"Stalin always tucks by the arm"

The author of the book “What we got. Three centuries of attempts to understand Russia with the mind” Historian and journalist Artem Efimov - about the special path of Russia, the origins of patriotism and too serious about history.

The book published at the publishing house Individuum stands out favorably against the backdrop of countless publications about the "alternative", "unknown" or "real" history. This is a popular story about people who over the past three years have taken on the titanic work of generalizing knowledge in Russian history. Tatishchev, Karamzin, Soloviev, Klyuchevsky and others appear to be living people, with their motives, their misconceptions and their agenda, which sometimes consciously, and sometimes not - formed ideas about the history of Russia that we use now.

- What became your biggest discovery during the time of work on the book?

- I re -discovered what is called the social function of history. For example, the emergence of the "history of the Russian state" Karamzin, it seems that this is not even the first generalizing history of Russia to be written and published. But in addition to the obvious scientific significance, it was a grand public, even a social event. I bring in the book the excerpts from Pushkin’s memoirs: when in 1818 the first eight volumes of Karamzin had only been released, for some time they did not talk about anything else in society. All the previous works-Shcherbatov, Tatishchev and so on-could be read, could not be read, but Karamzin’s story needed to read everyone who wanted to be considered a little or less cultural person. There is such a radical interpretation of the phenomenon of the "history of the Russian state" that this is the moment of the birth of the nation, the moment when the people are aware of their One past, gains a collective, national identity. In general, the very idea of the national state arises just at this time, after the French Revolution, in the late 18th-early 19th century, when the European peoples rushed to write these very generalizing stories. And my personal, and not scientific, of course, was the discovery that the social function of history was not an empty phrase.

"History of the Russian state" Nikolai Karamzin

- It is interesting that on the one hand, the “history of the Russian state” tells the people about its history, and on the other hand, it captures this story, captures ideas that become a common place - forever or for a while. And in this sense, the personal role of the author, historian, is huge.

- The role of Karamzin is not only in the history of Russian national consciousness, but also in the history of Russian literature - this is that we do not realize enough. We all know that we had Pushkin and that we had great literature with him. This is true. But Karamzin is a creator of the language in which Pushkin later began to create Russian literature. The principles of the device of this language, the ideology of how the language should be arranged, was invented by Karamzin. And in a sense, our national consciousness with its pathetics and heroics is also Karamzin. The monument to Minin and Pozharsky is Karamzin. It was the first people's monument erected with folk money. Previously, either sovereigns or some iconic philanthropists were put.

-I got the impression that almost all your heroes-the “generalists” of Russian history - operated on one of two designs, and sometimes two at once: this is a “special Russian path” and the idea that history works according to some general laws, almost like physics and mathematics. Where did they come from?

Everyone has a special way

- They were invented, of course, not in Russia. The “special way” is the literal translation of the German term “Sonderweg”, it was introduced by German historians around the middle of the 19th century: in France and England a centralized state, in Spain there is also a centralized state, but we don’t have it. In our country, the formation of the German people, the same national identity occurred in conditions of political fragmentation. This is our special way. And everyone has such a special way. The British have their own concept of "Islandism" - "islandism". In the American tradition, the so -called "Exceptionalism" is very powerful - an idea of exclusivity. You try to tell the Frenchman that France has some kind of special way. That China is not a special way.

In general, the idea of this “path” itself is beyond the boundaries of historical science itself and historical memory. This is a philosophical, mental attitude. In order to understand how everything is arranged, we need a plot, we more or less arbitrarily build a plot narrative from any set of facts, which has a beginning, middle and an end that has the characters, secondary heroes, it is convenient for a person to digest information. And historians have been in a desperate way for some time to overcome this, getting rid of narrative. Starting, at least, from the Prussian historiographer Leopold von Ranke, who said that it is necessary to throw the annals in the garbage dump, because they are building some plot narratives, but they need to study the documents: budgets, merchants, acts, wills. Only by getting rid of the plot structures, which should invariably have morality at the end, can we begin to understand something.

- But then it turns out a huge scattering of facts, which still will have to somehow be interpreted. For example, general historical laws.

- Absolutely true. There is a problem of selecting facts, selection of sources, why you take this act into account and do not take into account another. This is an unresolved and, apparently, fundamentally unsolvable problem of infinitely small and infinitely large. As for the laws of history, it seems to me that the best that is written in Russian on this occasion, this is the beginning of the third volume of “War and the World”, when Tolstoy argues that the movements of troops that are started like Napoleon, in fact, are millions of individual people of individual people who somehow connected. And after Napoleon, we can assume that he brought the army, but in fact Napoleon only seems to be a free actor. Tolstoy completes this rating in a completely mathematical language: when we learn to determine the differentials of history, some individual motivation, and learn to integrate them, then we will understand something about the laws of history. Yes, the desire to discover these very laws, to describe them as a strict language as if possible is an inescapable thing that is characteristic of historical memory, because historical memory implies the presence of some single path of Russia. Historical science, as a rule, tries to distance himself from this and do what can be studied and checked.

- Do not predict the future.

- Do not predict the future and even if possible not try to explain the past. The historian can only build models, for example, I am building a model that the reforms of Peter the Great were caused by this and that and that led to that and that. We do not know how everything was actually, what Peter thought about all this. We have a certain number of written sources from which we can judge something, we cannot. And it is The basis for the model, not for the knowledge of the past.

- But in Russia, these models, these supposedly understood historical laws, were often used as a basis for action, and often with a tragic outcome.

- There is a universal philological law, this is precisely the law: from any of any large body of the text, you can extract more or less anything. From the Holy Scripture, as we observe, it is possible to construct a gigantic amount of directly contrary to each other doctrines. You can put a box of quotes about "God is love," but you can also bring the world to the world, but the sword. " So from the array of everything that is written on the history of Russia, of only 29 volumes of Solovyov, you can put anything.

- Although the same Solovyov has his own model.

- Yes, Solovyov has a concept, which, incidentally, outside of historical science, about how the human community evolves and grows. First, the family, then the clan, then the tribe, in the end, turns out the people, and then the state is obtained from the people. Soloviev discovered that this concept beautifully allows us to describe at least the history of Russia before the beginning of the 18th century. The problem is that further Peter the Great built a bureaucratic regular state in which the birth relations stopped playing any role at all, this most omnipotent state has appeared, which now controls everyone, regulates everything, and history continues at the same time. And what is moving further? Solovyov has no answer, his concept is not applicable here. The same thing happened with the infamous Francis Fukuyama, who proclaimed after the collapse of the Soviet Union: we have an end to history, because the whole story went to ensure that liberal democracy is established as the only possible way to organize the life of large communities of people, and now the last alternative to liberal democracy fell. It turned out that here he hurried.

- And then no less superficial Nassim Taleb with the idea of a "black swan" came.

The annals, starting with the "Tale of Ancient Publics", were written as reports to a terrible court

- Absolutely true. The beautiful historian, an ancient Rus' specialist Igor Nikolaevich Danilevsky has a hypothesis that, in my opinion, he does not put forward in scientific works, because for this painfully elegant: that the tradition of the Russian chronicle breaks off because they did not wait for the end of the world. Because the annals, starting from the "Tale of Ancient Age", were written as a report to a terrible court. Some dates were regularly set when the end of the world should occur. For example, 7000 year from the creation of the world, he is the 1492nd from the Nativity of Christ. And the end of the world does not come and does not come. Whenever he does not come, a huge number of explanations are immediately discovered and a new date is set. And in the 16th century, the concept that we are preparing a report to a terrible court and for this we write a story, just so shattered. The chronicle, of course, did not immediately die, but gradually lost its sacred meaning. And so every time: it seems to us that “we all understood why everything is happening and what everything goes to”, and then it turns out that the story continues and what we managed to understand is fundamentally not enough to explain everything. The eternal pursuit of final answers that are not.

Portrait of Mikhail Lomonosov

- How are generalizing historical works interconnected with patriotism?

- Vitivato. For Vasily Tatishchev, the associate of Peter the Great, the writing of the scientific history of Russia was a patriotic task. The British have, the Dutch have, but we do not. We are also an enlightened people, and therefore we also need. Less than 50 years after Peter, and Gerard Miller appears. Tatishchev added to the Time of Troubles, and Miller says: I will publish Tatishchev, and I myself will write from the Time of Troubles. Here Lomonosov arises and says: this German cattle did not find anything better than writing about the troubles, when everything was bad with us, but why would he not choose any object that would somehow exalt us and glorify us-why did he need troubles right away? Another example is the same Karamzin, a court historiographer in an official position. It is more or less clear that he could not write about the destructive role of the autocracy, that the republic needed. The Decembrists read Karamzin, realizing that he does not necessarily mean everything that he writes, they perceive the 9th volume of Karamzin, a description of the oprichnina, unequivocally, as a denunciation of autocracy. And they have other conclusions, for them, the patriotic duty of any honest Russian person is to put a more fair rule.

- And these are two options for patriotism - either “we are the best, and our whole story indicates this,” or “we made mistakes, and in order to become better, we need to correct them and avoid in the future.” There is a feeling that now in Russia the first option is much wider, in my opinion, it somehow comes from how we represent our history, how we teach it at school. Was it always?

When there is a threat, it turns out that it is difficult to call the people to fight for a class struggle, for some kind of political education

- Specifically, the school subject of history, which we studied in late Soviet times and more or less continue to study now, did not take shape immediately, but its general principles were about around the 1930s. When the Bolsheviks came to power, they had to overthrow the historical narrative, which took shape over the previous two centuries, starting at least from Tatishchev, but in fact even earlier: about the decisive significance of autocracy in Russian history. They needed to explain everything with the class struggle, Marxist theory. Part of this policy came down to the fight against Great Russian chauvinism. The Russians became almost the only rather large people who did not receive his own national representation in the Soviet Union. There is a Kazakh Republic, there is Ukrainian, Latvian, Lithuanian and so on, but there is no Russian republic - there is Russia, which, in fact, is exactly the same imperial multinational education. The RSFSR was the only Soviet Republic that did not have its own Communist Party. This is a completely conscious policy of overcoming Great Russian chauvinism, which, incidentally, in some ways reflected in the present. About this there is a book by the American historian Terry Martin “The Empire of Positive Discrimination” (in the original - The Affirmative Action Empire, in a not too successful Russian translation - the “empire of positive activity”). At the turn of the 20-30s, it was discovered that the policy of rooting is very successful. Everywhere schools in national languages, the national elite is everywhere, in Ukraine, as of the beginning of the 30s, schools with teaching in Russian were 10 percent or even less. Many languages simply gained writing for the first time. And then suddenly it turned out that the support was eroded, on which all this should stand. When there is a threat, for example, in the person of Hitler, it turns out that it is difficult to call the people to fight for a class struggle for some kind of political education. But for the homeland - this is a very understandable call. And so in the 30s there was a very sharp turn. About this there is a book by another American historian, David Brandenberger, entitled "National Bolshevism." Historical faculties that were closed after the revolution were revived, history returned to universities, to schools. A focused policy of constructing the image of the general glorious past has begun. At this time, for example, Eisenstein removes Alexander Nevsky, at that time Lomonosov is proclaimed the founder of Moscow University. At this time, Popov is announced by the only correct inventor of the radio. This is the construction of the glorious past of the nation, which must be protected - the Soviet nation, if you like. Naturally, these words were not pronounced, bad associations were connected with them, but the concept of "Soviet people" appeared around this time. Already in 1977 he was secured in the Soviet Constitution. The story, like the school subject that we continue to study so far, albeit with rather large amendments, appeared exactly then. And the very origin determines that this is a political, ideological construct, which was invented and introduced with a very specific purpose - the education of patriotism, in particular Soviet patriotism. And it more or less continues to function. In the modern textbook, of course, there will be no conversations about the class struggle and the development of productive forces, but there will be a similar structure, division in the era, general accents: Peter - uniform, well done, then the era of palace coups, biron , then Catherine the Second - first a reformer, then a conservative, then Alexander the first - first a reformer, then a reactionary, and so on. This structure is filled with some other content, something is removed from there, something is added, but the essence does not change-the education of the younger generation in a certain spirit with the help of a carefully designed historical narrative.

Portrait of Catherine II

-And until the 1930s, this was not?

- Of course, everyone always perfectly understood the great power of the school textbook. Catherine the Second, when she first introduced typical school textbooks, their rules personally. There was a wonderful passage about her husband Peter III, whom she herself overthrew, imprisoned, and then he was accidentally strangled there. Everyone, to the last peasant, knew what actually happened to him. And in the textbook it was written that they overthrew Peter the Three, because he was a bad king, poorly ruled, and, being overthrown and imprisoned in prison, he was deprived of his own unnecessary life - not literally, but something like that. It is clear that "Orthodoxy, autocracy, nationality" was carefully brought up primarily by a gymnasium historical education, and these techniques were largely dedicated to Soviet textbooks. This is a continuous process.

- And nowhere in this process the concept of shame was laid down, the idea that we all, as a people, should not only be proud of our history, but also ashamed of something in it. Как, например, в Германии в послевоенный период.

Общенациональный немецкий стыд – это юридические реалии, а не общественно-нравственные

- Опыт Германии уникален по очень многим причинам, из которых главная – это Красное знамя над рейхстагом и Нюрнбергский процесс. Это более-менее уникальный случай, когда после Второй мировой войны определенные исторические трактовки в отношении Германии и Японии были зафиксированы не как научный консенсус, а международными юридическими документами. Даже после Красных кхмеров в Камбодже ничего такого не было. Нюрнбергский процесс был, а аналогичного процесса в отношении коммунизма – не было. И его невозможно провести. Так называемый общенациональный немецкий стыд – это юридические реалии, а не общественно-нравственные. Когда мы дискутируем об истории в России, мы неизбежно приходим к 30-м годам, к репрессиям и к Сталину. Очевидно, что спорим-то мы на самом деле не про Сталина, а про необходимое зло, про пределы вмешательства государства в частную жизнь, про свободу, ответственность, тоталитаризм, про какие-то такие общеполитические, общефилософские вещи, которые мы обсуждаем на нашем историческом материале, потому что другого материала у нас нет. Грубо говоря, Сталин под руку подворачивается все время.

Наша историческая память и исторический опыт сформированы событиями, которые мы старательно игнорируем

Поэтому мне кажется, что вообще в общественной дискуссии в современной России история занимает совершенно неподобающее ей место, гипертрофированное – она не приспособлена к этому, она не для того предназначена совершенно. Сталин умер 60 с лишним лет назад. После Сталина было очень много чего – Новочеркасский расстрел, танки в Праге, Афганистан, перестройка, в конце концов. Наша историческая память и исторический опыт сформированы событиями, которые мы старательно игнорируем, нам хочется обнаружить одну критическую точку, одну развилку, на которой мы свернули не туда. Что в 1937 году наши дедушки и бабушки не скинули Сталина, и с тех пор все стало плохо. No. It doesn't work like that.

Nikolai Karamzin

– Труд Карамзина оказал огромное воздействие на национальное самосознание. Может быть, если бы сейчас появился новый обобщающий исторический труд, а вслед за ним новые учебники – и общество бы изменилось, и мы вышли из того состояния, в котором оказались?

Прочел это какой-нибудь либерал – сказал: "Что за чушь, мало про губительность авторитаризма". Прочел консерватор: "Ерунда какая-то, мало про антинациональную интеллигенцию"

- Во-первых, никто за это не возьмется. Попросту есть непреодолимые технические сложности. Даже Карамзин так и не дописал про Смуту – там чудовищный объем источников, которые просто физически невозможно освоить. Ну ладно, допустим. Соловьев как-то справился со Смутой. Предположим, сегодня появляется какой-нибудь новый Соловьев, который преодолел вот эти технические затруднения, сумел все написать и издать. And what's next? Прочел это какой-нибудь либерал – сказал: "Что за чушь, мало про губительность авторитаризма". Прочел консерватор: "Ерунда какая-то, мало про антинациональную интеллигенцию". Прочел коммунист: "Бред, ничего нет про недопустимость частной собственности". Добавили про частную собственность – пришел тот же либерал: "Это что за фигню вы тут написали!" And so to infinity.

- Разумеется, у многотомной истории России сегодня не будет той же судьбы, что у труда Карамзина. Но есть же другие форматы, есть интернет. Кстати, такие проекты, как “Арзамас” или “Проект 1917”, играют как раз на этом поле.

Новый Карамзин невозможен. Даже единый учебник истории невозможен

- Да, но и у того, и у другого проекта, которые мне очень нравятся, есть свой довольно узкий сегмент аудитории. А вот что-то такое обобщающее практически весь спектр читателей создать невозможно. Новый Карамзин невозможен. Тут, понимаете, выяснилось, что даже единый учебник истории по большому счету невозможен. По такому учебнику должны учиться школьники в Москве, в Казани и, например, в Якутске. Представьте, в Казани начинаем проходить Чингисхана, татаро-монгольское иго. Давайте-ка, попробуйте одинаково преподать это в Москве и в Казани. А в Якутске якутским детям начинают преподавать какого-то Рюрика, который приехал откуда-то там в какой-то там Новгород. До Якутии, до предков этого школьника вся эта история доползет спустя тысячу лет после этого самого Рюрика. Вот вам и единый учебник истории. Не в том даже дело, что Россия очень большая, а в том дело, что она очень пестрая. И даже на уровне школьного учебника, даже при наличии инфраструктуры и полномочий Министерства образования и правительства Российской Федерации оказалось практически невозможным создать единый учебник.

- Если резюмировать, проблема не в том, что мы как-то неправильно историю знаем, а в том, что мы слишком серьезно к ней относимся?

- Да, во-первых, мы к ней слишком серьезно относимся. А во-вторых, мы пытаемся искусственным образом сконструировать патриотизм, национальное единство, национальную идею – Бог знает, что еще. Как есть "красота в глазах смотрящего", так и история – в ней тоже каждый находит свое. Я перестал участвовать во всевозможных баталиях про правильную или неправильную интерпретацию истории, каких-нибудь исторических эпизодов, потому что они на самом деле не про историю, а про общие мировоззренческие установки. Историческая наука тут не властна.