Harassment and Hussars

Two approaches to the discussion about harassment and women's rights on the example of the heroes of the story by Leo Tolstoy "Two Hussars"

This note has two reasons for not being written.

Secondly, in domestic latitudes, discussions of the American scandal with accusations of harassment have practically come to naught, overshadowed by new informational occasions. All angry regrets - about the violation of the presumption of innocence, on the one hand, and about male chauvinistic dominance, on the other - have been expressed. Yes, and all the jokes are already joked.

And firstly, our discussion of this topic seems to be some kind of abstract occupation - one can talk about the distortions of political correctness and the costs of feminism while being in a place where the situation with correctness and equality is not so dramatically bad.

It is inappropriate in the truest sense of the word to talk about the grimaces of overseas women's struggle for their rights from a country where family beatings are decriminalized, and the thesis “itself to blame” triumphs in society.

But there is an important reason why this note is still worth writing.

Because it is impossible to assume that these moods will not affect us at all. And it’s not even about the fact that the American mass (and non-mass) culture, tuned to the development of modernity, will become their ideal “transmitter”, but also because it seems to be a general metamorphosis of the spirit of the times. A change not only in the code of external “decency”, but in the internal understanding of “how it should be”, extending to entire generations.

Such a transition - from freedom and mockery of all kinds of regulation to restraint and reverence for principles - has occurred in the world more than once (in order to then rebound again to mockery of boring rules). And in Russian literature there is a tendentious, but exhaustive description of this change of views and generations.

This is a story written in 1856. The author is Leo Tolstoy. It's called "Two Hussars".

The twenty-eight-year-old Tolstoy makes no secret of his penchant for the old "evil" generation. He is nostalgic for the “violent, passionate and, to tell the truth, depraved inclinations of the last century” and is moved even by the outrages already committed (we learn about his favorite Count Turbin the father that he “was killed in a duel with some foreigner, whom he whipped a rapper on the street").

But in the unpleasant young earl - the representative of the next generation - there is not a shadow of these inclinations. His distinguishing qualities: "love for decency and the comforts of life, a practical view of people and circumstances, prudence and forethought."

Prudence and forethought—it is hard to better describe the rules by which today's civilized young people are supposed to live. And, if you get rid of Tolstoy's contemptuous intonation, you can't even understand what's wrong with that.

In general, this story is easily shifted to the modern era. Turbin-father (it is quite possible to imagine him as a man of the eighties and nineties of the last century), a bright and attractively unbridled character, comes to a provincial town. There he wins back from card cheats the debt of a stupid boy who was about to commit suicide because of a loss, and also comes to the ball. Ladies habitually expect harassment (“The leader, experiencing a certain inner trembling that this hussar would not make some scandal with her in front of everyone, looked at him with an expression that said: “If you offend a woman, then you are a complete scoundrel after that”) , but he behaves more or less decently, only slightly harassing one young widow.

And then he harasses her quite strongly, secretly hiding in her carriage. She is crying, but this - the hero and the author are sure - is a sign of consent. And in general, breadth and passion, it is said here, justify everything.

Twenty years pass. Young Turbin (quite a hipster) arrives with a regiment in the same town. That same widow is now an elderly widow and lives with her young daughter (she had her even before she met the passionate hussar). Turbin-son beats the old woman in small cards and takes the daughter's romantic story that she sits at the window in the garden at night as an invitation to a date. When he comes to the window at night, the girl sleeps with her head on the windowsill. He takes her hand. She screams and runs away. All. The young man does not pursue her, does not offend her in any way. But this innocent event becomes proof of the vulgar prudence of the new generation, its earthiness and downright vileness. And Tolstoy's talent is such that you even believe him.

But if you try to throw off the charm of this talent, then this is what happens. A person who allows himself (for example) to flog an unpleased individual with a rapper and applies the technologies of Lieutenant Rzhevsky to women from a well-known anecdote cannot be excused by the passion and breadth of his nature. And the one who does not throw money around and in love prefers preliminary agreements - he may not be so incendiary, but not necessarily a nonentity. Yes, and safer with him somehow.

So, ask me - I would choose the Turbine son. For myself, I don't know. For my daughter, sure.