"Educated" structures gave a start to Slavophilism in Russia

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Andrey FEFELOV. Being engaged in ideological struggle, being inside a kind of reactor, I feel that the lines of force of Westernism and Slavophilism, which were born in the 19th century, are still valid in the present century. And today I would like to talk with you, Alexander Vladimirovich, about the first Slavophiles.

Alexander PYZHIKOV. Yes, the origins and environment of the formation of Slavophilism are still of great interest. When we say the word "Slavophilism", we recall a number of public figures: Khomyakov, Kireevsky, Aksakov, Samarin … Behind them we find the large-scale, unjustly forgotten figure of Alexander Semenovich Shishkov, who was called the first Slavophile by his contemporaries, and not at all by subsequent generations. He did not dispute it, he accepted it. But it turned out that this is not a completely exhaustive thesis either. It contains by no means the whole truth about the origins of this phenomenon. If you look at it with a full-fledged glance, then Slavophilism was launched not by a specific person, but by scientists and "near-scholarly" structures.

Andrey FEFELOV. It sounds alarming: aren't they Masonic lodges?

Alexander PYZHIKOV. No, these are legal official structures, and there can be no sedition here. We are talking about the decree of Catherine II "On the establishment of the Russian Academy." This Decree, issued by the Empress in 1783, is in the "Complete Collection of Laws of the Russian Empire."

Andrey FEFELOV. The Academy, however, was previously established, under Peter I, and then absorbed Lomonosov, as well as Miller and other "nemchura" …

Alexander PYZHIKOV. Indeed, there is confusion on this score: the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences was created on the initiative of Peter I in 1724 and approved after his death by the Decree of Empress Catherine I, and in 1783 another academic structure was established - the Russian Academy.

Andrey FEFELOV. And what was another academy for?

Alexander PYZHIKOV. The fact is that the St. Petersburg Academy focused on natural disciplines: chemistry, physical and mathematical sciences, and historians occupied a peripheral niche in it. Moreover, it was foreigners who ruled the ball at the Academy, and Lomonosov waged historical and philological battles with them.

Having understood the situation in the field of the humanities, Catherine II considered it necessary to specially create the Russian Academy of Sciences. At that time, the St. Petersburg Academy was headed by Princess Yekaterina Dashkova, close to the empress, and she also became the director of the Imperial Russian Academy in 1783, in the decree on the creation of which it was said that the meaning of its establishment was to exalt the Russian word, or more precisely, Catherine II set the task to create the first Russian dictionary of the Russian language.

For this, the forces were pulled up, which were able to fulfill the task. And among them there were few foreign surnames, in contrast to the St. Petersburg Academy, where Russian surnames such as Lomonosov were rarely found at that time.

Andrey FEFELOV. Why did Empress Catherine II need it?

Alexander PYZHIKOV. Here she was not original. Catherine copied European approaches, and in the second half of the 18th century, a movement of romanticism was formed everywhere, including in the scientific paradigm, which paid close attention to the faith, history and language of peoples …

Andrey FEFELOV. That is, the leaven of future nations was created?

Alexander PYZHIKOV. Certainly! And this leaven cannot give results without increased attention to a common language and history - these are fundamental things in the romanticism of all European countries.

Andrey FEFELOV. In France, all this is quick and clear how it ended …

Alexander PYZHIKOV. Yes. In the face of the Pugachev movement, Catherine II's priority was on the agenda - the formation of a single nation, since it turned out that in reality life is not arranged the way it seems from afar, from the Petersburg offices or the Winter Palace …

Andrey FEFELOV. Didn't everything look so "folklore"?

Alexander PYZHIKOV. Yes, not so much, so it was necessary to start the huge work quickly. The idea of the first Russian dictionary was already in the air, and Catherine II entrusted this work to Ekaterina Dashkova, since she fully shared her opinion about the need for such a dictionary. The ruling class, speaking German and French, had long been necessary to return to the linguistic environment of the country where it was physically located.

Andrey FEFELOV. For some reason, almost nothing is known about this first Russian dictionary!

Alexander PYZHIKOV. It is forgotten, like this Russian Academy itself, which existed from 1783 to 1841, when Nicholas I, after the death of Shishkov, poured it into the St. Petersburg Academy as a department of the Russian language and literature.

But the history of this Russian Academy was quite turbulent and interesting. To compile the dictionary, a number of church ministers entered the Academy: bishops, priests, white clergy, and even young, promising seminaries. And during the absence of Dashkova at the meeting of this academy, Metropolitan Gabriel of St. Petersburg and Novgorod chaired. And these bishops were, by the way, in many respects from the Kiev-Mohyla Academy, from the library of which they sent, as it was said, a huge number of books. True, when I read about it, I am always jarred: there could not have been so many books there in 1783, because in 1777 there was a fire that burned almost everything.

The Academy received students from three seminaries: Petersburg, Moscow and Novgorod. It was them, the people of the clergy, who began to "move" along the academic line. And if in the St. Petersburg Academy there was a significant layer of people of foreign origin, then even people of simple origin got into the new Russian Academy: children of soldiers of the Preobrazhensky, Semyonovsky regiments …

Andrey FEFELOV. That is, the grandchildren of the peasants became academicians - it's amazing

Alexander PYZHIKOV. Yes, and there were many such people, and they left a noticeable mark on the Russian science of that time.

Andrey FEFELOV. And how could they act in these conditions? Received personal nobility?

Alexander PYZHIKOV. No, they did not receive a personal noble title. From the soldiers' schools, through the gymnasiums, they went to universities, including foreign ones. In fact, they followed the path of Mikhail Vasilyevich Lomonosov.

Andrey FEFELOV. Was the whole formation grown?

Alexander PYZHIKOV. Certainly! The fact of the matter is that the figure of Lomonosov obscures this phenomenon, and there were a lot of people like that.

Andrey FEFELOV. Alexander Vladimirovich, this means that, despite the increasing serfdom, "emancipation" from any service of the nobles, vertical dynamics was still present …

Alexander PYZHIKOV. But - at certain points! After all, the Preobrazhensky and Semyonovsky regiments were incomparable with the garrisons near Orenburg or elsewhere, because all the grand dukes served in these regiments. This privileged position was superimposed on ordinary recruits: those children of these soldiers who showed hope were assigned to the teaching, moved along the scientific line.

Andrey FEFELOV. Yes, the proximity to the "nobility" gave great opportunities. But it is still surprising that, in addition to the Lomonosov nugget, there was a whole direction of this kind

Alexander PYZHIKOV. Yes, and I have already found several dozen quantities of varying degrees of fame. For example, there was Ivan Ivanovich Lepekhin - an encyclopedist, academician of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences, Dashkova's favorite, he was working on the "Dictionary of the Russian Academy". Since a lot of church leaders worked on this "Dictionary …", the sources of words for it were chronicles, of course, of church origin, liturgical books, the laws of Ivan III, Ivan IV, and so on.

At the same time, the compilers translated Latin scientific terms from botany and chemistry into Russian, this point is also important to take into account. Latin names sounded in Russian, and this is important in this respect … For example, plants had folk names tied to the use of these plants, and the Latin language tore a name from its properties, carried a different meaning and principles. The downside was that no one paid attention to epics and folklore in general.

Andrey FEFELOV. But in order to then pay attention to folklore, it was also necessary to record it, fix the same epics, for example …

Alexander PYZHIKOV. Fragments about Ilya Muromets, Dobrynya Nikitich and some other epics were already known, but they were recorded in a comprehensive manner, of course, only by the middle of the 19th century.

Of course, they knew about the existence of a large epic layer, but even the fragments that surfaced here and there, for some reason, did not arouse tangible interest then. For example, Ivan Nikitich Boltin, a colleague and friend of Potemkin, a prominent historian and philologist, believed that all these "legends" were invented in order to ask for alms and should not be included in the dictionary. In this unwise "enlightenment" he was supported by the poet Derzhavin, who also spoke in a peculiar way about epics - that, they say, it should not be taken seriously, and there is no need to clog the Russian language. For Boltin and Derzhavin, the Russian language is unambiguously bookish.

When working on this dictionary, which has been created since 1783 and included six volumes, there was, of course, a lot of debate, and they argued mainly on what principle to compose it. And there are only two principles …

Andrey FEFELOV. Alphabetic and etymological?

Alexander PYZHIKOV. Yes! Boltin demanded an elementary approach, while the main forces insisted on something else. As a result, the first dictionary was etymological, 43 thousand words were included in it, and among them there were many scientific words in Russian translated from Latin.

Andrey FEFELOV. And these translated words stuck?

Alexander PYZHIKOV. Latin names stuck. And the elementary principle began to be realized in 1794, but the work went very sluggishly: the sixth volume was published already in 1826, already under Nicholas I! All this indicated that, of course, after Catherine II, the emperors paid much less attention to the humanitarian topic.

But the very atmosphere around the people who gathered then at the Russian Academy, this intellectual circle, gave birth to the first Slavophil ideological "sketches".

And Alexander Semyonovich Shishkov, about whom we spoke at the beginning of our conversation, having begun to gain authority with his literary research, in 1796 became a member of the Dashkovo Russian Academy. Being an outstanding and sincere person, he, however, did not get along very well with everyone who occupied the throne after Catherine II; Paul I favored him, brought him closer, making him his aide-de-camp, but once on duty in his waiting room, Shishkov had the imprudence to fall asleep. And - disgraced … Alexander I at first treated him badly, but since 1812, when Shishkov began to write patriotic appeals (manifestos, as they were called then), his affairs went uphill, because Alexander Semyonovich brilliantly completed all the tasks.

Andrey FEFELOV. Because he was a philologist and a nationally thinking person

Alexander PYZHIKOV. Yes, and in 1813 he was deservedly appointed president of the Academy, but after this appointment he had to beat the thresholds of power for several years in search of funding for it. Arakcheev helped. Then Shishkov was even appointed Minister of Public Education - he was so active, attracting attention to himself!

But, alas, bad luck happened again: at one of the audiences with Nicholas I, Shishkov could not open the lock of the briefcase that he had brought for a long time, and as a result, Nikolai I took this briefcase from him and opened it himself, gave it to him, and … he could not find the necessary papers. Then Nicholas I again took his portfolio and found what he needed. And after the completion of the case he said: Alexander Semyonovich, isn't it time to rest? After all, he was born in 1754, that is, already in his advanced years. That's how it happened to him. He was a rather comical man, but handsome: he really did not tolerate the cult of foreignism and deservedly headed the Academy.

Andrey FEFELOV. He remade foreign words in the Russian way …

Alexander PYZHIKOV. Yes, and that was the subject of ridicule …

Andrey FEFELOV. Instead of "billiards" - "ball rolling"

Alexander PYZHIKOV. Yes, these are approximately the verbal combinations he produced, fighting against borrowing.

Shishkov said the right things: what kind of united nation can we talk about if you speak French and German, how are you going to create it at all - after all, the people do not understand you? Shishkov was the driving force behind the movement in this direction. They made fun of him, like over Louis XIV, that, they say, the Academy is him. And also because the first wife of a zealot of the Russian national heritage Shishkov was a Lutheran, and the second was an ardent Catholic, whose relatives published a Polish literary magazine in St. Petersburg …

Andrey FEFELOV. That is, he got into the thick of it

Alexander PYZHIKOV. Yes, because of these contradictions he was very nervous. And when he asked for permission for a second marriage from Nicholas I, he treated his choice with irony. And Yulia Narbut really did not brighten up Shishkov's subsequent life, because they did not have children - only nephews, whom he took to foster home. But if only they! The house was also filled with French governors and teachers, who were invited by his wife. As a result, ironically, a man who opposed French education at home was forced to endure it constantly, since his wife considered this education to be the best.

When Shishkov was appointed president of the Academy, he was not in Moscow, but on a foreign campaign with Alexander I against Napoleon, and he asked that the affairs of the Academy be temporarily taken over by the Catholic Cardinal Sestrentsevich - a terrible enemy of the Jesuits, as far as he knew. For the same reason, he did not include the Minister of Public Education, Count Alexei Razumovsky, as a member of the Academy, since he sympathized with the Jesuits, who dared to speak even about the translation of the Russian language into Latin! That's what it was already heading towards … And Shishkov here stood up like a wall, leaning on the platform of Church Slavonic and Russian, which, of course, was across the throat of Benckendorffs of all stripes. He stood, as they say, to death, so it was no accident that in 1828 he was removed from the post of Minister of Public Education.

Andrey FEFELOV. After a while, this post was taken by Uvarov?

Alexander PYZHIKOV. Uvarov was also a pupil of the Jesuits; he came out of their circle into life. This was already in many ways a different circle, to which Shishkov did not belong and to which he tried in every possible way to resist, inviting metropolitans and bishops to the Russian Academy for scientific activities and creating dictionaries. He launched a huge publishing program in general, including on issues related to the Church Slavonic language and the publication of ancient literary monuments. Nikolai Mikhailovich Karamzin was at first his sworn enemy, then he softened his position to a more conservative one, and Shishkov extended a hand of friendship to him. And so, the Karamzinists said that the Academy publishes a historical reference book, not a dictionary of a living language.

Andrey FEFELOV. And then Pushkin appeared …

Alexander PYZHIKOV. Shishkov immediately appreciated the greatness of Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin in terms of the Russian language and invited him to be a member of the literary Russian Academy - this fact speaks precisely in favor of Shishkov, on whom so many unfair slander, reproaches of retrograde, and so on were erected during his lifetime.

The Uvarov-Benckendorff circle, as I call it, was also suspicious of Pushkin. Parents wanted to send him to a Jesuit institution, but did not give him, and Pushkin studied at the Tsarskoye Selo Lyceum … He was "incorporated" into a completely different circle. Therefore, both Pushkin and Shishkov worried the chief prosecutor of the Holy Synod Protasov, also a pupil of the Jesuits, like many of the entourage of Nicholas I.

Shishkov still fell under the hot hand with his preaching of the idea of Slavic unity. Neither Alexander I nor Nicholas I were ready for this, because many Slavic peoples were then part of the Austrian Empire, which would later become Austro-Hungarian. Only Alexander II would later develop these ideas into a Slavophil state policy.

Andrey FEFELOV. Shishkov, it turns out, was looking far ahead?

Alexander PYZHIKOV. Yes, even then he said that it was necessary to set up departments of Slavic studies, transfer to them the most prominent Slavists from the University of Prague: Hanka, Shafarik and others … But none of them took advantage of his invitations, the Slavic scientific leaders showed restraint for some reason.

After Shishkov's death in 1841, the Russian Academy was annexed as the Department of Russian Language and Literature to the Imperial St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences. Its president Dmitry Bludov, fortunately, largely adhered to Dashkova's guidelines.

Andrey FEFELOV. That is, he supported, strengthened in every possible way …

Alexander PYZHIKOV. Strengthened, as did the academic secretaries Ivan Lepekhin, Nikita Sokolov, who, by the way, came from seminarians. And before that in the St. Petersburg Academy the leading position of academician-secretary for ninety years was occupied by the Euler family, who had a very cool attitude towards the Russian Academy.

Lepekhin left four volumes of descriptions of his trips around the country, I looked at them in the Historical Library, this is a wonderful publication that a foreigner would hardly be capable of. His successor, as academician-secretary, Sokolov traveled across Russia with the German Pallas, whom Catherine II favored. Of the notes published by Pallas about his travels, in fact, two-thirds are the fruits of Sokolov's works, because Pallas did not know Russian well.

But on the whole, the Russian Academy remained on the floor of high literacy, not wanting to go down to the folklore floor. This was done by Vladimir Ivanovich Dal, whose vocabulary overshadowed the dictionaries of the Academy.

Andrey FEFELOV. Perhaps, at the beginning of the 19th century, the culture of expeditions did not yet take shape - there was no “recording” of oral speech, there was no system of its classification, in general there was no such methodology?

Alexander PYZHIKOV. Yes, of course not. The famous philologist Boris Andreevich Uspensky noticed one amazing thing in his 1985 monograph. He wrote that Lomonosov was sent abroad to study, in addition to physics, chemistry and so on, the Russian language! This is an amazing thought! It turns out that foreigners taught Russian in the first half and middle of the 18th century. For example, in the naval cadet corps, teaching the Russian language was included in the category of general training.

I was not too lazy and, to check this, took the volumes of "The History of the Semyonovsky and Preobrazhensky Regiments", where everything is documented: from Peter I to the middle of the 19th century, and I saw that the Russian language was taught to soldiers of regimental schools entirely by foreigners, Germans and French! What lies behind this, I do not know, and Ouspensky does not give an answer either.

Andrey FEFELOV. And this echoes the thoughts of Stalin in his works on linguistics, where he pointed out that the language of the army control system should be precise and understandable, excluding any discrepancies, that is, the same words should denote the same phenomena, otherwise commands during military operations will be impossible to convey

And it is not surprising that recruits from different places were taught the same language, because they could be carriers of different dialects and dialects, even the Ukrainian language is a dialect of the Russian language

Alexander PYZHIKOV. And many other peoples made up the population of the empire: Mordovians, Chuvash …

Andrey FEFELOV. Therefore, there was a logic behind it

And how were the obvious Slavophiles identified, about whom we already know a lot? One of them, Aksakov, published the newspaper The Day, by the way

Alexander PYZHIKOV. They took over this baton.

Andrey FEFELOV. They were structurally related to the Academy, or did the capillaries go to them from other layers?.

Alexander PYZHIKOV. The generation of Khomyakov, Kireevsky and Samarin could not, due to their age, be in that Academy, they were just beginning life. The father of the Slavophiles Aksakovs Sergei Timofeevich left memories of the last years of Shishkov, who died almost completely blind.

Andrey FEFELOV. That is, they were family close?

Alexander PYZHIKOV. Yes. Several years later, from the mid-1840s, Slavophilism began to take shape as a social trend. It did not arise in the Academy, which ceased to exist in 1841, but was directly associated with the bearers of this worldview - new, bright people. And what the concept of "Orthodoxy. Autocracy. Nationality”was created by former pupils of the Jesuits, speaks of the heterogeneity of the origins of Slavophilism. Khomyakov and his Slavophil "guard", following Shishkov's line, were, in fact, oppositionists.

Both Khomyakov and Samarin were put under house arrest, they were followed. Only under Alexander II did everything change somewhat, here the era of Nicholas I, when the ideological ball was largely ruled by the disciples of the Jesuits, had already ended. To what extent this struggle was reflected in politics - it is possible to argue here, but a common conceptual language was not found. It is a fact…