On September 16, 2019, at the age of 54, Doctor of Historical Sciences died Alexander Vladimirovich Pyzhikov.

Alexander Vladimirovich Pyzhikov

In 1989, A. Pyzhikov graduated from the history department of the Moscow Regional Pedagogical Institute. N.K. Krupskaya, ten years later defended his Ph.D. thesis in historical sciences “Socio-political development of Soviet society in 1953–1964.” A year later, he defended his doctorate on the topic “Historical experience of political reform of Soviet society in the 50s–60s” (M., 1999).

However, in recent years, Pyzhikov has become widely known for his research into the schism of the Russian Church in the 17th century and the history of the Old Believers. In his works, he tried to show that the Russian Old Believers played an important role in the revolutionary events of the early 20th century and the formation of the Soviet system. He put forward these thoughts in such books as “The Facets of the Russian Schism,” “The Roots of Stalin’s Bolshevism,” and “Rising Over the Abyss.”

A. Pyzhikov, in particular, argued:

Soviet society is a society of non-popovites. The merchant millionaires who started everything with tsarism needed capitalism, the liberal Western version, like in France and England. There was nothing else there. Let it be national capitalism, although even I now doubt it. Some of them, especially those close to Cornelius, like to say that they behaved like the national bourgeoisie. Only she behaved absolutely not nationally.

The Soviet team is popovites. The priestly model is a Western model, private property is sacred, and there is no talk. The main mass, non-church, non-priest - this is what the USSR grew up on. They did it.

Alexander Vasilyevich also introduced the term “Ukrainian-Polish yoke” into journalistic circulation. In his interview with Komsomolskaya Pravda he stated:

What is the Ukrainian-Polish yoke? Of course, first of all this is the construction of a new church. The Russian Orthodox Church under the Romanovs and before are two big differences... Before the Romanovs, the Russian Church was very different. In the pre-Romanov church there were very strong trends that the church could not be a commercial entity... Ukraine became a source of state power for the Romanovs. They came here, and Alexei Mikhailovich canceled all Zemsky Councils. He didn’t need them... The enslavement of the peasants also became the work of the Romanovs.

Among the Old Believers, the works of A. Pyzhikov aroused controversial opinions. Many said that his concept was tendentious and not supported by the completeness of historical sources. Others expressed that, despite the fact that Pyzhikov’s ideas are too categorical, they contain a sound grain that allows us to take a different look at the history of the Old Believers and the Russian state.

On air on the Vesti FM radio station in March 2017, there was a meeting between the historian and the Primate of the Russian Orthodox Church, Metropolitan (Titov). At this meeting, Alexander Vladimirovich noted:

Old Belief did not appear out of nowhere, it has always been there! It is the essence of this land. This is not even an old belief, but a true belief. This is the main spiritual path of our country, this is an expression of the essence of Russia itself, which in principle does not exist without Old Belief. Where is the center of gravity in the cause of the split? The center of gravity of the Old Belief was among the people, and what was imposed had its center of gravity in the elite. And this created a split. It can only be overcome on conditions of equality. Old Belief is illegitimate, as the Russian Orthodox Church declares. But how can equality be achieved if the Old Believers are considered illegitimate?

Readers of our site can also familiarize themselves with the correspondent of Nakanune.RU.

Please don't think badly of me
I myself am a great power, a chauvinist, and generally a supporter of large states and countries. Well, at least because the more people there are, the simpler, easier, and even better life is. It’s not for nothing that a proverb has taught since ancient Russian times: “It’s easier to beat a dad in a bunch.”
Therefore, I read with pleasure all sorts of exposers of historical falsifications (well, even children know that the Judeo-Masons and the Germans distorted our history in order to enslave)
But this titan of thought eclipsed everyone

Pyzhikov, Alexander Vladimirovich
Russian historian and statesman,
specialist in the history of Russia of the 20th century. Doctor of Historical Sciences.

Pyzhikov with bags, a lovely stranger and Spitsyn on the arm

Doctor of Historical Sciences Alexander Pyzhikov talks about his new book “Slavic Rift”. What the Kiev region brought to Russia in a meaningful, ideological, state and religious sense. What position did the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth occupy in the international market, and how Ivan the Terrible violated the plans of the Polish-Lithuanian elite. Who did the Romanovs rely on when they came to power? Why is it so important to reclaim our true history?

Turns out!
It’s not the Jews who are to blame for everything, nor the stone masons, nor even the little damned one...
And the Polish-Ukrainian Great Conspiracy to Seize Power in Russia
Which (Attention!) completed successfully
And now we live under the Polish-Ukrainian yoke, enslaved to the very throat, and this is the reason for all our troubles (and not from women, as some people think)
What should we do now? - you ask (I asked)
There is a recipe! - Pyzhikov responds
The Russian Orthodox Church, as the main instrument of the conspiracy, should be renamed from Russian to Ukrainian
Ukraine should be annexed to Poland, since they are one and the same people
The President should be chosen from among the Old Believers, because only they are not traitors
Well, how will we live after this!

We're sick of it, honestly!
Has my mind gone completely crazy, or what? At what point did Ukrainians become non-Russians?
With the latest political upheavals, some have already begun to forget that Ukrainians are also Russians
Come on! Even during the times of Soviet internationalism, this fact, although it was not emphasized, was not hushed up either.
Ukrainians, like Belarusians, like Russians themselves, are one of the three big Russian peoples
United by a common origin (Ancient Rus'), language (Old Slavic) and territory of residence.
Last year, a family from Chernigov moved to Krasnodar. Over the course of a year, everyone has successfully forgotten the Ukrainian language, fully adapted to life and also criticizes local customs - no one can distinguish them from ordinary visitors from other regions of Russia. Both children study at school, switched to Russian languages ​​quite easily, and, even if you wanted to, you can’t tell them apart from others.
Because this doesn’t happen to our own people. Poles, even completely Russified, even in the third generation, are different. But Ukrainians do not.
...
And therefore, to want them to separate from us and join some Poles
Only a fool or a bastard can (well, or not the last one, but still a bastard)

For more than a year now, in the capital's conservative political circles there has been nothing but talk about the works of the historian Alexandra Pyzhikova. Alexander Vladimirovich is present in the media as the author of publications about the Old Believers, the Orthodox schism of the 17th century, the Russian economy at the turn of the 19th-20th centuries and the problems of the 1917 revolutions. One gets the feeling that his historical concept of the Russian Bolshevik Old Believer has taken on a life of its own. People are looking for their Old Believer roots, and the Old Believer mentality is now used to explain everything incomprehensible that exists in their native country. On the one hand, this is the fate of any new humanitarian idea that manages to win minds. On the other hand, over the past 30-40 years there have been too many fashionable concepts, but also almost as many disappointments in them.

A Nakanune.RU correspondent met with Alexander Pyzhikov at Zakhar Prilepin’s farmstead, where the historian had a creative evening, and tried to understand the essence of his ideas, whether this was fresh historical knowledge or just another fashionable salon theme.

“Without Fedoseevites there would be neither the party nor you and me”

Over the weekend, more than 20 people came to Zakhar Prilepin’s hut in the Moscow region to listen to historian Pyzhikov. Lectures, by the way, are paid, and it’s not a long way from Moscow, but the person of the doctor of sciences is popular here. Even before the event began, people gathered around him. We break through to ask a few questions about his relationship with modern historical scholarship.

« There are specialists at the Institute of History who recognize my ideas, we meet and discuss. After all, I have serious work from a scientific point of view, I’m not like some popular publicists who blab something in the media", Pyzhikov answers.

For those who graduated from the history department in the “2000s,” his name is not an empty phrase, and any student who honestly prepared for seminars on the history of the USSR during the Khrushchev period is familiar with his work. Pyzhikov is a recognized expert on this topic, and there are no complaints about his doctorate. However, Alexander Vladimirovich is present in the media not as a specialist on Khrushchev, but as the author of publications about the Old Believers, the Orthodox schism of the 17th century, the Russian economy at the turn of the 19th-20th centuries and the problems of the 1917 revolutions. But this topic is still far from unanimous recognition among colleagues. However, those gathered on the farm are looking for something fresh, philosophical and intriguing in Pyzhikov’s ideas, for example, a detective story in the search for Soviet identity, and not at all strictly scientific. The opening speech is made by the owner of the farm, Zakhar Prilepin.

« Intuitively, I guessed that the truth was somewhere in this direction. I needed someone to explain why I thought this way. In the person of Pyzhikov, this man suddenly appeared. This is not even a theory, but a historical fact, which no one has fully realized", he reflects.

Prilepin immediately explains that right now the topic of the national roots of the Russian revolution is becoming especially important for him.

Pyzhikov begins to talk about this with a reference to the nephew of the Slavophile writer Aksakov, Alexander. His uncle, Ivan, is remembered at school as one of the founders of the Slavophile circle and the author of “The Scarlet Flower,” while his nephew was an official on special assignments in the Ministry of Internal Affairs under Nicholas I, where he studied the consequences of the schism in the Russian Orthodox Church. Pyzhikov claims that from his reports to the department, which the Minister of Internal Affairs, and possibly the Emperor himself, were familiar with, it followed that official statistics on Old Believers did not give a real picture. It is possible that there were 10 times more Old Believers, or at least those who sympathized with them, in the Russian Empire of the mid-19th century.

« Aksakov even wrote to the minister: “We don’t know what kind of Russia we are leading?” We take the data that is available, which is given everywhere, about a few percent(Old Believers - approx. Nakanune.RU), multiply them 10-11 times. As soon as we multiply, then we can somehow start from it and figure out how it really was. As a result, a picture will be presented that, thanks to Nicholas I, although he was not very happy when he received this data, we will not be able to cross out"- says the historian.

« We are dealing with an environment that is only externally, officially called Orthodox, but it is not such“, he immediately adds.

At the same time, the national roots of the Russian revolution should not be sought among the Old Believers. More precisely, not among those Old Believers about whom the average person knows at least something: the rich Moscow merchant clans. The origins of Soviet identity were not hidden in the houses of Savva Morozov and Ryabushinsky, even if they sponsored Lenin’s party from there. The goals of the Old Believers merchants, according to Pyzhikov, did not go beyond the fight against St. Petersburg financial and industrial groups. The guest of the farm suggests paying attention to the priestless Old Believers and already there looking for the origins of “Stalin’s Bolshevism” (“The Roots of Stalin’s Bolshevism” is one of his most famous books).

He immediately illustrates his thesis with a life story that happened to an acquaintance of his, an employee of the Institute of History, in the 80s. One day, together they were raking through letters that came to the institution, and came across a complaint from an old Bolshevik. The person outlined the essence of the problem in the text and asked for support. For the sake of credibility, he signed himself as an “old Bolshevik” and, which came as a surprise to Pyzhikov’s acquaintance, as a certain Fedoseevite. In order to somehow sort out the matter, the comrade took the letter to the elderly sector manager with the question: “ Old Bolshevik - understandable. And what kind of Fedoseevite?» « The Fedoseevites are those without whom neither the party nor you and I would exist. Cut it on your nose“, - the historian quotes the answer of the elderly boss.

After some time, the lecture ends and Nakanune.RU correspondent Ivan Zuev has the opportunity for a more detailed conversation.

“When everything broke through in 1917, the Old Believers were already ready”

Isn’t it radical to say that Bolshevism emerged from the Old Believers?

I often hear this, especially from liberals, but I also hear it from stubborn Marxist-Trotskyists. These are all the costs of one sad circumstance: all these intellectuals of ours leaf through books, rather than read them. If they had approached this more thoughtfully, they would have realized that there was no question of any Old Believers who had infiltrated the Communist Party and were doing any business there. This is an absurdity worthy of irony.

I am not talking about practicing Old Believers. I emphasize this all the time. Of course, they were there, because the Old Believers did not disappear anywhere, despite the repressions, which no one denies, as well as the fact that they also affected the Old Believers. I’m talking about people who came from an Old Believer environment. The human mentality, roughly speaking, the soul, is formed from the age of seven. Specifically, in the Old Believer community, from the age of seven he was placed in a “circle”, in mutual responsibility, communal, as was customary. At this age, the foundation with which a person lived his life was laid. What is instilled in youth will not go away. The Old Believer mentality is characterized by very specific qualities that are clear to everyone even without me: collectivism, rejection of the foreign. Then they said that people were allegedly knocked out of their trousers by foreign commissars in leather jackets. Nothing like that, the commissars did not play any role here, this is just how people were raised, this is how they felt about themselves.

But doesn’t this sound similar to the thesis that Russian communism emerged from Jewish shtetls, or that “the Englishwoman made a mess”? What's the difference?

Well, you can say that, why not? But what does this have to do with reality? None.

I'm talking about something else. Yes, there were bearers of communist ideas outside Russia, outside the Russian people, rightly so. And these are the same Marxists. Moreover, the communist idea is strongly implicated in globalism. Global capital must be opposed by global power, which means that all national governments and people go to hell. Only the fight against international globalism—capital—has become relevant. It is to this that the world international global proletariat must be raised.

Of course, in the Bolshevik Party there were bearers of this idea, and they united around the personality of Lev Davidovich Trotsky, as well as the group that he represented. Moreover, this movement was the first when Marxism set foot on Russian soil. But when all these historical events happened here, when completely different forces entered the party, which did not accept Trotsky’s Marxism, everything changed. Trotsky himself complained about this, saying that some idiots had arisen who did not understand anything and simply clung to the bright idea that he and Zinoviev represented. They fanned Marxism, they say. And Stalin relied precisely on these forces. Which gave Trotsky a reason to say that he was a true Marxist.

However, the force, the energy that created the USSR, of course, was not charged with Trotskyism. Trotsky was an unacceptable figure for the majority, like all his comrades, even Zinoviev, who tried to win over the Russian working class to strengthen his positions, but this ruined him. When he opened the door and brought huge masses into the party on the so-called Leninist calls, he received enemy force against himself. So all of Zinoviev’s leadership claims and ambitions melted away.

Do you want to say that Marxism came from the West and appealed to ordinary people who somehow transformed it to suit themselves?

What are the specifics of Russia? The religious conflict, from which all European countries emerged, happened in Russia a hundred years later, but it was no less bloody, although it took a different direction. We were unable to separate the warring parties. In Europe it worked. Catholics and Protestants were divided. In Russia, two forces did not arise after the religious conflict. There is only one left. If in the West they call it the Reformation, everyone studies it, then Russia is supposedly left without the Reformation. But, in fact, it was there, it just remained latent and did not break through. The catalyst for its breakthrough was 1917 and its consequences. This is where she broke through. The rivers of blood that our priests shed...

The religious reformation in Europe created the bourgeoisie, but in our country? If the revolution of 1917 was a delayed reformation, then in our country it created a communist state led by materialists? Is that how it works?

Certainly. It’s easy to compare Western Protestants and Old Believers. Protestants organized themselves around private property. For them it is sacred; whoever has more of it, God loves the same. In Russia, due to the fact that the Old Believers remained the losing side, remained in a discriminatory situation, they were forced to survive. There's no time for property here. The situation itself forced them to turn on the collectivist mechanisms that they had cultivated within themselves for 200 years. When everything broke through in 1917, they were already ready.

“I told Cornelius that there would never be a meeting with Putin, but here it is!”

Do you have data on how much money the Old Believers spent to support the Bolsheviks? Do you have any documents?

It’s all in the police archives, you just need to pick it up and count it. I cited some documents in “Facets of the Russian Schism,” but you can find more if you set your mind to it, for that I am calm. The main thing is not to mix everything together, to have attention to detail. What details do I mean?

When we use the term “Old Believers,” we are not very careful. For example, we forget about “priests” and “non-priests”. I myself was guilty of this at one time. But these are completely different groups. The fact of the matter is that the Old Believers were very fragmented...

When we say that the Old Believers helped the revolution... The “priests” helped. And what about the “priests”? Probably 80% of Moscow millionaires belonged to the priestly class. And here it doesn’t matter that Ryabushinsky had a “piece of paper”, that he was a parishioner of the “Rogozhskoye Cemetery”, but Konovalov did not, and someone left long ago. The main thing is that it was a single clan that fought for a place in the sun in the Russian economy. This clan was strongly united by pragmatism. Therefore, the same Guchkov, who even was married to a French woman and had not gone to church for a long time, was still with them. I went or didn’t go, this all has only local history significance. For understanding the meaning, this does not matter.

So these “priests” who grew out of the “Rogozhsky Cemetery” had absolutely clear claims to a certain role in the economy. It was a struggle between financial and industrial Moscow and St. Petersburg. And that's a different story. If we are talking about the Bespopovites, then there were practically no millionaires there - only two or three names. Mostly small figures like the merchant's wife in Serpukhov, with whom Stalin either lived or did not live. At the same time, the non-popovites treated the priests very badly, because the Nikonians are simply enemies, and these are traitors. It’s all very complicated and confusing, and that’s what I’m trying to figure out. And then, for example, Belkovsky comes to Echo of Moscow and starts commenting on my book! Did he understand anything at all?

What did he say?

Well, they say, these cliches are about how the Old Believers could end up in the Communist Party, how could such a thing come to mind?

I see, but how do people in the scientific community view your books?

Well, to the Metropolitan (Primate of the Russian Orthodox Old Believer Church - approx. ed.) likes it, the scientists around him are not very friendly. But they, as a rule, study ethnography, local history, and philology. My views on the Old Believers are unusual for them, they are apparently not ready for this. Well, I have my own scientific life and they have theirs.

Did you receive any news from Cornelius, or maybe you met?

I visited him several times. The last time he called was when my article “The Kyiv Roots of the Moscow Schism” was published in my Profile; he said that he read it on the plane and liked it. I like Cornelius myself. The contrast with our other leader of Christians is very clearly visible.

Kornily is a simple man who worked at the factory for 30 years. How he lives, I saw for myself, I visited him, modest surroundings, with the exception of some ancient icons, but he lives like every second Russian.

By the way, when Putin met with him, many remembered you.

And by the way, I told Cornelius that this would never happen, but he hoped - and so.

And now how are the Old Believers doing, what’s going on, clans, families, business?

No, that's not the case now. Only merchant shadows remained.

“Being a Finno-Ugric is indecent, but is it decent to pray to Kyiv?”

So, if we rely on your version of events, then since there are no Old Believers, since this mentality is gone, does this mean that there will be no socialism in Russia?

It’s not completely gone, it’s not the morning fog.

OK then. He hasn’t left at all, albeit, but the Old Believers don’t have any money now, you just said that yourself.

You are confusing again. Soviet society is a society of non-popovites. The merchant millionaires who started everything with tsarism needed capitalism, the liberal Western version, like in France and England. There was nothing else there. Let it be national capitalism, although even I now doubt it. Some of them, especially those close to Cornelius, like to say that they behaved like the national bourgeoisie. Only she behaved absolutely not nationally. Okay, but where does this love for Nobel, for the Azov-Don Bank, the representative office of Jewish capital, come from? This was the general plot to push tsarism forward.

Nobel, by the way, gave money to everyone.

With Nobel it’s different, he gave money to everyone. What is important to him is the conflict that he had with the St. Petersburg banks, which are now considered to be “foreign influence” at that time. Although what they wanted to do was the Chinese version. It will take a long time to leave the West. Just like China did. Chinese version of the late 20th century. What they did was because of this the year 17 was forced. It was necessary to remove the group, which I conventionally call the Kokovtsov group (Count Vladimir Kokovtsov, Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Russian Empire in 1911-1914 - approx. Nakanune.RU). The factory of the world, a mass of cheap labor, foreign capital - that was the goal of this group. But this path eventually became Chinese, but it would have been ours. Yes, Kokovtsov’s group is bureaucratic, but in China officials also performed miracles.

The Soviet team is popovites. The priestly model is a Western model, private property is sacred, and there is no talk. The main mass, non-church, non-priestly, is what the USSR grew up on. They did it. They raised all their ideas about life, about how it should be arranged, to the level of the state thanks to Stalin.

Why did everything change under Khrushchev? Has the Old Believer mentality disappeared, has individualism and nostalgia for private property appeared?

The Brezhnev group is Ukrainian, it is also called Dnepropetrovsk, but I don’t like that because it narrows it down. This is a different mentality - the Ukrainian front. All sorts of Chernenko, who was born in Krasnoyarsk, Shchelokov, originally from Moldova, are full members of the Ukrainian group. This group is the bearer of a completely different mentality, which has nothing to do with the Great Russian one. He is Ukrainian, kulak. No matter what costume he dresses up in, it’s all the same. The same song is heard from the Ukrainian expanses.

It turns out that the Ukrainians created a split for us in the 17th century, then another one in the 21st century, and they also destroyed the Union. It's all too simple, isn't it?

The southwestern gate is still the gate to the West. The path to the West for Russia is not direct, but through Kyiv. All western expansion came from there. From Vladimir Monomakh and False Dmitry to church affairs and the Brezhnev group. The trajectory is visible, how can it be denied?

And the mentality of Soviet Ukrainians was absolutely no different from Ukrainians from the Russian Empire?

There was no lack of priesthood there. There has always been a kind of “Nikonianism” there. And even after the split, Nikonianism always had support in Ukraine. This is foreign here, it was imposed in the second half of the 17th century. That’s why we don’t talk there about such a phenomenon as priestlessness. Here it is a foreign church. Designed and built specifically. The result is 1917, when the church fell off. But in Ukraine this Church cannot fall away, because it is their family, they cannot refuse it.

Ukraine will eventually receive autocephaly, it seems. How do you feel about the fact that our media pays so much attention to this? In your opinion, there is probably no tragedy in this?

I have a bad attitude. Reproduction of the same thing, second half of the 17th century. Whether the autocephalous Ukrainian church or ours, with all the Legoids, Dashevskys - they still hold a controlling stake there. Russian Orthodox Church. If you remove Ukrainians from our church, it will be some other church, and that church will collapse. What is the centuries-old dispute between the Ukrainian Church and Bohdan Khmelnytsky? From whom can you fuck more, from the Europeans or from us. One part says that we are done with them, they are idiots, rednecks. And they say: “ No, no, no, let's go West" And they said to them: “ No no no. You won’t be able to spin Merkel there like we do here, why do you need her?“They are having these disputes among themselves, but we, a huge country, hundreds of millions of people, who are in these disputes? Let it be without us.

But we are accustomed to the concept that we are the older brother and they are the younger. It turns out that the younger brother controls us.

What kind of big brother are we? When they tell me, they say, under the tsar, everyone was boiled in one cauldron... Well, yes, Karamzin, Tatar roots, Bagration, Georgian - they were all boiled in one cauldron. I say, that’s right, there is only one boiler, but whose boiler is it? Who brought it? Who cooks it? You will fall into this cauldron, you will recognize that Kyiv is the center and beginning of the entire country, and the spiritual beginning is there too. They all worked for this scheme, for those who started cooking this pot. Even now we are not allowed to comprehend it.

Putin just doesn’t seem to be very supportive of this scheme.

No, Putin is just acting according to the old scheme. According to this one, which you designated: “big brother” and everything else.

Okay, so we have understood the depravity of the “Kyiv is the mother of Russian cities” scheme, and what next? We must admit that we are Mordovians, Finno-Ugric peoples...

What’s better - to pray to Kyiv? In your opinion, this means it’s indecent, but standing and praying to Kyiv is decent? They throw mud at us, saying that we are aggressors. We just need to dramatically turn this scheme around, that’s all.

Maybe we can also force them to repent?

Of course, for the genocide of 250 years, which they organized by pushing their church here, which burned people alive. This is not a famine, there are 250 such famines here. There must be an offensive position, but we have only repentance.

As for repentance, by the way, how do you feel about “Royal Days”?

Yes, that's bad.

Is the figure of the last emperor splitting society?

You see, I am always for offensiveness. Why are you praising him? He himself spat on the Church, starting with the canonization of Seraphim of Sarov, which neither Pobedonostsev nor the bishops could allow? He broke them all over his knee. Seraphim of Sarov is a non-church tradition. This is impossible, people venerate this, no one needs this, a real saint, who needs him?

1903-1904, when the heir was born, a schism began, all sorts of fortune-telling Philips and Rasputins appeared, they actually lost the monarch as the head of the Church even then. Now they don’t like to remember this. So let's spin this up. You can dig up so much in the field of “Nicholas II against the Church”! We must act offensively, and not stand and make excuses. They are the ones who have to justify themselves. Seraphim of Sarov did not need to be canonized, he is already a national saint.

“Father kept walking and saying: “That’s right!”

Can the officials hear you?

Come on, who are they listening to anyway?

By the way, aren’t you an Old Believer yourself?

On my father's side I have Bespopovtsy of Fedoseev's consent. I didn't restore it. Local historians told me that my village is Fedoseyevskaya. I later remembered that even under Soviet rule, when the church in the village was already abandoned, my father, when he walked by, kept saying: “That’s right!..”

By the way, now the main task is to find out who the Bespopovites are! Otherwise we are throwing around the term.

Didn’t Soviet ethnography develop all this?

No, they developed it in an ethnographic manner. But who are they in terms of meaning, are they Christians or not? It is clear that some are not Christians. In a completely unexpected way, something becomes clear through Russian epics, the texts of which were published in the middle of the 19th century. There is absolutely Christian terminology, Christian characters, but when you dive into it, you see that absolutely non-Christian things are expressed in the language of Christianity, to which Christianity has nothing to do with at all. I would like to pull this thread and follow it, go...

The Orthodox will quickly tell you where this will lead you.

Yeah, they will say, to obscurantism ( laughs).

***

Interview with Alexander Pyzhikov comments Priest John Sevastyanov, rector of the Church of the Intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Rostov-on-Don.

***

The history of the Old Believers and their individual agreements is one of the most poorly studied aspects of Russian history. Huge historical layers of the life of the Old Believers are completely unexplored and uninterpreted. For example, such an important question as the statistics of the Old Believers has different variations that differ from each other several times. The Old Believers themselves did not know the answer to this question. (Bogatenkov) said so: they say, we cannot give accurate information about the number of our priests and laity, we do not know how many there are, even approximately. Therefore, no matter what page of the historical chronicle of the Old Believers modern researchers touch, they all conceal, if not sensations, then serious scientific discoveries. This concerns the internal life of the Old Believers and their church organization, and the relationship between consents, and issues of internal consolidation, and community structure, and business and social ethics, and the external relationships of the zealots of the old faith with the state, with the Russian Church, with the surrounding society. All these aspects can reveal to a conscientious researcher a lot of interesting and hitherto unknown historical information.

In particular, the attitude of Old Believers to social upheavals in Russia, to the revolutionary movement, the participation of Old Believers in these processes is a very interesting and little-studied topic that gives rise to many questions. To what extent did the Old Believers share socialist and liberal ideas at the beginning of the 20th century? Did the Old Believers take an active part in the revolutionary movement? If so, what part of the Old Believer population took part in this? How does this compare with the number of participants from other faiths in Russia? Which Old Believer consents were more active in this activity? Etc. and so on. Currently, there are no scientific studies that would provide unambiguous and reasoned answers to the questions that arise. And in this situation, these answers cannot be predetermined by any unfounded statements. No matter how much the modern reader might want it, there is no point in indiscriminately anticipating the results of scientific research.

Although in this situation the opposite view is quite acceptable. Namely, while academic history cannot provide answers to questions of interest to society, any hypotheses may have a right to exist. For example, the hypothesis expressed by Mr. Pyzhikov about the universal revolutionary spirit of the Fedoseev Old Believers. As a working hypothesis, this statement has a right to exist. Moreover, this is not a new observation. Herzen already expressed his opinion about the revolutionary predisposition of the Old Believers. And it should be recognized that this version has some connotations with the idea of ​​\u200b\u200bthe life of the Fedoseev Old Believers. Another question is, what is this hypothesis based on? But that's a completely different conversation. If this statement about the revolutionary activity of the millions of Old Believers is based on one crumpled piece of paper and the statement of some clerk from the district committee, then, to put it mildly, it does not deserve trust. If this hypothesis does not take into account the opposing facts that the Old Believers, as a religious group, were for the most part far from politics, that the Fedoseevites were not noticed in attempts to create their own party before the revolution, that the Old Believers had extremely small representation in the State Duma, which generally it did not even correspond in any way to their official number in the Empire, estimated at 2.2 million people, that none of the Old Believer delegates were elected to the Constituent Assembly - if these and similar facts are not taken into account, if there are no statistical observations and research, then treat these now statements as defining axioms are not worth it.

With all this, such versions are very useful in the development of historical science. They awaken research thought, force people to look for answers to the questions posed, give people the opportunity to reflect on their own history, on current events, look for historical analogies and confirmations, evaluate the truth or absurdity of statements. Such thinking people become more adequate and responsible. And if some absurd and unfounded hypotheses serve to awaken the adequacy and responsibility of the nation, then let there be more such hypotheses.

For a long time I could not understand why Professor Pyzhikov did not like Ukraine.
He seems to be a decent person, he wrote a good book about the Old Believers.
A week ago I met him in a sushi bar on Maroseyka * , listened for an hour and understood.

From Pyzhikov’s point of view, Russia has been ruled by Ukrainian authorities for the last 400 years. The Romanovs, starting with Alexei the Quiet, relied on the people of Kiev, eradicating the Russian in the Russians
- Ukrainians imposed this Kyiv, these Slavs, this damned Europe on us.
- I mean, they imposed it? Russia is not Europe, Russians are not Slavs?
- No! I found in the archives a book written in 1868. Vladimir Stasov. There he proves that Russian epics - about Ilya Muromets, about Dobrynya Nikitich - were actually stolen from the Turks.
- ?
- Ukrainians who came to Moscow took the local epic, which was all Turkic, and repainted it as Slavic. so that the Russians think that they are Slavs.
- and in fact?
- go to hell, this Ukraine! together with Europe and the Slavs! They imposed this Dnieper on us, this mother of Russian cities. Why do we need all this? forget Ukraine. we are Turks. we have more in common with the Kyrgyz and Uzbeks
- calling the waitress
- Sadgul, dear, bring a teapot of milk oolong
- tiny Sadgul, smiling snow-white, nods and hurries to the kitchen
- Russians need to return to their father’s house
- looks thoughtfully at the hair of the leaving girl, dark as night
- China, India, the Great Silk Road, Central Asia. our values ​​are there. and this Ukraine, these are their values
- waves his hand dismissively
- Ukrainians want to go to Europe...
- and wonderful! let them go! Let’s throw off the idea of ​​Europe imposed on us by the Ukrainians and breathe freely. maybe for the first time in 400 years
- Sadgul brought a teapot, the professor looks at her with emotion
-thank you, honey
- Will you order more?
- Take your time, honey. do not rush.

* * *
Alexander Vladimirovich Pyzhikov

Chief researcher at RANEPA, Doctor of Historical Sciences, laureate of the Yegor Gaidar Prize in the nomination “For Outstanding Contribution to the Field of History”, author of the book “Faces of the Russian Schism: Notes on Our History from the 17th Century to 1917.”
In 2000-2003, Assistant to the Chairman of the Government of the Russian Federation.
From June 5, 2003 to June 18, 2004 - Deputy Minister of Education of the Russian Federation.

*
Maroseyka- “Little Russian”, distorted by the aborigines, is the name of the area where those same Ukrainians invited to Moscow to lead the education of Muscovites settled, about whom Professor Pyzhikov speaks.

P.S.
To complete the picture, it is necessary to clarify here that another modern Russian historian considers the Tatars not Turks, but Finno-Ugrians:

Moreover, I’ll tell you a secret: Russians and Tatars are very close in origin. Because at the heart of both of them flows the blood of the Finno-Ugric peoples.
Neither the Russian nor the Tatar intelligentsia want to admit this. Or they simply don't know about it.
And genetic data shows exactly this. And it’s not difficult to guess, because the ancient inhabitants of the Eastern European forests and forest-steppes are the Finno-Ugrians, “overwritten” in history.
And only then the Slavs and Turks came here. Moreover, they did not constitute the majority, but they passed on their language, part of the culture and identity.
Therefore, I would have long ago changed the saying: “Scratch a Russian, you scrape off a Tatar” into a historically more accurate one: “Scrape a Russian, you scrape off a Finno-Ugric.”

Alexander Pyzhikov: “My work is an invitation to further conversation”

“History Lessons” continues to introduce readers to the participants nominated for the Gaidar Foundation Prize in the category “For Outstanding Contributions to the Field of History.” Today we are talking with Alexander Pyzhikov, winner of the competition, author of the monograph “The Facets of the Russian Schism” (M.: Drevlekhranilishche, 2013).

Interview with Elena Kalashnikova

- When I was preparing for the interview, I realized that you are an expert in the history of the 20th century.

Of course, and not the Old Believers, as some people confuse.

- And they wrote the book “The Facets of the Russian Schism.” How did you get the idea to address the schism, because before that you were researching the history of Russia in the mid-20th century?

Khrushchev, “thaw”. A book was published, I spent almost the entire 1990s doing this, as well as during the late Stalinist period (after 1945). And then it stopped satisfying me, and I decided to slow down, because there were proposals to switch to the Brezhnev era, to Kosygin’s reforms, to the Politburo...

-Who did these proposals come from?

From the same V.A. Mau, I have known him for a long time, I now work for him. He is a strong researcher and his advice is always useful, I listen to it. He once told me: “Move further from Khrushchev, this is correct from the point of view of scientific methodology.” But it didn’t work out, which I don’t regret now. Why didn’t I - I decided to reconsider the entire scientific approach and felt this from my personal research experience. New approaches were required that would allow us to get away from the class view, which is already sickening in fact, because everything is invested in this scheme, monumentally written by Lenin-Stalin. But this is nonsense from a scientific point of view! And I decided to take a religious approach, it was very unusual. Let me explain, the positivist approach dominated in Western science (I won’t say that this is bad, it’s just that it has been established for a long time). It has its advantage, it raises the power of the fact, its reliability. And Marxism, not Stalinist, of course, is already complete squalor, momentary journalism, and the teachings of Marx, who said his word in the 19th century, were scientific. Those who study Marx - which I do not pretend to do - and there are not many of them - claim that he is truly a scientist - an adherent of extreme positivism. So, if positivism as a historical movement has any drawback, it is that everything else is discarded. Positivists take the reliability of a fact, there is a fact - we are talking, there is no fact - we have nothing to talk about. And using this method they move throughout the historical canvas. What are the limitations? The archival fact does not capture the entire historical atmosphere of a particular period that we are studying. It gets to the point of ridiculousness - we argue about Stalin with Western professors who have been studying him for decades, I tell them with irony: “Show me a document that Stalin breathed.” They answer in all seriousness that they have not seen such a document. So you weren't breathing?! This is some of the limitations of positivism, although, of course, it is quite correct to use facts and strive for reliability. And in order to bring the picture to life and capture the spirit of the period that you are studying with the help of archival documents, you need to bring in an understanding of the cultural atmosphere. Positivism and Marxism, I repeat, reject all this, considering that it is a hindrance.

- And how did you decide to convey the spirit of the era?

This is where I decided to rely on a religious approach. And a very interesting picture emerges - after all, the entire modern European civilization has emerged from a religious schism. This is an absolute and indisputable fact. There were no political parties in our understanding then, and therefore public interests were expressed through religious institutions. I drew attention to the circumstance that became the starting point - religious wars, an integral part of the Middle Ages, and the way out of them became the way out of the Middle Ages into modern times. In the West, it was a struggle between two “parties” in religious garb - Catholics and Protestants. We had the same thing, only 100 years later, in the 17th century, and for them everything ended when it had just begun for us, in 1648, the Thirty Years' War ended, the Peace of Westphalia was signed. Its main principle, the cornerstone of Western civilization, is whose country, whose faith. All the warring parties, who had been slaughtering each other for decades, calmed down and went to their confessional “apartments.” The faith that existed in every country at the end of the war became the state faith. If we look at a map of Europe at the end of the 17th century, we will see that Catholics and Protestants were predominantly “settled” in different states and administrative entities. Italy, Spain - Catholic, England, Denmark, northern countries - Protestant. Germany was not united then, the principalities that were part of it were also divided, Bavaria was Catholic, for example, Saxony and Prussia were Protestant. What happened, as I conventionally call it, was “confessional sorting.” It gave grounds for the ideology of liberalism, everyone calmed down, the contradictions ceased to be of a deep-seated religious and cultural nature. The ruling strata and the lower strata now had one faith, a core emerged around which cooperation was built. No, of course, there were many contradictions, but there was also a strong foundation that made it possible to maintain balance in society.

As I already said, when it was all over for them (1648), it was just beginning for us (1654). 50 years of massacres, as brutal as in Europe, the Middle Ages are the Middle Ages. Supporters of Patriarch Nikon, state power in the person of Alexei Mikhailovich and his children - and those who did not accept Nikon’s “novels”, who remained adherents of the old ancient Russian rite. It was a very serious fight, at the top it quickly ended with everyone who did not accept the reforms of Patriarch Nikon being squeezed out - if you did not accept the reforms, you have nothing to do in the administrative vertical at any level. It was impossible to say: “I am for the old faith, appoint me governor.” This couldn't happen! And everyone was squeezed out of the church, especially the highest bishops; everyone quickly accepted Nikon’s innovations; literally only a few refused, such as Bishop Pavel Kolomensky. Everything came to peace only under Peter I, who completed the reconstruction of the state begun by Alexei Mikhailovich. But I compare it with how this story ended in the West - completely differently. No confessional sorting took place; where are the two Russias? There, Protestants and Catholics dispersed into their own confessional states, and the head of each entity (king, duke, whoever) supported the common faith. In our country, the Nikonian faith was established, but in fact, those who did not accept it did not go away: two Russias, Old Believer and Nikonian, were not formed, and this is the main difference from the West.

- The talk about Russia’s special path is probably connected with this characteristic feature.

Here, in my opinion, is the root of everything that has been talked about for 200 years: some strange country, some specificity, a special path. No, there is no special way. There is only one specificity - confessional sorting did not occur and this left its mark on everything. To put it in a very primitive way, it’s like two companies that got into a fight on the street, and one completely beat the other, but everyone had to live together in the same house. Will this leave an imprint on their relationship? They still hate each other. And some kind of reticence inherent in everything Russian stems from the socio-psychological atmosphere that developed after the religious split. In Europe, everyone emerged from the schism surrounded by their like-minded people; there was no contact with others, strangers, in everyday life. This is the basis for a kind of tolerance that has grown into Western liberalism. What kind of liberalism can there be in Russia? It was in this situation that Russia began to live. Peter I did one important thing - when he completed the “repair” work to create an empire, he decided to simply “smear over” this issue, without understanding it, since the situation was incomprehensible.

Peter did not like Old Believers and refused to delve into the problem - however, he used the Old Believers wisely, like, for example, the Demidovs. The emperor did this: we conduct a new census (revision tales), no longer a household census, but a poll census, and everyone who declares themselves an adherent of the old faith pays a double poll tax. And who will declare this? The bloody religious massacre ended just recently; many still remember it. A huge number of Old Believers simply ignored this, 2% of the population signed up, the rest recognized themselves as Orthodox in order to “not be seen.” In addition, there was a large migration under Peter I, under Anna Ioannovna, who sent an army to return those who fled. Catherine II, liberal and enlightened, decided to approach this problem differently: in 1782 she abolished the double tax and stopped persecution. The problem seemed to have gone away, but in fact it was only dusted over, “smeared over.” There was a huge layer of people who did not accept anything of what we call imperial “Russia” - neither the way of life, nor religion, nor culture. This was never realized by the ruling elites. Paul I, however, tried to reconcile everyone in common faith (preservation of old rituals while submitting to the Synod). But many people did not react to the actions of the authorities, and the authorities believed that everything would resolve itself. This situation persisted until the middle of the 19th century, when Nicholas I finally decided to find out what was happening in matters of faith, what was the depth of Old Belief among the people. This was one time when the authorities tried to explore the people's strata. And it turned out that the number of Old Believers declared by various commissions needed to be increased at least 10-11 times, but according to the documents, everyone was Orthodox. That's positivism for you - according to the documents there is nothing to talk about, there is no problem, but if you dig deeper, then that's all you need to talk about!

Nicholas I began to study the problem because when Catherine II declared freedom of enterprise in the spirit of liberalism, a huge mass of Old Believers, forced out of the administrative vertical and not owning land (land ownership was associated with service), went into trade and manufacturing, into the industrial sector. The nobility disdained to do this. And schismatics could get the means to live from the industrial sector and prove themselves. And therefore, the class of merchants that began to take shape under Catherine consisted of three-quarters of schismatics. If the nobles and foreigners did anything, it was only the export and import of luxury. The Old Believers mastered the domestic market. But what frightened Nikolai was that they mastered it specifically. Catherine and Alexander thought that normal capitalism was developing, but there was no sign of it. The merchant class developed thanks to community money, which accumulated spiritual schismatic centers (the most famous are the Rogozhskoe and Preobrazhenskoe Old Believer cemeteries). New enterprises were founded with people's money; the poorest hired worker could suddenly become the owner of thousands of capital and a merchant of the guilds, because his fellow believers put him in this business for his ingenuity and resourcefulness. And if the council decided that the business was being conducted poorly, they could transfer it to someone else. This lay outside the normal legal field. And this reached such proportions that Nicholas I was afraid, he really did not like the European socialists, Saint-Simon, Fourier and followers, and decided that socialist ideas had penetrated into Russia. But it quickly became clear that there were no ideas, and something else was coming from below. Nicholas quickly dispersed this entire Old Believer economy.

- What was your goal when you prepared this research and put together the book?

I needed to bring everything to the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, to 1917. There was one goal - to remove all Leninist-Stalinist layers: the consciousness of the proletariat, the formation of the avant-garde party, the rehearsal of 1905, the victory in 1917, and so on. Lenin had nothing to do with the processes taking place in Russia; the party (or rather, a number of circles) was financed by the Moscow merchants. The current Rogozh Old Believers really don’t like this.

- What exactly causes their dissatisfaction?

They have a completely different logic. I wanted to find out why 1917 happened; half of my book is about the twenty years before the revolution. Until the end of the 19th century, the Moscow merchant elite did not want to hear about any revolutions, nor about any Herzen, Ogarev, Bakunin... “Bell” - burn. The merchants' task is absolutely clear - to fit into the elite. Alexander II seemed to be meeting people halfway, but kept his distance: don’t come close to me again, but Alexander III was a completely different person. He was under the influence of the “Russian party” (Aksakov, Katkov, Meshchersky, Pobedonostsev), and he was encouraged to Russophile, so he took steps towards rapprochement. It was here that the Old Believers merchants realized that their time had come. The bureaucracy went to meet them halfway, since the emperor was favorable, things got serious. They should have a controlling stake in the economy! Katkov, Aksakov and others expressed their political interests. The only exception was Pobedonostsev, who was sick of this public, since he was the chief prosecutor of the Holy Synod. All these Slavophile figures were supported by merchants, although they themselves were not poor people, but there was a huge flow of money!.. The entire domestic market of Russia is served and concentrated in Moscow. Alexander III died unexpectedly, Minister of Finance Vyshnegradsky, their favorite, left; he adored the Moscow group, Katkov, Aksakov, and they lobbied for him. Instead, Witte came - at the beginning of his political career, an absolute Black Hundred member. Witte's uncle, who raised him, was an extreme nationalist and wrote patriotic manifestos. But Witte changed, made a sharp turn away from the “Russian party” and became the best friend of the St. Petersburg banks, the sworn enemies of the Moscow merchants. He relied on foreign capital, he saw that Russia is poor, the GDP growth rate, as they say now, is weak, it needs to be increased, but who will move it? Only foreign capital - there is a lot of it, there is knowledge and technology. Our merchants are asking the question: what about us, we are Russian people, after all? Witte answered them: you are good guys, but there is no time to wait until something useful comes out of you. And this was a tragedy for the merchants. Foreign capital poured in, and the Southern Industrial Region began to be created in Ukraine. All capital went through St. Petersburg banks; they were operators of the economy. The merchants realized that if nothing was done, in 20 years they would remain miserable minority shareholders. And they began to act.

- This is how the history of our revolutionary movement began?

Certainly. All circles that were previously of no interest to anyone - Socialist Revolutionary, Social Democratic, Liberal - are turning into parties. The Moscow merchants financed a huge, expensive cultural and educational project: the Moscow Art Theater, the Tretyakov Gallery, Mamontov's private opera, the publishing houses of Sytin, Sabashnikov... This project made liberalism fashionable in society. Previously, only the upper strata, Speransky, for example, were engaged in it, and this was a narrow stratum in the elite, but now liberalism has become social. The meaning of the actions of the merchants was this: if you do this to us, then we need to limit the tsar and the ruling bureaucracy to the constitution and parliament in order to protect ourselves from the political zigzags of the state. There must be a Duma, all freedoms must be fixed not by the expression of the will of the emperor, but by legislation. The liberal social model begins to be promoted, the entire Slavophile loyal public is forgotten, and by the end of the 19th century it becomes fashionable to encourage revolutionary liberal circles and newspapers. The Moscow Art Theater “promotes” Gorky, orders him all these “At the Depths” and other plays. And everything had to be filled with a democratic, liberal, anti-autocratic spirit.

- You say that in your book you wanted to remove Leninist-Stalinist layers. Did it work? And did you have any less important tasks?

It was important to really remove the layers. And those who read the book told me that the Leninist-Stalinist concept is bursting at the seams, since it is clear not only who was the driving force, but most importantly, why. It’s not enough to say that everything was moved by Moscow industrialists, but why did they start doing this, why? This was dictated by pragmatic interests, and not by any others. The entire Moscow industrial group grew up on the root of Old Believers. By the beginning of the 20th century, the picture was already very varied - some went to Old Believer spiritual centers, some were fellow believers, some did not go at all, like Konovalov. But they all came out of there, but most importantly, they were united by common economic interests, the fight against St. Petersburg banks.

The next book that Olma-Media is going to publish will be called “St. Petersburg - Moscow: the fight for Russia.” In it I will show in detail how the struggle went on in the last twenty pre-revolutionary years, including the period of the Provisional Government. After all, February 1917 was the triumph of the Moscow merchants, they swept away the ruling bureaucracy, all these Konovalovs, Ryabushinskys, Guchkovs, the cadets who were with them. But the St. Petersburg bankers, having recovered from their confusion, carried out what we know as the “Kornilov conspiracy.”

To Stalin, yes. There we are no longer talking directly about the split, but about the environment from which the characters of the Soviet pre-war period came, this is very important. Naturally, the members of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) were not practicing Old Believers or Orthodox Christians - and could not be. But this does not mean that they have forgotten where they grew up and have changed mentally. The way you were formed in your youth is how you will remain. And this dispute - not directly between the Nikonians and the Old Believers, but between people from different religious backgrounds - continued during the years of Soviet power. This is a rather unusual look, it shocks many. But these factors played a big role: none of the Bolsheviks who emerged from the depths of the people read Marx, returning to the above. What kind of Marxists were they? They weren't even Leninists. They had their own ideas about life, they understood life in their own way. We can say that the Russian empire was pregnant with the Soviet project in economic and social senses. Well, he broke through.

- Which domestic and foreign historians do you consider like-minded people?

There is a very famous American professor, Gregory Freeze, we meet every year during his visits to Moscow and discuss these topics. He is considered the greatest specialist in the history of religion in the West. When I told him about my work five years ago, he treated it with great interest. And he is a supporter of my approach, I am very pleased, and he suggested a lot of sources for me to work with. And the fact that he undertook to write a review of the book makes me optimistic. In Russia there is a very strong historian, the most famous and quoted in the West, St. Petersburg resident Boris Nikolaevich Mironov. His most popular two-volume book “Social History of Russia” has been translated into many languages, and I often refer to it. And when I am in St. Petersburg, I communicate with Mironov, he has a historical sense and also supports me, he believes that this topic needs to be continued.

- Are responses to your work important to you?

I think this is very important, and not only for me. People like Gregory Freeze, strong true scientists who have spent their whole lives on this, know our history well and impartially, objectivity and reliability are not an empty phrase for them. And their reaction to some kind of work is very important as a guideline for moving on. Science cannot be confined within national boundaries; this is understandable for the natural sciences, but it also fully applies to history. I make no difference between local and foreign assessments; we work with the same sources.

- Can you say that you write books primarily for yourself?

This is the first one I wrote for myself. I wrote “The Facets of the Russian Schism” without pragmatic goals, as it happens - they write a book to defend their doctoral dissertation. This happened to me with “Khrushchev’s “Thaw””, this is a published doctoral dissertation, slightly expanded. And with the split there was one goal - to try to understand this matter. And the fact that I received this award was completely unexpected.

- Who nominated you for it?

Nominated as an employee of the RANH IGS. What was important for me was that my work was noted and voted for by people whom I did not know before: N.K. Svanidze, D.B. Zimin and others. It is impossible to imagine that the Academy of Sciences will elect a corresponding member or academician without knowing you, but only having become acquainted with your books. This “temple of science” is a get-together. Only the middle level in the institutes is engaged in science there, and the leadership in the person of venerable academicians is busy with their affairs, which are far from science. They won’t read anything if there is no specific, tangible interest - they don’t need it in principle. The reaction to the book came from completely different people, from those who are really interested in increasing knowledge.

- At one time you were quite actively involved in political activities.

Yes, I wouldn't say so.

- Since 1993, you ran for the State Duma, then you were an assistant to Kasyanov, the Chairman of the Government, and in 2003-2004 - Deputy Minister of Education.

The Lost Years, as I call this period.

- Was it your initiative to go “to power”, or, rather, did the circumstances develop that way?

Immediately after defending my doctorate, I ended up at the Center for Strategic Research, which German Gref headed, and there was a very strong team there at that time. And many from there followed the state path. This flow brought me into the civil service.

- Do you continue to be involved in political activities now?

No, absolutely none. In 2007, I set myself the goal of making a book about the split; at first I worked slowly, then, when I saw that it was starting to work out, I worked more intensively. He often traveled to St. Petersburg to the RGIA, the largest archive in the country, documents of imperial Russia.

- Did working in the archives help you? And how would you characterize the current state of Russian archives?

The archives helped, it’s difficult without them. So I was getting ready to go to the RGIA in 2009, when the book seemed to be starting to come together, and I was thinking: maybe I shouldn’t go? And then I was there 25 times, and if I had not gone, I would not have achieved the quality that I wanted to achieve from the book. I like archives. RGIA moved to a new building, but I didn’t find the old Senate-Synod building, the one on Senate Square. The new building is completely modern, the people working there are very professional. They don’t just store documents, they work with them (for such salaries), they know them. It is very important for a researcher to have someone to guide him. So I have a very good opinion about archives, and about libraries too, for example, the Historical Library is my favorite.

- Surely, you encounter difficulties on your professional path, tell us about them.

Difficulty is not difficulty... I was told by readers (not professional historians) that the book is a bit complicated. And Boris Nikolaevich Mironov from St. Petersburg and I argued on this topic. He says that my writing is “simple.” But I think that the reader should understand that the material needs to be adapted. People can’t know everything; out of a large number of names, no one knows half of them, and that’s normal. Not everyone is a historian. Therefore, I try to create high-quality, but simple text addressed to a wide range of readers. This is the most important thing for historical science. And when they publish books that no one except 20 people will read: why?

- So you also set educational goals for yourself?

And this is inevitable. I believe that historical research and education are inseparable things. There is no other way. I understand that it is difficult to promote mathematical formulas from the same “Echo of Moscow”, but history is a social science, for society in the broad sense of the word.

- What are your future plans? You say that the new book ends with the time of Stalin, and then?..

I believe that next year we need to do research on the St. Petersburg period for the last twenty years before the revolution. We need to pull out materials about the first Russian constitution, who made it. There is a forgotten name there - Dmitry Solsky, the patriarch of Russian liberalism. Everyone knows Witte, they know Kokovtsov, the Minister of Finance. Where did they come from? We said that Witte was a Black Hundred member, but became a liberal - this is Solsky’s merit. And Kokovtsov is his pupil, whom he raised to become Minister of Finance, which Kokovtsov remembered with gratitude all his life, even in exile. Solsky is the favorite of Alexander II, the one who hatched the idea of ​​​​adopting the Russian constitution. He realized his dream, and the first constitution of 1906 was created under his direct leadership.

- Will this be a separate book about Solsky?

It will be clear from the material. He had many associates; Stolypin was not the only one there. Stolypin is a strong personality, but he did not develop anything, that was not his task. Specific policies were developed by the highest layer of the bureaucracy under the leadership of the same Solsky. Ideas were born there. And Stolypin, as a powerful, energetic figure, was called upon to bring it to life. These clarifying moments greatly enrich the picture. Otherwise we have Witte and Stolypin, and then who? And there are still many people there whom no one remembers now. And they were not reactionaries, how can a reactionary draft a constitution?

Finish what I want. And get rid of a certain categorical attitude. I try to ensure that it doesn’t exist; I need to strive so that it doesn’t look as if some person has appeared speaking the truth. On the contrary, I believe that my work should be the first step for further research, to search for evidence (and some may not be confirmed). This is an invitation to further conversation.

See also: