Ln Tolstoy wrote in an immoral society. L

Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy (1828-1910). Artist I. E. Repin. 1887

The famous Russian theater director and creator of the acting system, Konstantin Stanislavsky, wrote in his book “My Life in Art” that in the difficult years of the first revolutions, when despair gripped people, many remembered that Leo Tolstoy was living with them at the same time. And my soul became lighter. He was the conscience of humanity. At the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries, Tolstoy became the spokesman for the thoughts and hopes of millions of people. He was a moral support for many. It was read and listened to not only by Russia, but also by Europe, America and Asia.

True, at the same time, many contemporaries and subsequent researchers of Leo Tolstoy’s work noted that, outside of his artistic works, he was contradictory in many ways. His greatness as a thinker was manifested in the creation of broad canvases devoted to the moral state of society, in the search for a way out of the impasse. But he was petty picky, moralizing in his search for the meaning of an individual’s life. And the older he became, the more actively he criticized the vices of society, and looked for his own special moral path.

The Norwegian writer Knut Hamsun noted this feature of Tolstoy's character. According to him, in his youth Tolstoy allowed many excesses - he played cards, chased young ladies, drank wine, behaved like a typical bourgeois, and in adulthood he suddenly changed, became a devout righteous man and stigmatized himself and the whole society for vulgar and immoral actions. . It was no coincidence that he had a conflict with his own family, whose members could not understand his duality, his dissatisfaction and tossing-up.

Leo Tolstoy was a hereditary aristocrat. Mother is Princess Volkonskaya, one paternal grandmother is Princess Gorchakova, the second is Princess Trubetskaya. On his Yasnaya Polyana estate hung portraits of his relatives, high-born, titled persons. In addition to the title of count, he inherited a ruined farm from his parents, his relatives took over his upbringing, and he had home teachers, including a German and a Frenchman. Then he studied at Kazan University. First he studied oriental languages, then legal sciences. Neither one nor the other satisfied him, and he left the 3rd year.

At the age of 23, Lev lost heavily at cards and had to repay the debt, but he did not ask anyone for money, but went to the Caucasus as an officer to earn money and gain impressions. He liked it there - the exotic nature, the mountains, hunting in the local forests, participating in battles against the mountaineers. There he first put pen to paper. But he began to write not about his impressions, but about his childhood.

Tolstoy sent the manuscript, titled “Childhood,” to the journal Otechestvennye zapiski, where it was published in 1852, praising the young author. Inspired by good luck, he wrote the stories “Morning of the Landowner”, “Chance”, the story “Adolescence”, “Sevastopol Stories”. A new talent has entered Russian literature, powerful in reflecting reality, in creating types, in reflecting the inner world of heroes.

Tolstoy arrived in St. Petersburg in 1855. The count, the hero of Sevastopol, was already a famous writer, he had money that he earned through literary work. He was received in the best houses, and the editorial office of Otechestvennye zapiski was also waiting to meet him. But he was disappointed with social life, and among the writers he did not find a person close to him in spirit. He was tired of the dreary life in wet St. Petersburg, and he went to his place in Yasnaya Polyana. And in 1857 he went abroad to disperse and look at a different life.

Tolstoy visited France, Switzerland, Italy, Germany, and was interested in the life of local peasants and the public education system. But Europe was not to his taste. He saw idle rich and well-fed people, he saw the poverty of the poor. The blatant injustice wounded him to the very heart, and an unspoken protest arose in his soul. Six months later he returned to Yasnaya Polyana and opened a school for peasant children. After his second trip abroad, he achieved the opening of more than 20 schools in the surrounding villages.

Tolstoy published the pedagogical magazine Yasnaya Polyana, wrote books for children, and taught them himself. But for complete well-being, he lacked a loved one who would share with him all the joys and hardships. At 34, he finally married 18-year-old Sophia Bers and became happy. He felt like a zealous owner, bought land, experimented on it, and in his free time wrote the epoch-making novel “War and Peace,” which began to be published in “Russian Messenger.” Later, criticism abroad recognized this work as the greatest, which became a significant phenomenon in new European literature.

Next, Tolstoy wrote the novel Anna Karenina, dedicated to the tragic love of the woman of society Anna and the fate of the nobleman Konstantin Levin. Using the example of his heroine, he tried to answer the question: who is a woman - a person who demands respect, or simply a keeper of the family hearth? After these two novels, he felt some kind of breakdown in himself. He wrote about the moral essence of other people and began to peer into his own soul.

His views on life changed, he began to admit many sins in himself and taught others, talked about non-resistance to evil through violence - they hit you on one cheek, turn the other. This is the only way to change the world for the better. Many people came under his influence; they were called “Tolstyans”; they did not resist evil, they wished good to their neighbors. Among them were famous writers Maxim Gorky and Ivan Bunin.

During the 1880s, Tolstoy began to create short stories: “The Death of Ivan Ilyich”, “Kholstomer”, “The Kreutzer Sonata”, “Father Sergius”. In them, as an experienced psychologist, he showed the inner world of a common man, his readiness to submit to fate. Along with these works, he worked on a large novel about the fate of a sinful woman and the attitude of those around her.

Resurrection” was published in 1899 and amazed the reading public with its poignant theme and author’s subtext. The novel was recognized as a classic and was immediately translated into major European languages. It was a complete success. In this novel, Tolstoy for the first time showed with such frankness the deformities of the state system, the abomination and complete indifference of those in power to the pressing problems of people. In it, he criticized the Russian Orthodox Church, which did nothing to correct the situation, did nothing to make the existence of fallen and miserable people easier. A serious conflict broke out. The Russian Orthodox Church saw blasphemy in this harsh criticism. Tolstoy's views were considered extremely erroneous, his position was anti-Christian, he was anathematized and excommunicated.

But Tolstoy did not repent. He remained faithful to his ideals, his church. However, his rebellious nature rebelled against the abominations of not only the surrounding reality, but also the lordly way of life of his own family. He was burdened by his well-being and position as a wealthy landowner. He wanted to give up everything, go to the righteous in order to cleanse his soul in a new environment. And he left. His secret departure from the family was tragic. On the way, he caught a cold and contracted pneumonia. He was unable to recover from this illness.

Name any three features that unite industrial and post-industrial societies.

Answer:

The American scientist F. Fukuyama, in his work “The End of History” (1992), put forward the thesis that human history ended with the triumph of liberal democracy and a market economy on a planetary scale: “Liberalism has no viable alternatives left.” Express your attitude to this thesis and justify it with three arguments based on the facts of social life and knowledge of the social science course.

Answer:

Comment

This content section tests knowledge of the most general concepts and problems of the social science course: society, social relations, the systemic nature of society, problems of social progress, the current state and global problems of society. It is the significant degree of theoretical generalization, requiring a high level of intellectual and communication skills, that gives this material its particular complexity.

Graduates experience the greatest difficulties in identifying signs of a systemic society and manifestations of the dynamism of social development. The identified problems can be associated with the nature of the educational material: mastering philosophical categories of a high level of generalization requires serious time investment and causes serious difficulties, especially in a group of poorly prepared students. It also seems possible that the influence of established teaching practice, characterized by weak integrative connections, allows using the material of other subjects to show the phenomenon of systematicity and dynamism as one of the characteristics of systemic objects.

Let's look at some of the most problematic issues.

The tasks for the content unit “Society as a dynamic system,” with all their formal diversity, essentially come down to three questions: What is the difference between the broad and narrow definitions of society? What are the features of a systemic society? What signs indicate the dynamic nature of society? It is advisable to focus special attention on these issues.

The experience of the Unified State Exam shows that examinees experience the greatest difficulties when completing tasks to identify the characteristics of society as a dynamic system. When working on this issue, it is important to clearly distinguish between systemic features and signs of the dynamism of society: the presence and interconnection of structured elements characterize society as a system (and are inherent in any, including a static system), and the ability to change and self-development is an indicator of its dynamic nature .

It is difficult to understand the following relationship: SOCIETY + NATURE = MATERIAL WORLD. Usually, “nature” is understood as the natural habitat of man and society, which has qualitative specificity in comparison with society. Society, in the process of development, became isolated from nature, but did not lose contact with it, and together they make up the material, i.e. real world.

The next “problematic” element of content is “The relationship between the economic, social, political and spiritual spheres of society.” The success of completing tasks largely depends on the ability to identify the sphere of social life by its manifestations. It should be noted that graduates, confidently completing the usual tasks to determine the sphere of public life by manifestation with one answer choice out of four, find it difficult to analyze a number of manifestations and select several of them related to a certain subsystem of society. Difficulties are also caused by tasks aimed at identifying the interconnection of subsystems of society, for example:

The public organization, using its own funds, publishes a cultural and educational newspaper in which it criticizes government policies towards socially vulnerable groups of the population. What areas of public life are directly affected by this activity?

The algorithm for completing the task is simple - a specific situation (no matter how many spheres of society it has to be correlated with) is “decomposed” into its components, it is determined which sphere each of them belongs to, the resulting list of interacting spheres is correlated with the proposed one.

The next difficult element of content is “The variety of ways and forms of social development.” Approximately 60% of graduates cope with even the simplest tasks on this topic, and in the group of examinees who received a satisfactory grade (“3”) based on the results of the Unified State Examination, no more than 45% of exam participants can identify the characteristic features (or manifestations) of a certain type of society.

In particular, the task involving the exclusion of an unnecessary component of the list turned out to be problematic: only 50% of the subjects were able to detect a characteristic that did not correspond to the characteristics of a certain type of society. It can be assumed that such results are explained, firstly, by the insufficient time allocated to studying this topic, secondly, the fragmentation of material between history and social studies courses, the program for grades 10 and 11, the lack of proper interdisciplinary integration when studying this issue, and also poor attention to this material in the basic school course.

To successfully complete tasks on the topic under consideration, it is necessary to clearly understand the characteristics of traditional, industrial and post-industrial society, learn to identify their manifestations, compare societies of different types, identifying similarities and differences.

As the practice of conducting the Unified State Exam has shown, certain difficulties for graduates are presented by the topic “Global Problems of Our Time,” which seems to be comprehensively discussed in various school courses. When working through this material, it is advisable to clearly define the essence of the concept of “global problems”: they are characterized by the fact that they manifest themselves on a global scale; threaten the survival of humanity as a biological species; their severity can be removed through the efforts of all humanity. Next, we can identify the most important global problems (ecological crisis, the problem of preventing world war, the problem of “North” and “South,” demographic, etc.), identify and specify their characteristics using examples of public life. In addition, it is necessary to clearly understand the essence, directions and main manifestations of the globalization process, and be able to analyze the positive and negative consequences of this process.

Tasks for the section "Human"

Both human activity and animal behavior are characterized by

Answer: 2

What is characteristic of humans as opposed to animals?

Answer: 4

The statement that a person is a product and subject of socio-historical activity is a characteristic of his

Answer: 1

Both man and animal are capable

Answer: 1

Man is a unity of three components: biological, psychological and social. The social component includes

Answer: 1

Man is a unity of three components: biological, psychological and social. Biologically determined

Answer: 1

Determining the possible consequences of benefit reform (monetization of benefits) is an activity

Answer: 4

The farmer cultivates the land using special equipment. The subject of this activity is

Leo Tolstoy about civilization
14.11.2012

Selection by Maxim Orlov,
Gorval village, Gomel region (Belarus).

I observed ants. They crawled along the tree - up and down. I don't know what they could have taken there? But only those that crawl upward have a small, ordinary abdomen, while those that descend have a thick, heavy abdomen. Apparently they were taking something inside themselves. And so he crawls, only he knows his path. There are bumps and growths along the tree, he goes around them and crawls on... In my old age, it’s somehow especially surprising to me when I look at ants and trees like that. And what do all the airplanes mean before that! It’s all so rude and clumsy!.. 1

I went for a walk. A wonderful autumn morning, quiet, warm, green, the smell of leaves. And people, instead of this wonderful nature, with fields, forests, water, birds, animals, create another, artificial nature for themselves in cities, with factory chimneys, palaces, locomobiles, phonographs... It’s terrible, and there’s no way to fix it... 2

Nature is better than man. There is no bifurcation in it, it is always consistent. She should be loved everywhere, because she is beautiful everywhere and works everywhere and always. (...)

Man, however, knows how to ruin everything, and Rousseau is quite right when he says that everything that comes from the hands of the creator is beautiful, and everything that comes from the hands of man is worthless. There is no integrity in a person at all. 3

You must see and understand what truth and beauty are, and everything you say and think, all your desires for happiness, both for me and for yourself, will crumble to dust. Happiness is being with nature, seeing it, talking to it. 4

We destroy millions of flowers to build palaces and theaters with electric lighting, and one color of burdock is worth more than thousands of palaces. 5

I picked a flower and threw it away. There are so many of them that it’s not a pity. We do not appreciate this inimitable beauty of living beings and destroy them without sparing - not only plants, but animals and people. There are so many of them. Culture* - civilization is nothing more than the destruction of these beauties and their replacement. What? A tavern, a theater... 6

Instead of learning to have a love life, people learn to fly. They fly very badly, but they stop learning about the life of love, just to learn how to fly somehow. It's the same as if birds stopped flying and learned to run or build bicycles and ride them. 7

It is a big mistake to think that all inventions that increase the power of people over nature in agriculture, in the extraction and chemical combination of substances, and the possibility of great influence of people on each other, such as ways and means of communication, printing, telegraph, telephone, phonograph, are good. Both power over nature and an increase in the possibility of people influencing each other will be good only when people’s activity is guided by love, the desire for the good of others, and will be evil when it is guided by selfishness, the desire for good only for oneself. Excavated metals can be used for the convenience of people's lives or for cannons, the consequence of increasing the fertility of the earth can provide adequate nutrition for people and can be the reason for the increased spread and consumption of opium, vodka, communication routes and means of communicating thoughts can spread good and evil influences. And therefore, in an immoral society (...) all inventions that increase man’s power over nature and means of communication are not only not good, but undoubted and obvious evil. 8

They say, and I also say, that book printing did not contribute to the welfare of people. This is not enough. Nothing that increases the possibility of people influencing each other: railways, telegraphs, backgrounds, steamships, guns, all military devices, explosives and everything that is called “culture” has in no way contributed to the welfare of people in our time, but on the contrary. It could not be otherwise among people, the majority of whom live irreligious, immoral lives. If the majority is immoral, then the means of influence will obviously only contribute to the spread of immorality.

The means of influence of culture can be beneficial only when the majority, albeit small, is religious and moral. It is desirable that the relationship between morality and culture be such that culture develops only simultaneously and slightly behind the moral movement. When culture overtakes, as it does now, it is a great disaster. Perhaps, and even I think, that it is a temporary disaster, that due to the excess of culture over morality, although there must be temporary suffering, the backwardness of morality will cause suffering, as a result of which culture will be delayed and the movement of morality will accelerate, and the correct attitude will be restored. 9

They usually measure the progress of mankind by its technical and scientific successes, believing that civilization leads to good. This is not true. Both Rousseau and all those who admire the savage, patriarchal state are just as right or as wrong as those who admire civilization. The benefit of people living and enjoying the highest, most refined civilization, culture, and the most primitive, wild people are exactly the same. It is just as impossible to increase the benefit of people through science - civilization, culture - as it is to make sure that on a water plane the water in one place is higher than in others. The increase in the good of people only comes from an increase in love, which by its nature equals all people; Scientific and technical successes are a matter of age, and civilized people are just as little superior to uncivilized people in their well-being as an adult is superior to a non-adult in their well-being. The benefit comes only from increased love. 10

When people's lives are immoral and their relationships are based not on love, but on selfishness, then all technical improvements, the increase in human power over nature: steam, electricity, telegraphs, all kinds of machines, gunpowder, dynamites, robulites - give the impression of dangerous toys that are given in children's hands. 11

In our age there is a terrible superstition, which consists in the fact that we enthusiastically accept every invention that reduces labor, and consider it necessary to use it, without asking ourselves whether this invention that reduces labor increases our happiness, whether it does not destroy beauty . We are like a woman who tries to finish the beef because she got it, although she doesn’t feel like eating, and the food will probably be harmful to her. Railways instead of walking, cars instead of horses, hosiery machines instead of knitting needles. 12

Civilized and wild are equal. Humanity moves forward only in love, but there is no progress and cannot be from technical improvement. 13

If the Russian people are uncivilized barbarians, then we have a future. Western peoples are civilized barbarians, and they have nothing to expect. For us to imitate Western peoples is the same as for a healthy, hard-working, unspoiled fellow to envy a bald young rich man from Paris sitting in his hotel. Ah, que je m"embete!**

Do not envy and imitate, but pity. 14

The Western nations are far ahead of us, but ahead of us on the wrong path. In order for them to follow the real path, they need to go a long way back. We only need to turn a little off the wrong path that we have just embarked on and along which the Western peoples are returning to meet us. 15

We often look at the ancients as children. And we are children in front of the ancients, in front of their deep, serious, uncontaminated understanding of life. 16

How easily what is called civilization, real civilization, is assimilated by both individuals and nations! Go through university, clean your nails, use the services of a tailor and hairdresser, travel abroad, and the most civilized person is ready. And for the peoples: more railways, academies, factories, dreadnoughts, fortresses, newspapers, books, parties, parliaments - and the most civilized people are ready. This is why people are grasping for civilization, and not for enlightenment - both individuals and nations. The first is easy, requires no effort and is applauded; the second, on the contrary, requires intense effort and not only does not arouse approval, but is always despised and hated by the majority, because it exposes the lies of civilization. 17

They compare me to Rousseau. I owe a lot to Rousseau and love him, but there is a big difference. The difference is that Rousseau denies all civilization, while I deny false Christianity. What is called civilization is the growth of humanity. Growth is necessary; you cannot talk about it whether it is good or bad. It is there - there is life in it. Like the growth of a tree. But the bough or the forces of life growing into the bough are wrong and harmful if they absorb all the force of growth. This is with our false civilization. 18

Psychiatrists know that when a person begins to talk a lot, talk incessantly about everything in the world, without thinking about anything and only rushing to say as many words as possible in the shortest possible time, they know that this is a bad and sure sign of a beginning or already developed mental illness . When, at the same time, the patient is completely confident that he knows everything better than anyone, that he can and should teach everyone his wisdom, then the signs of mental illness are already undeniable. Our so-called civilized world is in this dangerous and pitiful situation. And I think - it is already very close to the same destruction that previous civilizations suffered. 19

External movement is empty, only internal work liberates a person. The belief in progress, that someday things will be good and until then we can arrange life for ourselves and others in a haphazard, unreasonable way, is a superstition. 20

* Reading the works of N.K. Roerich, we are accustomed to understanding Culture as “veneration of light”, as a building, calling moral force. In the above quotes from Leo Tolstoy here and below, the word “culture,” as we can see, is used in the meaning of “civilization.”

** Oh, how bored I am! (French)

Material for preparing an integrated lesson and elective “history + literature”
on the topic “The attitude of Russian society to Stolypin’s reforms. Civil motives in the works of Leo Tolstoy.” 9th, 11th grades

Leo Tolstoy's views on the agrarian modernization of Russia at the beginning of the twentieth century.

A huge number of very diverse works are devoted to the life and work of Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy - both in our country and abroad. These works reflected many important questions concerning the unique artistic gift of the great writer and thinker of Russia, whose ideas even today attract the close attention of creative, seeking, “passionate” people and awaken people’s conscience...

Great ascetic work on studying Tolstoy’s heritage and introducing our contemporaries to it is carried out by employees of the State Memorial and Natural Reserve “Museum-Estate of Leo Tolstoy “Yasnaya Polyana””
(director - V.I. Tolstoy), the State Museum of Leo Tolstoy (Moscow), a number of institutes of the Russian Academy of Sciences (primarily the Gorky Institute of World Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences).

On September 2, 1996, at the Tula State Pedagogical University, named after the outstanding writer and philosopher, the Department of Spiritual Heritage of Leo Tolstoy was created, which has been the organizer of the International Tolstoy Readings since 1997. A number of educational institutions in the country are working on the “Leo Tolstoy School” experiment.

At the same time, many questions concerning the ideological heritage of Leo Tolstoy and his influence on society still remain insufficiently studied, and sometimes cause heated discussions. Let us consider only one, but very important problem, namely: the views of Leo Tolstoy at the beginning of the twentieth century. to transform the Russian village, taking into account its real economic and sociocultural problems in the context of the dramatic process of domestic modernization: it was during these years that the Stolypin agrarian reforms were carried out.

The writer was acutely aware of the colossal gap between the lives of the bulk of the peasantry and the majority of noble landowners, which caused his angry and decisive protest. It is noteworthy that back in 1865 he noted in his notebook: “The Russian revolution will not be against the tsar and despotism, but against land ownership.” On June 8, 1909, L.N. Tolstoy wrote in his diary: “I felt especially keenly the insane immorality of the luxury of the powerful and rich and the poverty and oppression of the poor. I almost physically suffer from the consciousness of participating in this madness and evil.” In his book “Pacification of Peasant Unrest” (M., 1906), he strongly protested against the torture of starving peasants with rods. “The sinfulness of the lives of the rich,” based primarily on the unfair solution of the land issue, was considered by the great Russian writer as the key moral tragedy of those years.

At the same time, the methods he proposed for solving the problem, actively promoted in the press (for example, in the article “How can the working people free themselves?”, 1906), objectively did not at all contribute to the evolutionary solution of the most pressing economic and sociocultural problems of Russian agriculture, since they denied the possibility of joint creative work representatives of all classes. Meanwhile, only by combining efforts is the civilizational renewal of any nation possible, and, consequently, the modernization of its economic and sociocultural life. The historical experience of Stolypin’s agrarian reforms clearly proved this: despite all the difficulties, Russia at that time achieved noticeable socio-economic success, and, above all, thanks to the dedicated teamwork of employees of zemstvos, ministries, as well as members of economic, agricultural and educational societies - t .e. all persons interested in the revival of the country.

What are the reasons for this approach of L.N. Tolstoy to modernization? First of all, we note that he quite consciously denied most of the material and technical achievements of European culture at the beginning of the twentieth century, consistently taking an “anti-civilization” position, idealizing patriarchal moral values ​​and forms of labor (including agricultural labor) and not taking into account the significance of the modernization booming in Russia. processes. Sharply criticizing Stolypin's agrarian reform, he did not understand that, despite all the costs, it was an attempt to eliminate archaic communal traditions that hampered agrarian progress. Defending the inert communal foundations, Tolstoy wrote: “This is the height of frivolity and arrogance with which they allow themselves to twist people’s statutes established over centuries... After all, this alone is worth something, that all matters are decided by the world - not just me, but the world - and what a matter! The most important ones for them.”

Unlike L.N. Tolstoy, who idealized the peasant community, his son Lev Lvovich Tolstoy, on the contrary, sharply criticized communal traditions. In 1900, in his book “Against the Community,” he noted that “the personality of the Russian peasant is now up against a wall, like a wall, in the communal order and is looking for and waiting for a way out of it.” In the article “The Inevitable Path” published there, L.L. Tolstoy, convincingly proving the need for change, wrote: “The serf community is the greatest evil of modern Russian life; community is the first cause of our routine, our slow movement, our poverty and darkness; It was not she who made us what we are, but we became so, despite the existence of the community... and only thanks to the endlessly tenacious Russian man.” Speaking about attempts to improve peasant farming with the help of multiple fields and grass sowing (which was pointed out by numerous defenders of the community), L.L. Tolstoy rightly noted that these efforts cannot “eliminate the main negative aspects of communal ownership, the interstriation of fields ...”, and at the same time time cannot “instill in the peasant the spirit of citizenship and personal freedom he lacks, and eliminate the harmful influence of the world...” What was needed was not “palliative measures” (compromises), but cardinal reforms of agrarian life.

As for L.N. Tolstoy, he probably intuitively realized the fallacy of his many years of adherence to the archaic - now no longer noble, but peasant. “Tolstoy’s departure from Yasnaya Polyana,” noted in the 7th volume History of world literature(1991) - was one way or another an act of protest against the lordly life in which he took part against his own will, and at the same time - an act of doubt in those utopian concepts that he developed and developed over a number of years.”

It is noteworthy that even in raising his own children using the method of “simplification” (education “in a simple, working life”), which he actively promoted in the press, L.N. Tolstoy failed to achieve success. “The kids felt the disagreement of their parents and unwittingly took from everyone what they liked best,” recalled his youngest daughter Alexandra Tolstaya. - The fact that my father considered education necessary for every person... we ignored it, catching only that he was against learning. ... a lot of money was spent on teachers and educational institutions, but no one wanted to study” ( Tolstaya A. Youngest daughter // New world. 1988. No. 11. P. 192).

Among the family. 1897

The general approaches of the writer and philosopher to artistic creativity (including the creation of literary texts) were also not consistent. In a letter to P.A. Boborykin in 1865, he defined his position as follows: “The goals of the artist are incommensurable... with social goals. The artist’s goal is not to undeniably resolve the issue, but to make one love life in its countless, never-exhaustible manifestations.”

However, towards the end of his life his approaches changed dramatically. This is clearly evidenced by one of his last notes on art: “As soon as art ceases to be the art of the entire people and becomes the art of a small class of rich people, it ceases to be a necessary and important matter and becomes empty fun.” Thus, universal humanism was replaced, in fact, by a class approach, albeit in a specific “anarchist-Christian” ideological form with characteristic Tolstoy moralizing, which had a detrimental effect on the artistic quality of his creations. “As long as Count L.N. Tolstoy does not think, he is an artist; and when he begins to think, the reader begins to languish from unartistic resonance,” philosopher I.A. Ilyin, one of the most deeply understanding of the spiritual traditions of Russia, later rightly noted.

Let us note that such a criterion as democracy was completely unreasonably put forward by L.N. Tolstoy as the central criterion of any creative activity. The origins of this trend were laid by V.G. Belinsky, to which the authoritative connoisseur of Russian art, Prince S. Shcherbatov, drew attention: “Ever since the time of Belinsky, who said that “art is a reproduction of reality and nothing more...”, a drying wind blew and a certain epidemic began, carrying a destructive infection,” he noted in his book “The Artist in Bygone Russia,” published in Paris in 1955. “Nekrasov’s tears and populism ruined the holiday of the 18th century; both inflamed hostility towards the aesthetics of life. Aesthetics was seen as the most important obstacle to ethics and public service to the social idea. An idea that also infected our noble class, who lived festively and beautifully in the previous century. Hence all the everydayness and hopeless scum, along with a certain fanaticism and rigorism - scum that envelops, like fog, an entire era mired in ugliness and bad taste.”

The concept of sin as a key element of human nature was placed at the center of both ethics and the entire system of philosophical views of L.N. Tolstoy. Meanwhile, as European history shows, such an approach (in general not characteristic of the Orthodox tradition) also carried negative consequences: for example, it was the excessive immersion in the feeling of one’s own guilt that turned out for Western European civilization not only in mass psychoses, neuroses and suicides, but also in fundamental cultural shifts, the result of which was the total de-Christianization of the entire Western European culture (for more details, see Delumeau J. Sin and fear. The formation of a sense of guilt in Western civilization (XIII-XVIII centuries)./Trans. from French Ekaterinburg, 2003).

L.N. Tolstoy’s attitude towards such a key concept for Russians - in all historical eras - as patriotism was also marked by contradictions. On the one hand, according to the testimony of the Hungarian G. Shereni, who visited him in Yasnaya Polyana in 1905, he condemned patriotism, believing that it “serves only the rich and powerful self-lovers who, relying on armed force, oppress the poor.” According to the great writer, “The Fatherland and the state are something that belongs to the past dark ages; the new century should bring unity to humanity.” But, on the other hand, when addressing topical foreign policy problems, Leo Tolstoy, as a rule, took a pronounced patriotic position. This, in particular, is evidenced by his statement in a conversation with the same G. Shereni: “The German people will no longer be in sight, but the Slavs will live and, thanks to their mind and spirit, will be recognized by the whole world...”

An interesting assessment of the creative heritage of Leo Tolstoy was given by Max Weber, whose scientific authority for modern humanities scholars is beyond doubt. In his work “Science as a Vocation and Profession” (based on a report read in 1918), he noted that the thoughts of the great writer “were increasingly concentrated around the question of whether death has any meaning or not. Leo Tolstoy's answer is: for a cultured person - no. And precisely because no, that the life of an individual, civilized life, included in endless progress, according to its own internal meaning, cannot have an end or completion. For those who are included in the movement of progress always find themselves faced with further progress. A dying person will not reach the peak - this peak goes to infinity. ...On the contrary, a person of culture, included in a civilization that is constantly enriched with ideas, knowledge, problems, may get tired of life, but cannot be fed up with it. For he captures only an insignificant part of what spiritual life gives birth to again and again, moreover, it is always something preliminary, incomplete, and therefore for him death is an event devoid of meaning. And since death is meaningless, then cultural life as such is meaningless - after all, it is precisely this life that, with its meaningless progress, condemns death itself to meaninglessness. In Tolstoy’s later novels, this idea constitutes the main mood of his work.”

But what did such an approach give in practice? In fact, it meant a complete denial of modern science, which in this case turned out to be “meaningless, because it does not give any answer to the only important questions for us: What should we do?, How should we live? And the fact that it does not answer these questions is completely undeniable. “The only problem,” emphasized M. Weber, “is in what sense it does not give any answer. Maybe instead she can give something to someone who asks the right question?

In addition, it is necessary to take into account both the narrow circle of people who finally believed in Tolstoy’s social ideas, and the fact that most interpretations of Tolstoyism turned out to be incompatible with the modernization of the twentieth century, which actually determined the content and nature of civilizational development. “The rulers of the thoughts” of the intelligentsia were teachers and teachings that went far from the old religiosity, one of the leaders of the Socialist Revolutionaries, V.M. Chernov, later noted in his memoirs. - Leo Tolstoy alone created something of his own, but his God was so abstract, his faith was so emptied of any concrete theological and cosmogonic mythology that it provided absolutely no food for religious fantasy.

Without exciting and striking images, this purely cerebral construction could still be a refuge for the intelligentsia who had developed a taste for metaphysics, but for the more concrete mind of the common people, the specifically religious side of Tolstoyism was too innocent and empty, and it was perceived either as a purely moral teaching, or was a stage towards complete disbelief.”

“Tolstoy’s theological creativity did not create any lasting movement in the world...,” emphasizes, in turn, Archbishop of San Francisco John (Shakhovskoy). - Tolstoy has absolutely no positive, integral, creative followers and students in this area. The Russian people did not respond to Tolstoyism either as a social phenomenon or as a religious fact.”

However, these conclusions are not shared by all researchers. “Tolstoyism was a fairly powerful and large-scale social movement,” notes the modern philosopher A.Yu. Ashirin, “it united around itself people of the most diverse social strata and nationalities and geographically extended from Siberia, the Caucasus to Ukraine.” In his opinion, “Tolstoy’s agricultural communes were unique institutions of social ethics, which for the first time carried out a social experiment in introducing humanistic principles and moral norms into the organization, management and structure of the economy.”

At the same time, the generally accepted approach in Soviet historiography of the twentieth century does not seem entirely legitimate. a sharply negative assessment of the campaign of condemnation launched against Leo Tolstoy at the beginning of the same century - a campaign that to this day is identified exclusively with the “anti-autocratic” and “anti-clerical” views of the great writer. Representatives of the Russian intelligentsia, who most keenly felt the tragedy of the time, understood that the path proposed by the great master of words was the path of imitation of peasant life; a path to the past, but not at all to the future, because without modernization (bourgeois at its core), it is impossible to update almost all aspects of social life. “Leo Tolstoy was a gentleman, a count, “imitating” himself as a peasant (the worst, fake Repin portrait of Tolstoy: barefoot, behind a plow, the wind blowing his beard). Noble tenderness for a peasant, the sorrow of repentance,” noted writer I.S. Sokolov-Mikitov.

It is characteristic that even on his Yasnaya Polyana estate L.N. Tolstoy was never able to resolve the “land issue,” and the daughter of the writer T.L. Tolstoy, who, on his advice, surrendered all the arable and mowing land in the village. Ovsyannikovo “at the complete disposal and use of two peasant societies,” later noted that as a result, the peasants not only stopped paying rent, but began to speculate in land, “receiving it for free and renting it out to their neighbors for a fee.”

Thus, Tolstoy’s naive “democracy”, faced with the realities of village life (the thirst for enrichment at the expense of others), was forced to give in. This was a logical result: the writer did not know deeply peasant life. Contemporaries more than once noted the conspicuous poverty and unsanitary conditions in the huts of the Yasnaya Polyana peasants, which came into sharp contradiction with Tolstoy’s humanistic calls for improving people’s lives. Let us note that landowners-rationalizers often did much more to improve the economic life of “their” peasants. At the same time, the peasants of Yasnaya Polyana generally treated well the landowner who helped them more than once, as evidenced by their published memoirs.

It is also significant that Tolstoy failed to create a single convincing image of the Russian peasant in his works (Platon Karataev is the artistic embodiment of purely intellectual ideas “about the peasant”, far from the harsh reality of the Russian village; it is no coincidence that M. Gorky often used this image as the personification of illusory ideas about the obedience of the Russian people). It is characteristic that even Soviet literary critics, who tried in every possible way to “modernize” the writer’s work, were forced to join such conclusions.

Thus, T.L. Motyleva noted: “Karataev seems to concentrate the properties developed in the Russian patriarchal peasant over centuries of serfdom - endurance, meekness, passive submission to fate, love for all people - and for no one in particular. However, an army consisting of such Platos could not defeat Napoleon. The image of Karataev is to a certain extent conventional, partly woven from the motifs of epics and proverbs.”

As L.N. Tolstoy believed, who idealized the “labor natural existence” of the peasantry in the Rousseauist spirit, the land issue in Russia could be solved by implementing the ideas of the American reformer G. George. Meanwhile, the utopian nature of these ideas (similar to the main postulates of modern anti-globalists) has been repeatedly drawn to the attention of scientists both at the beginning of the 20th century and today. It is noteworthy that these concepts received official support only from the radical wing of the Liberal Party in Great Britain.

As is known, L.N. Tolstoy himself did not support radical methods of solving agrarian problems. This circumstance has been repeatedly pointed out not only by literary experts, but also by domestic writers. Thus, V.P. Kataev in the article “About Leo Tolstoy” noted: “In all his statements, he completely denied the revolution. He appealed to the workers to abandon the revolution. He considered revolution an immoral matter. However, not a single Russian, or even foreign, writer destroyed with his works with such amazing force all the institutions of Russian tsarism, which he hated... like Leo Tolstoy...”

According to the testimony of his daughter A.L. Tolstoy, back in 1905 he predicted the complete failure of the revolution. “Revolutionaries,” said Tolstoy, will be much worse than the tsarist government. The tsarist government holds power by force, the revolutionaries will seize it by force, but they will rob and rape much more than the old government. Tolstoy's prediction came true. The violence and cruelty of people who call themselves Marxists have surpassed all the atrocities committed so far by humanity at all times, throughout the world.”

Obviously, L.N. Tolstoy could not approve not only of the unjustifiably exalted at the beginning of the twentieth century. methods of violence, but also the denial of religious spiritual principles, characteristic of revolutionaries, organically inherent in the Russian person. “God,” wrote V.I. Lenin in one of his letters to A.M. Gorky, “is (historically and in everyday life) first of all a complex of ideas generated by the dull oppression of man and external nature and class oppression - ideas that consolidate this oppression lulling the class struggle." Such ideological attitudes were deeply alien to L.N. Tolstoy. The followers of the religious and philosophical teachings of Leo Tolstoy also resolutely opposed social-democratic propaganda, for which they were subsequently persecuted by the Soviet authorities (officially “Tolstoyism” was banned in 1938).

However, the writer’s views, reflecting his painful spiritual evolution, were extremely contradictory. Just two years later, in his book “On the Significance of the Russian Revolution” (St. Petersburg, 1907), he noted that “it is no longer possible for the Russian people to continue to obey their government,” because this meant “continuing to bear not only ever-increasing... disasters... landlessness, hunger , heavy taxes... but, most importantly, to still take part in those atrocities that this government is now committing to protect itself and, obviously, in vain.” The reason for the change in position was the harsh measures taken by the government to suppress the revolution.

“Leo Tolstoy combined in himself two characteristic Russian traits: he has a genius, a naive, intuitive Russian essence - and a conscious, doctrinaire, anti-European Russian essence, and both are represented in him to the highest degree,” noted the outstanding writer of the 20th century. Hermann Hesse. - We love and honor the Russian soul in him, and we criticize, even hate, the newly-minted Russian doctrinaire, excessive one-sidedness, wild fanaticism, superstitious passion for the dogmas of the Russian man, who has lost his roots and become conscious. Each of us had the opportunity to experience pure, deep awe of Tolstoy’s creations, reverence for his genius, but each of us, with amazement and confusion, and even hostility, also held in his hands Tolstoy’s dogmatic programmatic works” (quoted from: Hesse G. About Tolstoy // www.hesse.ru). It is interesting that V.P. Kataev expressed largely similar assessments: “His ingenious inconsistency is striking. ...His strength was in constant denial. And this constant negation most often led him to the dialectical form of negation of negation, as a result of which he came into contradiction with himself and became, as it were, an anti-Tolstyan.

The people who most subtly felt the depth of the patristic traditions understood that the “ideological tossing” of L.N. Tolstoy and the doctrines he developed were far from the national Orthodox principles of life. As noted in 1907 by the elder of the Optina Hermitage, Fr. Clement, “his heart (Tolstoy. - Auto.) is looking for faith, but there is confusion in his thoughts; he relies too much on his own mind...” The elder “foresaw many troubles” from the impact of Tolstoy’s ideas on “Russian minds.” In his opinion, “Tolstoy wants to teach the people, although he himself suffers from spiritual blindness.” The origins of this phenomenon lay hidden both in the noble upbringing that the writer received in childhood and youth, and in the influence on him of the ideas of French encyclopedist philosophers of the 18th century.

L.N. Tolstoy clearly idealized the peasant community, believing that “in agricultural life, people least of all need the government, or, rather, agricultural life, less than any other, gives the government reasons to interfere in the life of the people.” The unhistorical nature of this approach is beyond doubt: it was the lack of real state support for agricultural endeavors that for many decades was one of the main factors in the backwardness of the Russian village. At the same time, considering the Russian people to live “the most natural, most moral and independent agricultural life,” L.N. Tolstoy, speaking from an anarchist position, naively believed that “as soon as the Russian agricultural people stop obeying the violent government and stop participating in it , and taxes would immediately be destroyed by themselves... and all the oppression of officials, and land ownership... ...All these disasters would be destroyed, because there would be no one to cause them.”

According to L.N. Tolstoy, this would make it possible to change the very course of the historical development of Russia: “... in this way, stopping the procession along the wrong path (i.e., replacing agricultural labor with industrial labor. - Auto.) and indicating the possibility and necessity…. a different... path than the one followed by the Western peoples, this is the main and great significance of the revolution now taking place in Russia.” While respecting the humanistic pathos of such ideas, one cannot help but recognize their author’s obvious lack of understanding of the objectively inevitable processes associated with the development of bourgeois modernization at the beginning of the twentieth century.

L.L. Tolstoy, speaking as an ideological opponent of his father, emphasized: “I wanted to say that the Russian peasant community, in the form in which it is now, has outlived its time and purpose. That this form is archaic and slows down Russian peasant culture. That it is more convenient for a peasant to cultivate the land when it is in one piece around his yard... That the gradual shrinking of plots increasingly complicates the communal issue... That the peasant must be given rights and, above all, the right to land, in order to thereby place him in the first condition of civil freedom.”

One should also take into account the tragic internal evolution of Leo Tolstoy. His son L.L. Tolstoy, who observed this evolution for many years, noted: “He suffered due to three main reasons.

Firstly, his physical, previous strength was leaving and his entire bodily, worldly life weakened over the years.

Secondly, he was creating a new world religion that was supposed to save humanity... and since... he himself could not understand the countless contradictions and absurdities that flowed from it, he suffered, feeling that he would not succeed in the task of creating a new religion.

Thirdly, he suffered, like all of us, for the injustices and untruths of the world, unable to give him a personal rational and bright example.

All Tolstoyanism is explained by these feelings, and its weakness and temporary influence are also explained.

Not I alone, but many young or sensitive good people fell under it; but only limited people followed him to the end.”

What was the positive significance of Tolstoy’s ideas in relation to the problems of agrarian modernization in Russia? First of all, let us highlight the principle of self-limitation of one’s own needs, which Leo Tolstoy persistently insisted on: for the peasants and landowners of Russia at the beginning of the twentieth century. it was of particular significance, since the transition from extensive to intensive agriculture was impossible without a conscious and voluntary rejection of the traditions of archaic economic psychology with its reliance on “maybe”, “Oblomovism”, and unbridled exploitation of natural resources (including the destruction of forests).

At the same time, however, we note that the great humanist never succeeded in realizing this principle even in his own family, and Leo Tolstoy was unable to go beyond self-flagellation. One of his letters to V.G. Chertkov is typical, in which he admitted: “We now have a lot of people - my children and the Kuzminskys, and often without horror I cannot see this immoral idleness and gluttony... And I see... all the rural labor , which goes around us. And they eat... Others do for them, but they do nothing for anyone, not even for themselves.”

At the beginning of the twentieth century. L.N. Tolstoy was visited three times by Tomas Masaryk (in the future - not only a prominent liberal politician, the first president of Czechoslovakia in 1918-1935, but also a classic of Czech sociology and philosophy). During conversations with Tolstoy, he more than once drew the writer’s attention to the fallacy of not only Tolstoy’s views on the Russian village, but also the very life practice of “simplification,” tirelessly promoted by Tolstoy himself and his followers. Noting the poverty and squalor of the local peasants, who most of all needed concrete help, and not “moralization” (“Tolstoy himself told me that he drank from a glass of syphilitic, so as not to reveal disgust and thereby humiliate him; he thought about this, and to protect your peasants from infection - no about that”), T. Masaryk sharply but fairly criticized Tolstoy’s ideological position to lead a “peasant life”: “Simplicity, simplification, simplify! Lord God! The problems of town and countryside cannot be resolved by sentimental morality and by declaring the peasant and the countryside to be exemplary in everything; Agriculture today is also already industrializing, it cannot do without machines, and the modern peasant needs a higher education than his ancestors...” However, these ideas were deeply alien to L.N. Tolstoy.

In fairness, we note that at the beginning of the twentieth century. Not only L.N. Tolstoy, but also many other representatives of the Russian intelligentsia were characterized by idealistic ideas about both the Russian peasant and the communal order. The origins of such an attitude went back to the ideological delusions of the last century: it is no coincidence that the outstanding Russian historian A.A. Zimin focused on the phenomenon of “theology of the people,” which was characteristic of the noble literature of the 19th century and even then acted as a fruitless alternative to specific educational work among the peasantry.

Of course, such a psychological and “ideological-political” attitude did not carry a positive charge, preventing an objective analysis of agrarian problems, and most importantly, the consolidation of rural society in order to solve these problems locally. The roots of this approach lay mainly in the “anti-capitalist” position of the bulk of the intelligentsia during this period, which rejected bourgeois norms both in public life and in the field of government. However, such ideological and psychological attitudes did not at all indicate the “progressiveness” of mass intellectual consciousness, but rather the opposite: its stable conservatism (with a clear emphasis on the archaic).

At the beginning of the twentieth century. The position of the “repentant intellectual” was most clearly represented in the works of L.N. Tolstoy. Subsequently, critically assessing this feature of the Russian intelligentsia, which survived until the 1920s, the Soviet literary critic L. Ginzburg noted: “The repentant nobility made amends for the original sin of power; the repentant intelligentsia is the original sin of education. No disasters, no experience... can completely remove this trace.”

Of course, such sentiments (even dictated by a sincere desire to help the “common people” and get rid of the intelligentsia’s “guilt complex” towards them) did not have a positive impact on the national modernization of the early twentieth century. They obscured the truly pressing problems facing Russian society, including in the agricultural sector.

Well, let’s sum it up. The basis of not only socio-economic, but, to a certain extent, also religious views of L.N. Tolstoy were deeply patriarchal (and, in fact, archaic) psychological and life attitudes, which contradicted not only bourgeois modernization, but also, most importantly, civilizational renewal of Russia at the beginning of the twentieth century.

At the same time, while noting a number of vices inherent in Tolstoy’s ideological doctrine, we should not lose sight of its positive aspects. During the period under review, the works of L.N. Tolstoy became widespread in Russia. Despite their obvious utopianism, they also carried a positive charge, clearly and convincingly revealing the most acute economic and social contradictions of the traditional agrarian system, the mistakes and shortcomings of both the authorities and the Russian Orthodox Church. These works became a real discovery for thousands of people both in Russia and abroad, who experienced the joy of becoming familiar with the amazing artistic world of Leo Tolstoy; were a powerful incentive to deep moral renewal. “He was the most honest man of his time. His whole life is a constant search, a continuous desire to find the truth and bring it to life,” wrote the great philosopher of the 20th century. Mahatma Gandhi, paying special attention to the role of Leo Tolstoy in the development of the ideas of non-violence and his preaching of self-restraint, for “only it can give true freedom to us, our country and the whole world.” The recognition of the significance of this invaluable universal spiritual experience by both modern researchers and Orthodox church hierarchs is also characteristic. Thus, at one time, Metropolitan Kirill, who now heads the Russian Orthodox Church, in his 1991 article “Russian Church - Russian culture - political thinking” focused attention on “the special accusatory directness and moral anxiety of Tolstoy, his appeal to conscience and call to repentance "

L.N. Tolstoy was undoubtedly right when he sharply criticized not only the basic principles, but also the forms of implementation of bourgeois modernization in Russia: from the point of view of humanism, the new reforms were largely inhuman in nature and were accompanied by the loss of a number of centuries-old peasant cultural and everyday life traditions. However, we must take into account the following points. Firstly, despite all the costs, bourgeois reforms (primarily Stolypin’s agrarian reforms) were not only historically inevitable, but, most importantly, objectively necessary for both the country, society, and the most enterprising peasants seeking to escape from the oppressive clutches of communalism. collectivism and “equalization”. Secondly, it’s worth thinking about: perhaps some outdated traditions should have been abandoned then (and not only then)? For many years, a powerful barrier to the development of both agriculture and the entire peasantry were such traditions (closely associated with prejudices and community customs) as the notorious habit of relying on “maybe” in everything, disorganization, paternalism, everyday drunkenness, etc.

As is known, L.N. Tolstoy himself did not want to call himself a “fatalist,” however, as the famous Saratov literary scholar A.P. Skaftymov convincingly proved in 1972, in fact Tolstoy’s philosophy of history was fatalistic, and this was precisely what it consisted of main ideological flaw. As an argument, we will cite another testimony of T. Masaryk. According to his confession, during a visit to Yasnaya Polyana in 1910, “we argued about resisting evil with violence... he (L.N. Tolstoy - Auto.) did not see the difference between a defensive fight and an offensive one; he believed, for example, that the Tatar cavalry, if the Russians had not resisted them, would soon have become tired of the killings.” Such conclusions do not require special comments.

The critical remarks we have made, of course, do not at all cast doubt on the significance of Leo Tolstoy’s ideas. On the contrary, it is an objective, unbiased analysis, without the characteristic “go to extremes” characteristic of the Russian mentality, that, in our opinion, will help to better imagine the place and role of the multifaceted creative heritage of the great thinker in relation to the specific historical situation of the last years of the existence of Imperial Russia; understand the reasons not only for the outstanding spiritual breakthroughs of the mighty genius of world literature, but also for those real life failures that he had to endure...

S.A. KOZLOV,
Doctor of Historical Sciences,
(Institute of Russian History RAS)

Memoirs of Yasnaya Polyana peasants about Leo Tolstoy. Tula, 1960.

L.N. Tolstoy in the memoirs of his contemporaries. T. 1-2. M., 1978.

Sukhotina-Tolstaya T.L. Memories. M., 1980.

Yasnaya Polyana. House-Museum of Leo Tolstoy. M., 1986.

Memoirs of Tolstoyan peasants. 1910-1930s. M., 1989.

Remizov V.B. L.N. Tolstoy: Dialogues in time. Tula, 1999.

Burlakova T.T. World of memory: Tolstoy places in the Tula region. Tula, 1999.

It's her. Humanistic educational system of the orphanage: Implementation of the philosophical and pedagogical ideas of L.N. Tolstoy in the practice of the Yasnaya Polyana orphanage. Tula, 2001.

Tolstoy: pro et contra. The personality and creativity of Leo Tolstoy in the assessment of Russian thinkers and researchers. St. Petersburg, 2000.

Ashirin A.Yu. Tolstoyism as a type of Russian worldview // Tolstoy collection. Materials of the XXVI International Tolstoy Readings. The spiritual heritage of Leo Tolstoy. Part 1. Tula, 2000.

Tarasov A.B. What is truth? The Righteous by Leo Tolstoy. M., 2001.

A number of RuNet information resources are also dedicated to the rich creative heritage of Leo Tolstoy:

1. Find definitions of the words “personality” and “society” in two or three dictionaries. Compare them. If there are differences in the definition of the same word, try to explain them.

2. From the completed part of the history course, highlight the event that particularly interested you. Using the knowledge acquired in this chapter of social studies, formulate questions aimed at analyzing a historical event (for example: “What was society like before this event?”, etc.). Try to find the answer to them in a history textbook. If you have any difficulties, contact your teacher.

3. Read the figurative definitions of society given by thinkers of different times and peoples: “Society is nothing more than the result of a mechanical balance of brute forces”, “Society is a vault of stones that would collapse if one did not support the other”, “Society “It is a yoke of scales that cannot lift some without lowering others.” Which of these definitions is closest to the characteristics of society outlined in this chapter? Give reasons for your choice.

4. Make as complete a list of various human qualities as possible (a table with two columns: “Positive qualities”, “Negative qualities”). Discuss it in class.

5. L. N. Tolstoy wrote: “In an immoral society, all inventions that increase man’s power over nature are not only not good, but undoubted and obvious evil.”

How do you understand the words “immoral society”? Considering that the above idea was expressed more than 100 years ago, has it been confirmed in the development of society over the past century? Justify your answer using specific examples.

6. In the collective work of Russian philosophers, the inherent traits of people are presented in the following context: “No matter what region of the globe we go to, we will meet there human beings about whom it is legitimate to say at least the following:

They know how to make tools using tools and use them as means of producing material goods;

They know the simplest moral prohibitions and the unconditional opposition of good and evil;

They have needs, sensory perceptions and mental skills that have developed historically;

They can neither form nor exist outside society;

The individual qualities and virtues they recognize are social definitions that correspond to one or another type of objective relationship;

Their life activity is not initially programmed, but of a conscious-volitional nature, as a result of which they are creatures who have the ability of self-coercion, conscience and consciousness of responsibility.”

Find in the studied chapter of the textbook and quote those provisions that characterize each of the properties inherent in a person named in the above passage. Are there any of the properties mentioned that you encountered for the first time in this text? Which of the following properties do you consider the most important and why? How do you understand the words “foundation of humanity”? What other human qualities would you build on this foundation? If any of the above signs is not entirely clear to you, ask your teacher to clarify it.

7. Reveal the meaning of the Arabic proverb “People are more like their times than their fathers.” Think about how the life of society in our time differs from what it was like at the time when your parents finished school. Discuss these issues with your parents. Together with them, determine how the generation of your parents, who were at your age, differed from your generation.

Discuss in class the new features of young people today.

8. After consulting with teachers, collect information about graduates of your school who have chosen various professions. Find the most successful ones. Prepare a stand with materials about their work activities.