"What to do?" and “who is to blame? "Who's to blame?" and “what to do?”: the psychological subtext of Russian questions - male: men and women

It happens that you seem to know a person, but you never got beyond a greeting and a few words about the weather.

How wonderful, smart and intelligent he seemed then! Until you began to contact him regularly and closely. Very soon you will learn many facts about him and features of his character that you didn’t even suspect. It may turn out that this amazing person It never occurred to him to wash his mug after himself, or he argues about everything for no reason or reason. And who knows what else is unattractive in it? You, as a tactful person, will naturally not point out his flaws. However, you won’t stop noticing. Unfulfilled irritation tends to accumulate, and each subsequent incident will cause more and more internal dissatisfaction. If you leave everything as it is, then sooner or later the valve will break and a conflict will occur. Moreover, everything often happens asymmetrically: the person didn’t seem to say anything, but for some it was the last straw. As a result, we are faced with two mortally offended people, but equally confident in their own rightness: one got angry at them out of the blue, and the second is already fed up with everything, he does not have any strength to endure.

This issue has received a lot of attention in practical psychology. And it’s not surprising: we live in a society and the lion’s share of our problems relate to relationships with other members of it. Let's try to look at this classic situation from different angles.

Let's say I was unfairly offended. Let us immediately recall the statement that in any conflict both sides are to blame. Some more, some less, but always both. Even if in this particular case my action, which caused such an inadequate reaction, seems quite innocent, it is likely that the reason is not so much in it, but in the totality of all my previous words and actions. In other words, in my behavior in general. This very unpleasant thought, as a rule, is rejected by us almost at the subconscious level. It's the same as admitting that you're imperfect. No, I, of course, consider myself a great sinner, but I just think, and not feel. Theoretically, in general, I think so. Often calling oneself a sinner is perceived more as part of church etiquette: everyone is a sinner - and I am a sinner. When it comes down to it and I need to admit that I was wrong in a conflict, then I immediately become an innocent victim, that is, an absolutely sinless person.

It may happen that I still admit part of my guilt in this situation, but... And then just have time to write it down. I may be wrong (of course, just a little), but I could have remained silent or entered into the situation. I have a lot of excuses for myself and none for others. It turns out that I can, but they can’t. As my aunt says: “What kind of people are they? You spit in the face, they rush to fight...” When I create discomfort for those around me with my actions, it just turns out to be inconvenient, but when they do it to me, it’s already terribly unfair and in general terms normal people can they do this?!

Let's fast forward to the other side of the conflict. There is a person who methodically and systematically drives us to white heat. Of course, we can assume that he does this intentionally, but such cases are still extremely rare in nature. As a rule, it is more of an impatience with each other's weaknesses. Again, the form of our current relationship is the result of our joint work, so to speak. In addition, a person feels when they feel hostility towards him, and can even begin to answer us in kind on an instinctive level.

For some reason, we often think that a person should guess for himself that he is doing something wrong. Because of this, a big problem can be piled up out of the blue. Therefore, it is very important to still talk about your dissatisfaction. Of course, it’s better to do this without any complaints, and ideally, ask for it. A request is always more constructive than a demand. When we were students, we shared an apartment with a classmate. She had a way of putting a cup of tea leaves in the sink. I don’t know why, but it really pissed me off. I hinted in every possible way, pointedly put it back, pointedly shook out the tea leaves, etc., etc. But the cup still invariably ended up in the sink. It felt like she was doing it to spite me. I once said, “Don’t ask why, just don’t do that again. It’s annoying - I have no strength.” She replied: "Okay." And the episode with the cup never happened again! It turned out that she did not notice my “obvious” hints. This was normal for her, and she attributed all my grumblings and sidelong glances to anything but this ill-fated cup.

In any conflict or just simmering situation, we are used to analyzing in detail and carefully the character traits and details of the actions of our offender. We consult and plan what he needs to change in himself, in his attitude towards life and how we can help him with this. But we almost never think about what we could change about ourselves. For example, how can I behave differently in such situations to make it easier for him to communicate with me? Even if it was wrong for him to do this, what can I do to prevent this from happening again? These thoughts don’t even come to mind because deep down we are sure that we are doing everything right. No matter what we say or admit. Besides, it’s easy to change others, but it’s hard and pathetic to change yourself.

The Lord says: “You have heard what was said to the ancients: do not kill; whoever kills will be subject to judgment. But I tell you that everyone who is angry with his brother without cause will be subject to judgment” (Matthew 5:21, 22). Even in the above quotation from the Gospel, you just want to cling to the word “in vain”: they say, I’m not doing it just like that, but on purpose! But the interpreters upset us: everything that concerns you personally is vain anger. For example, St. John Chrysostom writes: “When is the right time for anger? Then, when we do not avenge ourselves, but curb the daring, and turn the careless to the straight path. And when is anger inappropriate? Then, when we get angry to avenge ourselves... Just as this last anger is unnecessary, so the first is necessary and useful. But many do the opposite. They become furious when they themselves are offended, but remain cold and faint-hearted when they see how another is being offended. Both are contrary to the laws of the Gospel.” And blzh. Jerome of Stridonsky notes that in many codes the word “in vain” is absent, therefore in the interpretation of this place it does not carry any special semantic load.

So why is anger equated with murder? For example, there is someone who does not give us life, terribly irritates us and drives us crazy. We don’t want to make peace with him, because we consider him, as we have already found out, to be one-sidedly guilty. He is also unlikely to make contact, either for the same reason, or without noticing that we have a nervous tic from him. Somewhere in the depths of our souls, at this moment we want him to stop talking like that, stop doing that, and stop interfering with us altogether. My eyes wouldn't have seen him. Thus, it turns out that I want this person not to be in my life. Now, if he were different or changed so that I could feel good with him, I might still think about it. But as he is now, I don’t want him, I don’t need him. If it weren’t for this recurring situation, if it weren’t for this person, then how much easier life would be for me. If it weren’t for him... It turns out that actual murder is just bringing this desire to its logical conclusion.

All New Testament permeated with love, forgiveness and humility. This means that when we are angry with our neighbor, we are fundamentally at odds with the teachings of Christ. “You, Lord, of course, created and said a lot of beautiful things, but please go away, I with my wounded ego have no time for You now.” It sounds crazy, of course, but that’s essentially what happens.

One of the Optina elders wrote that there is an opinion according to which the Lord grieved so much in the Garden of Gethsemane also because he knew how many people would not want to take advantage of His sacrifice on the cross. Isn’t it us when we cannot step over our pride and take the first step towards reconciliation? We also ask Him every day to forgive us our debts, just as we forgive our debtors... If we ask Him for the same attitude towards ourselves that we have towards everyone from whom we have suffered at least some kind of trouble, then, I'm afraid, dear brothers and sisters, that most of us are in big trouble.

Ekaterina Vykhovanets

These mechanisms psychological protection develop to varying degrees in a person depending on the methods of education. The less a child’s right to make a mistake is taken into account, the more he has to build a system of protection against it, since it is impossible to live without making mistakes. You can only learn to ignore your mistakes

Thus, the question “Who is to blame?” you can answer: “Anyone except me” or “I.” We see that neither one nor the other answer is constructive. They are not aimed at solving the problem. They are associated with its veiled removal and masking of emotional experience. This question exploits the need to feel right and the desire to lift a burden. negative emotions due to the events nearby for one participant and the habit of feeling “bad” for the other. The habit of being “bad” is based on an amazing unconscious mechanism that allows you to turn the concept of “bad” into “good” (“since I obeyed ...”) A person consciously admits his guilt, but the unconscious sense of significance grows, and he feels more and more yourself worthy and positive.

The need to ask the question “Who is to blame?” is not a Russian invention. However, the centuries-old living conditions in Russia contributed to the consolidation of the situation when an advantage was given to people who, in extreme situations, did not correct mistakes and did not try to understand the causes of the phenomenon, but looked for those on whom they could pour out their emotions for their failed happiness. Any change of power, any rebellion or revolution begins with the punishment of those who were previously in power. Solving problems not resolved by the predecessor is extremely difficult and sometimes impossible. But letting people mock his predecessor costs nothing. That is why in democratic Germany they so easily fired professors who were only suspected of collaborating with the Stasi (Ministry of State Security of the German Democratic Republic), without going into detail how competent this or that person was and what exactly he had done in the past. It wasn't meant to improve scientific activity of certain structures, but it satisfied the emotions that had accumulated in people over the years of the unlimited power of this organization. In the same way, after the failure of our Olympic team in Vancouver, the first action was not the development of children's sports and not the construction of sports facilities necessary for the training of athletes, but the dismissal of officials.

Many problems in the country can be solved if the actions of all branches of government become open and transparent. It is enough to find out the reasons and make the appropriate changes. But if the authorities do not strive to cooperate with society, corruption at all levels slows down any reforms, and budget implementation is closed from prying eyes, then a search for those responsible is regularly necessary, relieving tension among people, but not changing anything. We will consider the reasons for the consolidation of this behavior in the future.

Guilty Citizens Society

It amazes me how people from the most good advice and recommendations designed to bring their happiness and joy of life closer, they manage to weave themselves a new whip for self-flagellation.

M. Vislotskaya. "The Art of Love"

So, we have discovered that tension in society is regularly relieved through “sacrifice.” This is a situation when, instead of solving a specific problem, someone named guilty is given over to be torn apart by a crowd tired of hopelessness. However, the question arises: why are many, many people satisfied only with the sight of blood, without demanding a solution to the problems that really exist in the country? Moreover, why is it more profitable for those who are at the head of the state to organize an auto-da-fé rather than solve the problems of the country and the people living in it?

The characteristic of a guilty person, regardless of whether his guilt is real or not, is that he is easily controlled. If this is a family member, then it is easy to manipulate him. A guilty husband is ready to make amends by doing housework, taking care of the house and children. Moreover, for some time he will not claim a positive assessment of his work.

The guilty wife, in turn, will endure insults from her husband, who uses scandals to relieve his own tension arising from failures at work. She will not make any claims, trying in all known ways to make amends for existing or imagined guilt.

Children are easily manipulated by guilty parents. Being incredibly adaptive (it’s not for nothing that humanity has spread so widely across the earth), many children quickly learn to find the weak points of their teachers. They intuitively look for that invisible “button” that turns on their parents’ feelings of guilt, and regularly press it, receiving significant benefits. Such a button may be the fear of parents that they are raising their children incorrectly, that someone may not like their children, the desire of divorced parents to attract children to their side, etc. Offspring intuitively use these situations, since guilty parents give them more gifts, offer a variety of opportunities and are less demanding than those for whom guilt is not easily evoked.

It should be emphasized that since guilt is not related to responsibility, then “good” (from the point of view of others) behavior necessarily ends in failure, when a person makes many mistakes, which he is forced to atone for in the future. This mechanism will always operate within him, causing him to make mistakes. If he does not think about the reasons for regular failures, then this sequence of adequate and erroneous behavior will be constantly reproduced, giving rise to an equally constant feeling of guilt.

Guilt is a complex of individual feelings of one’s own “badness.” It's akin to shame. The difference between them is less significant compared to what unites them. Guilt is a self-perception of failure. Shame is the fear of revealing one’s shortcomings in front of others, the fear of being judged by others. Shame and guilt are generated by the fear of loneliness, the need to be accepted in a community of one’s own kind. They are brought up in the child from childhood. They are accompanied by self-pity and uncertainty. These feelings are so painful that they cannot be experienced for long.

Life is the desire to present yourself in the world, take a place in the sun and leave offspring. In her more primitive forms, she has no doubts and leaves only the strongest individuals, without asking what they did to survive. Man differs from other living things in that he raises the question of what is hidden behind his actions. Society has identified a range of thoughts and corresponding actions that are reprehensible, and demands that they be avoided. Every person at some point is forced to decide for himself whether he will cross the line that leads to condemnation of behavior or not, and if not, then why. And this “why,” depending on the type of upbringing, gives rise to either shame, guilt, or responsibility. Increased fear of external condemnation gives rise to shame, increased fear of oneself - guilt, the requirement to think about the consequences of one's actions - responsibility. Most often, these three qualities are found in different proportions in almost any person. However, the predominance of guilt or shame over responsibility leads to special behavior in society.

End of introductory fragment.

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What did you think of when you read the title of this article? Of course it's two rhetorical question, by which you can mean anything, but today I want to look at them in context. That is, the questions will sound like this:

• Who is to blame for our financial problems?
• What should I do to fix this?

I'll start with those whom people themselves consider to be the culprits of their financial troubles. There are 5 such subjects. If you ask a person in a distressed or simply unstable financial situation who is to blame, most likely his answer will be in one way or another connected with one of the following 5 subjects:

1. State.
2. Banks.
3. Employer.
4. Businessmen.
5. Relatives (husband, wife, etc.).

Now let's look at all these subjects separately in the context they create, in the format of our article: who is to blame and what to do.

Who's to blame? State! The government contains only thieves and swindlers who think only about themselves! The state does not care about its citizens: it does not create new jobs, cuts old ones, pays low wages to public sector employees, low social benefits and pensions that are not enough to live on, stifles business with taxes and inspections, does not control prices, creates conditions for corruption to flourish, In general, he does everything to ensure that the bulk of the population.

What to do? Can we agree with this? Yes, that’s basically what happens. Is it possible to change this somehow? It is unlikely that systemic changes will take years, at best. Then what can be done? You need to change your attitude towards this, namely: stop relying on the state!

Waiting for the state to provide you with everything you need and solve your financial problems is obviously a dead-end option that will only worsen the situation. You need to think about what you (and not the state) can do specifically to reduce the impact of these external unfavorable factors on your own financial well-being. For example:

• You are paid a low salary - start;
• If you don’t like low pensions, create your own;
• High prices are scary - study wisely;
• It’s difficult to run a business - sell it and start a business in another area, for example, the state has not reached there yet.

Who's to blame? Banks! Vampire bankers, we have holes in our pockets! They set crazy interest rates on loans, they drove you into credit bondage, they tortured you, and now it’s completely impossible to get out of debt. Or large loans (for example,) are not available to the average citizen, what to do if you have nowhere to live.

What to do? Is there such a problem? Yes, of course. Then what to do? Think before using banking services! First, think, analyze, study the terms of the loan, understand, adequately assess your ability to repay, and only then take it. Or better yet, don’t take it at all, especially when we're talking about O . Understand that living in debt will not solve your financial problems, but will only worsen them.

This widespread development of consumer lending is one of characteristic features, in which we all live, and here it is presented in the most unflattering form. The massive influence on people encourages them to live beyond their means, to consume a lot of unnecessary expensive goods and services in order to appear better, to create. If you don’t succumb to this influence and give up everything you can do without, and start living within your means, then you won’t need any loans, and there will be much more free financial resources that can be accumulated to make large purchases.

There is no need to use those banking services that are easily accessible and that are imposed on you. Use only those that are really beneficial for you.

Who's to blame? Employer! The employer does not want to raise my salary, pays me little, and at the same time forces me to work overtime for nothing, perform duties that are not my own, go to work on my days off, and does not allow me to go on vacation. Or maybe he fired me altogether, or already fired me, leaving me without income, not thinking that I need to support my family and feed my children.

What to do? In conditions of a significant predominance of demand for work over its supply, this situation is quite logical: there are fewer employers, and they will dictate their “rules of the game” as long as employees allow it. However, there is no need to perceive work as something permanent and unshakable. Any person is given a very wide choice of both direct work and work.

Therefore, if you are not satisfied with something about your employer, change him to another. If you are not satisfied with your job at all, take up freelancing, private practice, business, network marketing, investing... There are a lot of options for generating income, and most of them are, in fact, more promising than traditional employment.

Who's to blame? Businessmen! They constantly raise already exorbitant prices, it’s not enough for them, they won’t calm down! Even the most vital goods and services have become unavailable (renting housing, undergoing treatment, studying at a university, etc.). Salaries and pensions are completely insufficient to pay for the insatiable appetites of businessmen.

What to do? Since you cannot influence this external factor in any way, all that remains is to adapt to the existing conditions. Namely: if you don’t have enough money, think:

Both are completely possible if you do it. By the way, businessmen also constantly think about this, which is why prices are rising. So think about it too.

Who's to blame? Husband (Wife)! Or other relatives. For example, a husband earns little and his wife spends a lot, or it’s the other way around, or one spouse doesn’t spend money on what the other wants, there are very different cases. Spouses blame each other for financial problems. Problems begin in the family, which leads to the deterioration of relationships or even the breakup of the family.

What to do? Stop blaming other people for your problems and think about what you personally can do to normalize the situation. Let's say if the other person doesn't change. For example, switch to , and independently manage your own earnings, giving the same opportunity to your spouse. Or change the roles of breadwinner and manager of the family budget (for example, whoever earns money manages it). This will be fair and there will be no reason for disagreement. And most importantly, your personal financial situation will depend on you personally, and not on someone else, which is more correct and reliable.

Or maybe it’s worth ending a relationship with a person if it is tied solely to money. Perhaps there is someone next to you who only needs money from you and nothing more. Without this money, such people will drop out on their own.

In general, I have already written a whole series of articles on the topic of the connection between relationships and money. For example, here:

Check them out, there are a lot of interesting and useful things on this issue.

So, I looked at the most common answers to the question “who is to blame and what to do?”, which people most often name. And in conclusion, I want to add one option from myself, which, in my opinion, is key, but which few people think about.

Who's to blame? You yourself, your financial illiteracy! You are the one who hasn’t thought about how to increase income and optimize spending. It was you who took out loans without understanding them, without thinking about the consequences. It was you who got a low-paying job and worked at it for the sake of “stability” (?). It was you who rejected alternative and more promising ways of earning money. It was you who spent money on expensive entertainment that you could have done without. It was you who did not create monetary funds: but lived one day at a time, spent, roughly speaking, “eat up” everything that you earned. In general, you did a lot of things, which led to the problems that you now have. All these are signs (be sure to read the article at this link).

What to do? Change this situation. Better late than never! Admit your mistakes and start correcting them. Start increasing your income, which will certainly help improve your financial situation.

And the site you are reading now can be a good assistant in this matter. A colossal amount of useful materials has already been collected here, the study and application of which will increase your financial literacy and teach you to manage your personal finances differently and more competently.

Therefore, stay with us, study, ask questions in the comments, communicate on the forum where you can share experiences and useful information with other readers, subscribe to updates on social networks.

The higher your level financial literacy– the less often you will ask yourself the questions “who is to blame and what to do?”, since the situation will improve and the answers will already be known to you.

I wish you success, and I am always ready to help with advice (note, completely free of charge). See you again on the pages of the site!

"WHO IS TO BLAME?" And “WHAT TO DO?”:

PSYCHOLOGICAL SUBTEXT OF RUSSIAN QUESTIONS

There are two famous Russian formulas - “Who is to blame?” and “What should I do?” They became catchphrases Russian literature, Russian consciousness in general. It is believed that these formulas indicate the moralism of the Russian consciousness, its concern moral problems(“practical reason”, according to Kant) and at the same time relate to issues of social order. The heightened moralism of the Russian consciousness was reflected in this super-personal appeal, in concern for common destinies, especially the fate of the people. In this regard, they talk about moral socialism, about the moral justification of socialist ideology in Russia. This applies exclusively to “Russian”, that is, populist, or peasant, or - already in Marxist terms - utopian socialism, which sought and found moral justification in the so-called subjective sociology (Mikhailovsky). Subjective in this context it means moral, based on the volitional principle in a person, on the demands of his moral consciousness, and not at all on any kind of objectivist or quasi-scientific justification, the claim to which was made by Marxism, which marked a radical change in the socialist paradigm. All this is well known, and I returned to these plots only in order to recall the context in which the famous formulas of Russian literature were usually considered - and to take them out of this context, or rather, to return them to their original context.

Questions “Who is to blame?” and “What should I do?” First of all, they are extremely specific: these are the names of two Russian novels, written respectively by Herzen and Chernyshevsky. If we return from general considerations about the fate of Russian socialism to these novels and their authors, then, it seems to me, we will be able to deepen our understanding of this socialism itself - to discover its very interesting psychological roots.

And first of all, it is necessary to emphasize that both novels, despite the difference in their titles, are about the same thing, they have the same theme. Although Herzen writes about the “superfluous man” from the nobles, and Chernyshevsky about “new people,” the socio-cultural differences of the characters are insignificant in light of the fact of their cardinal psychological similarities. And it’s even better and more accurate to say that their authors have such psychological similarities. Naturally, the similarity is found at a significant depth rather than on a random biographical surface. This depth is “unconscious,” that is, determined sexually: Herzen and Chernyshevsky both belong to a significantly similar type of sexual orientation.

The assumption of Chernyshevsky’s “sodomy” was already expressed by Rozanov. In the case of Herzen, we can perhaps speak of a fairly high probability of bisexual practice. Single theme novels “Who is to Blame?” and “What should I do?” – threesome love; but this is not an ordinary “love triangle”, but a psychologically ambiguous plot, designated in psychoanalysis by the term “Candaules motive.” The cardinal difference between the “Candaules motif” and all other forms of ménage a troi is not the rivalry of men over a woman, but rather the unconscious desire to share her, thereby symbolically uniting through her.

Here I would like to touch on Irina Paperno’s book “Chernyshevsky and the Age of Realism: A Study on the Semiotics of Behavior.” I. Paperno has collected a wealth of material confirming exactly the point of view that I just expressed. But her work was written in a different methodology; the author ignored the psychoanalytic aspects of the topic. In I. Paperno’s book, Chernyshevsky’s “complexes,” which once served as a theme for a mocking description in Nabokov’s novel “The Gift,” are taken not in a psychological, but in a sociological sense. In Chernyshevsky she saw a commoner who did not know how to dance or speak fluently in French, and therefore unhappy in love. Hence the very striking stretches in the description and explanation of that very “Candaulus motif”, which is so clear in Chernyshevsky and which I. Paperno herself described in such detail under the name of “mediation in love” or “emotional mediation”. According to the author of the study, this complex found Chernyshevsky’s ideological sublimation in his project of a socialist society. This is a very subtle observation and a very promising idea, but the point is precisely that Chernyshevsky’s socialist complex is not so much a sublimation as a symbolic representation of the same individual psychological theme. In his case, socialism itself demonstrates its sexual roots, more strongly - it appears as a sexual problem.

I give the main thesis of I. Paperno in direct quotation:

What seemed like a form of adultery was for Chernyshevsky the basis of emotional and social harmony and balance. Balance was achieved through the principle of mediation. The constant application of this principle destroys all individual confrontations and personal tensions, reconciles all oppositions in people's relationships and eliminates all repression. The key to bliss lies in the presence of a third party between any two persons - the tripartite structure as the basis of any union... Chernyshevsky wanted this agreement to serve as a prototype of a new social harmony - a harmonious paradise on earth, based on the principle of collectivism in all spheres human life, both private and public, as they are presented in the picture of communist society in Vera Pavlovna’s Fourth Dream. Chernyshevsky's critics (including Dostoevsky) were wrong when they argued that both the family projects and the social utopia proposed by Chernyshevsky completely ignored human emotions. On the contrary, the social principle of collectivism had a solid psychological basis for Chernyshevsky: social harmony was seen as an extension of the family, and the latter itself was the result of the practical implementation of the belief that love is an indirect feeling, a mediative emotion, and is by its nature collective.

To refute this thesis, it is enough to give just one quote from “What is to be done?” The following reasoning by Lopukhov undoubtedly expresses the experience of the author of the novel in his brief and unsuccessful heterosexual practice:

I love her very much and will break myself to better adapt to her; it will give me pleasure, but still my life will be cramped. This is how it seemed to me when I calmed down from the first impression. And I saw that I was not deceived. She gave me this experience when she wanted me to try to keep her love. The month of indulging this desire was the hardest month of my life. There was no suffering here, this expression would not be at all relevant, it would be absurd; on the positive side, I felt nothing but joy in pleasing her; but I was bored. This is the secret that her attempt to stay in love with me was unsuccessful. I was bored pleasing her."

It is unlikely that such an experience can be called of general cultural significance: this is a purely intimate experience of communicating with a woman by a person who has no inclination towards women. Hence what I. Paperno calls the search for a mediator, and we, following Freud, the “Candaules motive” - the ability or even the need for emotional attraction to a woman only under the condition of her connection with another man. Such is the episode with the Lobodovsky spouses in Chernyshevsky’s life, and in the novel “What is to be done?” the main line is Vera Pavlovna – Lopukhov – Kirsanov. It is interesting that Lopukhov makes an attempt to turn a fictitious marriage with Vera Pavlovna into a genuine one when Kirsanov appears on the scene. The “mediator” here is not Kirsanov, but Vera Pavlovna: a typical situation for the “Candaules motive”.

There is no social specificity in this plot. It cannot be reduced to the problems of heterogeneity, if only because exactly the same theme took place in the novel “Who is to Blame?” (Beltov - Lyuba - Krutsifersky) and in the life of the aristocrat and rich man Herzen. One can recall subsequent similar situations: for example, the Merezhkovsky circle and the metaphysics of sociality developed there: the “secret of three” is a direct analogue of the triple structure of any social union noted by I. Paperno in Chernyshevsky (by the way, Zinaida Gippius’s play “The Green Ring” is, in essence, paraphrase “What to do?”). The researcher herself draws appropriate parallels to “What is to be done?”, recalling, of course, Herzen. But just such an abundance of everyday and literary parallels indicates the super-social nature of the plot, taking it beyond the framework of raznochinsky problems.

It cannot be said, however, that this removes the question of socialism as an ideology that goes beyond the limits of individual experience. The theme of Chernyshevsky-Herzen, if non-social, is in a certain sense super-personal. Or let’s put it this way: in socialism, it is not so much a certain social type that is significant as a certain psychological type.

Herzen was a man who was almost in every way the opposite of Chernyshevsky, and above all, unlike Chernyshevsky, highly talented, mentally, artistically and humanly gifted. Nevertheless, they had the same ideology - populist socialism. Thinking about Herzen, I want to ask a sacramental question: why the hell brought him to this galley? It's all about psychology, more precisely and specifically - in relation to women.

Herzen's initial socialist intuition is captured in precisely this way. Herzen was attracted to socialism, in its Saint-Simonist version, by the posing of the question of woman. Recalling the years of his socialist conversion, he wrote in “Past and Thoughts”:

Saint-Simonism formed the basis of our beliefs and has remained unchanged in its essence. On the one hand, the liberation of a woman, her calling to common labor, placing her destinies in her hands, an alliance with her as an equal.

On the other hand, justification, redemption of the flesh... a person achieved consonant unity, realized that he was a whole being, and not composed, like a pendulum, of two different metals holding each other, that the enemy welded to him had disappeared!

As you can see, there is not a word about cancellation here private property and socialization of the means of production. The problem of socialism for Herzen is sexual. He sees socialism as a way to achieve an ideal - the restoration of a certain desired integrity of man. This is the ideal of the androgyne, a platonic myth. Let us not forget that Plato was the author of the first communist utopia. Let us also remember what the marriage policy of Plato’s State was: the complete elimination of any personally colored sexual relations, the collective belonging of both sexes to each other: married couples were selected in advance by philosopher-rulers, this was an imitation of individual choice. In Plato, the “Candaulus motif” was raised to its maximum degree and acquired the meaning of a universal principle: apart from “mediation” and “mediation,” there was nothing else here in relation to the sexes.

Herzen wrote to his future wife:

Love is the only possible path to the restoration of man... two people, lost in each other, form an angel through love, that is, they express the first person in all their purity, returning to that unity that destroys struggle. Duality is always a struggle. God is one."

It would be absurd to understand these words as the expressed desire of a young man to unite with a woman, to understand the love that is spoken of here in the sense of a marriage, generally heterosexual union: no one interfered with such love and such a union - neither in the case of Herzen, nor in the history of mankind It wasn't a problem at all. Herzen’s problem here is different - the unity of masculine and feminine in the individual “I”, that is, androgyny, but it’s easier to say and closer to the point – bisexuality.

In the case of Herzen, there are serious reasons to talk about bisexuality. A modern reader of Past and Thought cannot help but see in the plot of the “whirling heart”, in Herzen’s family drama, the conflict that formed the basis of the novel “Who is to Blame?” Men share a woman - Herzen shares Natalie with Georg Herwegh. It became a conflict and a drama because the conflict was not recognized; more precisely: the parties, even knowing (or guessing) about their homosexual desires, did not dare to realize them socially. In general, Herzen found it difficult to gain this knowledge about himself: the story with Herwegh seriously traumatized him. At the same time, he appropriated Ogarev’s wife without much hesitation - because in “this case there was a clear heterosexual context, more acceptable to consciousness. And yet we have the right to say that he was not so interested in N.A. Tuchkova-Ogareva, how much is her husband. Readers of Past and Thoughts know that Herzen all his life either quarreled with his friends and their wives, or shared them with them. This was in his relationships with Ketcher, with Engelson, with the same Ogarev; even Botkin's French mistress irritated him. Now it is impossible not to see the homosexual overtones of the friendship between Herzen and Ogarev. In one place, Herzen very interestingly called the notorious oath on the Sparrow Hills “betrothal.”

It seems that for Ogarev this “betrothal” meant much more than for his friend. There is every reason to think that Ogarev remained completely alien to heterosexual desires. A striking, but essentially understandable fact: in two marriages he had no children, but as soon as his wives left him, they immediately became pregnant; This was the case with his first wife, M.L. Roslavleva, and from the second - N.A. Tuchkova. Here I would like to cite an interesting document - Ogarev’s recording of one of his dreams:

I saw in a dream a girl who told me: “You know that I am no longer innocent, but I beg you - don’t tell this to anyone. I can still get married, but now I have nothing to eat; and if anyone finds out, he won’t want to marry me.” “Believe me,” I answered her, “I won’t tell anyone. I know too well that the human race has not yet matured to the concept that the point is not that a woman is innocent or has already given birth to several children, but the point is that she knows how to take part in public affairs, in social labor, in the mental sense ; and there she is innocent or has already given birth once or more - it doesn’t matter, if only she were free to live as she wants.” “Then we shook hands and walked away amicably.

It is not difficult to interpret this dream: this is precisely the memory of Ogarev’s wife-girls, to whom he does not feel the right to make any moral claims. But in this context, the words “public matter” and « social labor": we can once again see what was hidden behind these concepts among the adherents of Russian socialism.

In general, Herzen’s circle can be called a group of very advanced bisexuals. This also applies to women: Natalie Herzen and Natalie Tuchkova are known for their “passionate” affection for each other. It is also known that Natalie Herzen, offering her husband a plan for living together with Herwegh, did not even have a “triple” but a “quaternary” union in mind: she wanted to include Herwegh’s wife Emma in this union. I. Paperno quotes the relevant sources extensively, but, as usual, does not want to notice their sexual context and subtext.

But we are now inclined to see them in texts that were hardly of particular interest to previous researchers. For example, the following passage from “Literary Memoirs” by P.V. suggests the corresponding reflections. Annenkova. To Herzen and his wife, writes Annenkov,

I was terribly tired of the discipline that was introduced and steadily maintained by the then idealism between friends. Observing oneself, sweeping aside as a dangerous element certain impulses of the heart and nature, tirelessly walking through one ritual of duty, duties, sublime thoughts - all this resembled a strict monastic art. Like any temptation, it had its charming and charming power at first, but became unbearable as it continued. It is curious that the first to raise the banner of rebellion against the preaching of moral restraint and the restriction of freedom to indulge in personal physical and sensory desires was Ogarev. He instilled in both of his friends, Herzen and his wife (especially the latter), the views on the right of everyone to dispose of themselves, without adhering to any code of established rules, which are just as conditional and constraining in official morality as in private morality, which sometimes friendly circles establish for of your everyday life. There is no doubt that Ogarev’s view had an aristocratic underpinning, giving developed people with a wealthy fortune the opportunity to calmly neglect those moral constraints that are preached by people who have not known from birth the charm and pleasures of complete material and mental independence.

Knowing about Ogarev what has already been discussed, it is difficult to imagine what else, besides homosexual practice, the misogynistic Ogarev could have seduced Herzen and his wife.

In socialism, Herzen saw the ideological motivation and sanction of his homosexual desires: in the attempt of Saint-Simon's students to realize, at least proclaim, the androgynous ideal. Saint-Simonism aroused the interest of the young Herzen with the process of Enfantin, the Saint-Simonist “prophet” who taught that the ideal, or, as he said, “social” person would be an androgyne, a male-female. As a projective example, Enfantin put forward the idea of ​​the high priest of the new religion of Saint-Simonism as a couple - a man and a woman - and devoted a lot of time to the search for his feminine replenishment, even traveling to Egypt for this (a striking parallel with Vladimir Solovyov, who met the Eternal Feminine in the Egyptian desert – Sofia).

And here begins perhaps the most interesting, in the opinion of the author of the proposed concept, topic - about the origins of the myth of socialism as a community of wives. This source, historically, is Saint-Simonian. The researcher (D.F. Shcheglov) writes:

The essence of Enfantin's teaching on marriage was that permanent marriage can be reserved for people who are permanent by nature; and fickle people can not be embarrassed by anything, they can have wives or husbands whenever they want and as many as they want.

The same researcher quotes the Saint-Simonist Bazar:

Intimacy between the sexes, which is currently considered legal, holy and sublime only in marriage, should not have the character of exclusivity between spouses; a superior, for example (a priest or priestess), can and must cause and establish this intimacy between himself and a subordinate, either for his own satisfaction, or in order to have a more direct or more living influence on the subordinates, on their thoughts, actions and, therefore, on their progress. This idea was set forth originally by Enfantin, following his own expressions, as a transformation of the ancient seigneurial right.

Of course, the ancient seigneurial right is primarily a sexual monopoly; there can be no talk of any “socialism” here. This was only a historical reminiscence for Enfantin, and in general this comparison did not even come from him, but from the prosecutor at the Saint-Simonist trial - Enfantin only tried to give the archaic institution a new, namely socialist, motivation. Let us not forget, moreover, that Enfantin’s views in the quoted passage could have been subject to some displacement, if not distortion, by his rival Bazar. In the psychology of the Saint-Simonists, which found a similar response in Herzen, socialism was perceived as a free sexual union, the cementing basis of sociality as such. The leader’s sexual monopoly, most reminiscent of the archaic practice of the father of the primitive horde, was hardly Enfantin’s goal - he has too much of a “baisek” feel with all its complexes. Most likely, from here, from observations of the Saint-Simonists, and not from Plato’s plot, which had been thoroughly forgotten by that time, the myth of socialism as a community of wives originated. Psychologically, this myth can be understood as a vague, “unconscious” guess of observers about the homosexual nature of the preachers of socialism. People saw through the socialists the same “Candaules motive.” Even agreeing that the community of wives in the programs of the socialists is slander against them (and abstracting from the practice of Enfantin), one cannot help but recall the interpretation of slander by the young Jung (in his work “Essay on the Psychology of Gossip”) as an unconscious guess about the unconscious of the slandered.

After all these analyses, what conclusion can we come to about the supra-personal nature of the socialist project? Why does social projection of seemingly purely individual complexes become possible at all? Here we should talk about compensatory mechanisms. Socialism can be understood as the outsider's dream of replenishment in the social community. And who would deny that homosexuals were outsiders in the 19th century? Socialism, “public” as such, the very form of sociality in this context act as metaphors for missing contact with people, compensation for some secret defect of the socialist. And not only socialists, of course. Let us again recall Merezhkovsky and Gippius with their idea of ​​a “sacred public”: “holiness” here is an increased assessment of the very possibility of emerging into the world from the unconscious underground. Berdyaev wrote about them:

In Merezhkovsky’s cathedral “we” there is no person... In him there is a terrible instability of the new, the latest human soul, running away from its decadence, trying to hide in conciliarity from its human collapse... The dark gracelessness of Merezhkovsky and Gippius, unhappy wanderers in the deserts of non-existence, speaks of the terrible abandonment of the modern human soul. But still, these people are trying to make fire in the icy cold.

And the same can be said about Berdyaev himself, who tried to take refuge in the same socialism, in political leftism from his own icy cold - from his own homoeroticism. It is amazing that Ilya Ehrenburg describes Andre Gide’s socialist impulses in similar words: he wanted to warm himself by someone else’s fire.

The examples given - from Herzen to Andre Gide - belong to the elite of the intellectual and cultural world. In all these cases (with the exception of Chernyshevsky), we can talk about creative sublimation as a way out of individual crises. But there are other, and much louder, ways to overcome subjective inferiority. Here the instructions of K.-G are of paramount importance. Young:

It often happens that an essentially personal and supposedly subjective problem suddenly grows and becomes a general issue that captures the entire society; This happens when a personal problem collides with external events, the psychology of which is composed of the same elements as a personal conflict. This gives a personal conflict a grandeur that it did not previously have... A person is ashamed to expose a personal conflict to the general public - unless in the case of too bold a revaluation of himself. But at the moment when he manages to find and comprehend the connection between a personal problem and great historical events of its time, such a connection is a person’s salvation from the loneliness of purely personal experiences, and the subjective problem grows into a broad public issue. This is a significant advantage in terms of the possibility of solving the problem. For while previously the personal problem had only the meager energies of conscious interest in one’s own personality, now collective motive forces flow in from all sides and, uniting with the interests of the ego, create a new situation that gives new possibilities for resolution. And what the personal willpower or courage of an individual person could never achieve, is achieved by the power of collective drives; this collective force lifts a person and carries him through obstacles that he could never overcome by personal energy alone.

It is difficult, and indeed impossible, to escape the impression that the famous psychologist views this connection between individual psychology and the depths of the collective unconscious as extremely valuable. This is generally Jung’s main idea - about the need in psychological experience to expand the boundaries of the “ego” at the expense of archaic superpersonal psychic energies - to achieve the “self” as a synthesis of consciousness and the unconscious, individual and collective. But it is even more difficult not to recognize in the process, purely theoretically described in the quoted words of Jung, extremely dangerous and repulsive precedents. The first thing that comes to mind here is Hitler. Approximately according to this scheme (but referring not to Jung, but to Jacob Burckhardt), Joachim Fest explained the rise of Hitler:

Hitler owed the success of his campaign only partly to his oratorical talent. What was more important was his consonance with the moods of neurotically agitated ordinary people and his understanding of what they wanted from him. He himself regarded this ability as the true secret of every great speaker: “He always allows himself to be carried by the masses, so that the words that come from his lips instinctively coincide with what is in the hearts of the audience.”

What the nation was now experiencing for the first time - disappointment, decline, declassification, the search for scapegoats - Hitler experienced many years ago. From the very time when he was not accepted into the Academy of Arts, he experienced the blows of fate, which resisted the fulfillment of his desires and expectations. Now he could translate his complexes and disappointments into a super-personal plane. Without this coincidence of individual and social pathology, Hitler would never have been able to gain this hypnotic power over his fellow citizens. But he had long ago mastered all the reasons, formulated all the pretexts, and had long since discovered the villains. It is not surprising that the listeners lit up at his words. What captivated them was not the logic of his arguments or the essence of his slogans and images, but a sense of common experience, common suffering and hope. A petty bourgeois loser, Adolf Hitler was a man of the same fate. They were united by a joint aggressive attitude. From this shared experience came a great deal of his charisma - a mixture of obsession, passionate banality and vulgarity. He proved that Jacob Burckhardt was right when he said that history sometimes likes to appear in the guise of a single person to whom the world submits: time and man unite in a majestic and mysterious union.

The Russian parallel to this theme is socialism itself, whose icons and heroes were people like Chernyshevsky. He won in Russia as an option mass movement, the psychology of which is revealed in Eric Hoffer’s landmark book “The True Believer.”

Hoffer's main thesis: revolutions are not produced by hungry people, they are produced by people, so to speak, of average satiety, but psychologically disadvantaged: what he calls misfits, losers. In the Russian context that interests us, these are the commoners. The most important instigators of mass movements are poorly gifted intellectuals - noncreative men of words. This is exactly Chernyshevsky’s type. Hoffer includes Lenin, Mussolini, and Hitler in this type. The transformation of these people's individual complexes into a mass movement is described by Hoffer as a defense mechanism of projection:

We have a tendency to project outside of us the forces that shape our lives... It is clear that people who experience failures do not consider themselves to be to blame for these failures, but the world... Faith in a just cause largely serves as a substitute for the loss of faith in oneself. .. There is no doubt that by exchanging a self-absorbed life for a selfless life, we increase our self-esteem to a tremendous extent... Eternal losers can find salvation only in complete withdrawal from themselves; and usually such people find this salvation by losing themselves in the compact collectivity of mass movements... Where do fanatics come from? Most of them are recruited from the ranks of people aspiring to creative activity, but deprived creativity(noncreative men of words).

The cultural significance of such transformations (an individual complex into a mass movement) in the overwhelming majority of cases is very small and is even rather a negative value. Massiveness of the phenomenon, its quantitative characteristic, the changes he makes are not a guarantee of his value and the good nature of these changes. That is why, returning to I. Paperno’s thesis about the transformation carried out by Chernyshevsky personal experience into a generally valid cultural pattern, and even recognizing the factual correctness of this statement, we cannot agree with I. Paperno’s assessment of this fact, which is clearly positive. The cultural significance of individual experience is generated by it, this experience, by individual sublimation into a creative product. For talented people, for example Herzen, ideology is not important; what they created in their own creativity is much more important. But the result of Russian socialism as a mass movement cannot be recognized as a positive achievement of Russian life and culture. The psychology of Russian socialism as an anticultural and antisocial rebellion was a direct product and consequence of the flawed psychology of the losers who gave birth to it. A defective psyche can only give rise to a defective social movement. And it is impossible not to see in the makeup of this psychology the influence of unresolved sexual problems, which we discussed in connection with Chernyshevsky.

It is worth asking the question: is it even possible to resolve sexual problems, by definition personal, personal, intimate, on the paths social reform or even revolution? At first glance, this assumption seems absurd, but at the same time, the connection between these purely individual needs and unsolved problems - and their transformation into a kind of ideology, in this case - socialism, which is what we were talking about. There are, however, attempts to directly, outside of unconscious symbolization, link these different dimensions of being and openly, consciously pose the problem of sex, or, let’s say more solemnly, Eros as a social problem. I am referring, of course, to the famous concept of Herbert Marcuse, outlined in his book Eros and Civilization. As you know, Marcuse tried, in contrast to classical psychoanalysis, to see non-sexual symbolism in the plots social life, but on the contrary, to discern the social fullness of sexual conflicts. He created a sexual parallel to Marx’s socio-economic schemes. In history, there is an expropriation of sex in favor of dominant social groups, called surplus repression by Marcuse (parallel to surplus value in Marx). The task of a genuine social revolution must therefore be the fair distribution of Eros, the expropriation of the Sexual expropriators. I can't go into details now, but main idea, Marcuse’s most important attitude is already clear from what has been said: sexual satisfaction, the erotic fullness of being is not a personal problem, but public importance. This is how Marcuse presents the unconscious problematics of Chernyshevsky-Herzen and all Hoffer’s “misfits” in general.

There seems to be only one, but undeniable, objection to this: sexual success is still a purely individual quality, hardly dependent on the social status of the sexual subject. Moreover, at the lower levels of society, sexual life often encounters much less repressive restraint than at the upper steps of the social ladder. Here it is enough to recall Freud’s famous girl from the basement and the girl from the mezzanine: both of them indulged in the so-called in childhood. “sexual research,” but the girl from the basement successfully assimilated into her “I” these memories of an unclean childhood, and the girl from the mezzanine became painfully fixated on them and doomed herself to neurosis. Freud further writes:

The differences between the two destinies, despite the same experiences, stem from the fact that the ego of one girl underwent a development that did not take place in the other. To the janitor's daughter, sexual activity seemed as natural and unquestionable as in childhood. The homeowner's daughter experienced the influence of her upbringing and accepted its demands. Her Ego, from the motives presented to him, created for itself the ideals of female purity and purity, with which sexual activity is incompatible; her intellectual development reduced her interest in the female role intended for her. Thanks to this higher moral and intellectual development of her Self, she found herself in conflict with the demands of her sexuality.

Marcuse himself suggests descending into this basement, appealing to sexually liberated outsiders and thereby unwittingly recognizing that sexual excess is not a product of social exploitation and the privilege of the rich. But it is not my task to criticize Marcuse's concepts. My task was to give a private, Russian example, illustration of the same problem - to demonstrate the hidden meaning of the questions so openly asked in Russia - who is to blame and what to do. It turns out that in the cases being investigated, no one is to blame and there is nothing to be done.