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

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

* * *
Alexander V. Pyzhikov

Chief Researcher at RANEPA, Doctor of Historical Sciences, laureate of the Yegor Gaidar Prize in the category "For Outstanding Contribution to History", author of the book "The Facets of the Russian Schism: Notes on Our History from the 17th Century to 1917".
2000-2003 Assistant to the Prime Minister of the Russian Federation.
From June 5, 2003 to June 18, 2004 - Deputy Minister of Education of the Russian Federation.

*
Maroseyka- "Little Russian" distorted by the aborigines - the name of the district where the very same Ukrainians invited to Moscow to guide the education of Muscovites, about whom Professor Pyzhikov speaks, settled.

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

Moreover, I will tell you a secret: Russians and Tatars are very close in origin. Because the blood of the Finno-Ugric peoples flows at the base of both.
Neither the Russian nor the Tatar intelligentsia want to admit this. Or they just don't know about it.
And the data of geneticists show just that. And it is not difficult to guess ourselves, because the ancient inhabitants of the Eastern European forests and forest-steppes are "erased" in the history of the Finno-Ugric peoples.
And only then the Slavs and Turks came here. Moreover, they did not make up the majority, but conveyed their language, part of their culture and self-awareness.
Therefore, I would have changed the saying long ago: "Scratch a Russian, scrape off a Tatar", into a historically more correct one: "Scrape a Russian, scrape off a Finno-Ugric."

Don't you think badly for me
I myself am a great power, and a chauvinist, and in general a supporter of large states and countries. Well, if only because the more people there are, the easier, easier, and even better life is. It is not for nothing that since ancient Russian times the proverb teaches: - "Gurt and dad are easier to beat"
Therefore, I read with pleasure all sorts of exposers of historical falsifications. (well, even children know that the Jewish-Masons with the Germans perverted our history in order to enslave)
But this titan of thought eclipsed everyone

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

.

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

.
Spitsyn, Evgeny Yuryevich - also a historian, and also a titan of thought, wrote a five-volume (!!!) "Complete course on the history of Russia for teachers" Since the enemies of Russia refused to publish this work, he published it himself, with the money of sponsors.
He walks on them and conducts further research (damn it! already enviable, I want that too)
...
Both of them are distinguished by their clear views. But Pyzhikov, in my opinion, is cooler.
His discerning mind fell on many topics, among which the following stand out: -

And from this place in more detail. The scientific work has a dramatizing, before the blood cools in the veins, the title: - "The Polish-Ukrainian conspiracy in Russian history"

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

Turns out!
It is not the Jews who are to blame for everything, and they are not kamenshiks, and not even the damned nemtchu ...
A Polish-Ukrainian Great conspiracy to seize power in Russia
Which the (Attention!) completed successfully
And now we live under the Polish-Ukrainian yoke, enslaved up to the very throat, and from this all our troubles (and not from women, as some think)
What to do now? - you ask (I asked)
There is a recipe! - Pyzhikov confronts
ROC, as the main instrument of the conspiracy, to rename from Russian to Ukrainian
Annex Ukraine to Poland, since they are one and the same people
Choose one president from among the Old Believers, because only they are not traitors
Well, after that, how will we live!

Zadolbali, honestly the word!
Has the mind gone completely beyond the mind, or what? With what hangover did the Ukrainians become non-Russians?
During the latest political upheavals, some have already begun to forget that Ukrainians are Russians too
Damn it! Even in the days of Soviet internationalism, this fact, although it was not stuck out, was not hushed up.
Ukrainians, like Belarusians, like Russians themselves, are one of the three big Russian peoples
United by a common origin (Ancient Rus), language (Old Slavic) and territory of residence.
Last year, a family from Chernigov moved to Krasnodar. Over the course of a year, everyone has successfully forgotten the Ukrainian language, fully adapted to life, and just scold the local order - no one can distinguish it from ordinary visitors from other regions of Russia. Both children go to school, quite easily switched to language skills in Russian, and also, even if desired, you cannot distinguish them from others.
Because yours - with strangers it does not happen. Poles, even completely Russified, even in the third generation, are different. And the Ukrainians are not.
...
And therefore, wish to separate them from us, and join some Poles there.
Maybe only a fool or the last bastard (well, or not the last, but still a bastard)

On September 16, 2019, at the age of 54, the doctor of historical sciences passed away Alexander Vladimirovich Pyzhikov.

Alexander Vladimirovich Pyzhikov

In 1989 A. Pyzhikov graduated from the Faculty of History of the Moscow Regional Pedagogical Institute. NK Krupskaya, ten years later he defended his Ph.D. thesis in historical sciences "Social and political development of Soviet society in 1953-1964." A year later, he defended his doctoral thesis on the topic "Historical experience of political reform of Soviet society in the 50s-60s" (Moscow, 1999).

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

A. Pyzhikov, in particular, argued:

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

The Soviet team is bespopovtsy. Pop's model is a Western model, private property is sacred, and there is no talk. The bulk of the same, outside the church, popovskoy - that on which the USSR grew up. They did it.

Also, Alexander Vasilievich introduced the term "Ukrainian-Polish yoke" into publicistic circulation. In his interview with Komsomolskaya Pravda, he stated:

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

In the Old Believers, the works of A. Pyzhikov evoked ambiguous opinions. Many said that his concept was tendentious and not supported by the completeness of historical sources. Others expressed that, despite the fact that Pyzhikov's ideas are overly categorical, they have a healthy grain that allows them to look differently at the history of the Old Believers and the Russian state.

On the air of Vesti FM radio station, held in March 2017, the historian met with the head of the Russian Orthodox Church of the Patriarchate Metropolitan (Titov). At this meeting, Alexander Vladimirovich noted:

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

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

For more than a year in the capital's conservative political party, there has been only talk about the works of the historian Alexandra Pyzhikova... In the media, Alexander Vladimirovich is present as the author of publications about the Old Believers, the Orthodox schism of the 17th century, the economy of Russia at the turn of the 19th-20th centuries and the problems of the revolutions of 1917. One gets the feeling that his historical concept of the Russian Bolshevik-Old Believer has taken on an independent life. People are looking for their Old Believer roots, and now they explain everything incomprehensible in their native country with the Old Believer mentality. On the one hand, this is the fate of any new humanitarian idea that has managed to conquer the minds. On the other hand, over the past 30-40 years there have been too many fashionable concepts, but almost as many disappointments in them.

Correspondent Nakanune.RU met with Alexander Pyzhikov at Zakhar Prilepin's farm, where the historian had a creative evening, and tried to understand what the essence of his ideas is, whether this is fresh historical knowledge or just another fashionable salon theme.

"Without Fedoseevites there would be no party, no you and me"

More than 20 people came to listen to the historian Pyzhikov at the weekend in Zakhar Prilepin's hut in the Moscow region. Lectures, by the way, are paid, and Moscow is not a close way, but the person of the doctor of sciences is popular here. Even before the start of the event, people gathered around him. We break through to ask a few questions about his relationship with modern historical science.

« There are specialists at the Institute of History who recognize my ideas, we meet and discuss. Still, I have serious work from the point of view of science, I do not look like some popular publicists who babble something in the media"- Pyzhikov answers.

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

« Intuitively, I guessed that the truth was somewhere in this direction. I needed someone to explain why I thought so. In the face of Pyzhikov, this man suddenly appeared. After all, this is not even a theory, but a historical reality, to which no one fully reached.", He muses.

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

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

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

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

At the same time, the national roots of the Russian revolution should not be sought among precisely the Old Believers. More precisely, not among those Old Believers about whom an ordinary man in the street knows at least something: the rich Moscow merchant clans. The origins of Soviet identity were not hidden in the houses of Savva Morozov and Ryabushinsky, even if they sponsored Lenin's party from there. The goals of the Old Believer merchants, according to Pyzhikov, did not go beyond the fight against the St. Petersburg financial and industrial groups. The guest of the farm proposes to pay attention to the Old Believers-bespopovtsy and already there to look for the origins of "Stalinist Bolshevism" ("The Roots of Stalinist Bolshevism" is one of his most famous books).

He immediately illustrates his thesis with a story from a life that happened to his acquaintance, an employee of the Institute of History, in the 80s. Once they were sorting through letters that came to the institution together and came across a complaint from an old Bolshevik. The person stated in the text the essence of the problem and asked for support. For authority, he signed himself as an "old Bolshevik" and, which came as a surprise to his acquaintance Pyzhikov, a certain Fedoseev. To somehow sort out the case, the comrade took the letter to the elderly head of the sector with the question: “ The old Bolshevik is understandable. And what kind of Fedoseev?» « The Fedoseevites are those without whom neither the party nor you and I would exist. Hack your nose", - the historian quotes the answer of the elderly chief.

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

"When everything broke through in 1917, the Old Believers were already ready."

Is it not radical to say that Bolshevism emerged from the Old Believers?

I hear this often, especially from the liberals, but I hear it from the stubborn Marxist-Trotskyists too. These are all the costs of one sad circumstance: all these intellectuals of ours leaf through books, not read. If they had approached this more thoughtfully, they would have realized that there was no question of any Old Believers that had infiltrated the Communist Party, did any business there. This is an absurdity worthy of irony.

I'm not talking about practicing Old Believers. I emphasize this all the time. Of course, they were there, because the Old Believers have not disappeared anywhere, despite the repressions, which no one denies either, as well as the fact that they also affected the Old Believers. I'm talking about people who came out of the Old Believer environment. Human mentality, roughly speaking, the soul is formed from the age of seven. Specifically, in the Old Believer community, from the age of seven, he was put in a “circle”, in mutual responsibility, communal, as was customary. At this age, the foundation was laid with which a person lived life. What is inherent in youth will not go anywhere. The old-believing mentality is characterized by completely definite qualities, which are clear to everyone even without me: collectivism, rejection of the foreign. Then they said that people were knocked off their trousers by foreign commissars in leather jackets. Nothing of the kind, the commissars did not play any role here, it was just the way people were brought up, this is how they felt.

But doesn't this sound analogous to the thesis that Russian communism came out of Jewish townships, or that "the Englishwoman has shit?" What's the difference?

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

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

Of course, there were bearers of this idea in the Bolshevik party, and they united around the personality of Lev Davidovich Trotsky, as well as the group he represented. Moreover, this trend was in fact the first when Marxism set foot on the land of Russia. But when all these historical events happened here, when completely different forces entered the party, which did not accept Marxism as played by Trotsky, everything changed. Trotsky himself complained about this, said that some kind of oklomons had arisen who did not understand anything and simply cling to the bright idea that he and Zinoviev represent. They said it was Marxism. And Stalin relied precisely on these forces. Which gave Trotsky a reason to say that he was a true Marxist.

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

Do you want to say that Marxism came from the West, fell to the liking of ordinary people, who somehow transformed it for themselves?

What is the specificity of Russia? The religious conflict, from which all the countries of Europe withdrew, in Russia happened a hundred years later, but it was no less bloody, although it took a different course. We failed to separate the warring parties. In Europe, it worked. Catholics and Protestants were divided. In Russia, two forces did not arise after the religious conflict. There was only one left. If in the West it is called the Reformation, everyone is studying it, then Russia is supposedly left without a Reformation. But, in fact, it was, just remained latent, did not break out. The catalyst for her breakthrough was 1917 and its aftermath. Here it broke through. The rivers of blood that our priests have shed ...

The religious reformation in Europe created the bourgeoisie, but with us? If the revolution of 1917 is a postponed reformation, then in our country it created a communist state headed by materialists? Is that how it turns out?

Sure. Just comparing Western Protestants and Old Believers. Protestants organized around private property. For them it is sacred, whoever has more of it, God loves the same. In Russia, due to the fact that the Old Believers remained the loser, remained in a discriminatory position, they were forced to survive. There is no time for property. The situation itself forced them to turn on their collectivist mechanisms, which they had nurtured in themselves for 200 years. When it all broke in 1917, they were ready.

"I told Cornelius that there will never be a meeting with Putin - but here!"

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

All this is in the police archives, you just need to pick it up, count it. I cited some documents in "The Faces of the Russian Schism", but you can find more, if you set a goal, for this I am calm. The main thing is not to mix everything together, to have attention to detail. What details do I mean?

When we use the term "Old Believers", we are not very careful. For example, we forget about "popovtsy" and "bespopovtsy". I myself have sinned in my time. But these are completely different groups. The fact of the matter is that the Old Believers were very fragmented ...

When we say, they say, the Old Believers helped the revolution ... The "priests" helped. And what kind of "priest"? Probably 80% of Moscow millionaires belonged to the priestly estate. And it doesn't matter that Ryabushinsky had a "piece of paper", that he was a parishioner of the "Rogozhsky cemetery", while Konovalov did not, and someone left for a long time. The main thing is that it was a single clan that fought for a place in the sun in the Russian economy. This clan was strongly united by pragmatism. Therefore, the same Guchkov, who was even married to a French woman and had not gone to church for a long time, was still with them. Went, did not go, all this has only local lore value. For understanding the meaning, this does not matter.

So these "priests" who grew out of the "Rogozhskoye cemetery" had absolutely clear claims to a certain role in the economy. It was a struggle between financial and industrial Moscow and St. Petersburg. And that's another story. If we are talking about bespopovtsy, then there were practically no millionaires - two or three surnames. Mostly small figures like the merchant's wife in Serpukhov, with whom Stalin either lived or did not live. At the same time, the non-popovtsy treated the priests very badly, because the Nikonians are simply enemies, and these are traitors. All this is very complicated and confusing, and this is what I am trying to figure out. And then, for example, Belkovsky comes to the "Echo of Moscow" and begins to comment on my book! Did he know anything at all?

What did he say?

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

I see, but in the scientific community, how do they treat your books?

Well, here's the Metropolitan (Primate of the Russian Orthodox Old Believer Church - approx. ed.) like, the scientists who are in his environment are not very friendly. But they are also engaged, as a rule, in ethnography, local history, philology. They are not used to my views on the Old Believers, they are not ready, apparently, for this. Well, I have my own scientific life - they have their own.

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

I have visited him several times. The last time he called was when my article “The Kiev roots of the Moscow schism” came out in my Profile, and said that he had read it on the plane and he liked it. I like Cornelius myself. The contrast with our other Christian leader is very noticeable.

Cornelius is a simple man who worked at the plant for 30 years. How he lives, I saw it myself, I had a modest atmosphere, with the exception of some old icons, and he lives like every second Russian.

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

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

And now, how are Old Believers doing, what is happening, clans, families, business?

No, there is no such thing now. Only the merchant shadows remained.

"It is indecent to be a Finno-Ugric, but is it decent to pray to Kiev?"

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

He's not completely gone, it's not the morning fog.

Oh well. He didn’t leave at all, albeit, but the Old Believers don’t have any money either, you yourself just said that.

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

By the way, Nobel gave money to everyone.

With Nobel - different, he gave money to everyone. The conflict with him is important, which he had with the St. Petersburg banks, which are now considered the then "foreign influence." Although what they wanted to do was the Chinese version. Driving away from the West is far and long. The way China did it. Chinese version of the late 20th century. What they did, because of this, the 17th year was forced. It was necessary to remove the group, which I conventionally call the Kokovtsov group (Count Vladimir Kokovtsov, Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Russian Empire in 1911-1914, - approx. On the eve.RU). The factory of the world, a mass of cheap labor, foreign capital - that was the goal of this group. But this path eventually became Chinese, but it would have been ours. Yes, Kokovtsov's group is bureaucratic, but in China bureaucrats also did a miracle.

The Soviet team is bespopovtsy. Pop's model is a Western model, private property is sacred, and there is no talk. The bulk of the same, non-church, popovskoy - that on which the USSR grew up. They did it. They raised all their ideas about life, about how it should be arranged, to the level of the state thanks to Stalin.

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

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

It turns out that the Ukrainians staged a split for us in the 17th century, then another one in the 21st century, and they also destroyed the Union. It's somehow too simple, no?

The Southwest Gate is still the gateway to the West. The way to the West for Russia is not directly, but through Kiev. All western expansion came from there. From Vladimir Monomakh and False Dmitry to church affairs and Brezhnev's group. The trajectory is visible, how can it be denied?

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

There was no confusion. There has always been a kind of "nikonian". Even after the schism, Nikonianism always had support in Ukraine. It is foreign here, it was imposed in the second half of the 17th century. Therefore, we are not talking there about such a phenomenon as unpopularity. This is a foreign church here. Designed and built specially. The result is 1917, when the church fell off. And in Ukraine this Church cannot fall off, because it is their own, they cannot refuse it.

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

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

But we are used to the concept that we are the elder brother and they are the younger. It turns out that your younger brother is in control of us.

What kind of elder brother are we? When they tell me, they say, under the tsar, everyone was boiled in the same cauldron ... Well, yes, Karamzin, Tatar roots, Bagration, Georgian - all were boiled in the same cauldron. I say, correctly, there is only one boiler, but whose boiler is it? Who brought it? Who makes it? You will get into this cauldron, you admit that Kiev is the center and the beginning of the whole country, and the spiritual principle is there too. They all worked for this scheme, for those who started to cook this boiler. Even now we are not allowed to comprehend it.

Putin just doesn't seem to work very well for this scheme.

No, Putin is just acting according to the old scheme. For this one, which you designated: "elder brother" and everything else.

Okay, so we have comprehended the viciousness of the scheme "Kiev is the mother of Russian cities", and what next? I must admit that we are Mordvinians, Finno-Ugrians ...

And what is better - to pray to Kiev? This, in your opinion, means indecent, but is it decent to stand and pray to Kiev? They pour mud at us, they say, we are the aggressors. We just need to flip this scheme abruptly, and that's it.

Maybe they can also make them repent?

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

Regarding repentance, by the way, how do you feel about "Tsar's days"?

Yes, bad, how.

Is the figure of the last emperor splitting society?

You see, I am always for the offensive. Why do you extol him, he himself spat on the Church, starting with the canonization of Seraphim of Sarov, which neither Pobedonostsev nor the bishops could allow? He broke them all over the knee. Seraphim of Sarov is a non-church tradition. It's impossible, it's the people who worship, nobody needs it, a real saint, who needs him?

1903-1904, when the heir was born, the schism begins, all sorts of Philip-fortune-tellers and rassputines appear, they actually lost the monarch as the head of the Church even then. Now they do not like to remember this. So let's spin it up. You can dig so much in the field "Nicholas II against the Church"! We must act offensively, and not stand and make excuses. They must justify themselves. Seraphim of Sarov did not need to be canonized, he is already a saint of the people.

“The father kept walking and saying:“ That's right! ”

Do the officials hear you?

Well, what are you, who do they hear at all?

And you yourself, by the way, are not an Old Believer?

On the paternal side, I have no priests of Fedoseev's consent. I didn’t restore it. Local historians told me that my village is Fedoseevskaya. Later I remembered that even during the Soviet era, when the church in the village was already abandoned, my father, when he walked by, kept saying: "That's right! .."

By the way, now the main task is to find out who the bespopovtsy are! And then we throw the term.

Didn't Soviet ethnography work it all out?

No, they worked ethnographically. But who are they in the sense of the word, are they Christians or not? It is clear that some non-Christians. In a completely unexpected way, something becomes clear through Russian epics, the texts of which were published in the middle of the 19th century. There is absolutely Christian terminology, Christian characters, but when you immerse yourself in this, you see that absolutely non-Christian things are expressed in the language of Christianity, to which Christianity has nothing to do with it. I could pull this thread and follow it, go ...

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

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

***

Interview with Alexander Pyzhikov comments Priest John Sevastianov, rector of the Church of the Intercession of the Most Holy Theotokos in Rostov-on-Don.

***

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

In particular, the issues of the attitude of Old Believers to social upheavals in Russia, to the revolutionary movement, the participation of Old Believers in these processes is a very interesting and little-studied topic that raises many questions. To what extent did the Old Believers share socialist and liberal ideas by the beginning of the 20th century? Did the Old Believers take an active part in the revolutionary movement? If so, what part of the Old Believer population took part in this? How does this compare with the number of participants from other faiths in Russia? Which Old Believer consents were more active in this activity? Etc. etc. Now there are no scientific studies that would unequivocally and reasonably give answers to the questions that arise. And in this situation it is in no way possible to predetermine these answers with some unfounded statements. No matter how much the modern reader would like it, it is not worth to foretell the result of scientific research indiscriminately.

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

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

Alexander Pyzhikov: "My job is an invitation to further conversation"

History Lessons continues to acquaint readers with the nominees for the Gaidar Foundation Prize for Outstanding Contribution to History. Today we are talking with Alexander Pyzhikov, the winner of the competition, the author of the monograph "The Facets of the Russian Schism" (Moscow: Drevlehranische, 2013).

Elena Kalashnikova's interview

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

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

- And they wrote the book "The Facets of the Russian Schism". How did you get the idea to turn to schism, because before that you were studying the history of Russia in the middle of the 20th century?

Khrushchev, "thaw". A book came out, I have been doing this for almost all of the 1990s, as well as in the late Stalinist period (after 1945). And then it ceased to satisfy me, and I decided to slow down, because there were proposals to switch to the Brezhnev era, to Kosygin's reforms, to the Politburo ...

- Who did these proposals come from?

From the same V.A.Mau, I have known him for a long time, and now I work for him. He is a strong researcher and his advice is always useful, I listen to them. He once said to me: "Climb further from Khrushchev, this is correct from the point of view of scientific methodology." But it didn’t work out, which I don’t regret now. Why not - I decided to reconsider the entire scientific approach and I felt it in my personal research experience. New approaches were required that would allow one to get away from the class view, from which it was already sick in reality, because everything is invested in this scheme, monumentally written by Lenin-Stalin. But this is stupidity from the point of view of science! And I decided to take a religious approach, it was very unusual. Let me explain that the positivist approach prevailed in Western science (I will not say that this is bad, it’s just that it was established long ago). It has its own advantage, it raises the power of fact, its reliability on the shield. And Marxism, not Stalinist, of course, is already complete squalor, momentary journalism, and the teaching of Marx, who had his say in the 19th century, was scientific. Those who study Marx - which I do not claim at all - and there are few of them, claim that he is indeed a scientist - an adherent of extreme positivism. So, if positivism as a historical direction has any drawback, then everything else is discarded. The positivists take the certainty of the fact, the fact is - we talk, the fact is not - we have nothing to talk about. And in this way they move throughout the historical canvas. What is the limitation? An archival fact does not capture the entire historical atmosphere of a particular period that we are studying. It comes to the ridiculous - we argue about Stalin with Western professors who have been studying him for more than a dozen years, I tell them with irony: "Show me the document that Stalin breathed." They answer in all seriousness that they have not seen such a document. So you didn't breathe ?! This is a certain limitation of positivism, although, of course, it is quite correct to use facts and strive for certainty. And in order to revive the picture and capture the spirit of the period that you study with the help of archival documents, you need to bring in an understanding of the cultural atmosphere. Positivism and Marxism, I repeat, reject all this, believing that it interferes.

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

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

As I said, when everything was over for them (1648), we had just begun (1654). 50 years of massacres, as fierce as in Europe, the Middle Ages is the Middle Ages. Supporters of Patriarch Nikon, state power in the person of Alexei Mikhailovich and his children - and those who did not accept Nikon's "novins", who remained adherents of the old Old Russian rite. It was a very serious fight, at the top it quickly ended with the fact that everyone who did not accept the reforms of Patriarch Nikon was squeezed out - if you did not accept the reforms, you have nothing to do in the administrative vertical at any level. It was impossible to say: "I am for the old faith, appoint me as voivode." This could not be! And everyone was squeezed out of the church, especially the highest bishops, everyone quickly accepted Nikon's innovations, literally a few refused, like, for example, Bishop Pavel Kolomensky. Everything was reconciled only under Peter I, who completed the restructuring of the state, begun by Alexei Mikhailovich. But I compare it with how this story ended in the West - in a completely different way. No confessional sorting took place, where are the two Russias? There, Protestants and Catholics dispersed to their confessional states, and the head of each entity (king, duke, whoever) supported the common faith. In our country, the Nikonian faith has taken root, but in fact, those who did not accept it have not gone anywhere: two Russias, Old Believer and Nikonian, have not been formed, this is the main difference from the West.

- This characteristic feature is probably associated with the talk about the special path of Russia.

Here, in my opinion, is the root of everything that has been talked about for 200 years: some strange country, some kind of specificity, a special path. No, there is no special way. There is only one specificity - confessional sorting did not take place and this left an imprint on everything. To put it quite primitively, it's like two companies that had a fight on the street, and one completely beat the other, but everyone had to live together in the same house. Will this leave an imprint on their relationship? They hate each other anyway. And some kind of reticence inherent in all of Russia stems from the socio-psychological atmosphere that has developed after the religious split. In Europe, however, each emerged from the split surrounded by his like-minded people, with others, strangers, in everyday life there was no contact. This is the basis for some kind of tolerance that has grown into Western liberalism. What kind of liberalism can there be in Russia? In such a situation, Russia began to live. Peter I did one important thing - when he finished the "repair" work on the creation of the empire, he decided to simply "gloss over" this issue, not understanding it, since the situation was incomprehensible.

Peter did not like the Old Believers and refused to delve into the problem - however, he used the Old Believers wisely, such as the Demidovs. The emperor did this: we are conducting a new census (revision tales), no longer a household, but a poll tax, and everyone who declares himself to be an adherent of the old faith pays a double poll tax. And who will declare this? The bloody massacre has just ended, and many people still remember it. A huge number of Old Believers simply ignored this, 2% of the population signed up, the rest recognized themselves as Orthodox, so as not to “shine”. In addition, there was a large migration under Peter I, under Anna Ioannovna, who sent an army to return those who had fled. Catherine II, liberal and enlightened, decided to approach this problem in a different way: in 1782 she abolished the double tax, stopped the persecution. The problem seemed to be gone, but in reality it was only sprinkled over, "covered up". There was a huge layer of people who did not accept anything that we call imperial "Russia" - neither way of life, nor religion, nor culture. This has never been recognized by the ruling elites. Paul I, however, tried to reconcile everyone in unity of faith (preserving the old rituals while subordinating to the Synod). But many people did not react to the actions of the authorities, and the authorities believed that everything would resolve itself. This situation persisted until the middle of the 19th century, when Nicholas I finally decided to find out what was going on in matters of faith, what is the depth of Old Belief among the people. This was one time when the authorities tried to investigate the strata of the people. And it turned out that the number of Old Believers declared by various commissions should be increased by at least 10-11 times, and according to the documents, they were all Orthodox. Here is positivism - according to the documents, there is nothing to talk about, there is no problem, but if you dig deeper, then only this is what you need to talk about!

Nicholas I began to study the problem because when Catherine II declared free enterprise in the spirit of liberalism, a huge mass of Old Believers, ousted from the administrative vertical and not owning land (land ownership was associated with service), went into trade and manufacturing, into the industrial sector. The nobility disdained to do this. And the schismatics could get livelihoods from the industrial sector and prove themselves. And therefore, the class of the merchant class, which began to form under Catherine, consisted of ¾ of schismatics. The nobles and foreigners, if anything, were engaged only in the export-import of luxury. The Old Believers mastered the domestic market. But what frightened Nicholas, they mastered him specifically. Catherine and Alexander thought that normal capitalism was developing, but there was no trace of it. The merchants developed thanks to communal money accumulated by spiritual schismatic centers (the most famous are the Rogozhskoe and Preobrazhenskoe cemeteries of the Old Believers). New enterprises were founded on the people's money, the poorest hired worker could suddenly become the owner of a thousandth capital and a merchant of guilds, because co-religionists put him in this business for his ingenuity and resourcefulness. And if the council decided that the business was going badly, they could transfer it to another. This lay outside the normal legal framework. And now it reached such proportions that Nicholas I was frightened, he really did not like the European socialists, Saint-Simon, Fourier and followers, and decided that socialist ideas penetrated into Russia. But it quickly became clear that there were no ideas, and something else was coming from below. Nikolai quickly dispersed this entire Old Believer economy.

- And what was your goal when you were preparing this study and folding the book?

I had to bring everything to the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, to 1917. The goal was one - to remove all the Leninist-Stalinist layers: the consciousness of the proletariat, the formation of the vanguard party, the rehearsal of 1905, the victory in 1917, and so on. Lenin had nothing to do with the processes taking place in Russia, the party (or rather, a number of circles) was financed by the Moscow merchants. The present-day Old Believers of Rogozh do not like this very much.

- And what exactly causes their displeasure?

They have a completely different logic. I wanted to find out why 1917 happened, half of the book I have is just about twenty years before the revolution. Until the end of the nineteenth century, the Moscow merchant elite did not want to hear about any revolutions, about any Herzen, Ogarev, Bakunin ... "The Bell" - to burn. The task of the merchants is quite clear - to fit into the elite. Alexander II seemed to be walking towards me, but kept his distance: you do not approach me once again, and Alexander III was a completely different person. He was under the influence of the "Russian party" (Aksakov, Katkov, Meshchersky, Pobedonostsev), and he was tuned into Russophilia, so he took steps towards rapprochement. Here the merchants-Old Believers realized that their hour had struck. The bureaucracy went to meet them, because the emperor was kind, things started to get serious. They should have a controlling stake in the economy! Katkov, Aksakov and others expressed their political interests. The only exception was Pobedonostsev, who was sick of this audience, since he was the chief prosecutor of the Holy Synod. All these Slavophil figures were supported by the merchants, although they themselves were not poor people, but there was a huge flow of money! .. The entire internal market of Russia is served and concentrated in Moscow. Suddenly, Alexander III died, the Minister of Finance Vyshnegradsky, their favorite, left, he adored the Moscow group, Katkov, Aksakov, and they lobbied him. Instead, Witte came - at the beginning of his state path, an absolute Black Hundred. Uncle Witte, who raised him, was an extreme nationalist, wrote patriotic manifestos. But Witte changed, made a sharp turn from the "Russian party" and became the best friend of the Petersburg banks, the sworn enemies of the Moscow merchants. He staked on foreign capital, he saw that Russia was poor, GDP growth rates, as they say now, are weak, they need to be increased, but who will move it? Only foreign capital - there is a lot of it, there is knowledge and technology. Our merchants ask themselves the question: how are we, are we Russian people? Witte answered them: you are good guys, but there is no time to wait until something useful will come out of you. And this was a tragedy for the merchants. Foreign capital poured in, the southern industrial region began to be created in Ukraine. All capital went through St. Petersburg banks, they were the operators of the economy. The merchants realized that if nothing was done, in 20 years they would remain miserable minority shareholders. And they started to act.

- So the history of our revolutionary movement began?

Sure. All circles that were not interesting to anyone before - Socialist-Revolutionary, Social-Democratic, liberal - are turning into parties. The Moscow merchants financed a huge expensive cultural and educational project: the Moscow Art Theater, the Tretyakov Gallery, Mamontov's private opera, publishing houses Sytin, Sabashnikov ... This project made liberalism fashionable in society. Previously, only the upper strata were engaged in it, Speransky, for example, and this was a narrow stratum in the elite, but now liberalism has become public. The meaning of the actions of the merchants was as follows: if you do this to us, then we need to limit the tsar and the ruling bureaucracy with a constitution and parliament in order to guarantee ourselves from the political zigzags of the state. There should be a Duma, all freedoms should be fixed not by the expression of the will of the emperor, but by legislative means. The liberal social model begins to be promoted, the entire Slavophil loyal public is forgotten, and by the end of the 19th century, it becomes fashionable to encourage revolutionary liberal circles and newspapers. The Moscow Art Theater "spins" Gorky, orders him all these "On the Bottom" and other plays. And everything had to be filled with a democratic, liberal, anti-autocratic spirit.

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

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

The next book, which Olma-Media intends to publish, will be called "Peter - Moscow: the fight for Russia." In it, I will show in detail how the struggle was going on in the last twenty pre-revolutionary years, including the period of the Provisional Government. After all, February 1917 was the triumph of the Moscow merchants, they swept away the ruling bureaucracy, all those Konovalovs, Ryabushinskys, Guchkovs, cadets who were with them. But the Petersburg bankers, recovering from their confusion, produced what we know as the "Kornilov conspiracy."

To Stalin, yes. There we are no longer talking directly about the split, but about the environment from which the protagonists of the Soviet pre-war period came, this is very important. Naturally, the members of the CPSU (b) were not practicing Old Believers or Orthodox - and could not be. But this does not mean that they forgot where they grew up and changed mentally. How you formed in your youth, so you will be. And this dispute - not directly between Nikonians and Old Believers, but between people from different confessional strata - continued during the years of Soviet power. This is a rather unusual view, it shocks many. But these factors played an important role: among the Bolsheviks who emerged from the depths of the people, no one read Marx, returning to the above. What kind of Marxists were they? They were not even Leninists. They had their own provision about life, they understood life in their own way. We can say that the Russian empire was pregnant with the Soviet project in the economic and social sense. Here, he broke through.

- What domestic and foreign historians do you consider your adherents?

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

- Are the responses to your work important to you?

I think this is very important, and not only for me. People like Gregory Freese, strong true scientists who have spent their entire lives on this, know our history well and impartially, objectivity and reliability are not empty words for them. And their reaction to some kind of work is very important as a guide in order to move on. Science cannot be closed within national boundaries, this is understandable for the natural sciences, but it fully applies to history as well. I do not make a difference between local and foreign assessments, we work with the same sources.

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

This is the first one I wrote for myself. I wrote "The Facets of the Russian Schism" without pragmatic goals, as it happens - they write a book to defend my doctoral dissertation. It was like that with Khrushchev's Thaw, this is a published doctoral dissertation, slightly expanded. And with the split there was one goal - to try to sort out this matter. And the fact that I received this award is completely unexpected.

- Who nominated you for it?

He was nominated as an employee of the RANH IGS. What was important for me was that the work was noted and voted for me by people whom I did not know before: NK Svanidze, DB Zimin and others. It is impossible to imagine that the Academy of Sciences will be elected a member of the Correspondence or Academician without knowing you, but only after getting acquainted with your books. This "temple of science" is a get-together. Only the middle link in the institutes is engaged in science there, and the leadership, represented by respectable academicians, is busy with their affairs, which are far from science. They will not read anything if there is no concrete, tangible interest - they don’t need it in principle. The reaction to the book came from completely different people, from those who are really interested in the growth of knowledge.

- At one time you were quite active in political activities.

Yes, I would not say.

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

Lost years, as I call this period.

- Was it your initiative to go "into power", or, rather, did the circumstances turn out like that?

Immediately after defending my doctoral thesis, I ended up at the Center for Strategic Research, which was headed by German Gref, and then there was a very strong team. And many people from there followed the state path. This stream also brought me to the civil service.

- Do you continue to engage in political activities now?

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

- Did the work in the archives help you? And how would you describe the current state of the Russian archives?

The archives helped, it's hard without them. So I was going to go to RGIA in 2009, when the book seemed to be starting to work out, and thought: maybe not to go? And then I was there 25 times, and if I had not gone, I would not have achieved the quality that I wanted to achieve from the book. I love archives. RGIA moved to a new building, but I did not find the old building of the Senate-Synod, the one on Senate Square. The new building is completely modern and the people are very professional. They not only keep documents, they work with them (for such salaries), they know them. It is very important for a researcher to be guided by someone. So I have a very good opinion of archives, and of libraries too, for example, Historical is my favorite.

- Surely, there are difficulties on your professional path, tell us about them.

Difficulty is not difficulty ... I have been told by readers (not professional historians) that the book is difficult. And we with St. Petersburg Boris Nikolayevich Mironov argued on this topic. He says that I write "simple". And I think that the reader should be clear, the material needs to be adapted. People cannot know everything, out of a large number of names, no one knows half, and this is normal. Not all are historians. Therefore, I try to make high-quality, but simple text, addressed to a wide range of readers. This is the most important thing for historical science. And when they publish books that no one but 20 people will read: why?

- That is, you also set yourself educational goals?

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

- What are your future plans? You say that the new book ends in Stalin's time, and then what? ..

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

- Will it be a separate book about Solsky?

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

To finish what I want. And get rid of a certain peremptoriness. I try not to have it, we need to strive so that everything does not look as if some person has appeared, speaking the truth. On the contrary, I believe that my work should be the first step for further research, for finding evidence (and something, perhaps, will not be confirmed). This is an invitation to further conversation.

See also: