Fomin A. Yu. The reasons for the emergence of interest in Russian society in the spiritual and material manifestation of national identity, the “spirit of the people” are quite well known and described in detail in the specialized literature: the collapse of the philosophy of rationalism in the last decades of the 18th century predetermined the transition to new, “idealistic” worldviews systems that have discovered the intrinsic value of momentary phenomena and their constant dynamism; the establishment of a romantic way of creative understanding of reality made it possible to discover the undoubted aesthetic value of the people's beginning, and the Patriotic War of 1812 clearly proved that the concepts of “people”, “national character” are not at all an invention, a philosophical or aesthetic abstraction, but a very real phenomenon that has an interesting and dramatic story.

It is not surprising that it is under the sign of “nationality” and the search for forms of its expression that almost the entire “golden age” of Russian literature passes.

If we consider Russian literature of the 19th – early 20th centuries. (at least using the example of the creativity of authors who invariably formed the backbone school curriculum) in relation to the concept of “national character”, it is necessary to note the following.

1. For Russians artists of the XIX– beginning of the 20th century. national character is a completely objective phenomenon of real life, and not just an artistic generalization, a symbol, a beautiful myth, and therefore folk character deserves careful and detailed study.

2. Like any phenomenon of real life, the national character is complex and contradictory, has both attractive and repulsive features, includes dramatic contradictions of the surrounding reality, acute spiritual problems. This forces us to abandon the schoolboy view of folk character in Russian literature as something absolutely positive, integral, having the value of a model, an ideal, the proximity or distance from which the viability of certain characters is measured. So, in the drama A.N. Ostrovsky's "Thunderstorm" Kabanikha, Dikoy, Katerina, Varvara, Vanya Kudryash - the characters are very different both in content and in ideological and semantic terms, but, of course, “folk”.

3. The consequence of the first two provisions is that in the works of Russian classical literature the concept and the “phenomenon” itself, the image of a national character, is essentially devoid of a clear social-class reference (which is also an ideologeme firmly rooted in the practice of school teaching): manifestations “ nationalities”, “ folk spirit” can equally be inherent in a nobleman (like Andrei Bolkonsky, Pierre Bezukhov, M.I. Kutuzov), and a merchant, and a peasant, and a representative of the “middle class”, intelligentsia (for example, Osip Stepanovich Dymov in “The Jumper” by A.P. . Chekhov). Therefore, it seems, thoughtful debates about whether a servant can be considered as a typical representative of the people (for example, Petrushka and Selifan in “Dead Souls”, Zakhara in “Oblomov”), or whether only a hereditary farmer can lay claim to this role, do not make sense .

This approach allows us to distinguish between the concepts of “national character” and “nationality”. Folk character- a private, individual manifestation of nationality, those very general religious, everyday, moral, aesthetic attitudes that objectively exist in the people’s environment and, in fact, form the “people” from the latter. However, as an aesthetic category in literature, nationality is secondary in relation to the national character, is derived from it and cannot serve as the initial measure of its assessment. This or that literary character is “folk” because the artist correctly depicted its objective, really existing folk features, but not because the latter were already given by one way or another understood “nationality”. At the same time, the provisions stated above allow us to get away from the identification of the concepts of “folk” and “common people”, and from the currently fashionable understanding of folk character exclusively in its national Russian specificity.

Let us consider in more detail the features of artistic embodiment and the role of folk character in the works of Russian classics of the 19th century.

In the comedy A.S. Griboedov’s “Woe from Wit” the only stage character that can be considered truly folk is Lisa. If we leave aside her role as a soubrette, which dates back to Western European comedy, then the functions of this character, especially in

5
Department of General and Professional Education
Municipal educational institution
“Average secondary school №1”
Features of Russian national character
(using the example of N.S. Leskov’s story “The Enchanted Wanderer”
and the story of M.A. Sholokhov "The Fate of Man").

Completed:
Novikova Ekaterina,
student of 11 “B” grade.
Supervisor:
Myasnikova T.V.,
teacher of Russian language and literature.
Tchaikovsky
2005
Content.

1. Introduction………………………………………………………………………………3
2. Russian national character…………………………………4
3. Peculiarities of the Russian national character in the literature of the 19th century (using the example of N.S. Leskov’s story “The Enchanted Wanderer”)…………….......9
4. Features of the Russian national character in the literature of the 20th century (using the example of M.A. Sholokhov’s story “The Fate of a Man”)……………..……14
5. Conclusion……………………………………………………………..19
6. List of references…………………………………………………….21
I. Introduction.

IN modern world Borders between states are erased, culture becomes common, international. This is due to a lot of communication between representatives different nations, there are currently many international marriages. So, for example, if 20-30 years ago Russia was closed from the external influences of other countries, now you can see the influence of the West everywhere, and culture is no exception. And sometimes a Russian person knows the culture of some other country much better than his own.
In my opinion, “saving face” of the people and a person’s awareness of himself as a representative of a given people is becoming one of the main problems not only for Russia, but also for the world as a whole.
A distinctive feature of a people is its national character. I recognize myself as a Russian person, and I became interested in how much my character corresponds to the idea of the Russian national character.
The problem of national character was also of interest to writers and philosophers of the 19th century and XX centuries, such as Goncharov, Leskov, Nekrasov, Yesenin, Klyuev, Sholokhov, etc.
The purpose of my work is:
1. Get acquainted with the description of the Russian national character in the works of Leskov N.S. “The Enchanted Wanderer” and Sholokhova M.A.
“The Fate of Man.”
2. Compare the character traits of representatives of the 19th century. and XX century, to identify commonalities and differences.
Research methods:
1. Study of a work of art.
2. Analysis.
3. Comparison of character traits of heroes.
II. Russian national character.

Character is the totality of a person’s mental and spiritual properties, revealed in his behavior; a man of character, strong character.
If you sow a habit, you will reap a character; if you sow a character, you will reap a destiny. Old truth
Character (in literature) is the image of a person in a literary work, outlined with a certain completeness and individual certainty, through which both a historically conditioned type of behavior and the moral and aesthetic concept of human existence inherent in the author are revealed. The principles and techniques of character reconstruction vary depending on the tragic, satirical and other ways of depicting life, on the literary type of the work and genre; they largely determine the face of a literary movement.
National character is a people’s idea of themselves; it is an absolutely important element of their national self-awareness, their overall ethnic self. And this idea has a truly fateful significance for its history. After all, just like an individual, a people, in the process of its development, forming an idea of itself, forms itself and, in this sense, its future.
Features of the Russian national character.

Positive character traits: resilience, generosity, self-confidence, honesty, courage, loyalty, ability to love, patriotism, compassion, hard work, kindness, selflessness
“The Russian character,” wrote A. N. Tolstoy, “is light, open, good-natured, compassionate... when life does not require him to make a heavy sacrifice. But when trouble comes - a Russian person is harsh, hard-working and merciless towards the enemy - without sparing himself, he does not spare the enemy either... In small things, a Russian person can be unfair to himself and others, get off with a joke, boast here, pretend to be a fool there... But justice in big ideas and big deeds lives in him ineradicably. In the name of justice, in the name of the common cause, in the name of the Motherland, he, without thinking about himself, will throw himself into the fire.”
The rhythm and economic structure of Russian life certainly unambiguously determines the main dominant of the Russian national character - the heroic dominant.
It is not surprising that in the family of super-ethnic groups of humanity, the role of Hero is played by the Russian family of nations. And within the Russian family of nations itself, this same role of Hero belongs to the Russian people. The Russian national character is, first of all, a heroic character.
Russia is a cold northern country with an abundance of icy rivers and lakes. If you look at the map of population density and compare it with the map of the settlement of peoples, you will see that Russians are river people living along the banks of rivers. This is reflected by many cognate words with water and river meanings: “Rus”, “bed”, “dew”, “mermaid”. The Russian road is a river.
The heroic dominant of the Russian character is revealed by every small detail of everyday life, for example, Russian manners of handling water. Russians wash themselves under running water, which shocks foreigners with such irrationality. The British, for example, in order to save money, never rinse, but, when getting out of the bathroom, wipe off the soap with a towel. The dishes are also not rinsed, but left in soap and placed in the dryer. There is enough water in England and endless rains, but stinginess is English national trait character. No nation in the world uses water on such a scale as the Russians. So, the Japanese take turns washing in the bathtub with the whole family, without changing the water.
Russians swim differently than Europeans. This is especially noticeable at international resorts: Europeans there usually either lie on the shore or splash around at a depth slightly shallower than waist-deep, while Russians swim long and far - according to the principle: “if I swim to the buoy, nothing will happen.” Arriving in a new place, the first thing Russians ask is: Where do they swim here?” - and climb into the nearest body of water.
National character is manifested in the creativity and culture of peoples. Russian music is easily distinguishable by ear - flowing. Our classics are Tchaikovsky, Borodin and Rachmaninov’s inspired, heroic “Hymn of Russia”. The musical style is not characterized by “creaking and squeaking”.
The main problem of the Russian people is drunkenness. We don’t know how to “drink civilly” - it doesn’t correspond to our character - we don’t know how to stop, and drinking turns into binge drinking. While in other nations multi-day feasts with fun and songs are possible, in our country the drinking session ends in a collective fight, and fences and fences will certainly be dismantled into stakes. No other country in the world has such a number of crimes due to drunkenness as in Russia.
Any public event - dancing, birthday, wedding, holiday or folk festival - is a drinking session and a scuffle. A typical Russian scenario: they drank vodka, went after the women, and got into a fight on the way. Another favorite scheme: drink, and then swim in ice water.
The Russian character is an “explosive”, daring character, but not hot-tempered, not angry, not spiteful, not vindictive and not cruel. The men will drink, fight, and then get drunk together again.
The general style of Russian life is boredom and languor, interspersed with bursts of action. Production plans are always carried out on the last day with the help of a “crisis rush”, and then again “don’t hit someone lying down” - boredom. It has long been noted: “Russians harness for a long time, but then gallop quickly.” Of course! - “What Russian doesn’t like driving fast!” The “Siberian” character is famous for its special prowess.
All attempts to conquer Russia followed the same scenario: first Russia suffers defeats, and then in a decisive battle it wins and defeats the conqueror. What for Russia is “invigorating frost”, for foreigners is “unbearable climate disasters”, “General Frost”.
The thirst for action bursts through all Russian literature, the main theme of which is how to overcome “the melancholy and boredom of life.” The masterpieces of Russian romanticism are the images of Danko tearing his heart out of his chest and “Petrel”. And my favorite topic of essays is “There is always a place for heroic deeds in life!”
The Russian character is characterized by a breadth of interests and scope of endeavors. Russians have a “wide soul”, “wide open”. We do everything on a grand scale: if we publish a library, it will be a “worldwide” one; if we make a revolution, it will certainly be a global one. We, Russians, manage to accomplish the impossible, the unthinkable, the fantastic better than the ordinary and utilitarian.[
Russian folk tales, unlike Western European ones, are almost exclusively heroic tales. If the plots of Western European fairy tales involve profit, money, enrichment, the search for gold or treasures, then in Russia the motivation for actions is different than in Western Europe - heroic, not selfish.
It should be noted that the basis of any nation is made up of people with the character of a Friend-Worker. This role is associated with a feeling of friendship and unity, with the feeling of “WE”. It is this feeling that unites the Russian and other peoples together, and also unites the peoples around the Russian into an integral Russian superethnos.
Russian people are able to get along with other peoples. It was precisely because of such traits of national character that the Russian people managed to spread and settle from the Carpathians to Kamchatka and Alaska, which no other people could do.
The dominant of the Russian character is the role of the Victim, the role of the “superfluous” person is reflected in the phenomenon called “Russian God-seeking”, as well as in “Russian self-sacrifice”.
The Russian national character is not characterized by such traits as: arrogance or arrogance, envy or greed, malice or meanness.
One of the most accurate evidence of the national character of a particular people, tribe or social group (class) is anecdotes. There are thousands of them. Thousands of anecdotes are thousands of testimonies. The anecdotes reflect the experiences and collective opinions of peoples. There is no point in arguing with anecdotes. Each anecdote is polished by millions of storytellers. People retell those jokes that they like, that is, those that correspond to their opinions and ideas. If some character traits are noticed and reflected in jokes, then this is in fact true, this is the real truth.
All anecdotes indicate the presence of stable character traits among peoples. So here it is. All jokes certainly reflect Russian prowess and excitement. If a Russian thinks of something, he will do it in a way that no one else has ever dreamed of, as no one else could think of. This means that the role of Hero is assigned to the Russians in jokes.
The main features of the Russian character, in my opinion, can be considered: heroism, perseverance, generosity, self-confidence, honesty, courage, loyalty, generosity, the ability to love, patriotism, compassion, hard work, kindness, dedication, daring, breadth of interests, scope of endeavors , tendency to drink, can get along with everyone, self-esteem.
III. Features of the Russian national character in literatureXIXcentury (using the example of N.S. Leskov’s story “The Enchanted Wanderer”).
The image of the wanderer Ivan Flyagin summarizes the remarkable features of energetic, naturally talented people, inspired by boundless love for people. It depicts a man of the people in the intricacies of his difficult fate, not broken, even though “he had been dying all his life and could not die.”
The kind and simple-minded Russian giant is the main character and central figure story. This man with a childish soul is distinguished by irrepressible fortitude, heroic mischief and that excess in hobbies that is so alien to the moderation of virtuous bourgeois heroes. He acts at the behest of duty, often on the inspiration of feeling and in a random outburst of passion. However, all his actions, even the strangest ones, are invariably born from his inherent love for humanity. He strives for truth and beauty through mistakes and bitter repentance, he seeks love and generously gives love to people. He saves people from imminent death not for the sake of any benefit, reward, or even out of a sense of duty. When Flyagin sees a person in mortal danger, he simply rushes to his aid. Just as a boy, he saves the count and countess from death, but he almost dies. He also goes instead of the old woman’s son to the Caucasus for fifteen years.
Behind the external rudeness and cruelty, hidden in Ivan Severyanych is the enormous kindness characteristic of the Russian people. We recognize this trait in him when he becomes a nanny. He became truly attached to the girl he was courting. He is caring and gentle in his dealings with her.
“The Enchanted Wanderer” is a type of “Russian wanderer” (in the words of Dostoevsky). This is a Russian nature, requiring development, striving for spiritual perfection. He searches and cannot find himself. Each new refuge of Flyagin is another discovery of life, and not just a change in one activity or another. Broad soul the wanderer gets along with absolutely everyone - be it wild Kyrgyz or strict Orthodox monks; he is so flexible that he agrees to live according to the laws of those who accepted him: according to Tatar custom, he is cut to death with Savarikei, according to Muslim custom, he has several wives, takes for granted the cruel “operation” that is carried out on him done by the Tatars; In the monastery, he not only does not complain about the fact that, as punishment, he was locked up for the whole summer in a dark cellar, but he even knows how to find joy in it: “Here you can hear the church bells, and your comrades have visited.” But despite such an accommodating nature, he does not stay anywhere for long. He does not need to humble himself and want to work in his native field. He is already humble and with his peasant rank he is faced with the need to work. But he has no peace. In life he is not a participant, but only a wanderer. He is so open to life that it carries him, and he follows its flow with wise humility. But this is not a consequence of mental weakness and passivity, but complete acceptance of one’s fate. Often Flyagin is not aware of his actions, intuitively relying on the wisdom of life, trusting it in everything. And the higher power, before which he is open and honest, rewards him for this and preserves him.
Ivan Severyanich Flyagin lives primarily not with his mind, but with his heart, and therefore the course of life imperiously carries him along, which is why the circumstances in which he finds himself are so varied. The path that the hero of the story goes through is a search for his place among other people, his calling, comprehension of the meaning of his life’s efforts, but not with his mind, but with his whole life and his destiny.
It is no coincidence that in response to the request of Mr. Rarey, who “takes it from an English, scientific point of view,” to tell him the secret of his skill, Ivan Severyanovich innocently says: “What secret? - this is stupidity.” This “stupidity” is clearly visible when Flyagin pacifies the horse from which Rarey retreated. Ivan Severyanych breaks the pot on the horse's head and at the same time whips him on both sides with his whip. In addition, he scares him with a terrible gnashing of teeth. The horse eventually gives up in exhaustion. So, Flyagin wins not through prudence, but through “stupidity,” inner cunning.
There is not a trace of humiliation in Ivan Severyanych’s psyche; on the contrary, he has an extremely high sense of self-esteem and self-respect. This is already evidenced by his inherent demeanor: “But, despite all this, he is kind, etc....................

To understand and appreciate the true scale of the artist’s talent, his contribution to literature, one must proceed from what he said new about life and man, how his vision of the world relates to the moral and aesthetic ideals and tastes of the people [Kurlyandskaya 2004: 14].

Many writers have addressed the topic of Russian national character at different times: A.S. Pushkin, M.Yu. Lermontov, N.A. Nekrasov, F.M. Dostoevsky, N.M. Karamzin, N.V. Gogol, M. Gorky, S.A. Yesenin, V. Sholokhov, A. Tvardovsky and others.

A.S. Pushkin glorified life in his works home country, showed the inexhaustible spiritual wealth of the Russian people, their great creative power. Remembering Patriotic War with Napoleon, the poet wrote:

Be afraid, O army of foreigners!

The sons of Russia moved;

Both old and young have risen, they fly on the daring,

Their hearts are kindled with vengeance.

Pushkin saw the strength of the Russian people primarily in patriotic feelings. The poet was admired by the courage, courage, self-sacrifice, contempt for death characteristic of the Russian people. In every warrior of Russia, Pushkin saw a hero whose goal is “either to win or to fall in the heat of battle.” Pushkin is proud of his people, who gave a crushing rebuff to the foreign conqueror and defended the honor and independence of their fatherland. But the poet also acted as a defender of the oppressed people, an exposer of the “wild lordship”, the “violent” who appropriated “the labor, property, and time of the landowner.” Not being a revolutionary poet, Pushkin spoke out against inhuman tyranny:

Tyrants of the world, tremble!

And you take courage and listen,

Arise, fallen slaves!

In Gogol's poem "Dead Souls" the theme of Russian folk character occupies one of the leading places. The author shows a bleak picture of the life of the serf peasantry. The landowners ruthlessly exploit them, treat them as their slaves, and can buy and sell them like things. The “club-headed” Korobochka, afraid of selling dead souls too cheaply, complains to the guest: “...it has never happened to me to sell the dead. I gave up the living ones, so the archpriest gave two girls for a hundred rubles each...” Peasants are obliged to fulfill all the whims of their masters. The author presents a terrifying picture of the life and back-breaking work of the people, their patience and courage, outbursts of protest. But the author paints not only terrible pictures of the people’s fate. Gogol shows how talented and rich in soul Russian people are. These people were used to working well and knew their craft. Ingenuity and resourcefulness are emphasized in the image of Eremey Sorokollekhin, who “traded in Moscow, bringing in one rent for five hundred rubles.” The efficiency of ordinary peasants is recognized by the gentlemen themselves: “Send him to Kamchatka, just give him warm mittens, he claps his hands, an ax in his hands, and goes to cut himself a new hut.” Love for the working people, the breadwinner, can be heard in every author’s word. Gogol writes with great tenderness about the “efficient Yaroslavl peasant” who brought together the Russian troika, about the “lively people”, “the lively Russian mind” [Lebedev 2000: 121].

N. Nekrasov wonderfully conveyed the character traits of a Russian person in his poem “Who Lives Well in Rus'.” In the image of Grisha Dobrosklonov we see collective image revolutionary intelligentsia, fighter for peasant interests, for all the “offended” and “humiliated”. He does not need wealth and is alien to concerns about personal well-being. The Nekrasovsky revolutionary is not afraid of the upcoming trials, because he believes in the triumph of the cause to which he devoted his whole life. He sees that the people of many millions themselves are encouraging him to fight. Grigory Dobrosklonov is the future leader of the peasantry, an exponent of their anger and reason. his path is hard, but also glorious; only “strong, loving souls” enter it; true happiness awaits a person there, because the greatest happiness, according to Nekrasov, lies in the struggle for the freedom of the oppressed [Lebedev 2000: 118].

M. Gorky depicted the Russian national character in his work in a completely special way. Gorky's heroes are gifted freedom lovers, prone to reflecting on their fate or the fate of similarly disadvantaged people. These are “restless” and at the same time “thoughtful” people who are alien to acquisitiveness, petty-bourgeois complacency, and the desire for peace. Dissatisfaction with one's life, a sense of self-worth that does not allow one to put up with the lot of slaves - this is what, first of all, is characteristic of Gorky's Russian man. Spontaneous protest often leads them to break with their environment. They became vagabonds, tramps, proudly declaring: “Even if you’re hungry, you’re free!” [Gracheva 2008: 15].

M. Gorky has his essays and stories from folk life, in which he, by his own admission, wanted to depict “certain properties of the Russian psyche and the most typical moods of the Russian people,” form a cycle called “Across Rus'.” For the author here, a ardent love for the people is characteristic and deeply conscious. The most fruitful aspects of his worldview are expressed “in philosophical idea human creator, in the understanding of labor as highest value"[Gracheva 2008: 21].

S.A. Yesenin was always concerned with such philosophical and ideological problems as Man and the universe, Man and nature, Man and the world of his earthly deeds, joys, passions, anxieties, his love and hatred, his loyalty to the Motherland, his life and death:

How beautiful the earth is

And there is a man on it...

M. Sholokhov is one of the few who managed to truthfully portray the Russian character. In the story "The Fate of Man" he explores great secret Russian soul. Andrei Sokolov reflected, as the writer himself later noted, “one of the best features of the Russian people - the constant and immediate readiness to defend the Motherland” [Bugrov 2000: 281]. In him one feels genuine moral greatness, a pure and noble soul, a huge soul, enormous strength will, remarkable self-control, high feeling self-esteem, an excellent understanding of one’s soldier’s duty to the Motherland. The image of Andrei Sokolov is Sholokhov's solution to the problem of the Russian national character. The story evokes pride in the Russian people, admiration for his strength, the beauty of his soul, and gives rise to faith in the immense possibilities of man. This short work is a symbol of perseverance, courage, self-sacrifice and humanism, reflects true values national identity.

The image of a simple Russian warrior was captured in his work by A. Tvardovsky. “Vasily Terkin” is a book about a fighter. Terkin appears on the first pages of the poem as an unassuming joker soldier who knows how to amuse and amuse the soldiers on a campaign and at a rest stop, innocently laughing at the mistakes of his comrades. But his joke always contains a deep and serious thought; the hero reflects on cowardice and courage, loyalty and generosity, great love and hatred. However, the poet saw his task not only in truthfully drawing the image of one of the millions of people who took on their shoulders the entire burden of the fight against the enemy. Gradually, Terkin’s image increasingly acquires generalized, almost symbolic features. The hero personifies the people:

Into battle, forward, into utter fire

He goes, holy and sinful,

Russian miracle man.

The poet, without embellishing, but also without downgrading the hero, embodied in him the fundamental moral qualities of the Russian people: patriotism, consciousness of responsibility for the fate of the Motherland, readiness for selfless feats, love of work [Samsonov 1999: 112].

Whatever work of V. Shukshin we take, in each of them we feel alive Russian word and the soul of the Russian person. He created the whole world folk characters and did it generously and talentedly. V.M.Shukshin with sensitivity great artist caught the growing protest against homogenization, schematism, and emasculation of life among the people and reflected it in a peculiar tragicomic manner. However, neither anecdotal incidents nor the eccentric behavior of the characters prevent the writer from discerning the main thing in them - the people's thirst for justice, concern for human dignity, and craving for a meaningful life. V. Shukshin's heroes are truly impulsive and extremely natural. They have a heightened reaction to the humiliation of man by man, which takes on a variety of forms and sometimes leads to the most unexpected results. V. Shukshin’s heroes are maximalists, and this is their desire to outgrow themselves, to grow from the growth that is predetermined for them by circumstances, and not by hidden “talent,” their greatness. The pain and anxiety of thought is the most human torment, evidence of the intense life of the soul, rising above pragmatic concerns.

Close attention to the people, deep interest in their destinies and the fate of their individual representatives, the humanism and democracy inherent in these writers bring them closer to a certain extent with I.A. Turgenev. The main theme of their work is showing the spiritual wealth of the Russian people, the originality of the national character.

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Introduction

1. Reflection of the features of the Russian mentality in the fiction of the 19th century

2. Russian artistic culture of the second half of the 19th century

Conclusion

References

Introduction

Fiction actively participates in modern life, influencing the souls of people, their culture and ideology. And at the same time, she is a mirror: on her pages, in the images and paintings she created, spiritual development society for many decades, expresses the feelings, aspirations and aspirations of the masses of different stages of the country's historical past, embodies the mentality of the Russian people.

Since the task of our research is to trace how the features of the character and culture of the Russian people are reflected in Russian literature, we will try to find in the works fiction manifestations of the above traits.

However, little has been devoted to this issue scientific literature, only a few scientists have seriously worked on this topic, although by analyzing our past and present and identifying the direction of our character and culture, we can determine the right path along which Russia should move in the future.

The object of our research is the culture and character of the Russian people, its characteristics and distinctive features.

When writing this work, three main methods were used: analysis and synthesis philosophical literature on this issue, analysis and synthesis of fiction of the 19th century and analysis historical events Russia.

The purpose of this work is to study the characteristics and distinctive features of the character and culture of the Russian people through works of philosophical and artistic literature and historical events.

The purpose of this study is to trace how the features of Russian character and culture are reflected in Russian literature.

1. Reflection of the features of the Russian mentality in fiction of the 19th century

If we turn to N.V. Gogol, then in his poem “Dead Souls” one can observe the manifestation of all that scope and ignorance of proportion that is so characteristic of the Russian people. The composition of the work is based on the journey of the main character Chichikov across the endless Russian expanses. Chichikov's chaise, a Russian troika, "equipped" by a "Yaroslavl efficient man", turns into symbolic image the rapid, “wonderful movement of Rus' into an unknown distance.”

The writer did not know where the Rus' Troika was rushing, because Rus' is wide and vast. In chapters V and IX we observe landscapes of endless fields and forests: “...And a mighty space threateningly embraces me, reflecting with terrible force in my depths; my eyes were illuminated with an unnatural power: wow! what a sparkling, wonderful, unfamiliar distance to the earth! Rus'!.. “But in the images created by Gogol we see scope, breadth, and prowess. Manilov is extremely sentimental and dreamy, which prevents him from effectively managing the land.

Nozdryov clearly expressed irrepressible energy in real life, daring and a destructive tendency to participate in all sorts of “stories,” fights, drinking bouts: “Nozdryov was in some respects historical person. Not a single meeting he attended was complete without a story. Some kind of story would certainly happen: either the gendarmes would lead him out of the hall by the arm, or his own friends would be forced to push him out. If this doesn’t happen, then something will happen that won’t happen to anyone else: either he’ll cut himself up at the buffet in such a way that he only laughs, or he’ll break out in the most cruel way...” Gogol speaks of Plyushkina as a phenomenon unusual for Russia: “I must say that such a phenomenon rarely occurs in Rus', where everything likes to unfold rather than shrink.” Plyushkin is distinguished by greed, incredible stinginess, stinginess to the extreme, so he seems to “shrink.” reveling in the full breadth of the Russian prowess of the nobility, burning through life, as they say,” “loves to turn around.” The desire to cross the boundaries of decency, the rules of the game, any norms of behavior is the basis of Nozdrev’s character. He says such words when he goes to show Chichikov the boundaries of his estates: “This is the border! Everything you see on this side is all mine, and even on this side, all this forest that is turning blue, and everything beyond the forest, it’s all mine. and that there are no boundaries for him - the clearest example of such a feature of the Russian mentality as the desire for scope. His generosity even goes beyond all boundaries: he is ready to give Chichikov all the dead souls that he has, just to find out why he needs them. .

Plyushkin goes to the other extreme: a liqueur, carefully cleaned of dust and boogers, and a cake brought by his daughter, somewhat spoiled and turned into crackers, he offers to Chichikov. And if we talk about landowners in general, then their inhumanity knows no bounds, just as Nozdryov knows no bounds in his revelry. Breadth, going beyond limits, scope can be seen in everything; the poem is literally saturated with all this.

The record of the Russian people found its clearest reflection in Saltykov-Shchedrin’s “History of a City.” The tribe of bunglers, in order to achieve some kind of order, decided to gather all the other tribes living in the surrounding area, and “it started with kneading the Volga with oatmeal, then dragging the calf to the bathhouse, then boiling porridge in a pouch”... But nothing came of it. Boiling porridge in the purse did not lead to order, and head scratching also did not produce results. Therefore, the bunglers decided to look for a prince. There is a phenomenon of searching for a defender, intercessor, and ruler, which is so characteristic of the Russian people. The bunglers cannot solve their problems on their own, they can only throw hats at the Kosobryukhs. The desire for revelry prevailed and led to complete disorder in the tribe. They need a leader who will do everything for everyone. The wisest in the tribe say this: “He will provide us with everything in an instant, he will make soldiers for us, and he will build the proper prison” (the breadth of space still puts pressure on the residents of Foolov, and they want to somehow isolate themselves, as evidenced by this detail, like a prison). The Foolovites, who are the personification of the Russian people, relaxed in the presence of Mayor Brudasty, and then, “as soon as the Foolovites found out that they were left completely without a mayor, driven by the power of love for the authorities, they immediately fell into anarchy,” which was manifested in the smashing of windows in a fashionable establishment of a French woman, in throwing Ivashki from the roll and drowning the innocent Porfishki. fiction gogol mentality

However, the intensification of administrative activity in Foolov led to the fact that the residents “overgrown with fur and sucked their paws.” And they even somehow got used to it! This is already happiness: “This is how we live, real life we don’t have.” The woman of the city, Foolov, is the force that brings movement into the life of the city. The archer Domashka - “she was the type of woman-khalda, swearing casually,” “she had extraordinary courage,” “from morning to evening she rang through her settlement voice." Mayor Ferdyshchenko even forgot why he came to the field, what he wanted to tell the Foolovites when he saw Domashka, "acting in one shirt, in front of everyone, with a pitchfork in her hands."

If we pay attention to the contenders for the position of mayor, we see from the description that each of them has a masculine trait: Iraidka, “of an unyielding character, manly build,” Klemantinka “had a tall stature, loved to drink vodka and rode horseback like a man,” and Amalia , a strong, lively German woman. It should also be noted that in the tale of the six mayors, for some time the government was in the hands of Clemantine de Bourbon, due to some kind of family relationship connected with France; from the German Amalia Karlovna Shtokfisch, from the Pole Aneli Aloizievna Lyadokhovskaya. In the novel "Oblomov" I.A. Goncharov we also find a manifestation of the traits of the Russian mentality. The clearest example passive person - Ilya Ilyich Oblomov. And the point is not whether he is just a slacker and a lazy person, who has nothing sacred, just sitting in his place, or whether he is a person of highly developed culture, wise and spiritually rich, he, however, does not show activity. Throughout almost the entire novel we see him lying on the sofa. He can’t even put on boots and a shirt himself, because he’s used to relying on his servant Zakhar. Oblomov was brought out of his state of “immobility and boredom” by his friend Andrei Stolz (again, a German). The passivity of the Russian people, called “eternally feminine” by Berdyaev, finds an outlet in Goncharov’s description of Ilya Ilyich: “in general, his body, judging by its matte finish, is too white color neck, small plump arms, soft shoulders, it seemed too pampered for a man." His lying on the sofa was occasionally diluted by the appearance of fellow revelers, for example, the ardent reveler and robber Tarantiev, in whom one can hear a echo of Gogol's Nozdryov. Immersion in the depths of thought and spirituality life, distracting Oblomov from external life, presupposes a leader who will always guide the hero, whom Stolz becomes. Oblomov’s passivity is also manifested in his love for Olga Ilyinskaya.

The letter that was written to her began with the fact that it was very strange for such a letter to appear, since Olga and Ilya Ilyich see each other a lot and an explanation could have been completed long ago. This indicates some timidity, passivity even in such a matter as love!.. It is from Ilyinskaya that the initiative comes. It is Olga who always brings Oblomov into conversations, she is some kind of engine of these relationships (like a real Russian woman, brave, strong and persistent), offering some meetings, walks, evenings, and in this we see an illustration of that feature of the mentality of the Russian people , which characterizes the position of women and men.

Another feature of the Russian mentality - Russian love - can be seen in this work. Oblomov, realizing that “they don’t like people like that,” did not demand from Olga reciprocal feelings for his love, he even tries to warn her against the wrong choice of a groom in his person: “You are mistaken, look around!” This is the sacrifice of Russian love. You can also note another feature of the Russian mentality - duality, since Oblomov does not want to admit what is so unpleasant for him - the erroneous, false love of Olga Ilyinskaya - and can marry her to himself while she thinks that she loves, but we immediately encounter a characteristic of the Russian people inconsistency: he is afraid of hurting Olga by marrying her to him forever, and at the same time hurting himself because he loves the heroine and breaks off relations with her. The image of Agafya Pshenitsina also illustrates the passivity and sacrifice of Russian love: she does not want to disturb Oblomov with her feeling: “Agafya Matveevna makes no urgings, no demands.” Thus, using the example of Goncharov’s novel “Oblomov,” we traced how the following traits manifest themselves in literature: sacrifice and cruelty in love, intelligence and passivity, fear of suffering and inconsistency. The stories of Nikolai Semenovich Leskov “Chertogon” and “The Enchanted Wanderer” very clearly illustrate the above-mentioned features of the mentality of the Russian people.

In the first story "Chertogon" we can observe a ritual "that can only be seen in Moscow alone." Over the course of one day, a number of events happen to the hero of the story, Ilya Fedoseevich, which are narrated to the reader by his nephew, who saw his uncle for the first time and spent all this time with him. In the image of Ilya Fedoseevich, that Russian prowess is represented, that Russian scope, which is expressed by the proverb to walk like that. He goes to the restaurant (where he is always a welcome guest), and on his orders, all visitors are kicked out of the restaurant and they begin to prepare every single dish indicated on the menu for a hundred people, they order two orchestras and invite all the most eminent persons of Moscow.

The author lets the reader know that Ilya Fedoseevich sometimes forgets about moderation and can plunge into revelry by assigning to his hero the “half-grey, massive giant” Ryabyk, who “was in a special position” - to protect his uncle, in order to have someone to pay . The party was in full swing all evening. There was also forest cutting: my uncle cut down exotic trees displayed in the restaurant, since the gypsies from the choir were hiding behind them; “they were taken prisoner”: dishes were flying, the rumble and cracking of trees was heard. “Finally, the stronghold was taken: the gypsies were grabbed, hugged, kissed, each one stuck a hundred rubles for the “corsage”, and the matter was over...” The theme of the worship of beauty can be traced, as the uncle was fascinated by the gypsy charm. Ilya Fedoseevich and all the guests did not skimp on money, as they threw expensive dishes at each other and paid a hundred rubles here and there. At the end of the evening, Ryabyka will pay for all this revelry instead of his uncle a huge amount money - as much as seventeen thousand, and my uncle just without any concern, “with a calmed and rejuvenated soul,” said to pay. The whole breadth of the Russian soul is evident, ready to live life through and not be limited by anything: for example, the requirement to lubricate the wheels with honey, which “is more interesting in the mouth.”

But also in this story there is a “combination of the difficult to combine” and that special Russian holiness, which requires only humility, even in sin: after such a revelry, the uncle cleans himself up in the hairdresser and visits the baths. Such a message as the death of a neighbor with whom Ilya Fedoseevich had been drinking tea for forty years in a row was not surprising. The uncle replied that “we will all die,” which was only confirmed by the fact that he walked like the last time, without denying anything and without limiting himself in anything. And then he sent to take the stroller to Vsepeta (!) - he wanted to “fall before Vsepeta and cry about his sins.”

And in his repentance, the Russian knows no limits - he prays so that it is as if the hand of God is lifting him by the tuft. Ilya Fedoseevich is both from God and from the demon: “his spirit is burning towards heaven, but his legs are still in hell.” In Leskov's story "The Enchanted Wanderer" we see a hero who, throughout the entire story, is a combination of mutually exclusive properties. Ivan Flyagin overcomes a difficult path, which is a circle in which we can observe all the above-mentioned features of the Russian mentality, the defining of which is duality. The entire work is built on a complete antithesis and the connecting link of the opposing elements is Flyagin himself. Let's turn to the plot. He, a praying son, protected by the Lord (which in itself contradicts the commission of some kind of sin), saves the count and countess, feels compassion for the murdered missionaries, but the death of the monk and Tatar is on his conscience; whatever the reason, he killed Grusha. Also, the inconsistency of the image lies in the fact that he loves a gypsy, whom he barely knows, Grushenka, and does not recognize his Tatar wives, although he lived with them for eleven years; he cares for someone else's child, but does not love his own legitimate children due to the fact that they are not baptized. When Flyagin lived in the count's house, he kept pigeons, and the count's cat ate the eggs laid by the dove, so the hero decided to take revenge on her and cut off her tail with an ax.

This speaks to the inconsistency of his character - love for a bird (or a horse, since Flyagin’s work was connected with them) coexists with such cruelty towards a cat. Flyagin cannot resist making an “exit”, implying that he will not be there for a certain amount of time, since any such exit is not complete without visiting a tavern, if this is not the main reason at all... Here is an example of Russian ignorance of proportions: Flyagin is going with five thousand rubles from his master to a tavern, where, under the influence of some kind of magnetizer (by the way, speaking in French words, which emphasizes the knowledge of a Russian person under the influence of foreign influence), he is treated for drunkenness with vodka (!), as a result of which he gets drunk as hell in in the literal sense of the word and wanders into a tavern (again, the story contains gypsies, who in Russian fiction are a symbol of daring, scope, revelry, drunken fun and revelry), where the gypsies are singing.

With all his broad Russian soul, he begins to throw the lord’s “swans” at the gypsy’s feet, like the rest of the guests (it is no coincidence that “other guests” are used in the stories - Ilya Fedoseevich cut down trees with a late general, and Flyagin was constantly trying to outdo the hussar - so as these heroes are not isolated phenomena, they constitute the entire Russian people), infected with this captivating carefree fun of the gypsy tavern, first one at a time, and then a whole fan: “Why should I torture myself like this in vain! I’ll let my soul walk to its heart’s content.” It is interesting that on the way to the tavern, Flyagin goes into the church to pray so that the master’s money does not disappear, as if anticipating a loss of control over himself, and, by the way, manages to show the demon a figurine in the temple. Here, such features of the Russian mentality as leadership and worship of beauty are also manifested: Flyagin no longer controls, power over him belongs to the beautiful gypsy Grushenka, who captivated the hero with her unprecedented beauty. Flyagin says the following words about this: “I can’t even answer her: she did this to me right away! Right away, that is, when she bent over the tray in front of me and I saw how it was between the black hairs on her head, as if silver, the parting curls and falls behind my back, so I went crazy, and all my mind was taken away from me... “Here it is,” I think, “where the real beauty is, what nature calls perfection...” There is also Russian love in this story, which manifested itself in the murder of Grusha, who would forever be tormented by feelings for the prince and his betrayal: “I trembled all over, and told her to pray, and did not stab her, but took her and pushed her off the steep slope into the river...” Despite all those sins that the hero accomplished in his life, during the narration of this story he became a church minister. Flyagin walks the path of sin, but prays and repents of his sins, for which he becomes a righteous man. From the example of this image, we see that the angelic and the demonic can coexist in a Russian person. , how great is the amplitude of fluctuation - from committing a murder to becoming God's servant.

In the poem by N.A. Nekrasov can trace the features of the Russian mentality. The scope of the Russian soul is clearly presented here: “In the village of Bosovo, Yakim Nagoy lives, he works until he’s dead, he drinks half to death!..” Accustomed to turning around in everything, the Russian man forgets to pause here too. We can observe in the poem a manifestation of such a feature of the Russian mentality as admiration for beauty. During the fire, Yakim Nagoy ran first to save pictures from beautiful images, bought for my son. We also note that people see their happiness in suffering! Although this contradicts another feature of the mentality - the fear of any suffering in general. Perhaps the people would like to avoid some “single” griefs, but when their whole life consists of only sad things, they learn to live with it and even find in it some kind of happiness that is understandable, probably only to the Russian people... in suffering, in agony! In the poem it is written about this like this: “Hey, peasant happiness! Leaky with patches, hunchbacked with calluses...” in the poem there are a lot of songs that reflect the mood of the people, which express the above-mentioned feature of the Russian mentality: “- Eat the prison, Yasha! Milk- then no! “Where is our cow?” - Take away my light! The master took her home for the offspring. This song is called cheerful. In the chapter about Saveliy, the Bogatyr of Svyatorus, we meet a peasant who suffered torture every year for non-payment of tribute, but was even proud of it, because he was a hero and protected others with his chest: “The arms are twisted with chains, the legs are forged with iron, the back... the dense forests have passed along it - they broke. And the chest of Elijah the prophet thunders along it - rides on a chariot of fire... The hero endures everything! There is a Russian woman, strong, hardy, brave - Matryona Timofeevna: “Matryona Timofeevna, a dignified woman, broad and dense, about thirty-eight years old. Beautiful; graying hair, large, stern eyes, rich eyelashes, stern and dark-skinned. She is wearing a white shirt, a short sundress, and a sickle over her shoulder.” She endures all the hardships of life, cruelty from her father-in-law and mother-in-law, from her sister-in-law. Matryona Timofeevna sacrifices herself for the sake of her beloved husband and endures his family: “The family was huge, grumpy... I ended up in hell from my maiden holiday! redeem." And her husband Philip, the intercessor (the leading Russian follower; the governor and the governor’s wife, to whom Matryona Timofeevna went to resolve her trouble), act as a leader, in the role of intercessor in the poem, hit her, albeit only once: “Philip Ilyich I got angry, waited until I put the pot on the pole, and hit me on the temple!.. Filyushka also added... And that’s it!” Belief in omens and superstition, in fate in this poem is reflected in the fact that Matryona Timofeevna’s mother-in-law was always offended if someone acted, forgetting about omens; Even famine in the village happened because Matryona put on a clean shirt on Christmas Day. Savely said the following words: “No matter how you fight, you fools, what is written in your family cannot be avoided! Men have three paths: a tavern, a prison and penal servitude, and women in Rus' have three nooses: white silk, the second - red silk, and the third - black silk, choose any!.." Another feature of the Russian mentality - holiness - is reflected in the following episodes of the poem. Grandfather Savely goes to the monastery after neglecting Demushka, in search of remission of sins. In the story of two great sinners we again see Russian holiness. In Kudeyar, the robber chieftain, “God awakened his conscience.” For repentance of sins, “God took pity.” The murder of the sinful Pan Glukhovsky is a manifestation of full awareness of the sins once committed by Kudeyar, the murder of a sinner atones for sins, therefore the tree that Kudeyar needed to cut with a knife fell itself as a sign of forgiveness: “Just now the bloody master fell with his head on the saddle, a huge tree collapsed , the echo shook the whole forest." It is no coincidence that we noted precisely the external manifestations of the Russian mentality. What explains this behavior of the heroes of the above-mentioned works can be found in Tyutchev’s lyrics and when considering the connection between the hero of Dostoevsky’s novel Mitya Karamazov and Apollo Grigoriev.

In Tyutchev’s lyrics one can observe how the features of the mentality of the Russian people manifest themselves. In many poems, the poet talks about contradictions, about absolutely opposite things that coexist simultaneously in the Russian soul.

For example, in the poem “O my prophetic soul!” illustrates the duality of the soul of the Russian person: “Let the suffering chest be agitated by fatal passions - the soul is ready, like Mary, to cling to the feet of Christ forever.” That is, again, the soul is a “dweller of two worlds” - the sinful world and the holy world. We again see a contradiction in words lyrical hero: “Oh, how you struggle on the threshold of a kind of double existence!..” in the poem “Our Century” we note the combination of unbelief and faith in one person: “Let me in! - I believe, my God! Come to the aid of my unbelief! "The hero turns to God, because the desire to believe and the desire to deny everything coexist in him at the same time; his soul constantly fluctuates between these two opposite sides. In the poem “Day and Night” we see confirmation that at the heart of the Russian soul there is always something darkly elemental, chaotic, wild, drunken: “and the abyss is exposed to us with its fears and darkness, and there are no barriers between us ..." We observe the cruelty and sacrifice of Russian love in the poem "Oh, how murderously we love...":

"Fate is a terrible sentence

your love was for her,

and undeserved shame

she laid down her life!

And what about the long torment?

like ashes, did she manage to save them?

Pain, the evil pain of bitterness,

pain without joy and without tears!

Oh, how murderously we love!

As in the violent blindness of passions

we are most likely to destroy,

what is dearer to our hearts!..”

Speaking about the Russian mentality, one cannot speak about such a person as Apollo Grigoriev. A parallel can be drawn between him and the hero of Dostoevsky’s novel Mitya Karamazov. Grigoriev was not, of course, in the full sense the prototype of Dmitry Karamazov, but, nevertheless, we see in the latter many characteristic Grigoriev traits and the connection between them seems quite close.

Mitya Karamazov is a man of nature. The minute dominates his life, dragging him along with it and constantly revealing two abysses. Delight and fall, Schiller and debauchery, noble impulses and base deeds alternately, or even together, burst into his life. Already these fairly obvious features indicate a mental situation very close to Grigoriev’s. It is the collision of the ideal and the earthly, the need for a higher existence with a passionate thirst to live that can be seen in the fate of Grigoriev and in the fate of Mitya. If we take as an example the attitude towards a woman and love, then for both of them it is like some point in life at which contradictions converge. For Mitya, the ideal of the Madonna somehow came into contact with the ideal of Sodom (two extremes), and he was unable to separate them. Grigoriev had that “ideal of the Madonna” seen in Murillo’s painting. In the Louvre, he prays to the Venus de Milo to send him “a woman - a priestess, not a merchant.” The frenzied Karamazov feeling can be heard in his letters almost as clearly as in Mitya’s hymns to Queen Grushenka. “To be frank: what have I not done to myself over the past four years? What meanness have I not allowed myself in relation to women, as if taking it out on them all for the damned puritanical purity of one - and nothing helped... I sometimes love her to the point of baseness , to the point of self-humiliation, although she was the only thing that could raise me. But there will be...” Such duality, the incompatibility of the two sides of existence, tears at the soul of Apollo Grigoriev in its Karamazovian way. Submission to the unconscious elements does not yet bring internal integrity. He realized that he was releasing “wild and unbridled” forces, and already, while these forces were taking more and more power over him, he felt more and more acutely that he was not living as he should. Here are examples from his letters: “A whole period of dissolute and ugly life lay here in a layer, I escaped from it as the same wild gentleman who is known to you from all his good and bad sides... how I lived in Paris, it’s better not to ask about this Poisonous blues, crazy - bad hobbies, drunkenness to the point of visions - this is life."

The two abysses of Apollo Grigoriev’s life became more and more clearly visible. He wrote about the duality of the Russian soul and tried to justify with it everything that happened to him. But the duality with his keen critical consciousness also turned out to be unbearable. From the end of his stay in Italy, there was a struggle in his soul, a struggle between life and death. He wrote: “For me, for example, no human efforts can either save or correct me. For me there are no experiences - I fall into eternal spontaneous aspirations... I thirst for nothing more than death... Neither of me nor of us has anything at all comes out and can’t come out.” He still continued to believe in life with an impenetrable Russian faith, which, in fact, is difficult to define as a life phenomenon - what is Russian faith? Grigoriev felt himself captured by the whirlwind principle and, in the name of his faith, surrendered to it to the end with that feeling that Alexander Blok later called the love of death. A terrible monument to his last wandering was the poem “Up the Volga”, ending with a groan: “Vodka or what?..” up the Volga Grigoriev was returning to St. Petersburg, where a debt prison and a quick death awaited him, a forty-year-old man, almost under the fence.

The rhythm of vortex movement is equally present in the lives of Apollo Grigoriev and Dmitry Karamazov. In Dostoevsky's novel this rhythm plays an almost decisive role. Despite the stops and turns in Mitya’s fate, the speed of movement is increasing, and life is rapidly carrying Mitya towards disaster. This rhythm finds its highest expression in the scene of desperate driving in the wet, when the passion for a woman fights in him with the passion of renunciation and shame for what was done depicts the only way out for the confused mind - suicide. “And yet, despite all the determination he had made, his soul was vague, vague to the point of suffering, and the determination did not give him peace... There was one moment on the way that he suddenly wanted... to take out his loaded pistol and end everything without waiting and dawn. But that moment flew by like a spark. And the trio flew, “devouring space,” and as they approached the goal, again the thought of her, of her alone, took his breath away more and more...

And in the fall, Grigoriev finds delight and beauty, if there is no other way out, and finds the only true and beautiful solution to fall to the end, as Russian scope allows. Just like Mitya: “Because if I’m going to fly into the abyss, I’ll do it straight, head down and heels up, and I’m even pleased that it’s in this humiliating position that I fall and consider it beauty for myself.” Apollo Grigoriev also traces the theme of gypsies in the cycle “Struggle” - a Hungarian gypsy woman. In him we finally see an accurate and comprehensive definition of the gypsy theme: “It’s you, the dashing spree, you are the fusion of evil sadness with the voluptuousness of the Badeyarka - you, the motive of the Hungarian!”

In general, Mitya and Apollo Grigoriev were always attracted by beauty, and perhaps because “beauty is a terrible and terrible thing,” a mysterious thing, a “divine riddle,” to guess which means to say goodbye to this light; “When you look into the abyss, you don’t want to go back, and it’s impossible.” But the desire to give an accurate, almost mathematical definition is not inherent in the poet... Yes, Grigoriev the scientist was not completely defeated by Grigoriev the poet and Grigoriev the scientist did not completely defeat Grigoriev the poet, leaving Apollo Grigoriev in a state bifurcation. Grigoriev the man, the Russian, the truly Russian man, won. Before us various works different authors, but they are united by some common features, traced here and there: breadth, scope, an unbridled desire to look into the abyss, to fall into it, and the desire of the soul for the light, for the divine, for the temple, she had just left the tavern. Flyagin, Ilya Fedoseevich, Oblomov, Yakim Nagoy, Tarantiev, Nozdrev - this is a whole gallery of images illustrating the features of the Russian mentality. Oscillation from one extreme to another - from the tavern to the temple for Ilya Fedoseevich, from the temple to the tavern for Ivan Flyagin - closes the path of the Russian person in an endless circle, in which other features of the mentality of the Russian people, such as knowledge, passivity, worship, manage to manifest themselves. beauty, holiness, etc. The interaction of all these traits confirms that we have not listed some independent and isolated traits that appear among the Russian people, we have named the traits of the mentality, which by definition is a combination of these traits and something holistic, unified, where each element is in close connection with another.

2. Russian artistic culture of the second half of the 19th centuryA

Russian literature second half of the 19th century century continues the traditions of Pushkin, Lermontov, Gogol. There is a strong influence of criticism on the literary process, especially the master's thesis of N.G. Chernyshevsky "Aesthetic relations of art to reality." His thesis that beauty is life underlies many literary works of the second half of the 19th century.

This is where the desire to reveal the causes of social evil comes from. The main topic works of literature and, more broadly, works of Russian artistic culture At this time, the theme of the people, its acute social and political meaning, becomes.

In literary works, images of men appear - righteous people, rebels and altruistic philosophers.

Works by I.S. Turgeneva, N.A. Nekrasova, L.N. Tolstoy, F.M. Dostoevsky's works are distinguished by a variety of genres and forms, and stylistic richness. The special role of the novel in literary process as phenomena in the history of world culture, in artistic development of all humanity.

"Dialectics of the Soul" became an important discovery in Russian literature of this period.

Along with the appearance of the “great novel,” small narrative forms of great Russian writers appear in Russian literature (please look at the literature program). I would also like to note the dramatic works of A.N. Ostrovsky and A.P. Chekhov. In poetry, N.A.’s high civic position is especially highlighted. Nekrasov, soulful lyrics by F.I. Tyutchev and A.A. Feta.

Conclusion

Solving the assigned tasks, studying materials on this topic, we came to the conclusion that the Russian mentality has the following features and distinctive features: ignorance of proportion, breadth and scope (illustrations are such heroes of works of fiction as the “wasting life” reveler Nozdryov from Gogol’s poem , the reveler and robber Tarantyev from Oblomov, Ilya Fedoseevich, ordering dinner from the most expensive dishes for a hundred people and arranging the cutting of exotic trees in a restaurant, Ivan Flyagin, getting drunk in a tavern and squandering five thousand rubles in a night in a lordly tavern); knowledge and irresistible faith (this trait is clearly reflected in the “History of a City” by Saltykov-Shchedrin: without the prince there was no order, and the residents of the city of Foolov threw off Ivashki and drowned the innocent Porfishek, believing that a new city chief would come and will arrange their life, bring order); passivity (an example of a passive person is Ilya Ilyich Oblomov, who cannot deal with economic affairs, and even cannot be active in love); a Russian man is a generator of ideas, a Russian woman is the engine of Russian life (Olga Ilyinskaya orders Oblomov to read books and then talk about them, calls him for walks and invites him to visit, she feels love when Ilya Ilyich is already thinking about what she will do in the future meet your true other half); cruelty and sacrifice in Russian love (In the story “The Enchanted Wanderer,” Ivan Flyagin kills Grushenka, the one he loves, and Ilya Ilyich Oblomov breaks up with Olga, although he loves); admiration for beauty (Yakim Naga in Nekrasov’s poem “Who Lives Well in Rus'?” During a fire, he ran to save the pictures that he had once bought for his son, since they depicted something very beautiful. The reader does not know what exactly was in the pictures, but the author makes it clear that people are drawn to beauty with irresistible force, they are attracted by beauty); holiness (Ilya Fedoseevich from Leskov’s story “Chertogon” allows himself to drunkenly cut down trees, break dishes in a restaurant and chase gypsy girls from the choir and at the same time repent for all this in the temple, where, by the way, as in the restaurant, he is a regular) ; duality, inconsistency, combination of the difficult to combine (Mitya Karamazov and Apollon Grigoriev constantly fluctuate between delight and fall, find happiness in grief, rush between a tavern and a temple, want to die from love, and when dying, they talk about love, look for an ideal and immediately surrender earthly hobbies, desire a higher heavenly existence and combine this with an irresistible thirst to live).

References

1. Gachev G.D. Mentality of the peoples of the world. M., Eksmo, 2003.

2. Likhachev D.S. Thoughts about Russia: St. Petersburg: LOGOS Publishing House, 2001.

3. Ozhegov S.I., Shvedova N.Yu. Dictionary Russian language. M., 1997.

4. Likhachev D.S. Three foundations of European culture and Russian historical experience // Likhachev D.S. Selected works on Russian and world culture. St. Petersburg, 2006. P. 365.

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Portrayal of Russian national character

Part 1. The problem of Russian national character in Russian philosophy and literature of the 19th century

“Mysterious Russian soul”... What kind of epithets were awarded to our Russian mentality. Is the Russian soul so mysterious, is it really so unpredictable? What does it mean to be Russian? What is the peculiarity of the Russian national character? How often have philosophers asked and asked these questions in scientific treatises, writers in works of various genres, and even ordinary citizens in table discussions? Everyone asks and answers in their own way.

Very accurately the character traits of the Russian person are noted in folk tales and epics. In them, the Russian man dreams of a better future, but he is too lazy to make his dreams come true. He still hopes that he will catch a talking pike or catch goldfish who will fulfill his wishes. This primordial Russian laziness and love of dreaming about the advent of better times has always prevented our people from living. A Russian person is too lazy to grow or make something that his neighbor has - it is much easier for him to steal it, and even then not himself, but to ask someone else to do it. A typical example of this is the case of the king and the rejuvenating apples. All Russian folklore is based on the fact that being greedy is bad and greed is punishable. However, the breadth of the soul can be polar: drunkenness, unhealthy gambling, living for free, on the one hand. But, on the other hand, the purity of faith, carried and preserved through the centuries. A Russian person cannot believe quietly and modestly. He never hides, but goes to execution for his faith, walking with his head held high, striking his enemies.

There are so many things mixed into a Russian person that you can’t even count them on your fingers. Russians are so eager to preserve what is theirs that they are not ashamed of the most disgusting aspects of their identity: drunkenness, dirt and poverty. Such a trait of the Russian character as long-suffering often goes beyond the bounds of reason. From time immemorial, Russian people have resignedly endured humiliation and oppression. The already mentioned laziness and blind faith in a better future are partly to blame here. Russian people would rather endure than fight for their rights. But no matter how great the patience of the people is, it is still not limitless. The day comes and humility transforms into unbridled rage. Then woe to anyone who gets in the way. It’s not for nothing that Russian people are compared to a bear - huge, menacing, but so clumsy. We are probably rougher, certainly tougher in many cases. Russians have cynicism, emotional limitations, and a lack of culture. There is fanaticism, unscrupulousness, and cruelty. But still, mostly Russian people strive for good. There are many positive features in the Russian national character. Russians are deeply patriotic and have high fortitude; they are capable of defending their land to the last drop of blood. Since ancient times, both young and old have risen to fight against invaders.

Speaking about the peculiarities of the Russian character, one cannot fail to mention the cheerful disposition - a Russian sings and dances even in the most difficult periods of his life, and even more so in joy! He is generous and loves to go out on a grand scale - the breadth of the Russian soul has already become the talk of the town. Only a Russian person can give everything he has for the sake of one happy moment and not regret it later. Russian people have an inherent striving for something infinite. Russians always have a thirst for a different life, a different world, they always have dissatisfaction with what they have. Due to greater emotionality, Russian people are characterized by openness and sincerity in communication. If in Europe people are quite alienated in their personal lives and protect their individualism, then a Russian person is open to being interested in him, showing interest in him, caring for him, just as he himself is inclined to be interested in the lives of those around him: both his soul wide open and curious - what is behind the soul of the other.

A special conversation about the character of Russian women. The Russian woman has unbending fortitude, she is ready to sacrifice everything for the sake of loved one and follow him to the ends of the earth. Moreover, this is not blindly following a spouse, like Eastern women, but a completely conscious and independent decision. This is what the wives of the Decembrists did, going after them to distant Siberia and dooming themselves to a life full of hardships. Nothing has changed since then: even now, in the name of love, a Russian woman is ready to spend her entire life wandering around the most remote corners of the world.

An invaluable contribution to the study of Russian national character was made by the works of Russian philosophers at the turn of the 19th - 20th centuries - N.A. Berdyaev (“Russian Idea”, “Soul of Russia”), N.O. Lossky (“The Character of the Russian People”), E.N. Trubetskoy (“The Meaning of Life”), S.L. Frank (“The Soul of Man”), etc. Thus, in his book “The Character of the Russian People,” Lossky gives the following list of the main features inherent in the Russian national character: religiosity and the search for absolute good, kindness and tolerance, powerful willpower and passion, sometimes maximalism . The philosopher sees the high development of moral experience in the fact that all layers of the Russian people show a special interest in distinguishing between good and evil. Such a feature of the Russian national character as the search for the meaning of life and the foundations of existence, according to Lossky, is excellently illustrated by the works of L.N. Tolstoy and F.M. Dostoevsky. Among such primary properties, the philosopher includes love of freedom and supreme expression hers is freedom of spirit... Those who have freedom of spirit are inclined to put every value to the test, not only in thought, but even in experience... As a result of the free search for truth, it is difficult for Russian people to come to terms with each other... Therefore, in public life The love of freedom of Russians is expressed in a tendency towards anarchy, in repulsion from the state. However, as N.O. rightly notes. Lossky, u positive qualities There are often negative sides too. The kindness of a Russian person sometimes prompts him to lie so as not to offend his interlocutor, due to the desire for peace and good relations with people at all costs. Among the Russian people there is also the familiar “Oblomovism”, that laziness and passivity that is excellently depicted by I.A. Goncharov in the novel “Oblomov”. Oblomovism in many cases is the flip side of the high qualities of the Russian person - the desire for complete perfection and sensitivity to the shortcomings of our reality... Among the especially valuable properties of the Russian people is a sensitive perception of strangers states of mind. This results in live communication between even unfamiliar people. “The Russian people have highly developed individual personal and family communication. In Russia there is no excessive replacement of individual relationships with social ones, there is no personal and family isolationism. Therefore, even a foreigner, having arrived in Russia, feels: “I am not alone here” (of course, I am talking about normal Russia, and not about life under the Bolshevik regime). Perhaps these properties are the main source of recognition of the charm of the Russian people, so often expressed by foreigners, well knowledgeable about Russia..." [Lossky, p. 42].

N.A. Berdyaev in philosophical work The “Russian Idea” presented the “Russian soul” as the bearer of two opposite principles, which reflected: “the natural, pagan Dionysian element and ascetic monastic Orthodoxy, despotism, hypertrophy of the state and anarchism, freedom, cruelty, a tendency to violence and kindness, humanity, gentleness, ritualism and the search for truth, a heightened consciousness of the individual and impersonal collectivism, pan-humanity, ... the search for God and militant atheism, humility and arrogance, slavery and rebellion” [Berdyaev, p. 32]. The philosopher also drew attention to the collectivist principle in the development of national character and in the fate of Russia. According to Berdyaev, “spiritual collectivism”, “spiritual conciliarity” is a “high type of brotherhood of people”. This kind of collectivism is the future. But there is another collectivism. This is “irresponsible” collectivism, which dictates to a person the need to “be like everyone else.” The Russian person, Berdyaev believed, is drowning in such collectivism; he feels immersed in the collective. Hence the lack of personal dignity and intolerance towards those who are not like others, who, thanks to their work and abilities, have the right to more.

So, in the works of Russian philosophers at the turn of the 19th - 20th centuries, as well as in modern research(for example: Kasyanova N.O. “On the Russian National Character”), among the main characteristics of the traditional Russian national mentality, three leading principles stand out: 1) the religious or quasi-religious nature of the ideology; 2) authoritarian-charismatic and centralist-power dominant; 3) ethnic dominance. These dominants - religious in the form of Orthodoxy and ethnic - were weakened in Soviet period, while the ideological dominant and the power dominant, with which the stereotype of authoritarian-charismatic power is associated, became more strengthened.

IN Russian literature XIX century, the problem of Russian national character is also one of the main ones: we find dozens of images in the works of A.S. Pushkin and M.Yu. Lermontova, N.V. Gogol and M.E. Saltykova-Shchedrina, I.A. Goncharov and N.A. Nekrasova, F.M. Dostoevsky and L.N. Tolstoy, each of whom bears the indelible stamp of Russian character: Onegin and Pechorin, Manilov and Nozdryov, Tatyana Larina, Natasha Rostova and Matryona Timofeevna, Platon Karataev and Dmitry Karamazov, Oblomov, Judushka Golovlev and Raskolnikov, etc. You can’t list them all.

A.S. Pushkin was one of the first to pose in Russian literature the problem of the Russian national character in its entirety. His novel "Eugene Onegin" became highly folk work, "encyclopedia of Russian life." Tatyana Larina, a girl from a noble background, is the one in whom the primordial nationality was most powerfully reflected: “Russian in soul, / She herself, without knowing why, / With her cold beauty, / loved the Russian winter.” This twice repeated “Russian” speaks about the main thing: the domestic mentality. Even a representative of another nation can love winter, but only a Russian soul can feel it without any explanation. Namely, she can suddenly see “frost in the sun on a frosty day,” “the radiance of pink snow,” and “the darkness of Epiphany evenings.” Only this soul has a heightened sensitivity to the customs, mores and legends of the “common antiquity” with its New Year’s card fortune-telling, prophetic dreams and alarming signs. At the same time Russian beginning for A.S. Pushkin is not limited to this. To be “Russian” for him is to be faithful to duty, capable of spiritual responsiveness. In Tatyana, like in no other hero, everything that was given merged into a single whole. This is especially evident in the scene of explanation with Onegin in St. Petersburg. It contains deep understanding, sympathy, and openness of soul, but all this is subordinated to the observance of necessary duty. It does not leave the slightest hope for the loving Onegin. With deep sympathy, Pushkin also talks about the sad serfdom of nanny Tatyana.

N.V. Gogol, in the poem “Dead Souls,” also strives to vividly and succinctly portray the Russian people, and for this he introduces into the narrative representatives of three classes: landowners, officials and peasants. And, although the greatest attention is paid to the landowners (such vivid images as Manilov, Sobakevich, Korobochka, Plyushkin, Nozdryov), Gogol shows that the real bearers of the Russian national character are the peasants. The author introduces into the narrative the carriage maker Mikheev, the shoemaker Telyatnikov, the brickmaker Milushkin, and the carpenter Stepan Probka. Special attention is paid to the strength and acuity of the people's mind, the sincerity of the folk song, brightness and generosity national holidays. However, Gogol is not inclined to idealize the Russian national character. He notes that any meeting of Russian people is characterized by some confusion, that one of the main problems of the Russian person: the inability to complete the work begun. Gogol also notes that a Russian person is often able to see the correct solution to a problem only after he has performed some action, but at the same time he really does not like to admit his mistakes to others.

Russian maximalism in its extreme form is clearly expressed in the poem by A.K. Tolstoy: “If you love, it’s crazy, / If you threaten, it’s not a joke, / If you scold, it’s rash, / If you chop, it’s wrong!” / If you argue, it’s too bold, / If you punish, then it’s worth it, / If you ask, then with all your soul, / If you feast, then it’s a feast!”

N.A. Nekrasov is often called the people's poet: he, like no one else, often addressed the topic of the Russian people. The vast majority of Nekrasov's poems are dedicated to the Russian peasant. In the poem “Who Lives Well in Rus'” a generalized image of the Russian people is created thanks to all the characters in the poem. These are central characters (Matryona Timofeevna, Savely, Grisha Dobrosklonov, Ermila Girin), and episodic ones (Agap Petrov, Gleb, Vavila, Vlas, Klim and others). The men came together with a simple goal: to find happiness, to find out who has a good life and why. A typical Russian search for the meaning of life and the foundations of existence. But the heroes of the poem failed to find a happy man; only landowners and officials were free in Rus'. Life is hard for the Russian people, but there is no despair. After all, those who know how to work also know how to rest. Nekrasov expertly describes village holidays, when everyone, young and old, starts dancing. True, unclouded fun reigns there, all worries and labors are forgotten. The conclusion that Nekrasov comes to is simple and obvious: happiness lies in freedom. But freedom in Rus' is still very far away. The poet also created a whole galaxy of images of ordinary Russian women. Perhaps he romanticizes them somewhat, but one cannot help but admit that he managed to show the appearance of a peasant woman in a way that no one else could. For Nekrasov, a serf woman is a kind of symbol of the revival of Russia, its rebellion against fate. The most famous and memorable images of Russian women are, of course, Matryona Timofeevna in “Who Lives Well in Rus'” and Daria in the poem “Frost, Red Nose.”

The Russian national character also occupies a central place in the works of L.N. Tolstoy. Thus, in the novel “War and Peace” the Russian character is analyzed in all its diversity, in all spheres of life: family, national, social and spiritual. Of course, Russian traits are more fully embodied in the Rostov family. They feel and understand everything Russian, because feelings play a major role in this family. This is most clearly manifested in Natasha. Of the entire family, she is most endowed with “the ability to sense shades of intonation, glances and facial expressions.” Natasha initially has a Russian national character. In the novel, the author shows us two principles in the Russian character: militant and peaceful. Tolstoy discovers the militant principle in Tikhon Shcherbat. The militant principle must inevitably appear during people's war. This is a manifestation of the will of the people. A completely different person is Platon Karataev. In his image, Tolstoy shows a peaceful, kind, spiritual beginning. The most important thing is to attach Plato to the earth. His passivity can be explained by his inner belief that, in the end, good and just forces win and, most importantly, one must hope and believe. Tolstoy does not idealize these two principles. He believes that a person necessarily has both a militant and a peaceful beginning. And, depicting Tikhon and Plato, Tolstoy depicts two extremes.

A special role in Russian literature was played by F.M. Dostoevsky. Just as in his time Pushkin was the “starter,” so Dostoevsky became the “finisher” of the Golden Age of Russian art and Russian thought and the “starter” of the art of the new twentieth century. It was Dostoevsky who embodied in the images he created the most essential feature of Russian national character and consciousness - its inconsistency, duality. The first, negative pole of the national mentality is everything “broken, false, superficial and slavishly borrowed.” The second, “positive” pole is characterized by Dostoevsky by such concepts as “simplicity, purity, meekness, broadness of mind and gentleness.” Based on the discoveries of Dostoevsky, N.A. Berdyaev wrote, as already mentioned, about the opposite principles that “formed the basis for the formation of the Russian soul.” As N.A. said Berdyaev, “To understand Dostoevsky to the end means to understand something very significant in the structure of the Russian soul, it means to get closer to the solution to Russia” [Berdyaev, 110].

Among all the Russian classics of the 19th century, M. Gorky pointed specifically to N.S. Leskov as a writer who, with the greatest effort of all the forces of his talent, sought to create a “positive type” of a Russian person, to find among the “sinners” of this world a crystal clear person, a “righteous person.”

Essay: National character in the deformations of the Soviet era. Portrayal of national character in the works of Russian writers

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