We live in a time of mass movements. The people’s soul has become more mobile, easily revolted and angered; neither traditions nor habits have the former force in its life. This ‘people’s anger’ occupies not the least place in the world of political fictions of our time. Everything can be explained and justified by it. People’s anger is invariably righteous, directed against evil and vice… But the political history of modern times has shown that the means of obtaining ‘people’s anger’ are not difficult; that any clever seeker can obtain it on occasion; that this anger is, in fact, worth no more attention than the tears of a child; and that it does not manifest itself when the people ‘suffer from unbearable oppression’, but in other circumstances not directly related to oppression and suffering.

The introduction of excitement into the sufficiently idle and sufficiently well-fed masses is not difficult and can always be repeated, if only there were a class of relatively educated and sufficiently free people who have subordinated their minds to this or that salutary idea, i. e. to that set of values which should be imposed on society at all costs for its own good. These people can be called ‘political activists’ and their worldview can be called ‘activism’.

It is not for nothing that I mentioned ‘relative’ education, or rather, ‘semi-education’ (a word used by Pushkin in relation to Radishchev).  Let me recall Pushkin’s definition of semi-enlightenment: ‘ignorant contempt for everything that has passed, a weak-minded amazement at one’s own age, a blind fondness for novelty, partial superficial knowledge, randomly adjusted to everything’. On this and only on this soil does ‘activism’ grow, regardless of its colouring: socialist, racial or liberal.

Not so long ago, this outwardly religious movement was called socialism. The outward resemblance between socialism and religion was repeatedly mentioned. It has been pointed out with condemnation or approval that socialism is the religion of our day; it has even been said that ‘in our days Christ would be a socialist’. But the name ‘socialism’ has obviously become obsolete. The socialist beliefs (‘the working class’ as the bearer of final truth, the final battle with the ‘bourgeoisie’, the building of a ‘new society’) are forgotten. So how can we define this mindset?

The easiest way to do this is to contrast it with another mindset: the religious one. ‘Religion’, however, we shall understand not in the sense of ‘belief’ in anything — this definition is both wrong in general (because any profound worldview is based on things beyond everyday experience, that is, strictly speaking, on faith — and the worldview of a scientist, say, is no exception) and unsuitable for our study. Let us draw the boundary in another way: by defining religion as a world of invisible and, most importantly, inner values. ‘Activism’ is directly opposed to such a worldview: it pushes all motivations and goals outward, beyond the individual; it lives only in opposition. Take the world away from the believer, and he will not lose his inner fullness; take the world away from the activist, and he will lose his foothold.

We can put it this way: the Christian is always aware of the contradiction between his personal values, his desires, his comforts, and the values of the Gospel. This contradiction is the reason for his moral movement and all his essential actions. The activist has no values that abolish or at least call into question the desires and comforts of his private life; in other words, one feels always ripe for ‘activism’; the activist is never ‘unworthy’ or ‘unready’. In short: while the Christian is primarily concerned with his own behaviour, the activist’s attention is focused solely on the behaviour of others.

And so it can also be said: at the centre of religion is the question of the meaningfulness of life; the search for meaning and affirmation on its basis; at the centre of activism is the certainty that life is meaningless, or at least badly arranged, and that ‘everything must be changed’ in order for it to become at least somewhat tolerable.

The power of activism lies in its focus on external goals. All its varieties are inflamed by the idea of what may be called the ‘external liberation’ of man; whereas the higher religions have in view an internal liberation; and even if Judaism or Islam do not explicitly say that obedience to the commandments is the way to liberation from sin, they imply it.

But still, in speaking of religion, I do not mean primarily Islam or Buddhism, but Christianity. Activism exists (at least originated) only in the Christian world, and in some ways complements Christianity and at the same time repels it. Without rejecting the Christian worldview, understood as ‘preaching submission, false humility, self-deprecation’, it is hard to imagine. Activism means boiling on the surface of the personality with complete calmness in the depths. The activist is indifferent, if not hostile, to what is in the depths, to all inner meaning. It would be wrong, however, to think that the activist is necessarily an enemy of religion. Not at all. A religious activist is also possible; Patriarch Nikon is a vivid example of such an activist. Sharp attention to appearance, to form, fierce activity for the sake of this appearance and, finally, cooling and indifference. Activism is a vice (or peculiarity of development) of the spirit; its causes are deeper than the acceptance or rejection of religion in itself. And at the same time he speaks of the inability to worship anything ‘in spirit and in truth’, because such worship teaches attention first of all to oneself and one’s deeds, and generally makes one more peaceful.

Take away Christianity, with its values of personal salvation and self-denial, and you take away the activist’s self-determination; because, as a rule, he or she self-determines through rejection of these values. More than that: it can be assumed that these people not only need Christianity as a ‘point of reference’, but have also abandoned it; and they have abandoned it because the ideal of inner labour and external unpretentiousness at a certain age (or at a certain spiritual development) is unacceptable and unattractive; self-denial is less tempting than self-assertion; and also because — let us be honest — that the widespread idea of the ‘ideal Christian’: the old man, all white, who wants nothing, and can do nothing — is a caricature and completely intolerable for a living and active man.

These people simply forgot to be told (or they did not want to hear) that Christianity is a leaven, not a building material; that the inner is more important than the outer and is generally indifferent to the outer; that Christianity is not directly connected with either monarchy or republic, neither with youth nor with old age — despite all the attempts in history to draw it to one side or the other. (It should be noted, however, that Christianity and democracy, Christianity and equality are, after all, opposite to each other; this will be discussed further on.) In creative epochs, it lives in the forms it has found ready-made; non-creative times seek it in the forms of life of past epochs, engaging in unbearable self-stylisation…

One way or another, the inner ideal characteristic of the higher religions is rejected by activism for the sake of the outer; but it remains a kind of ‘Christianity without God and man’, which has retained its original explosive power, that is, its capacity to act for ideals infinitely superior to the ends that everyday life can offer man; and which has retained its original adoration of the individual, who is still considered more important than the whole world (but no longer because of its content, godlike nature, immortal soul — but, strictly speaking, for any clear reason). This last — the groundlessness of extra-Christian individualism — is simply striking; man is still considered ‘of more value than many sparrows’, but it is asserted that he is in no way better than these birds and in no way essentially different from them.

Activism and religion not only compete as worldviews, but also pull towards two opposing social ideals, even if these ideals are not clearly recognised by the participants in the struggle. Conventionally speaking, they can be called the ‘society of external freedoms and successes’ and the ‘society of invisible values’. Activism has for centuries accused Christianity of serving the powerful, of despising the ‘masses’. However caricatured the Christian social ideal may be in this portrayal, it is not completely false. If we peel these accusations from the verbal husks, we see that they are relatively true. Namely, from the point of view of the Christian ideal, the individual is more valuable than the ‘mass’; the individual who faithfully directs his powers and abilities is more valuable than the one who wastes or buries his gifts; state authorities are not mere devices like water pipes or sewers, but an institution with cultural and moral tasks: the defence of the weak against the arbitrariness of the strong; the defence of the higher degrees of order against a slide to the lowest; the protection of the individual against encroachments on his higher freedoms.

About these ‘higher (or better) freedoms’ I shall speak separately. In our days of overly generalised, almost ‘wholesale’ freedoms, this expression must be strange; although it has been known to the Russian language for a long time, since the words of Pushkin: ‘I need other, better freedom’. To such ‘better freedoms’  I would include the freedom to improve; to complicate judgements; to work in fields in which the majority cannot be the judge… In general, those freedoms which in our time are called ‘freedoms for’ and are opposed to the empty, meaningless (but patronised by liberal doctrine) ‘freedom from’.

At the heart of the social ideals we are considering are precisely different understandings of freedom. We are not talking about the opposition between ‘Reason and Freedom’ on the one hand and ‘Ignorance and Slavery’ on the other, as naïve minds understand the question (just remember our Strugatskys, and indeed all the champions of ‘progress’)…

Christianity has been repeatedly reproached that it is hostile to democracy, supports monarchy and class-based society. (These reproaches have already been mentioned above.) Nowadays one often hears the opposite: that Christianity is not connected with any social order and can be associated with democracy, as it used to be associated with monarchy. Both statements are not quite correct. It is true that no social order ‘follows’ from Christianity in the same way that the caliphate ‘follows’ from the Koran. But the recognition of a hierarchy of values, and more importantly, the recognition that these values are autonomous, free and independent of our will, all this makes the Christian worldview incompatible with democracy, that is, with an order that believes only in conditional truths determined by majority vote. Any ‘Christian-democratic’ illusions are possible only where Christianity is understood vaguely and indefinitely, as ‘the totality of all that is good’ (as we see in modern Europe, under the roof of Protestantism, which is close to destruction).

All this is said about one of the parties being compared. What is the opposite ideal? It is all based on the external transformation of the world. Since the activist ultimately has no faith in the individual, he is convinced of his utter powerlessness and total dependence on external conditions. ‘The transformation of society on new principles’; ‘the elimination of racially inferior elements’; ‘a return to ancestral ideals’; or ‘unrestricted rights and freedoms’ are his paths to salvation. Class and racial utopias seem to have lost their force (one died of old age, the other was destroyed by military hand). The sun of a new ideal is rising: the liberal dream. The activist of our days dreams of rights and freedoms; of the final liberation of the individual; of the liberation — ultimately — of man from himself. [1]

These social ideals have already clashed in battle or in silent opposition, and now, in our day, there is still no peace between them. Activism grows by means of departures from Christianity; by means of more and more baits which life puts upon the soul, diverting it from the inner life for the sake of the outer one. The world of inner values is more and more remote from modern man… What will happen next, we can only guess.

If nothing changes; if the efforts of Western society to push as many people as possible off a certain spiritual height (or to allow them to fall ‘freely’) do not abate — the light of inner values will slowly fade away, as it has been fading away for a century, and will one day be extinguished — to everyone’s or almost everyone’s satisfaction. The majority do not need any ‘invisible values’. In the coming twilight, the last gleam of society will be that of an industrial, vivacious society, based on unbound personal energy and the desire for pleasure — or, what is the same, based on nothing. It will flourish as long as the power and enterprise of the ‘liberated’ individual is based to some extent on soil fertilised by the values of the previous epoch; when this soil is exhausted, the last motives for action will be force, power, pleasure and success….

And then? What comes next is beyond the reach of the eye.

[1] There is, however, a contradiction. The power that supports destructive instincts of the most diverse kind in the world (up to and including Mohammedan religious activism) is a Protestant-Christian power in its origin; its ideal of the individual revolving in airless space, regally autonomous, grew up on extreme Protestant soil; and America’s labour (let’s call things by their proper names) to destroy all and any foundations of spiritual and social life undermines, in the final result, precisely this native American soil… It will probably be up to the next generation of American leaders to recognise this contradiction and confront its consequences.

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