Preface:
The mention of Stolypin (1862-1911) is always reminiscent of Stolypin's reforms. Since the Stolypin reform was another important reform in Russia after the serfdom reform in 1861, it often attracted the attention of scholars. However, influenced by revolutionary ideas, Stolypin's "representative of the landlord class and the origin of the aristocratic family" always associated him with the exploiting class and opposed to the working people, giving the impression of being reactionary and moving against the tide of history.
Stolypin
Economic development is polarized
When modern research methods gradually became mainstream research methods, the progressiveness of Stolypin's reforms gradually entered the author's field of vision. Because modernization "refers to the historical process of the transformation of human society from a traditional agricultural society to a modern industrial society." Although revolutionary thought also emphasizes the role of capitalism in promoting the development of productive forces, the development of capitalism only lays the material foundation for socialism, and cannot explain why the traditional agrarian society should move towards an industrial society, and why the development of capitalism will cause polarization and moral decline. We have been grappling with the question: Can economic development not lead to polarization and moral decline? Therefore, on the basis of industrialization, we put forward the great idea of establishing a socialist system and put it into practice in the 20th century.
Iva the Great
The awakening of Russian humanity stemmed from the war between Europe and Russia. The first to raise this question was probably Ivan the Terrible's uncle Kurbsky. He said: "If the Tsar is respected by the whole country, but God has not given him any gifts, then he should seek good and useful advice not only from the parliamentarians, but also from the people, for the strength of the spirit does not come from the amount of wealth and power, but from the integrity of the heart." ”
It is a pity that such an awakening was suppressed by Ivan the Terrible in the name of the state and proved by Orthodox principles. He said: "Strive to make people know the truth and the light, confess that God is the only truth, incomparably glorious, and God has given them sovereigns; No more infighting, no self-strife, for this will destroy the kingdom; If the tsar is not obeyed, the infighting will never end. ”
tsar
The 17th century was a turning point for Russia. She fell into a state of confusion in her contact with the West. Nikon (1605-1681), as the patriarch of the Russian church, improved the liturgy according to the Greek way in order to highlight the greatness of Russia: the cross was painted with three fingers instead of two, the hymn to Jesus "hallelujah" was called three times instead of twice, the liturgical procession that circled the church no longer followed the direction of the rising and setting of the sun but greeted the sun, and the kneeling during prayer was changed to a bowing salute, etc., to show the devotion and holiness of Russian worship of God. Nikon's reforms had no real content, but they sparked sectarian fighting.
Nikon compared himself to the sun and the tsar to the moon, sparking a power struggle; Nikon's declaration that the old was false and that the pagans were unclean triggered a self-immolation campaign by the Old Mannerists. If Nikon's reforms sparked a power struggle within the government, within the Christians people felt that the end was near, and they went into memories and the future, looking for illusions and portents, and fell into unprecedented doubts.
The Tsar took advantage of Nikon's reforms, but society also described the government's reforms as the Antichrist. In the time of Peter the Great, Peter I single-handedly cut off the connection with history, forcibly pushed Russia into the arms of the West, and Russia stepped into the ranks of modernization. But it is an unprecedented affront to the dignity of Russians. The bearded tunic was once used as a symbol by the Russians, but for practical reasons, it was cut off and replaced by Peter, and if the monarch found anyone to keep it during the parade, the person would be beaten on the spot with a club.
Peter the Great
Although the beard was later allowed to be retained, the beard tax had to be paid. Peter's forced modernization certainly cannot be denied, but it brings social trembling. The church, once an advocate of the spirit of independence, became a slave to secular life. The old liturgical school turned Peter I into the Antichrist and hid in the ground, and the wise and learned nobles turned to the praises of the regime, seeking happiness for themselves regardless of conscience.
Khraskov said: "Peter gave only the Russian body, and Ekaterina gave the soul." "Peter's so-called giving the Russians a body is leading the Russians to the road of pursuing national interests and common welfare. Catherine gave the Russian soul, enriched the Russian nobility with knowledge and formed an enlightened autocracy.
The nobility received privileges
Catherine II said in her edict: "It is my desire that the country brought to me by God be happy and auspicious, and that the country will be prosperous and prosperous, and this is my principle; If my ideals can lead to the realization of this principle, I will be blessed with three lives. I want the country and my subjects to be prosperous; That's one of the principles I stand on. A regime that is not trusted by the people is meaningless to those who want to be loved and honored; It's easy. It is that you take the inseparable things of the happiness and justice of the people as the norm of your actions, the norm of your regulations. Freedom is the spirit of all things! Without you, everything would be dead. I am willing to obey the law and do not want slaves; Hope that the common goal is to make people happy, not willful, eccentric and cruel. ”
Catherine II
By edict of Catherine II, on April 21, 1785, the nobility received privileges.
The nobility was exempt from the requisition of dwellings by the army; The nobility was exempt from corporal punishment; The nobility had land ownership; The nobility had the right to establish its own hierarchical institutions; The nobility has the right to change to the title of the first rank, etc. On the same day, the merchant class also became a special class. City dwellers are divided into six classes based on wealth, "top businessmen" with property of more than 500 rubles are exempt from corporal punishment, can pay money exempt from military service and personal tax, and only 1% capital tax is levied. Human rights based on property rather than on patriarchal law became privileges to be flaunted for, because the nobility and big merchants could keep their rights to themselves and their obligations to others, and serfdom in Russia developed so much after the aristocracy gained privileges that the peasants hated the nobility as much as France did when they were liberated.
Thus, Catherine II's enlightened and despotic approach was questioned in hypocrisy. Klyuchevsky summed it up by saying: "How poor is the ideological literacy and political talent that this class has to lead society. The social status of this hierarchy is based on unjust politics and decorated with meaningless social activities. They do not have any real organic connection with the people around them at home, nothing important, in foreign countries they are makeovers Tatars
Yaroslav's landowner Opotchinin, unable to reconcile with reality, committed suicide in 1793. Explaining his actions in his suicide note before his death, he wrote: 'The motive that compelled me to end my life was disgust with the reality of Russia. Subsequently, this melancholy and sadness became the theme of Russian thought and culture in the 19th century.
Alexander I
Alexander I is a representative of mysticism and sentimentalism.
Although he allowed Russian military power into Europe, he also began Russia's awakening. The awakening in Russia began with the ideas of Freemasonry. Russian Freemasonry has been looking for certain universal religious beliefs that should be rooted in the natural feelings and thoughts of the earliest primitive humans. Freemasonry hoped that through this natural religion it would replace the various forms of dogma of Christianity.
Freemasonry
This natural, universal belief system will move men from conflicting religious and socioeconomic situations to a state of brotherhood. Freemasonry allows different religions to exist, and it is even more important in Freemasonry to convince future Freemasons of their own God: Allah, Jehovah, etc., acknowledging the existence of a supreme entity that creates life. Although Freemasonry is not Christian, it has played a role in finding the truth in the face of the decline of the Russian Orthodox Church.
Alexander I came into contact with Freemasonry after his own father was killed in search of inner peace. His idea of the Holy League after the Great Patriotic War was also based on the idea that all Christians are brothers. Alexander established the Ministry of National Education and Religious Affairs, which, through such a special department, sought to "free the Russian people from the numbness and indifference of faith that existed everywhere, awaken the noblest religious instincts in them, and infuse them with a continuous stream of understanding of Christianity from the heart by distributing the Bible." A period of unprecedented awakening began.
Russian thought awakens
The awakening of Russian thought in the 19th century was not all smooth sailing, but full of contradictions and struggles. A very vexing problem is that Russian religious philosophy is so isolated from Russian reality that it does not function as it should. Novikov, Rajishev and Karamzin, who were once called by De Likhachev as the first generation of intellectuals with independent ideas, made outstanding contributions to the awakening of Russian thought. But, as a pioneer of the Decembrists, Rajishev brought nothing more than a "distant God."
The Decembrists revolted
Karamzin, a historian of aristocratic origin, had good intentions to free the peasants of the manor before studying in Germany, but when he returned to the countryside, he saw poor, poorly cultivated land, empty granaries, and ruined huts. Karamzin then abandoned the idea of immediately emancipating the serfs, instead allowing them to gradually move towards freedom under the supervision of the landlords. In Karamzin's eyes, the serfs in Russia had become accustomed to laziness and alcoholism, and they had to be enlightened first and then free. As a result, Karamzin gained a reputation as a reactionary serf owner or as a defender of patriarchal autocracy. Karamzin's attempts and conclusions are not conservative by the author, and Karamzin's partial reforms were impossible to achieve for the situation when "the nobility was attached to the regime, and the peasants were attached to the nobility." The reform of the peasants also became a state of maintaining neither food nor starvation. As a result, Alexander I's liberal reforms led to fierce debates about Russia's development path, which made the improvement of the lives of the Russian people more tortuous.
Karamzin
Chaadaev was an aristocratic young officer who, influenced by the Decembrists, spoke most vocally about the fate of Russia. He said: "It is a great mistake to think that the effects of slavery seem to affect only those who bear the weight of slavery and have no means of subsistence, and on the contrary, its effects on those classes that benefit from slavery should be studied." Because of their own ideas, mainly those of asceticism, because of their racial temperament that does not expect a better future with little security, and, finally, because of the distance that often separates serfs from their masters, Russian serfs deserve sympathy, but not to the extent that you can think of them. Moreover, their current situation is only a natural consequence of their past situation. The enslaved status of serfs was not the result of the violence of the conquerors, but a natural course of development of what manifested itself in their inner life, in their religious feelings, in the depths of their character. And the emergence of this process of development is the lack of inner unity between reason and love.
Gogol
As a result, Russian society stubbornly followed its own principles and turned the relationship into a dead and alive relationship. We first see the break between Belinsky and Gogol, and then the decisive battle between the Slavic and the Western. If the decisive battle between intellectuals was merely a severance, by the time of the serfdom reform in 1861, the decisive battle between the upper and lower strata of society had become a naked plunder, so that it had led to a social Armageddon, and to the populists it had become a celebration of the battle. Through the transformation of the Orthodox Church, Gogol pointed out the direction for the landlords to handle their relations with the peasants.
Although by the time V. Solovyov no longer confronted Western culture and tried to reconcile the East and West by merging the Christian churches, he did not expect the victory of the cross of Jesus Christ, that is, the triumph of temptation through the path of faith, but longed for the appearance of Sophia, a goddess of selfless love. The populist path to suicide is not easy to defeat, they need love without anything in return, and this is the problem that Russian rationalists must face.
Stolypin
It was against this revolutionary background that the Stolypin reforms arose.
References: Sun Chengmu, Liu Zuxi, Li Jian: Compendium of the General History of Russia, Volume II, People's Publishing House, 1986, p. 341.
Luo Rongqu, New Theory of Modernization: The Modernization Process of the World and China, Peking University Press, 1993, p. 12.
Yao Hai: The Road of Russian Culture, Zhejiang People's Publishing House, 1992, pp. 50-51.
G. Florovsky: The Path of Russian Religious Philosophy, translated by Andy Wu et al., Shanghai People's Publishing House, 2006, p. 98.