by Prot. Alexander Schmemann
The article examines the perception of history of Russian culture
by Archpriest Alexander Schmemann (1921–1983), an outstanding Orthodox
thinker, theologian, and educator. The research was based on the talks by
Fr. Alexander “The Fundamentals of Russian Culture” held in 1970–1971
on radio “Liberty” as well as his journals and certain articles devoted to
A. Solzhenitsyn. The logics of Schmemann’s reasoning is revealed as an attempt
to draw the general outline of Russian culture discovering both the synthesizing
junctions and the moments of disruption. When solving the task, A. Schmemann
endeavors to detect the sources of Russia’s social tragedy over the post-
Revolutionary period. According to Prot. Alexander, the choice of the Christian
faith by Ancient Russia became the foundation of all Russian culture up to the
early 20th century. Schmemann names Pushkin as the medium of the “classical
norm” – the only one of the whole pleiad of Russian authors, who managed to
portray “all Russia” in terms of culture per se, without sinking into the sphere of
“sociality”, pragmatic “use”, and “utopianism” which appeared to contaminate
Russian literature in post-Pushkin period. As A. Schmemann interprets, the Silver
Age became the crucial moment for breakdown of Russia’s cultural integrity
when the country fell away from the common spiritual criteria laid in Christianity.
The appeal of Archpriest Alexander to the theme of the Silver Age in terms
of the degree of development is comparable only to the appeal to Pushkin’s
work. Soviet literature, having approved a new value system based on atheistic ideology, retreated essentially into the sphere of “anti-culture”. Prot. Alexander
indicates the opposition to this process in late works by A. Akhmatova and
B. Pasternak as well as in early works by A. Solzhenitsyn whom Schmemann
calls a “great Christian writer”. However, Schmemann’s journals and articles
about Solzhenitsyn’s work of the emigratory period demonstrate Fr. Alexander’s
attitude to the author as becoming more sophisticated with the course of
time. Solzhenitsyn’s theme in Schmemann’s diaries is a rare example of the
dynamics of attraction-repulsion, characterizing his inner relation to the writer.
From Schmemann’s point of view, the “great national writer’s” activity in emigration
dwindled exactly to the same “utopianism” and “obsession with ‘sociality’”
which, being intrinsic for the “man of use”, were repeatedly criticized by
Schmemann in “The Fundamentals of Russian Culture”.
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by Prot. Alexander Schmemann // Критика и семиотика. 2018. № 2. Pp. 310–336. DOI: 10.25205/2307-1737-2018-2-310-336.