Article

Name: From Ancient Russia to Solzhenitsyn: The Meditation of Russian Culture by Prot. Alexander Schmemann

Authors: E. N. Proskurina

Institute of Philology of the Siberian Branch of Russian Academy of Sciences

Abstract: 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”.

Keywords: heritage by A. Schmemann, A. Solzhenitsyn, history of Russian culture, Russian literary tradition, Russian cultural self-consciousness, Christian tradition in literature, utopianism

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