In the paper, an attempt is made to define the conservatism as is. The integral conservatism involves monarchy, class stratification of the society, domination of religion, idealistic platonic philosophy, mostly agrarian economy, and focus on ancient patterns, classics and classicism in art. Conservatism emerged on the cusp of the 18th and 19th centuries as a reaction to the bourgeois revolutions (first of all, the French Revolution), which destroyed the traditional Western societies and paved the way to a modernist civilization. Conservatives differ from traditionalists and “conservative revolutionaries” in that they do not call for a “revolution against the modern world”. Instead, they seek to preserve the existing traditional structures. At first glance, the Soviet society, with its cult of progress and anti-traditional worldview, left no room for the conservatism. Yet, firstly, authoritarian traits were present in Bolshevism itself. Secondly, Russian peasants and national Bolshevik specialists brought the elements of traditional Russian culture to the Soviet project. Thanks to this, not only latent integral conservatism (A. F. Losev) became possible in the USSR, but also the partial one (M. A. Lifshitz and L. N. Gumilev). 

The paper poses the problem of Soviet conservatism. What protective forces and mechanisms were inherent in the Soviet system? Since any society should have its own conservative tendencies, one can also talk about elements of conservatism in the Soviet society, culture and ideology. Nevertheless, reflections on this problem lead to an epistemological difficulty. In what sense can we talk about Soviet conservatism in general? After all, the defining worldview of the Soviet period was Marxist ideology, which was radically revolutionary and progressive. Even the word “conservative” was then perceived in a decisively negative way. Nevertheless, it is noted that in the late Soviet society it was possible to be a Soviet conservative, wishing for the preservation of the USSR but disapproving of communism and Marxism. The paper states that Soviet conservatism cannot be described as a single entity. In different epochs, different types of Soviet conservatism can be distinguished that struggled with each other and contradicted each other. In addition, the distinction between them is a bit of conditional, because all of them were permeated by the revolutionary-progressive elements of the dominant ideology or stood out against a background of the latter. The paper outlines an approximate general typology of Soviet conservatism: cultural-humanistic Soviet conservatism, pro-Leninist Soviet conservatism, Stalinist Soviet conservatism, pro-Stalinist Soviet conservatism, situational Brezhnev conservatism, and Soviet conservatism of non-Soviet authors and thinkers. It states that the USSR was largely brought to the collapse by the defectiveness and insufficiency of its conditionally conservative, protective forces and principles. It is only with a very high degree of conditionality that one can talk about the phenomenon of Soviet conservatism, understanding it as a set of transformed, unnatural, and contradictory conservative and quasi-conservative ideological currents that do not add up to a single whole.

The paper examines the biography and ideas of Aleksei Fedorovich Losev, the last classical philosopher of the Silver Age, who created the Orthodox Neoplatonism. In his historical doctrine, the terms “formation”, “feudalism”, “capitalism”, “socialism”, and “anarchy” are used in a specific sense, different from the Marxist one. Losev’s formations are based on the myth in the author’s own interpretation. Feudalism was marked by the domination of the theocratic myth and was the highest point of human development, according to Losev, an Orthodox conservative monarchist. Capitalism makes a fetish of the individual human personality, while socialism is centered on the labour and the labour collective. Anarchy brings “hell on earth”. However, socialism, being the antithesis of capitalism, distorts the feudal authoritarianism in its own way, which cannot but arouse some sympathy in the philosopher, notwithstanding a generally negative assessment thereof. Such were the views of the young Losev, who boldly criticized socialism from a religiously conservative position and, apparently, still hoped for the revival of feudalism. In the 1930s, Losev’s position began to change. He partly reconciled with the Soviet government, remaining aware of its negative traits, and emphasized the positive aspects of socialism. In our opinion, the reason for this was the understanding that a return was possible only to capitalism and liberalism, that is, to philistinism, which Losev always opposed. 

The paper examines the circle of “thick” Soviet conservative-patriotic journals, whose contributors tried to defend Russian national interests and values of the Russian history within the ideological framework of that time. These were, first of all, Young Guard (Molodaya gvardiya), Moscow (Moskva) and Our Contemporary (Nash sovremennik). The terms “thick patriotic journals”, “journal contributors”, and “circle of journals” are considered almost synonymous, as the author is talking about a phenomenon that, although tied to specific respected editions, extends far beyond their pages. The main thesis of the paper is that patriotic journals of the second half of the Soviet period continued and developed two long-standing trends that may seem a bit contradictory, but in fact are combined quite harmoniously. The first is the autonomous statist (yet not state-based) patriotism, which strives to bring good to Russia and the Russian people and for this purpose objects to the current government and criticizes it, wishing to bring it to reason, transform and improve, but not overthrow. The second is the justification of the current government, whose merits are not obvious to many from the point of view of long-term national and state interests. The paper examines the discussion between patriotic and liberal journals and authors generated by the famous article Inevitability (Neizbezhnost’) by V. А. Chalmayev that was printed in the Young Guard journal, publications by M. P. Lobanov and S. N. Semanov, disputes by B. M. Sarnov and V. V. Kozhinov, and other issues that are important for understanding of the subject.

The paper reviews the philosophy and aesthetics of an outstanding Soviet thinker, the founder of the concept of left Marxist conservatism Mikhail Aleksandrovich Lifshitz (1905–1983). It describes Lifshitz’s life and work, paying attention to his “respectful friendship” with the Orthodox conservative philosopher A. F. Losev, member of the Onomatodoxy (Imiaslavie) movement. Discussions of the 1930s between Lifshitz and his movement (Lukács, Grib, Usievich, Platonov), on the one side, and Marxist “sociologizers” and “vulgar democrats”, on the other side, are described. During these discussions, Lifshitz and his associates criticized the complete reduction of art, philosophy, and morality to economic facts (the notorious Marxist base), defending the autonomy of spiritual and cultural creativity. They criticized “revolutionary, left-wing avant-garde art” and rehabilitated representatives of classical art of the past, “Great conservatives of humanity”, i.e. Plato, Aristophanes, Goethe, Pushkin, Tolstoy, and classical realistic art itself. According to Lifshitz, the latter also included old Russian art, i.e. icons. The paper shows the conservative potential of Lifshitz’s teaching on the dialectic of progress and regress that justifies the conservative criticism of capitalism by the great realist artists of the past. It also describes Lifshitz’s criticism of the relativistic trend in Marxism and his attempt to reveal and develop the link between Marxism and classical dialectical philosophy from Plato to Hegel. The author shows that, defending the unity of the Truth, Beauty and Goodness, Lifshitz approached some kind of non-religious (possibly crypto-religious) philosophy of all-encompassing unity or unitotality. Finally, the paper offers a look at Lifshitz’s left conservatism from the standpoint of ordinary (classical) religious conservatism, stating that his understanding of classical epochs lacked the religious component that has always been present in these epochs.

The article explores the philosophical meaning of Ilya Glazunov’s paintings. The author states that the artist understood the art not as the aesthetic category, but through the idea of worship. The artist considered it his ultimate mission to bring Russian meanings back to the Russian people. Essentially, this entails overcoming our metaphysical groundlessness. This approach allows us to characterize the art of Ilya Glazunov as modern and even topical in the era of cultural and intellectual desolation. In this sense, the literalism of Glazunov’s images becomes the strong side of his works. The author of the article introduces the concept of the triptych of the Russian consciousness in the twentieth century, comprised of Mikhail Nesterov’s The Soul of the People, Pavel Korin’s Farewell to Rus and Ilya Glazunov’s Eternal Russia, and explores the idea of Holy Russia shared by these artists. In this connection, the author considers the philosophical meaning of the idea of the God-bearing people, sobornost’ and the differences between the Christian logic and the logic of the Antichrist. The author examines the artist’s attitude to avant-garde, realism and icon painting and explains why Ilya Glazunov preferred realism in art. While avant-garde images are apophatic and icon painting exists only within the church consciousness, realistic religious painting turns out to be a direct path to the perception relying on sobornost’. Special attention is paid to Ilya Glazunov’s illustrations of the works of classical Russian literature and his attitude to Fyodor Dostoevsky. The argumentation is entirely based on the analysis of Ilya Glazunov’s specific paintings. 

Contrary to common belief, Russian literature of the Soviet period was never a “waste of time” for our culture. No socialist realism could tear it completely off from the Orthodox worldview and the classical Russian literature. As for the works of that period written with the hidden agenda, they have long since been duly forgotten. In the Soviet years, the reality of the so-called literary process appeared to be distorted: there were books that received prizes, and other books that people read and discussed. Time, however, straightens everything and puts things in their proper place. The works of writers who felt that they belonged to the great Russian literature stand out clearly from the political and social framework of this historical period. They are, in essence, a bridge from the pre-revolutionary Orthodox culture to our time. We can be firmly justified in saying that the literature of the Soviet period was hardly the “bearer of the Christian message”. And yet, to call it entirely anti-Christian would be equally wrong. The author of the article researches this phenomenon through the works by Andrey Platonov, Mikhail Sholokhov, Nikolai Zabolotsky, Nikolai Rubtsov and Vasily Shukshin. The article examines the works of these authors, and reveals their hidden Christian or close enough character, ideas, images and moods. In general, even taking into account the necessary reverence to the system, the Soviet literature in its best representation was a worthy continuation of the classic Russian one. Sadly, the current literature in our country has not yet managed to become even a remote successor of the Soviet literature.

The article researches the legacy of the “nravstvenniki” (village prose writers) as an important phenomenon of the Russian spiritual revival in the second half of the twentieth century. It examines the original view based on the millennia-long experience of peasant life, taken by the “village prose” on the fate of a person facing the destruction of the Russian Orthodox civilization. This experience uniquely combines the Christian soul and the “cosmic” (sobornost’-people-nature) conscience, which allows to immediately and unerringly feel and deeply understand any untruth of the existence. This truly is the latest word of the great Russian literature, not in the chronological sense, since another era is already upon us, but in the sense of revealing the last foundations of the “Russian point of view” (V. Woolf) to the world. The main storyline of the “village prose” was the death of the great Orthodox civilization and the perpetuation of the images of its living members surviving into the second half of the twentieth century. This prompted Viktor Astafyev to call it a unique “global phenomenon born out of the suffering and misfortunes of the people”. The experience of the literature of “nravstvenniki” (Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn), however, also showed the reality of the Orthodox revival of the Russian people, prophesying on this moral basis a new revival of Russia. The article off ers several representative examples of works that enable the reader to understand the spiritual meaning and significance of this literary phenomenon and to appreciate the worldwide historical task it tried to solve: to comprehend both the greatness of the Orthodox peasant civilization and the tragedy of its destruction. The most prominent critique and literary reviews on the “village prose” are also considered. The article ends with substantiating the conclusion of this literary phenomenon becoming the newest Russian classics, corresponding to the most important and urgent tasks of the spiritual revival of Russia and creating a new “canon” of Russian Christian literature of the twenty-first century.

The article is devoted to the biography and views of the famous mathematician and Russophile dissident Igor Shafarevich. Since the beginning of the 1970s, he has been a fellow-thinker and associate of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. The article analyzes the main events of Shafarevich’s life, his social and political activity, and the ideas his most fundamental works base upon. It is noted that despite the importance of his ideas and his works, neither monographs nor significant studies on his activity have yet appeared. The article tells about Shafarevich’s life journey, biography, his social and political activity, and his place in the dissident movement. It also pays attention to his friendship and ideological kinship with Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Next, it analyzes the main ideas of Shafarevich’s article “Socialism” for the “From Under the Boulders” collection and his book “Socialism as a Phenomenon in the World History”. Shafarevich took socialism as a manifestation of the human race’s desire for self-destruction, for Nothing, as a kind of the biological death instinct. According to Shafarevich, socialism is hostile to individuality. It lowers a person down to the level of a government machine component and seeks to destroy the forces that support and strengthen the human personality: religion, culture, family, individual property, nationality. Developing his concept of socialism in later works, he appeared there as a critic of socialism, even more radical than Solzhenitsyn, and probably the most radical than anyone else among the Russian thinkers. The article pays special attention to Shafarevich’s famous work “Russophobia” and the controversy it aroused. It is noted that the core of Shafarevich’s social and political views was not formed by him in any separate program. However, it can be quite clearly identified in a number of his key statements. It appears that it was connected with his vision of Orthodoxy, monarchy and Russian civilizational sovereignty, which presupposed getting rid of dependence on the West.