Ideas about patriotism in the worldview of M.A. Bulgakov: an experience of historical-philosophical reconstruction

Gorokhov Pavel Aleksandrovich Doctor of Philosophy Professor; Department of Jurisprudence and Humanities; Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (branch in Orenburg) 460000, Russia, Orenburg region, Orenburg, Kuracha str., 26 erlitz@yandex.ru Other publications by this author

Yuzhaninova Ekaterina Rafaelevna Associate professor, Department of Philosophy and Culturology, Orenburg State University 460000, Russia, Orenburgskaya oblast', g. Orenburg, prospekt Pobedy, 13 yuterina@yandex.ru Other publications by this author

The search for ways and methods of forming patriotism among the younger generation of Russians is becoming an increasingly urgent task for humanitarian scientists today. Patriotism is understood and interpreted in different ways. The Philosophical Encyclopedia defines patriotism as "love for the fatherland, devotion to it, the desire to serve its interests by their actions" ^[18]. We propose to consider patriotism as "a moral and socio-ethical category, which is a dialectical combination of intellectual-rational and spiritual components" ^{[6, p. 71]}.

In our opinion, in the interpretation of patriotism, it is necessary to apply the method of ascent from the abstract to the concrete and consider the philosophical foundations of patriotism on the example of the life and work of outstanding figures of national history and culture. Most of the reflections of the classics of Russian literature and philosophy have by no means lost their relevance, and it is possible to formulate and successfully solve many of the tasks currently facing our Homeland much more successfully if we thoughtfully study the creative legacy of A.S. Pushkin and F.M. Dostoevsky, N.S. Leskov and A.A. Fet, N.S. Gumilev and A.A. Blok. Russian philosophy has always been not only genetically closely related to literature, but literature itself has been one of the forms of existence for Russian philosophy. Poems, novels and novellas by Russian writers testify to the original synthesis of philosophy and fiction.

Mikhail Bulgakov (1891-1940) is one of the Russian writers who, during the years of fateful changes in the country, could not help but touch upon the most important philosophical issues in their works. His mindset was far from academic canons, unlike B.L. Pasternak, he never studied philosophy professionally, but M.A. Bulgakov's immersion in the ultimate questions of being makes him related to such thinkers as V.S. Solovyov, N.A. Berdyaev, L. Shestov, V.V. Rozanov. No wonder back in 1991, when almost all of Bulgakov's works finally came to the domestic reader without censored bills, V. Gudkova stated: "A brilliant world-class novelist, romantic and philosopher, moralist and social visionary came to us" ^[9]. This characteristic is still true today.

The purpose of this study is to study the totality of ideological ideas about patriotism, which can be reconstructed on the basis of studying the works of M.A. Bulgakov. The object of the research is the creative heritage of M.A. Bulgakov, and the subject is the idea of patriotism in the philosophical worldview of M.A. Bulgakov.

The methodological basis of this research is comparative historical analysis, philosophical comparative studies and the hermeneutic method as the identification and interpretation of meanings hidden in artistic creativity.

Quite a lot of works have been written about the work of Mikhail Bulgakov. The research of I. Belobrovtseva ^[1], A.N. Varlamov ^[4], V.V. Petelin ^[14], B.V. Sokolov ^[16], M.O. Chudakova ^[19] is widely known. The philosophical views of M.A. Bulgakov as an original thinker were considered in the works of P.A. Gorokhov ^[7], A. Zerkalov ^[12], E.R. Yuzhaninova ^{[20; 21; 22; 23]}. A number of interesting remarks about the philosophical views and literary and spiritual ties of M.A. Bulgakov were expressed by Ralph Schroeder ^[24] in his voluminous afterwords to the publication of the novel in its first translation into German. But in the Russian historical and philosophical literature there were no special works reconstructing M.A. Bulgakov's ideas about patriotism as an integral part of his philosophical worldview.

The ideas of patriotism were organically woven into the structure of M.A. Bulgakov's worldview as a thinker with specific philosophical views, and although philosophy as a special form of human culture was not self-sufficient for him, but he, as a well-read Russian intellectual, possessed considerable erudition in philosophy.

Russian Russian philosophy researchers have been in solidarity with A.V. Gulyga's call for the need to "publish Russian thinkers in full and write the philosophy of Russian classics" for almost forty years ^{[10, p. 115]} and mention the name of M.A. Bulgakov in this regard. Much has been done in this direction, and historians of philosophy have repeatedly turned to the philosophical foundations of the worldview of the Russian classics. K.N. Lyubutin and Yu.K. Saranchin quite rightly noted: "Philosophy acquires and has a different appearance at different times, its social existence is pluralistic. Art and literature, one way or another, carry philosophical ideas. Russian national philosophy, both before 1917 and after, provided unique examples in this regard. Aren't Gogol, Bulgakov, and Zoshchenko unique as philosophers? Any critical time exacerbates existential problems, including because at such a time the evil social principle in a person manifests itself very aggressively" ^{[13, p. 9]}.

In modern Russia, the task of forming a new patriotic mindset, free from the misconceptions of previous years, first of all, uncritical and excessive fascination with Western values, has become relevant. In philosophy, we must talk about a modern and sound assessment of post- and metamodernism, which many researchers, not without reason, assess as the "end of philosophy" ^[5]. A.V. Gulyga once wrote: "Our new thinking today can rely on the national tradition. There is no reason for us to create new values, and no philosophy is able to create them, it can only identify, defend, spread them... The Russian classics recorded them with the utmost depth and expressiveness" ^{[10, p. 115]}. Undoubtedly, the vivid artistic images created by Mikhail Bulgakov and his intuitive philosophical insights will be in demand by Russian intellectuals, including in the conceptualization of the national idea, which in Russia at the highest political level today is identified with patriotism ^[25].

Earlier, one of the authors of this work came to the conclusion that "axiologically, the philosophical worldview of M. A. Bulgakov can be represented in the form of an inverted cone, the base of which is a point – human individuality" ^[19]. And Bulgakov's ideas about patriotism were associated with views on a unique and unique human personality.

An attentive researcher of M.A. Bulgakov's legacy, including a researcher of his philosophical ideas, sees the image of an intelligent and strong-minded man, similar to Don Quixote from the play created by Bulgakov based on the novel by the great Cervantes. In this play, the hero says to the duke's confessor: "Do you think that a man who wanders the world not in search of pleasure, but in search of thorns, is mad and idly wasting his time? People choose different paths. One stumbles along the road of vanity, another crawls along the path of humiliating flattery, others make their way along the road of hypocrisy and deception. Am I walking along one of these roads? No! I walk the steep road of chivalry and despise earthly goods, but not honor!.. I stood up for the weak, offended by the strong. If I saw evil somewhere, I went to a deadly fight to beat the monsters of malice and crime!.. My goal is bright – to do good to everyone and not to harm anyone" ^{[2; vol. 4; p. 205]}.

The childhood of the future writer, unlike many classics of Russian literature, was happy. Bulgakov carried the echoes of a cloudless childhood through his whole life and reflected them in his work: "As the "Saardam Carpenter" was often read near the blazing tiled square, the clock was playing gavotte, and always at the end of December it smelled of pine needles, and colorful paraffin burned on the green branches. In response, the bronze and gavotte that stand in the bedroom of the mother, and now Elena, were beaten in the dining room by black wall towers. My father bought them a long time ago, when women wore funny, bubble sleeves at the shoulders. Such sleeves disappeared, time flashed like a spark, the professor's father died, everyone grew up, but the clock remained the same and beat with a tower battle" ^{[3; vol. 2; p. 84]}. It is quite understandable that the foundation of M.A. Bulgakov's ideas about patriotism was precisely the images of his native home and loving family. These images were carefully carried by him through his short, but full of bright and tragic events life. Bulgakov wrote in his diary: "The stock of impressions is so huge in a day that they can be reduced only in fragments, with the idea of subsequently systematizing them. A day, as during the Sevastopol defense, for a month, a month – for a year" ^{[3; vol. 8; p. 98]}.

M.A. Bulgakov as a personality was formed among Russian intellectuals who came from the spiritual estate. His father was a professor at the Theological Academy, but Mikhail Bulgakov chose the medical path, graduating from Kiev University in 1916. Those who knew Bulgakov as a student note his purely monarchical beliefs. The events of the October Revolution, which Bulgakov, like most people of his circle, did not accept, and the civil war that followed the revolution had a huge impact on the formation of M.A. Bulgakov's worldview and on his entire career. Bulgakov left medicine for literature, moving to Moscow in 1921, where all the illogic and disorder of post-revolutionary life fell upon him.

And the thoughts of a house where one could create calmly and productively did not leave the writer. In 1922, Bulgakov's mother passed away, which gives the writer an additional impetus for philosophical reflections on life and death. The death of his mother severed a tangible connection with the past, which Bulgakov, nevertheless, did not stop thinking about. He is planning a voluminous novel about the Motherland and the fate of the Russian people who were caught up in the bloody events of the Civil War. The novel "The White Guard", written based on fresh impressions, full of philosophical reflections on the historical fate of Russia, was remade by the writer for the stage called "The Days of the Turbins". In 1926, the play, in which many of the plot moves of the novel were changed, was given on the stage of the Moscow Art Theater and was a stunning success with the audience.

But, most importantly, the play about white officers was very fond of I.V. Stalin, who already at that time was thinking about the need to return to traditional Russian patriotism and the idea of national statehood after the international and utopian ideas of the world revolution. Many of the characters in the play are presented as decent, thinking Russian people, as genuine patriots of their country, from whom it is necessary and possible to learn.

And although the leader himself approved the play, devastating responses appeared in the press: "I'm not saying anything against the author of Bulgakov's play, who is what he was, and will remain: a new bourgeois brat, spraying poisoned but impotent saliva on the working class and its communist ideals" ^{[3; vol. 8; p. 281]}. Subsequently, similar assessments will be reflected in the portraits of various critics painted by Bulgakov, who ostracize everything that they are unable to understand.

In the novel "The White Guard" and the play "The Days of the Turbins", the writer's faith in the humanistic foundations of life, which is embodied in the image of the house, is clearly traced. M.A. Bulgakov's house is associated with the Motherland. With indelible sadness and sincere love, the writer paints the homely comfort that was forever taken away from the Russian educated society by the years of the Russian troubles. And this is not a simple philistinism, which was so fond of being criticized in Soviet times, and which has largely won in modern Russia in the form of thoughtless "glamour".

The house connects the present with the past and gives hope for the future. The house is the homeland where you want to live: "Here is this tile, and old red velvet furniture, and beds with shiny cones, worn carpets, mottled and crimson, with a falcon on his arm Alexey Mikhailovich, with Louis XIV, basking on the shore of a silk lake in the garden of Eden, Turkish carpets with wonderful curlicues on the eastern field{...} a bronze lamp with a shade, the best bookcases in the world with books smelling of mysterious ancient chocolate, with Natasha Rostova, the Captain's Daughter, gilded cups, silver, portraits, curtains – all seven dusty and full rooms that raised the young Turbins..." ^{[3; vol. 2; pp. 84-85]}

Bulgakov believed that the new reality brought by the Soviet government had destroyed Home as a Homeland, as a quiet haven for a Russian man tired of social cataclysms. The Russian man was deprived of a safe haven, having fallen into a situation of existential abandonment. Bulgakov realized and tragically experienced the situation of universal universal homelessness in which the citizens of the collapsed great country found themselves, comprehending it in vivid artistic images. After all, a miserable room in a communal apartment can only be called a House with a big assumption. Therefore, a Russian man who has lost his Home appears in Bulgakov's works as a man who has lost his Homeland itself.

The revolution turned the Russian man into a homeless wanderer who had lost his habitual habitat and his place in life. Priests became stripped, peasants left their native villages, and "gentlemen", most of whom sincerely loved their Homeland, were forced to flee Russia, as Bulgakov showed in the play "Running". The life of people who have lost their Homeland is, as a rule, bitter and joyless.

But even the Russians who remained in Russia after the revolution expected little bright things from the future. Bulgakov's characters often huddle in other people's houses, basements, communal apartments, which was typical in those years of the housing crisis. The "Housing issue" gave an impetus to the creation of many bright works not only to M.A. Bulgakov, but also to M. Zoshchenko, and the brilliant duo of I. Ilf and E. Petrov. After an established family life in his native home, Bulgakov was forced to "remove corners" in Moscow. Like the hero of the "Theatrical Novel", the writer during the revolution acutely perceived his home as "cursed" and "disgusting". He visibly described the untidy entrances, the squalor of a room in a communal apartment with a dusty dim light bulb, and the ineradicable kitchen smells. The reader seems to see for himself a penny inkwell, a pile of old newspapers on the floor and an unhappy hungry cat picked up in a doorway – so vivid and vivid are the descriptions given by Bulgakov.

For many citizens of modern Russia, experiencing a communal collapse more than thirty years after the collapse of the great Soviet state and freezing at the peak of winter in their own apartments, Bulgakov's words are relevant, depicting the destroyed habitat from the story "The Heart of a Dog": "At first, singing every evening, then pipes freeze in the toilets, then the boiler in the steam room bursts heating and so on" ^{[3; vol. 3; p. 249]}.

Bulgakov wrote to his mother on November 17, 1921, about the difficulties of living in Moscow: "You cannot live outside such a life, otherwise you will die. I do not want to be among the dead" ^{[3; vol. 8; p. 38]}. This credo of a novice writer who survived the horrors of the Civil War was understandable and close not only to most of the heroes of the works created by Mikhail Bulgakov, but for many people of his circle – educated Russian patriots, whose habitual life was destroyed by the revolutionary whirlwind. These people did not strive for the victory of the world revolution, they loved Russia and wanted only one thing for a normal life: "in 3 years to restore the norm - an apartment, clothes, food and books" ^{[3; vol. 8; p. 39]}. It should be noted that only at the end of the sixth year of his life in Moscow, the writer managed to rent a three-room apartment on Bolshaya Pirogovskaya Street, where he had his own office.

Bulgakov's sense of Homeland was associated with home comfort, a well-adjusted and settled life, which the writer could not imagine without books. The book is not only a unique ethical component of the writer's artistic world, but also becomes a spiritual haven for Bulgakov and his characters. The writer describes with love and delight "the best bookcases in the world." The White Guard mentions Pushkin's "Captain's Daughter", Bunin's "The Gentleman from San Francisco", Dostoevsky's "Demons", Leo Tolstoy's "War and Peace" and, of course, the Bible - "a heavy book in a yellow leather cover", sometimes acting as a full-fledged actor. And in the biography "The Life of Monsieur de Moliere" written for the series "The Lives of Wonderful People" (unpublished during the writer's lifetime), the reader will see a solid register of treasures of world literature.

With his reverence for the book as the basis of a reasonably organized human existence, Bulgakov continued the mental paradigm of Pushkin, the book lover, who said goodbye to his extensive library with the words "Goodbye, friends!" and fully accepted the thoughtful attitude to the philosophical ideas of world literature that can be found in L.N. Tolstoy, who once wrote in his diary: "I read Goethe, and thoughts swarm" ^[17]. In our opinion, M.A. Bulgakov anticipated the enthusiastic perception of books that can be found among such intellectuals of the twentieth century as Jorge Borges and Umberto Eco. For a thinking Russian intellectual, Homeland is impossible without books, without spiritual culture. Bulgakov transformed the idea from The Tale of Bygone Years that books are rivers filling the universe into the belief that books are one of the existential foundations of being a thinking Russian person.

Bulgakov's characters enthusiastically discuss books and admire them "with pleasant and quiet joy", with pleasure, like Lariosik in The White Guard, "traveling around the walls covered with shelves, looking at the bindings with greedy eyes" ^{[3; vol. 2; p. 265]}. It was Bulgakov's books that he considered as sine qua non, an indispensable condition for the restoration of an established, truly human life on the land of his Homeland. Describing the way of life of the Turbin family, Bulgakov notes "two closely packed cabinets full of books", because "that was the name of the room in the professor's family – the book room" ^{[3; vol. 2; p. 84]}.

The world is often perceived by the writer precisely as a "library", as a natural habitat of a cultured person full of books. Moreover, without knowledge of the masterpieces of Pushkin, Leo Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, one cannot be a Russian person, a patriot and a citizen. The fruit of a thoughtless scientific experiment, Polygraph Polygraphovich Sharikov, studying the works of the classics of Marxism, appears as a terrible parody of a thinking person. And not only the death of the Fatherland, but also the collapse of the familiar world, Bulgakov presents episodes of burning books, including the destruction by the Master of his magnum opus in the sunset novel.

Therefore, Bulgakov considered Russian culture to be the beginning that creates the world and pacifies the chaos of entropy, which is the most important and integral part of the spiritual culture of all mankind. Only culture is able to prevent the ethical and axiological catastrophe that is maturing in society. No wonder Bulgakov's favorite writers were Pushkin and Dostoevsky, whose legacy he carefully studied and used in his work. And Bulgakov's patriotic views were not formed without the influence of these geniuses of Russian literature.

Not without the spiritual influence of Dostoevsky, who reflected on a single "tear of a child" as an unacceptable price for a future social paradise, Bulgakov has an eternal image of a child as a symbol of the limit that life itself sets to insane destruction and chaotic violence. In the novel "The White Guard" Bulgakov, depicting the death of a peaceful measured life and the horrors that the revolution brought with it, includes an episode of bathing a child. Children, the enduring value of life, triumph over the deceitful pathos and madness of the revolution. "Marya Petrovna was washing Petka. Petka was sitting naked in the trough and crying silently because the soap got into his eyes" ^{[3; vol. 2; p. 248]}. The patriotic idea of saving and preserving the people was artistically suffered and formulated by Bulgakov long before A.I. Solzhenitsyn.

Bulgakov himself never became a father, but in his works it is children who sometimes turn into the force that suspends the raging madness and even stops it. In the novel "The Master and Margarita", the awakened "boy of four years old" involuntarily stops the pogrom that the main character committed, overcome by a completely understandable sense of revenge, brought by her to the diabolical absurdity. Margarita turns from an enraged fury into a woman again.

A similar motive can be traced in the episode with the "interactive" globe, on which Woland can see all the evil and obscenities happening on the planet. And young children are paying the price for the madness of adults possessed by bloodthirsty demons of war. This has been the case in all ages of human history. This is still the case today. "Margarita saw a small female figure lying on the ground, and next to her in a pool of blood a small child's hands were scattered" ^{[3; vol. 5; p. 387]}. For Bulgakov, as for Dostoevsky, the measure of human actions is the life of a child, and the main moral imperative is the inadmissibility of permissiveness in history, over the plots of which Bulgakov often and fruitfully reflected. The story is clearly present on the pages of almost all of his works: from the short story "Khan's Fire" to the novel "The Master and Margarita".

The glorious and tragic history of the Fatherland is a powerful educational factor for the younger generation, if this generation strives to be genuine, and not "leavened" patriots. It was not for nothing that after the government of the USSR, realizing after various pedagogical experiments of the revolutionary years the need to educate Soviet youth using examples from the glorious past, announced a competition to write a textbook on the history of the country, Bulgakov set to work with great enthusiasm. Unfortunately, like much of his work, this project turned out to be completely unclaimed at that time. But it is precisely knowledge of Russian history and love for it that appears to be one of the most important foundations on which Bulgakov's patriotism is based.

M.A. Bulgakov watched with interest and not without understandable fear the social experiments of the Bolsheviks, especially the activities of I.V. Stalin. Harassed by various "Brass" and "Berlioz", sometimes without means of livelihood, Bulgakov writes a letter to the Soviet government: "Knowing that I can no longer be published or staged within the USSR... I ask ... for my exile outside the USSR" ^{[3; vol. 8; p. 254]}. But the incredible thing happened: the great leader, being an untalented artist, called the Master himself. During this telephone conversation, Stalin allowed Bulgakov to live and work as a director and actor of an Art Theater.

Stalin, who was building a new type of state, understood that a powerful socialist empire needed a beautiful facade, so he highly appreciated the writers, artists, and artists he needed who agreed to serve the new socialist Fatherland with their talent. But the Master was deprived of the opportunity to see most of his plays staged and his books published. Bulgakov passed away, seemingly doomed to oblivion. He did not see how his books became dearly loved by readers, and the thoughts hidden in them still encourage thinking people to fruitful reflections.

To us, former citizens of the great Soviet Union, Mikhail Bulgakov's statement from his early story "No. 13 – The House of Elpit-Rabkommune" is now very close and understandable: "It is terrible to live when kingdoms fall" ^{[3; vol. 1; p. 254]}. Bulgakov, like many Russian patriots, thought that with the death of the Russian Empire, Russia was lost. The writer in the novels "Diaboliada", "Heart of a Dog", "Fatal Eggs" and in other works comprehended and recreated all the illogic and chaotic socio-political life of Russia after the revolutionary events. Philosophers or historians have published many works on the characteristic features of the new mentality that arose after the revolution, and Mikhail Bulgakov in the "Heart of a Dog" put such reflections on the uncomplicated desires of the owners of the new Russia into the head of Sharik, who has not yet undergone vivisection: "I'm tired of my Matryona, now it's my time. I'm the chairman now, and no matter how much I steal, it's all on the female body, on cancerous necks, on Abrau–Durso. Because I was hungry enough in my youth, it will be enough for me, and there is no afterlife" ^{[3; vol. 3; p. 221]}.

But the creative forces of the people, inspired by the great idea of building a just society, overcame the forces of social entropy. In the 20s, Stalin himself made the evolution from an internationalist Bolshevik into a Russian patriot statesman, and the USSR created by the Bolshevik government became a new form of the great Russian state. For the Russian intellectual patriots who survived the death of this state in 1991, many burning questions related to the philosophy of history are relevant, which worried Bulgakov. One of the main issues remains: what should a Russian patriot do in the new, crisis-ridden historical conditions, when the usual and well-established life is collapsing? Bulgakov sought to answer this question in his creations, deeply comprehending the ideological and socio-philosophical problems of his era with vivid expressive means.

M.A. Bulgakov, unconditionally taking the side of the "knights of the white robes", assessed the civil war as a tragedy of Shakespearean intensity, without denying patriotic feelings and human dignity to the Red Guards. In the novel "The White Guard" at the end of 1918, Alexei Turbin sees in a dream how he gets to heaven and not only meets his friends who fell on the battlefield there, but also sees heavenly "mansions" for "Bolsheviks who are digging."

"What Kind of Perekop? Turbin asked, vainly straining his earthly mind.

- And this, Your Honor, they know everything in advance. In the twentieth year, the Bolsheviks, when they took Perekop, were apparently invisibly put down. So, therefore, the room was prepared for them" ^{[3; vol. 2; p. 148]}.

With this scene, Bulgakov not only shows the tragedy of the fratricidal war, but also makes you think about the world of the supernatural, where there is no familiar earthly time, but absolute timelessness prevails. There are no dead for God.

Love for the Motherland, according to M.A. Bulgakov, does not imply unconditional and blind love for the people. No wonder Viktor Myshlaevsky in the novel "The White Guard" ironically comments on Dostoevsky's words about the "God-bearing people", and in the first edition of the play "The Days of the Turbins" even suggests hanging "this outstanding writer" for his idyllic faith in the people. Having witnessed the cataclysms of the revolution and the Civil War, Bulgakov, like many educated Russian people at that time, wondered about the causes of the tragedies taking place and about the responsibility of the people in the horrors taking place. In this regard, Bulgakov often recalled Pushkin, whose "Captain's Daughter" leads the heroes of the White Guard to ponder hard about the "Russian rebellion, senseless and merciless," whose contemporaries they were destined to become.

Bulgakov feared that the revolutionary events would lead to the death of historical Russia, its disintegration. There were reasons for this, because in Ukraine during the civil war, the government was changing with grotesque speed. Therefore, Bulgakov's thoughts about the revolution are combined with thoughts about physical and social death as a natural result of the Russian Troubles: "Yes, death did not slow down. <...> She herself was not visible, but clearly visible was preceded by a kind of gnarled peasant anger. He ran through the snowstorm and the cold, in holey bast shoes, with hay in his uncovered, matted head, and howled. In his hands he carried a great club, without which no great undertaking in Russia can do. Light red cockerels fluttered. Then the Jewish shinkar, hanged by the genitals, appeared in the crimson setting sun" ^{[3; vol. 2; p. 150]}.

Bulgakov compared the defeat of the "white guard" with death, reflecting figuratively and philosophically: "Oh, only those who were defeated themselves know what this word looks like! It's like an evening in a house where the electric lighting has gone bad. It looks like a room with green mold crawling on the wallpaper, full of painful life. It looks like rickets, demons of children, rotten vegetable oil, swearing in women's voices in the dark. In a word, it looks like death" ^{[3; vol. 2; p. 145]}.

Bulgakov saw and captured all the chaotic and meaningless political life of the first post-revolutionary years. It seemed to many Russian patriots then that Russia was dead, and the Bolsheviks were obsessed only with the idea of implementing a world revolution. Bulgakov himself held conservative political views based on: Russian Russian state; 1) the idea of a powerful and unified Russian state; 2) the belief that "enlightened autocracy" will save and unite Russia; 3) the hope in the historical goodness of an effective, not servile Orthodoxy; 4) the geopolitical idea of equality of the peoples of Russia with the unconditional spiritual primacy of the Russian people as a state-forming factor, and mutually beneficial cooperation with Europe, with which Russia is bound by indissoluble spiritual ties. This becomes clear when studying the materials he prepared for a textbook on the history of Russia. When Bulgakov began to realize that Stalin was building a new state based on the idea of a new Soviet patriotism that genetically incorporated traditional Russian patriotism, his attitude towards the leader began to change.

Bulgakov, like Fyodor Dostoevsky, understood the need for strong state power for the very existence of Russia. If the state collapses, then the people will face terrible trials during the years of turmoil. If Dostoevsky sincerely believed that the duty of a Russian patriot writer as a genuine "son of the fatherland" was to convey his opinion to the monarchs, and even to give them advice in governing the country, then Bulgakov could not even think of advising the leaders of the Soviet state "how we should equip Russia."

Of course, Bulgakov understood the danger of totalitarianism in a country in which the memory of serfdom and slavery had not yet been erased from human souls. Reflecting on the role of Russian patriots, great writers and poets, he realized that the great people of the people are not the great people themselves. In Russia, great people usually fall victim not only to the government, but also to the people themselves. But after all, every person is unique and inimitable. As Heinrich Heine once remarked, under every tombstone lies the history of the world. And if Mayakovsky, in the voice of an "agitator, a gorlan, a leader," shouted that "one is nonsense, one is zero," then his opponent M.A. Bulgakov asserted in his work the uniqueness and uniqueness of each person as the main secret of the universe.In the novel "Fatal Eggs" we read: "No matter how simple the combination of glasses with mirrored beams of light was, it was not combined a second time, despite Ivanov's efforts. Obviously, something special was needed for this, besides the knowledge that only one person in the world possessed - the late Professor Vladimir Ipatievich Persikov" ^{[3; vol. 3; p. 216]}.

Only through the preservation of the uniqueness of an individual can a nation be preserved. It is in this way, according to M.A. Bulgakov, that the patriotic idea of saving the people is realized. In his early work "The Extraordinary Adventures of a Doctor," Bulgakov conveys the thoughts of a doctor who, against his will, was drawn into a civil war: "Since childhood, I have hated Fenimore Cooper, Sherlock Holmes, tigers and rifle shots, Napoleon, wars and all sorts of brave exploits of the sailor Cat. I don't have a penchant for it. I have a penchant for bacteriology" ^{[2; vol. 1; p. 432]}.

And after all, there were an overwhelming majority of such people in Russia who simply wanted to live an ordinary life, raise children and work for the benefit of the Motherland. Instead, they were destined to kill each other in an absurd war. Bulgakov's doctor finds himself in the Khankal gorge, where Chechens, "like devils", are fighting with Russian people, and indignantly exclaims: "What am I, Lermontov, or something! It seems to be his specialty. What have I got to do with it!!!" ^{[2; vol. 1; p. 436]} But history ruthlessly negates all his plans for a peaceful life, in which he wanted to treat people, not kill them: "The green lamp went out. “Chemotherapy for spirillosis diseases” is lying on the floor. They're shooting in the alley. I was mobilized by the fifth government" ^{[2; vol. 1; p. 432]}. It is precisely such a simple Russian person that Bulgakov considers as the norm in his understanding of patriotism.

The whole history of Mikhail Bulgakov's relations with the Soviet government shows that talented and creative people are dangerous for totalitarianism, because their patriotism is based precisely on love for the Motherland, and not for the state or the leader representing this state. Bulgakov saw that a new, Soviet patriotism was being born. On the other hand, as a connoisseur of history, he understood that totalitarianism could not allow even the slightest encroachments on the infallibility and greatness of the leaders.

In the Soviet country, any dissent was tantamount to spiritual corruption and intellectual contagion, and submission was required from the masters of culture, first of all. This could not but cause Bulgakov anxiety, who, like Pushkin once, was not inclined to identify the Motherland and the state. No wonder in the play "Pushkin", which tells about the poet's death, Bulgakov writes: "The death of a great citizen was accomplished because in the country unlimited power was handed over to unworthy persons who treat the people as slaves..." ^{[2; vol. 3; p. 504]} Alas, these words lead to sad thoughts about the coils historical spirals that have a mystical tendency to repeat in our country.

The real patriots who love Russia, its great history and amazing culture are intellectuals and Russian educated people: Professor Preobrazhensky and Dr. Bormental ("The Heart of a Dog"), the Master, Professors Persikov ("Fatal Eggs") and Efrosimov ("Adam and Eve"), Sergey Leontievich Maksudov ("Theatrical Novel"), the inventor of the Timofeev time machine ("Ivan Vasilyevich"), the Turbin family ("White Guard").

Bulgakov saw that there are intellectuals who develop science, art and literature, and there are fruitless critics-intellectuals who cannot create anything themselves, but only with bitterness belittle what intellectuals have created. Reflecting on the years of the revolution, he understood that it was precisely such intelligent critics, who were in eternal opposition to the monarchy, who were largely responsible for the revolutionary collapse, when the evolutionary development of the country was thoughtlessly and mercilessly disrupted. Bulgakov could not consider such intellectuals, who poured oil on the fire of the revolutionary conflagration, on which most would soon burn themselves, to be patriots. It is not for nothing that Pushkin, highly revered by Bulgakov, wrote in The Captain's Daughter: "The best and most lasting changes are those that occur from the improvement of morals, without any violent shocks" ^{[15; p. 1093]}. Our intelligentsia, deprived of a sense of love for the Motherland, demanded great and bloody upheavals, and received the collapse of the usual sociality and the entire Russian statehood.

Bulgakov described the sad end of many such liberal critics of the former Russian life in the novel "Notes on Cuffs": "Hungry, late in the evening I walk through puddles in the dark. Everything is boarded up! There are scraps of socks and torn shoes on his feet. There is no sky. Instead, there is a huge footcloth hanging. I'm drunk with despair... I have a cap on my head. I took my top hat from hunger to the bazaar. Good people bought it and made a parasha out of it. But I will not carry my heart and brain to the bazaar, even if I die" ^{[3; vol. 1; p. 195]}.

In his notes, Bulgakov wrote, not without irony, about the pre-revolutionary intelligentsia: "For anyone who immediately took into account the ability of the Revolution to penetrate not only through the stone walls of old buildings, but also through the shell of human souls, it became quite clear that its violent waves, of course, would not stop before the dilapidated doors of old theatrical "temples", and inevitably they will pour into them.

And so it happened. We must do justice to the Russian intelligentsia. She, with her eternal ability to lag behind and be in the tail everywhere, with her habit of evaluating events much later after they happened, with her eternal fear of the new, remained true to herself here" ^{[3; vol. 8; p. 73]}.

Of course, for Bulgakov, officials could not serve as a model of patriotism, in any era of Russian history striving only for personal gain and, as M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin ironically said, never shared the concepts of "Fatherland" and "Your Excellency". Bulgakov subjected such pseudo-patriot officials to merciless satire. For example, in the novel "The Master and Margarita", Prokhor Petrovich, who is extremely outspoken and loves to curse, disappears, and an "empty suit" without a head and legs turns out to be at his desk. Having lied to the Behemoth that he was busy (a typical excuse of the lazy bureaucratic brotherhood at all times), and wishing that the devils would take him, the bureaucrat was terribly punished. The behemoth fulfills the official's wish: "The devils to take? But the headless something, nevertheless, continues to lead and give instructions on the phone. Thus, Bulgakov, continuing the glorious traditions of Saltykov-Shchedrin, shows that for officials of the Soviet country, as well as for Dementiy Varlamovich Brudastyi from The History of One City, the head is not particularly needed. In the understanding of M.A. Bulgakov, there is not a grain of genuine patriotism in party functionaries bearing such "purely Russian" surnames as Shvonder ("Dog's Heart"), Rokk ("Fatal Eggs"), Longjohn ("Diaboliade").

Neither Russia nor Russian history interested such figures – at best, they remembered Russia as a springboard for the world revolution, the red chariots of which they still continued to dream of in the 20s. A. Zerkalov wrote well about such pseudo-patriots, Soviet bureaucrats: "... healthy criteria for the formation of a bureaucratic structure were lost: belonging to a privileged stratum (giving a sense of responsibility), education (guaranteeing competence) and reputation (guaranteeing moral behavior)" ^[12]. Such figures – if the authorities please – destroy churches and close temples, persecuting priests and parishioners, and when the wind blowing from the power peaks changes, they begin to cross themselves fervently and diligently attend Christmas and Easter services.

Bulgakov's worldview as a Russian man and a patriot was formed in an Orthodox country. What was the role of religion in M.A. Bulgakov's worldview and were his religious views connected with patriotic ideas? How did he feel about Russian Orthodoxy and Christianity in general? Did he believe in God and in his creation – the archangel of light, who once rebelled against his creator? Of course, some writers and ministers of the church are tempted to call the book "Satanic", in one of the editions of which the hero asks with horror and hope: "Where are you dragging me, O great Satan", and in the final version of the novel states: "When people are completely robbed ... they seek salvation from an otherworldly force" ^{[3; vol. 5; p. 511]}. His beloved is in a frenzy, but also quite sincerely praises the Prince of Darkness: "Omnipotent, omnipotent."

M.A. Bulgakov came from a Russian Orthodox believing family, but in his own intellectual studies about good and evil, about God, the devil and the intervention of supernatural forces in people's lives, he turned out to be incredibly far from the sincere faith of his grandfather Ivan, who was a priest of the cemetery church in Orel. But Bulgakov's faith in God withstood the horrors of the revolution and the civil war. His first wife Tatyana Nikolaevna recalled: "... He believed. Just didn't show it.… He never prayed, did not go to church, he did not have a cross, but he believed. He was superstitious" ^{[11, p. 45]}.

Bulgakov's faith in God is indirectly evidenced in the novel "The White Guard" by scenes of Elena's prayer to the Mother of God and the miraculous recovery of her brother Alexei Turbin. Elena addresses the Mother of God precisely as a mother who can understand and save: "The mother took from us, I do not have a husband and will not ... and now you are taking away the eldest" ^{[3; vol. 2; p. 352]}. And the writer describes the connection that arises in a mystical way between Elena and Maria figuratively, but at the same time realistically: "The corolla above the swarthy face of the Mother of God turned into gold, her eyes became friendly. The head, tilted to one side, looked at Elena" ^{[3; vol. 2; pp. 352-353]}. And the words of the unfortunate sister heard by the higher powers turned into a miracle: Alexey Turbin survived.

In a diary entry in 1923, Bulgakov himself writes about his own theodicy, which he came to after much thought: "Maybe the strong and brave don't need Him, but for people like me, it's easier to live with the thought of him… So let's hope in God and live. This is the only and best way" ^{[3; vol. 8; p. 90]}.

Russian Russian relatives recalled: "Like all Bulgakovs, M. A. believed that every Russian person is a mystic by nature, and the struggle against religion, in his opinion, took away from the Russian people their "backbone", so he wanted, he considered it his duty to awaken religious feeling in Russian minds again" ^{[11, p. 60]}. Russian Russians, apparently, the writer deeply reflected on the words of Shatov from Dostoevsky's novel "Demons" that "an atheist cannot be Russian, an atheist immediately ceases to be Russian," and his patriotism naturally included an Orthodox component – first of all, in the form of following Russian cultural and historical traditions.

Elena Bulgakova, the third wife of the Master, unconditionally testifies to her husband's Orthodoxy. Already dying, he ruled in the manuscript of the "sunset novel" the dialogue of Pontius Pilate with Yeshua. According to Elena Sergeevna, the last thing the writer said before his death was: "Forgive me, accept me!", and shortly before his death Bulgakov asked his wife and his friend P. S. Popov to serve a memorial service for him.

With regard to the topic of our work, the characteristic that E.S. Bulgakova gave to her late husband deserves attention. On July 7, 1946, in the hope of publishing the works of her late husband, Elena Sergeevna wrote to Stalin: "The name of Bulgakov, who so selflessly gave his heart, mind and talent to his infinitely beloved Homeland, remains unrecognized and buried in silence. I ask you to save Bulgakov a second time, this time from undeserved oblivion" ^{[3; vol. 8; p. 389]}. In our opinion, Bulgakov is in demand now, more than ever before, by all patriotic-minded intellectuals of Russia precisely as a statesman thinker who knew the history and culture of his native country perfectly well and believed in the realization of the best potencies that are hidden in the soul of the people and figures of national culture.

So, let's summarize the results of our research. The patriotic views of Mikhail Afanasyevich Bulgakov, which are an integral part of his philosophical worldview, were in many ways similar to those of A.S. Pushkin, who always distinguished ostentatious official patriotism from genuine love for the Fatherland. M.A. Bulgakov also did not identify the Motherland with the state, but knew, appreciated and loved the complex and tragic history of our Fatherland, believing It is history that is the most important factor for the formation of patriotic consciousness. But, like F.M. Dostoevsky, Bulgakov realized the need for a strong state power to preserve and prosper Russia – the main thing is that this power takes into account the interests of not only the state, but also ordinary citizens.

The Motherland was conceived by M.A. Bulgakov as a Home where books and children play a huge role as indispensable conditions for a truly human life. The writer's patriotic views were associated with the following worldviews: 1) the desire to transform Russia into a powerful power in all respects; 2) the idea of "enlightened autocracy", that is, a strong intellectual power at the head of the country; 3) the goodness for Russia of an effective, not servile Orthodoxy, depending entirely on state power; 4) the equality of the peoples inhabiting Russia with the unconditional primacy of Russian 5) not obsequious worship of European culture and spiritual values, but respectful and mutually beneficial coexistence with Europe.

At its core, M.A. Bulgakov's patriotic ideas relate to enlightened conservatism, which was characteristic of N.M. Karamzin and other Russian enlighteners ^[8]. It is quite obvious that the conservative ideology, the basis of which is the triad "autocracy – Orthodoxy – nationality" and which was promoted by the great Russian writer M.A. Bulgakov, is once again becoming extremely popular in modern Russia.