Marian ZDZIECHOWSKI (1861-1938)
Historian of culture
and literature, literary critic, essaist. B. April 30, 1861, Nowosiółki
(today Belorussia). He conducted comparative research into the psychology
of Slavonic nations against the background of their political, social,
religious, philosophical, and ethical systems, publishing Mesjaniœci i słowianofile ("Messianists and Slavophiles", 1888),
Wpływy rosyjskie na duszę
polskš ("Russian Influences on the Polish Soul", 1920), Europa,
Rosja, Azja ("Europe, Russia, Asia", 1923), and other works;
he also corresponded profusely with many representatives of the
Russian elites (such as the Trubetskoy brothers, Merezhkovsky and
Berdayev). Defender of the traditional European culture, polemist
of the Catholic modernists from the turn of the century, Zdziechowski
not only reflected on the foundations of this culture and contemporary
dangers it was exposed to, especially from radical currents, bolshevism
being pre-eminent among them (Pessymizm,
romantyzm a podstawy chrzeœcijaństwa ["Pessimism, Romanticism,
and the Foundations of Christianity"], 1914; Gloryfikacja
pracy ["Glorification of Labour"]; 1916, Renesans a rewolucja ["Renaissance and the Revolution"], 1925; Widmo przysz³oœci ["The Spectre
of the Future"], 1936; W obliczu
koñca ["Facing the End"], 1938), but also wrote on history
of literature (Byron i jego
wiek ["Byron and His Age"], vol. 1-2, 1894-97; U
epoki mesjanizmu ["The Messianic Epoch"], 1912), with a special
focus on the works by Zygmunt Krasiński and Stanisław Brzozowski.
D. Oct. 5, 1938, Vilnius.
The selected fragments
are from two texts by Zdziechowski: Czerwony terror ["The Red Terror"], and Tragiczna Europa. W obronie liberalizmu ["Tragic Europe. In Defence of Liberalism"],
in the collection W obliczu
końca ["Facing the End"], which originally appeared 1937 in
Vilnius, reprinted from Biblioteka Frondy, Apostolicum: Warszawa-Zšbki
1999, pp. 77-84 and 85-94.
Bolshevism decided to eradicate from the human soul every thought of God,
and hence to kill off the longing for a higher life and destroy
everything in the world, starting from God's temples, which is a
visible expression of this longing. Let there be no trace that religion
has ever existed, that people have ever prayed.
My late friend, prince Grigorii Trubetskoy, says in a beautiful book published
posthumously that in these worst times of the first triumphs of
bolshevism, "when the earth caved in under our feet and we did not
know where to hide from the horror, often a blissful peace descended
upon the soul with the sound of evening bells calling for prayer
in those churches in Moscow which the Bolsheviks had not yet destroyed
or appropriated. We forgot about life's monstrosities; it seemed
that high above the bells, somewhere in the heavens, a solemn, splendid
Te Deum was played". Vladimir Solovyov
was right when he said that the "liturgy of the Eastern rite was
created by angels". Every Orthodox faithful believes and feels that
angels take part in it and lead us towards the gates of eternal
light. [...]
Russia produced a type of pilgrim who is looking for God's truth, endlessly
wandering from one sacred place to another. [...]
However, the pilgrim who roams the world driven by the desire to see the
Kingdom of God is just one pole of the Russian soul and thinking.
On the opposite pole we see a Bolshevik who shouts foaming at the
mouth that God does not exist and cries death unto them who believe
in God. The Russians are by nature maximalists: it is all or nothing
with them. There is no balance in this nation - they jump from one
extremity to another, from God to the devil. [...]
At present Russia is the kingdom of the devil.
Tragic Europe. In Defense of Liberalism
Communism is a fundamentalist, uncompromising socialism, i.e. one that
disregards reality, pushes towards its aim through revolution and
destruction, because there is no other way. Revolution and destruction
are the law of nature and based on this law are the cruel dogmas
of Marxist materialism: "Let nine tenths of the Russian population
die - Lenin used to say - just as long as one tenth see a new world,
built on Marxian principles". In Russian bolshevism the spirit of
French Jacobinism was revived, but taken to extreme forms.
An international revolution, intended to embrace the entire world, must
gradually conquer all other countries if it is not to perish on
its own. With this aim in view bolshevism splendidly organized a
pan-European or even universal propaganda. Fearing that it would
be defeated in war, it proposed a vast plan for destroying Europe
through flooding its markets with its own output. The so-called
piatiletka (five-year
plan) was to serve this purpose. In addition, bolshevism was lucky
that after the dictatorship of a man of Lenin's stature there came
the equally formidable Stalin. It is a very rare, perhaps the only
such case in history - and it should not be expected that after
Stalin's death a man worthy of his two predecessors will arrive.
And even if they could find such a man, he will not save bolshevism, for
in the battle between life and an ideology alien to life it is always
life that prevails, and bolshevism goes against life, attempting
to turn man into an automaton. [...]
The work of Jewish and Russian Bolsheviks, though doomed to perish, has
the great advantage that it appeared, to use Gustav le Bon's terms,
in an era when the old gods left the stage. Like a ship that has
lost its compass and is swept by winds in all directions, modern
man is aimlessly wandering through those spaces which were once
inhabited by these gods, and which have now turned into a desert.
The science of nature has taught us how infinitely small a thing
is man against the enormous universe, how indifferent is nature
towards him, how ruthless is the selection whereby the strong, crushing
the weak, produce what we call progress. Contrary to claims that
science is compatible with religion, science, especially the thriving
natural sciences, created an atmosphere where old beliefs were dissolved
and vanished. After short bursts of enthusiasm for science with
its present and future blessings, there came a skepticism murderous
of will, followed by a philosophical nihilism disguised as relativism.
Has anyone heard about a civilization anywhere and at any time that
rested on principles regarded as being of relative value? The saddest
thing is that today relativism infects the upholders of absolute
principles, even Catholics. [...]
Do they not see that bolshevism is a counter-religion, a "counter-Church"
with its red pope in Moscow? However, if the intelligentsia can
content themselves with relativism, the masses want belief. This
belief, not in God, but in the divine power of magic words or formulas,
is given to them by the Muscovite red pope. The French Revolution
bequeathed us three causes: liberty, fraternity, and equality. Liberty
is regarded as junk and laughed at; fraternity is out of the question
amidst the class war now raging. What remains is equality. [...]
What is man, what is his destiny, his end? There are two answers, the Christian
one, that God is the end, and the humanist one, that man is the
end: theocentrism and anthropocentrism, two legitimate intellectual
trends. Anthropocentric humanism, conceiving God pantheistically,
was essentially a rebellion against the idea of original sin. But
the author admits that it would be an "unfair simplification on
our part if we regarded humanism as a gradual, fatal, and unresisted
descent on the lowlands of materialism". Humanism defended itself,
fought tragic battles against its own consequences, but the systems
it founded, fighting and destroying each other, led to calling into
doubt the existence of objective truth, led to relativism! Relativism
in the moral sphere denies the absolute character of the ideals
of right and wrong. Hence, in the life of an individual it means
surrendering to his own nature, his primitive instincts, it is "free
love, followed by the perversion of love, then sadism, then crime,
various steps, but the same staircase, and on the last step there
stands bolshevism, which so masterfully and methodically used the
sexual instinct for the purposes of its propaganda". In the life
of society the effect of relativism is subjecting the individual
to laws imposed by society; and since the political expression of
society is the state wielding all the means of coercion, the priest
is being supplanted with a policeman. This ideal is already being
instituted; we are observing it with our own very eyes.
In a word, Europe is going through the tragedy of gradually losing the
illusions that have hitherto guided its life. As its aim it took
up man, that is, humanity, reason, nature, science, taking control
of the material world, statehood, the well-being of the disadvantaged
- noble things but only as means to the ultimate aim, to God. Today
we see that man is not good, that reason is not infallible, that
nature is indifferent, that science can in equal measure be employed
towards right and wrong ends. Matter overwhelms the spirit, the
state overwhelms the nation; classes are soulless tyrannies. Some
unknown forces carry us towards unknown ends; we succumb to spiritual
defeatism.
There is one solution: return to the point we started from, to God, to
the Christian idea, perceiving man as a creature carrying within
himself an image of God and destined for supernatural goals, and
not as a biological entity. The Christian idea requires an authority
standing guard to God's Law. It is either one or the other: a spiritual
authority or physical coercion. What is better: an order coming
from above or this horrible organization which grips in its vise
from below, "rationalizes", "homogenizes", threatens with killing
off the spirit?
In the face of the common enemy and the common danger of the progressing
dechristianization of the world, let all Christians, regardless
of their denomination, make a joint effort based on the belief that
without Christianity there can be no civilization.