Yakov Krotov: how to live when there is no life?

Yakov Krotov, priest

I watched for the first time a video recording of Father Alexandra Men in a Library of the foreign literature in 1988 - apparently, it was one of the first such his speeches. I have not been to it, I have not gone to his lectures, or to any lectures ever for the same reason that I do not listen to YouTube - it's a pity, there is too little information per minute.

Of course, wow...

But here I thought. In 1990, four people of the same age died. My scientific chief Alexander Stanislavsky at the beginning of the year, Venedikt Yerofeyev in the summer, fr.Alexander was killed, a month later - Mamardashvili, due to the heart attack. I didn't know personally only Yerofeyev, which I don't regret at all, I admit, because alcoholics are not my element.

So, what is the main problem now? How to live when it is impossible to live. These four people are four options, four scenarios. The most extreme are Yerofeyev, self-destruction, grassroots foolishness, and Men - self-creation, riding foolishness. Stanislavsky and Mamardashvili are average options, intellectuals as such. One thing in common - all four did not cheat, did not cheat. They could have been lying. But if asked head-on, of course, they would say that they are against the events in Ukraine, Czechoslovakia, etc. That is, everything was written on their face. And in the voice. In this they differed from the wise minnows and dried roaches in cassocks and without.

It is impossible to live, because in slavery there is not life, but horror. There is no way out. The lie of dissidence - even good dissidence, not to mention operatic oppositionism - is self-deception and deception. Like, you can get rid of the slave owner. It won't work! Well, not in our lifetime. Mothers, in tiny Belarus, which does not even have nuclear weapons, cannot overthrow despotism, an abscess of codependence on dictatorship has already formed. And the whole West is powerless. What can we say about Russia.

But do you have to live? Do you want to?

All four people are Uncle Tom, only somewhat differently realized. Father Alexander is just Uncle Tom, but more sanguine than bookish. Yerofeyev is a deliberately drunk Uncle Tom, a melancholic. Stanislavsky is Uncle Tom choleric. Mamardashvili is phlegmatic.

Maybe the way out is to be less of an uncle and more of an aunt? Tom's aunt. By the way, Alexander's father had everything in order with this, he had that wisdom and grace, the ability to glide along the golden mean, which in a patriarchal society are pushed onto women.