The Russian Century: A Hundred Years of Russian Lives

And then I realized that this way was the only true way to universal happiness and the kingdom of good that I had dreamed of since childhood. Since it’s not society that is bad, but man himself, then however many revolutions you have, it will only be like running in place. The have-nots envy the rich, take their wealth from them and themselves become the rich (“he who was nothing has become everything”), society once again is divided along the lines of rich and poor, and so on forever. Because the very desire for equity is founded on selfishness: a person thinks that he has not received his fair share and undertakes to establish equity. Yet when every person will be glad, when he can give more to another than he takes for himself (as parents are happy, when they give the tastiest bits to their children)—that’s when true justice will come into being. And this universal happiness will not be dependent on universal well-being. Material well-being has never made people happy. But they can be happy in poverty. That’s why the teaching that presumes the establishment of a paradise on earth together with the attainment of universal abundance is utopian. The maxim “from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs,” is wrong. It will never be possible to satisfy man’s unbridled desires (recall the fable “The Fisherman and the Fish”).

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Chapter Twenty-Eight

There is another thing that I then understood: The only thing that can truly transform a person is to love all people, including the wicked, and to answer evil with good. While in most cases, evil begets evil.

Throughout history, humanity on the whole has lived according to the rule “an eye for and eye”—and what is the result? Endless suffering. Auschwitz and hydrogen bombs. Because an evil plus an evil equals two evils.

My final turning point occurred after Crime and Punishment. In Raskol-nikov I recognized my former self, and in the collapse of his worldview, the collapse of mine. And our savior was the righteous sinner, Sonia Marmeladov with the Gospel in hand.

Dostoevsky brought to me fragments of the Gospel, and these fragments seemed more wonderful than anything I had known. I remember how, when I had read the final page, I went outside. There was a fine, light rain and the wind was blowing. I wandered the streets of Moscow that night and thought about how the next day, I would begin a new life, quite different from the one I had known until then.

But this new belief of mine still was not true religiosity. It was rather a reasoned belief. I simply considered that it was more proper, more reasonable to live in such a fashion (while acknowledging immortality, of course). Without that, this new life was just as senseless as everything else. Having been taught to be rational, I could not grasp the irrational. To me, the rituals of the Church seemed senseless, games old women played. Well, what would possibly occur if I were dunked in water or if I crossed myself? Then once, already as one who acknowledged the teachings of Christ and who sympathized with religion, I dropped by a church—just to take a look. The impression was incredible. Yes, it was all ornate, but the theater can also be ornate. But I was gripped by a feeling that I had never experienced in any theater. Most importantly, after that visit I became much stronger in my Christian convictions, and a simple thought occurred to me: we cannot simply think and feel, we must also express our thoughts and feelings symbolically. Our every word is in fact a symbol. Yet it doesn’t seem odd to us when we, upon greeting someone, say “hello” and shake his hand. The rituals of the Church are also symbols that cannot be dispensed with. Without them the faith within one’s soul will wither.

After that I had no doubts in the necessity of baptism. If the human soul in all its forms senses the difference between good and evil, and, with rare exceptions, a person who commits a vile act knows that he behaves wrongly, not humanely, and since there is nothing more humane than Christianity—it follows that in Christianity there is truth. (Later I became convinced of this in practice. And I think that if every person were to analyze his life without atheistic superstitions and prejudice, he would become convinced of the same.) A

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person can strive only after that which is implanted in him. After all, we don’t try to make ourselves grow tails.

I then told a student acquaintance in the Theological Academy, with whom I had previously spoken only about literature (he, from a reluctance to proselytize, and I from a sense of tact, so as not offend him by mocking religion), that I wanted to be baptized.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Valentin Kataev, A Paschal Memory