home Health technologies Freedom is a conscious necessity. "freedom" as a "conscious necessity"

Freedom is a conscious necessity. "freedom" as a "conscious necessity"

This saying goes back to ancient Greek antiquity, and more precisely to the philosophy of the Stoics, which arose in Athens around 300 BC. O. B. Skorodumova notes that the Stoics were characterized by the idea of the inner freedom of man. Thus, she writes, convinced that the world is determined (“the law of fate does its right... no one’s prayer touches him, neither suffering nor mercy will break him”), they proclaim the inner freedom of man as the highest value: “That Anyone who thinks that slavery extends to the individual is mistaken: his best part free from slavery." A kind of their philosophy proclaims the inner freedom of man, from any external limiters, but is this so?

Here we should understand human free will, that is, the possibility of choice, as well as in Spinoza: freedom is a conscious necessity or need. In the most general sense, free will is the absence of pressure, restrictions, and coercion. Based on this, freedom can be defined as follows: freedom is the ability of an individual to think and act in accordance with his desires and ideas, and not as a result of internal or external coercion. This general definition, built on opposition and the essence of the concept, it does not yet reveal.

The course of B. Spinoza’s reasoning is as follows. Usually people are convinced that they are endowed with free will and their actions are carried out completely freely. Meanwhile, free will is an illusion, the result of the fact that the vast majority of people are aware of their actions without delving deeply into the reasons that determine them. Only a wise minority, capable of rising on the paths of rational-intuitive knowledge to the awareness of the world connection of all causes with a single substance, comprehends the necessity of all their actions, and this allows such sages to transform their affects-passions into affects-actions and thereby gain true freedom. If the freedom of our will is only an illusion generated by inadequate sensory-abstract ideas, then true freedom - “free necessity” - is possible only for those who achieve adequate, rational-intuitive ideas and comprehend the unity of acquired freedom with necessity.

The meaning of this idea is that you feel free when you do something regardless of someone else's will. Very often you have to strain yourself and do something completely undesirable. But this is only if you do not consider it right and necessary yourself. That is, the more you understand the meaning of your actions, the easier they come to you. Awareness leads to liberation of the spirit.

Life in society imposes restrictions on each person (renunciation of some personal freedoms) for the sake of the sustainable functioning or progress of society itself. In this case, the restrictions are more than redeemed by new opportunities, that is, an increase in freedom. A kind of freedom of each individual ends where the freedom of another person begins.

Thus, a free person is a person who consciously accepts the limitations of his capabilities (limitations of his personal freedom) necessary for the existence of a society that, by its existence, further increases human freedom. A kind of opposition arises: restriction of freedom leads to its increase, since its conscious restriction is necessary for the normal existence of society.

It should be understood that the concept of freedom, one way or another, has been transformed in human culture over time. For example, in a number of historical periods for a person, the concept of freedom was belonging to a corporation, and the opposite of this type of freedom was exile 1 . Also, freedom differs in consideration and in the ranks of regions, so in the east of the Christian world the individual is presented with free will, but in the west his life is predetermined. In a way, we see a clash of two extremes: voluntarism on the one hand and fatalism on the other.

Now freedom is perceived completely differently; it represents the opportunity to manage one’s existence and the products of one’s labor. On the other hand, it is perceived as the opportunity to make choices and the ability to manage intangible things: one’s abilities and capabilities. In philosophy, freedom is seen as a necessity. But this need must be considered in conjunction with the relationships between the individual and other people. Thus, we will see that a person cannot be absolutely free and not have any restrictions, on the other hand inner life a person is absolutely free, but a person’s inner and outer life are very different. Life in society, as we noted above, imposes a number of restrictions, and since life in society is also a necessity, it should be noted that in order to fulfill one need it is necessary to limit another. One fairly simple mechanism acts as a limiter: freedom appears to us as freedom of choice and it is necessary to bear responsibility for its implementation.

Exercise.

Is unlimited freedom possible in society?

What articles of the Russian Constitution guarantee freedom?

What is the connection between the concepts of “freedom” and “responsibility”?

1 A striking example of such freedom is the medieval estates, where people had clear regulation of rights and freedoms. While people outside the classes were alien and alien.

Why does society and politics need philosophy?

Alexander Khaldey

Hunter: Are you saying that a person can lift himself up by his hair?

Munchausen: Definitely! thinking man I just have to do it from time to time.

If, according to Bulgakov, he ruined the Muscovites housing problem, then the Marxists were ruined by their lack of understanding of their own philosophy. Marxists talked a lot about dialectics, but in 99% of cases they mentioned it in vain, not understanding the essence of what Engels said. In general, studying the dialectics of Marxism should begin with studying the dialectics of Hegel, and after Lenin and Stalin no one climbed so deeply into the jungle of Marxism. And this is not the fault of the Marxists - they simply did not publish Hegel in the USSR. There was simply nowhere for the Shirnar masses to read it - not everyone had access to the treasures of the library of the Institute of Philosophy of the USSR Academy of Sciences. So what grew up was a generation of communist leaders who had the classics of Marxism in their office for the sake of image.

Now communism as a worldview system has become an unused programming language. They remember him, some authors are somewhat influenced by his ethics, but they do not understand the core and do not use this system to explain the world. They just sometimes experience the impulses of Marxism as residual phenomena or phantom pains in a severed limb. For example, they don’t like oligarchs or the government’s pension reform. They don’t like the word “exploitation”, they really don’t like the word “capitalism” (they don’t like the word “communism” either, so it’s not possible to define their worldview as a system). They do not fully accept the word “freedom”, denying both its radical communist and liberal connotations.

In a word, the masses, together with the layers of anti-liberal intelligentsia who help them formulate their opinions, find it difficult to determine their systemic worldview and live within the framework of profane everyday “common sense,” colloquially understood as “for everything good against everything bad.” Not bad for an intellectual mechanic, but unacceptable for a doctor of all humanities - from economics to political. And since the Soviet educational system, from the depths of which they emerged, at one time produced them in great numbers, without ever bringing them to the point of philosophical readiness, the army of these semi-idealists, semi-professionals (essentially the real Vekhi intellectuals) roams around Mother Russia , grumbling and grumbling, criticizing existence for its inconsistency with consciousness and seducing many little ones who believe in them and their scientific degrees and expert verdicts.

The most difficult issue for our humanities professors is the topic of the relationship between freedom and necessity. Engels at one time seduced them with his formula of freedom as a conscious necessity, and they, having accepted its shell, remained in disagreement with its inner essence. Our intelligentsia understands freedom as will; to understand it as a necessity, it is internally confused, sensing a totalitarian coercive catch here. Such a subconscious repression of disagreement with the basic position of their basic ideological system becomes among Marxist professors, directly according to Freud, the cause of a kind of humanitarian neurosis, when the conflict is repressed into the subconscious and there is vaguely experienced as something disturbing that one does not want to think about. Our red humanities professors, now working in the field of public journalism, could not overcome the discomfort of dialectics, since they failed to master the topic of dialectics itself.

Dialectics requires understanding the theme of the unity of opposites. A non-trivial and very humanitarian mind is capable of thinking this. Engineers and mathematicians with their binary logic will never be able to accept this, considering it not just heresy, but schizophrenia. In the field of mathematical logic this is true. But society is not a mechanism, and its logic is not mathematical. And therefore, one should not seriously let engineers, mathematicians and programmers get involved in humanitarian problems, although they absolutely love to chat about these topics, considering themselves quite mature for this. And it’s true - if a person has overcome mathematical analysis and sopromat, then it seems reasonable to him that economics and politics are completely within his grasp. And he transfers his mental schemes to social problems, without even suspecting how unsuitable they are for this.

Dialectics, with its unity of opposites, requires understanding freedom as a necessity that must be accepted through an “I can’t.” If you refuse to do this, then you are going beyond the scope of dialectics, and this is a shame for a thinker. The same as for a mathematician to go beyond the multiplication table. The non-dialectical - that is, profane - mind demands to separate freedom from necessity, and in this it sees common sense. This can be done - to separate freedom from necessity, but then what about dialectics, where opposites merge in the synthesis of unity? If you don’t understand this, and begin to judge it, then you become a laughing stock among the community of those who understand. True, those who understand are always in the minority, and those who reason are quite satisfied with the support of a community of laymen like themselves. However, this has nothing to do with getting closer to the truth.

If professors who sympathize with the leftist idea condemn this world with its oligarchs and pension reform, then they are breaking with dialectics. They do not accept freedom as a conscious necessity, which is expressed in the brilliantly simple conclusion of the authors of the immortal “Golden Calf”: “If there are some banknotes roaming around the country, it means that somewhere there must be people who have a lot of them.” If you are not a Marxist in its purest form, demanding in an ideal society the abolition of commodity-money relations and the ban on money, then you must accept the inevitability of oligarchy as a phenomenon.

Accepting does not mean justifying, because we accept the existence of viruses, although we do not justify it. We simply understand that there are opposites in the world and somewhere they come together. There is a world of people, and there is a world of money. Somewhere these worlds intersect - however, we are not close to these intersection points. This does not need to be justified, just as the law of gravity, because of which many people died, does not need to be justified. But no one starts a war with this law and its adherents - physicists. Why then do they dislike dialecticians so much? Because it seems that the law of attraction cannot be canceled, but the law of value can?

Of course, although only a few can understand the illusory nature of this. Many people are constantly drawn to the barricades in order to remove the contradiction of opposites there. Not through synthesis, but through the destruction of that side that is declared to be the bearer of the opposite. And when necessity leads to the fact that in the place of the destroyed opposite, over time, exactly the same one grows up, revolutionaries call this “degeneration” and call for repeating the mission of violence. Calling it freedom.

What about dialectics? Where is the synthesis? There have been a lot of barricades and revolutions in history - but the opposites have not gone away. Opposites are not resolved by revolutions. Evolution is painful and unbearable. Dialecticians are to blame - they are called compromisers and opportunists, the most stupid thing that can be invented in the field of mental operations. Then the biggest opportunists and compromisers are aircraft designers - they are always trying to adapt to the law of gravity, instead of banning it - and that's all.

Dislike for the oligarchs is lack of freedom as an unconscious necessity, showing the lack of mastery of dialectics by the former Marxist intelligentsia. Dialectics would require an understanding of freedom as a conscious necessity. What about a world in which money circulates? Can this world be perfect? What are the morals and ethics here? And are there any limits to the desire for such perfection? What are these boundaries? Do freedom and necessity merge or are they separated?

Shouting “down with you” does not contribute to the search for answers to such questions. It is excusable not to ask them to laymen, but unforgivable to professors. This is not an apologetics for evil - this is a question about what evil is, because there is such a struggle for good that only multiplies evil. To drive a recruit away is to cause him harm. But the war will reveal that it turns out that it was good. What about the oligarchs? Is it possible to avoid their occurrence or are they inevitable? What is evil here, what is good here and where do these opposites merge? Simply put: what is the harm from the oligarchs and what is the benefit from them? After all, one cannot exist without the other - this is dialectics. You just need to be able to see it.

The government's pension reforms are another unconscious necessity, which is opposed not only by the masses who do not think in dialectics, but also by professors, whose scientific degree itself does not order them to operate within the framework of everyday thinking. To understand the pension reform and thereby freely accept it - this is dialectics training for our professors, which she successfully failed.

An economics professor comes out and says: “I am a Doctor of Science. There is a lot of money in the budget, everyone who says otherwise is lying. Down with pension reform! It’s just done by sadists to torture you.” "Hooray!" - the Shirnarmass shout and lift the professor above them. The professor is happy - he will never see such a reception among his fellow professors - they will require proof and not every proof will be accepted as infallible. What about dialectics? She is crying quietly in the corner. Who needs it?

Professors who have emerged from the Marxist overcoat and have now become not scientists, but propagandists, keenly sense the situation. Now doing science is boring. Politics is where the drive and adrenaline are. The authority of the opinion has already been scientifically substantiated - all that remains is to come into unison with the opinion of the masses. The masses will not say: “Justify me, colleague!” The masses at one time were accustomed to the fact that in the world of capital there is exploitation, which is expressed in the alienation of surplus product. It was the destruction of exploitation among the survivors that justified the bloody revolutionary era. But now the state has taken the place of the private owner as an employer. In the person of the bureaucracy, of course. And then the fight against bureaucracy began.

And this state, represented by the bureaucracy fighting bureaucracy, began to confiscate the surplus product no longer to the private owner, but to the state. That is, for myself. And she began to manage it herself. If she wanted, she shared with the shirnarmass; if she wanted, she stopped sharing and privatized everything. And no one made a sound - the property was not theirs, it was someone else’s. State that is. But what about the dogmas of socialism, that everything around is collective farm, everything around is mine? They lied, then?

In the person of a bureaucrat fighting bureaucracy, the Shirnarmass received another exploiter, who called himself a representative of the Shirnarmass, and anyone who doubted this was exterminated either organizationally or physically. It was called socialism. We are building where the exploitation of man by man was defeated. It was forbidden to say that human exploitation by the state had arisen. It was said that now there is no exploitation, and the state acts on behalf of us and for the benefit of all of us, and therefore IT IS POSSIBLE.

They may say to me - what about free education and healthcare? This is all true, and this is very good, but that’s not what I’m talking about now. I'm talking about exploitation. So did she disappear or just change her form? Justified or not justified? And what is better - exploitation of a person by the state or exploitation by a person? And is it even possible to have an economy completely without exploitation? Including self-exploitation? And isn’t this a fraudulent term – exploitation? Are alienations in the form of regulation exploitative? wages and taxes as a relatively fair form of taking money?

People think in different levels understanding of existence. And now I have no complaints about the population who are looking for a way to survive. I myself am looking for these ways to survive, and I also don’t like oligarchs, capitalism, exploitation, pension reform, and I don’t like taxes either. But there is truth. She calls out from her conscience. To its misfortune, the Soviet education system seriously taught me philosophy, and to its misfortune, it hooked me. I tried to pass it not “on the ball”, as the students said. And therefore I feel that somewhere nearby sits and is silent, offended by everyone, philosophy, which was mockingly called the queen of sciences. Have you seen such kings whom their servants treat with such contempt? The ball is ruled by jesters - politicians, economists and political scientists, but where have you seen at least one philosopher? Is it a different time now? Well, the time is always the same.

Truth is always not in honor, and therefore philosophy is not in honor. Not because it gives answers, but because it raises questions. Questions are more important than answers. There are those questions to which there are no simple answers. Sometimes not for centuries. This irritates the masses; they need answers - and not just answers, but ones that the masses can understand and calm down.

Philosophy does not engage in applied psychotherapy, it does not give advice on how to calm people down, but raises eternal questions. And not abstract from being, but the most profound, essential for being. It's difficult, it's not easy. This is precisely why the world does not like philosophers. But so much the worse for the world. A world without philosophy is a world of manipulators and swindlers, a world of triumph of PR and social deceitful technologies of deception. The attitude towards philosophy is a mirror held up to the face of modernity, and it is not the mirror’s fault if it sometimes reflects an unsightly face.

The fate of this philosopher is full of drama, and his name has become a kind of symbol of logic and rationality in European philosophy. Benedict Spinoza (1632-1677) considered the highest goal of this science to be the vision of things from the point of view of eternity. And on his seal for letters there was a rose with the inscription at the top: “Caute” - “Prudently.”

Benedict Spinoza (Baruch d'Espinoza) was born in Amsterdam into a wealthy family of Spanish Jews who fled to Holland from persecution by the Inquisition. Although they were forced to convert to Christianity, they secretly remained faithful to Judaism. At first, Spinoza studied at the Jewish community school in Amsterdam, where he learned Hebrew and deeply studied the Bible and Talmud.

After that, he moved to a Christian school, where he mastered Latin and science - the ancient world, the culture of the Renaissance and new trends in philosophy created by R. Descartes and F. Bacon were revealed to him. Gradually, young Spinoza began to move more and more away from the interests of his community, so that he soon came into serious conflict with it.

The young man’s deep intelligence, talents and education were striking to everyone, and many members of the community wanted Spinoza to become their rabbi. But Spinoza refused in such a harsh manner that some fanatic even attempted the life of the future great rationalist - Spinoza was saved only by the fact that he managed to dodge in time, and the dagger cut only through his cloak. Thus, already in his youth, Spinoza was forced to defend his freedom, the right to his own choice. In 1656 he was expelled from the community, and his sister challenged his right to inheritance. Spinoza sued and won the case, but did not accept the inheritance itself - it was important for him to prove only his rights. He moved to the outskirts of Amsterdam and there, living alone, took up philosophy.

From 1670 Spinoza settled in The Hague. He learned to grind glass and earned his living from this craft, although by this time he was already known as an interesting, deep philosopher. In 1673, he was even offered to take the chair of philosophy at the University of Heidelberg, but Spinoza refused because he feared that in this position he would have to make ideological compromises, because, having abandoned Judaism, he never accepted Christianity. He lived alone and very modestly, although he had many friends and admirers of his philosophy. One of them even gave him money for lifelong maintenance - Spinoza accepted the gift, but at the same time asked to significantly reduce the amount. Benedict Spinoza died at the age of 44 from tuberculosis.

Spinoza's main philosophical work was his "Ethics". He always considered himself a follower of the rational philosophy of Descartes and his “geometric” method of cognition, which requires strict proof of any statement. In “Ethics,” Spinoza took his teacher’s method to its logical limit - this book, in its manner of presentation, is more reminiscent of a geometry textbook. First come the definitions of basic concepts and terms. Then follow obvious, intuitively clear ideas that do not require proof (axioms). And finally, statements (theorems) are formulated, which are proven on the basis of definitions and axioms. True, Spinoza was still aware that philosophy was unlikely to be able to completely fit within such a strict framework, and therefore provided the book with numerous comments, in which he outlined the actual philosophical argumentation.

The main idea of Spinoza, on which his entire philosophy is “strung”, is the idea of a single substance of the world - God. Spinoza proceeded from the Cartesian concept of substance: “Substance is it is a thing whose existence requires nothing else but itself.” But if a substance is the basis of itself, that is, it creates itself, then, Spinoza concluded, such a substance must be God. This is the “philosophical God”, who is the universal cause of the world and is inextricably (immanently) connected with it. The world, Spinoza believed, is divided into two natures: the creating nature and the created nature. The first includes substance, or God, and the second - modes, i.e. individual things, including people.

Since the world is permeated by a single substance, strict necessity reigns in it, emanating from the substance itself, or God. Such a world, Spinoza believed, is perfect. But where does fear, evil, lack of freedom come from then? Spinoza answered these questions in a very unique way. Yes, a person is drawn through life by absolute necessity, but often the person himself does not understand this and he becomes afraid, a desire arises to contradict necessity, and then passions take over his soul, he does evil. The only way out is to recognize this need. Hence his famous “formula of freedom”: Freedom is a conscious necessity.

Spinoza also defined human virtue in his own way. Since the world is perfect, it strives to preserve itself. Therefore, Spinoza believed: “For us to act according to virtue means nothing more than to live, taking care of self-preservation, guided by reason and our own benefit.” True, Spinoza himself, judging by his biography, was not very concerned about “self-preservation”; he was more attracted by the opportunity to think rationally, for this meant for him “bliss with higher intellectual knowledge,” which is “not only a virtue, but also the only and highest reward.” for virtue." Virtue, Spinoza believed, carries its own reward, making “paradise” possible already here on earth.

- “Even the KGB did not know exactly what part of the USSR population listens to foreign radio.”

- “I headed a department whose functions included work on objects of ideological sabotage, among which was Radio Liberty/Free Europe...”

- “There was a discussion around jamming, but nothing new was put forward as arguments, the same thing - “they will corrupt the youth, produce dissidents.” What kind of dissidents could we be talking about even then?..”

- “As far as I remember, there were no disagreements on this issue, because everyone understood that this was already an urgent issue and could not be resolved without solving it...”

- “I would like the programs of today’s Freedom to become a model for our media, but hopes for this are weak...”

Difference in time. - The difference is 50 years. First of March 53rd year. Are those few still alive in Russia who heard this in the early morning of the first day of March:

A fragment of the first broadcast of the Osvobozhdeniye radio station, renamed Radio Liberty in 1959:

Listen, listen! Today the new radio station "Liberation" begins its broadcasts!

Compatriots! For a long time, the Soviet government has been hiding from you the very fact of the existence of emigration. And so we want you to know that, living abroad in freedom, we have not forgotten about our duty to our homeland. We are all Russians, like other peoples Soviet Union, do not intend to stop fighting until the communist dictatorship is completely destroyed...

Vladimir Tolts: Half a century of Freedom...

Speaking seriously, over the past 50 years, this cultural and political phenomenon - Radio Liberty - its role in the history of the no longer existing country of the USSR and the changed world, its significance for modern Russia have not yet been comprehended. And this story itself has not yet been written. Although thousands of pages of research, dissertations, propaganda and counter-propaganda brochures, denunciations, complaints, critical and enthusiastic reviews and reviews have already been devoted to it. The anniversary broadcast, of course, does not provide an opportunity to fill this gap. Yes, I don’t pose such a task.

Today I would like to give the floor to people (very few - time limits us), those who, despite different destinies and views, one way or another intersected with this a unique phenomenon- Radio Liberty - in service and “in life”. And I would also like to draw your (including future Radio historians) attention to some little-known and critically unconsidered documents and evidence, without which the perception of the history of our Radio and the countries for which it broadcast and broadcasts turns out to be incomplete and emasculated .

Let's start with a passage from a publication prepared by Russian historians for publication in the United States.

“Even the KGB did not know exactly what part of the population of the USSR listened to foreign radio. In July 1960, the head of the propaganda department of the CPSU Central Committee for the republics, Leonid Ilyichev, reported to the CPSU Central Committee that “currently in the Soviet Union there are up to 20 million radios capable of receiving foreign radio stations. It is difficult to imagine an exact picture of how much foreign radio stations are listened to in the USSR, including the Voice of America and the BBC, but there is indirect information indicating a certain interest in foreign radio stations."

Ilyichev further reported that in Tajikistan foreign radio stations are listened to not only in apartments, but also in in public places(in teahouses), the practice of handicraft modification of radio receivers has become widespread: radio amateurs, including war veterans (trained in the army) “for 250-300 rubles, build in the short-wave range, starting from 10 meters, into receivers available to the population. "On these waves, only foreign radio stations can be received. Even in Moscow, in GUM and other stores, people buying a receiver are often approached by people without specific occupations with a proposal to build an additional shortwave range into the receiver."

In 1986, a memorandum to the CPSU Central Committee on jamming foreign radio, signed by Yegor Ligachev and Viktor Chebrikov, reported that “13 “long-range defense” radio centers and 81 “local defense” stations with a total capacity of about 40 thousand kW are used for jamming.” Long-range protection provides jamming of transmissions on approximately 30% of the territory of the Soviet Union. Local protection stations are deployed in 81 cities and provide suppression of transmissions in a zone with a radius of up to 30 km. Outside this zone, the quality of jamming drops sharply. By means of "long-range and short-range defense" with different the degree of effectiveness overlaps with regions of the country where about 100-130 million people live."

Vladimir Tolts: A modern Russian historian sneers: “We cannot help but draw attention to the irresistibility of bureaucratic phrases: the “quality of jamming”, which is the “protection” of the Soviet population"But the then defenders Soviet system(from the Central Committee and from the Cheka) there was no time for jokes. We must give them their due: they were among the first to realize the power of the influence of free radio information on the consciousness of Soviet people, especially young people. (They realized it not because they were smarter than others, but all thanks to the same information that they carefully hid from others.)

From an analytical report by the head of the “ideological” department of the KGB of the USSR, Philip Bobkov, presented by the head of the Security Committee, Yuri Andropov, in December 1976 to the Secretariat of the CPSU Central Committee. (Style and spelling of the original!)

Top secret.

Special folder.

On the nature and causes of negative manifestations among students and students

In ideological sabotage against Soviet youth, the enemy actively uses various channels of international communication. He attaches particular importance to radio propaganda.

Currently, 41 radio stations broadcast from the territory of capitalist countries to the Soviet Union, broadcasting 253 hours a day. Most of their radio programs are designed with a youth audience in mind.

Vladimir Tolts: And here - from the same document - and about us:

“One of the leaders of the Radio Liberty Committee expressed in the following words the instructions of the special services to organize ideological sabotage among Soviet youth: “It is absolutely not necessary to formulate specific positive slogans for Soviet youth. It is quite enough to irritate her with the surrounding reality." At the same time, he said, "people will inevitably be found who are ready to do anything for the sake of fundamental changes." In the documents fabricated by the Radio Liberty Committee, "Program of the Democratic Movement of the Soviet Union" and "Tactical foundations of the democratic movement of the Soviet Union" these guidelines are expressed not only in the form of calls for the widespread involvement of young people in anti-socialist activities, but also in a specific program for the deployment of subversive work by all centers and through all channels.

Vladimir Tolts: Well, "irritation with the surrounding reality" neither the young nor the old needed to call up the Radio with any special efforts - here Bobkov and Andropov, and perhaps their informants, are, so to speak, “bending over.” By the way, I knew some of the last ones who worked in Svoboda for the KGB personally. What can I say: not “Spinoza”, maybe they misunderstood it and they could have lied. This is an obvious lie about the documents “Program of the Democratic Movement of the Soviet Union” and “Tactical Foundations of the Democratic Movement of the Soviet Union”. - Pure samizdat! And the Soviet court recognized this, and I know the author too...

But I personally was more interested in another passage in this particularly secret KGB-Tsek document:

“Analysis of statistical data shows that a significant part of those who committed politically harmful acts experienced ideologically harmful influence from abroad.

Of all the factors, the main one is the influence of foreign radio propaganda, which influenced the formation of an ideologically hostile attitude in more than 1/3 of the people (1,445 people) who committed negative manifestations. Analysis of the materials indicates the spread of interest in foreign broadcasting among young people. Thus, according to the study “The Audience of Western Radio Stations in Moscow”, conducted by the Department of Applied Social Research of the Institute of Social Sciences of the USSR Academy of Sciences, 80% of students and about 90% of students in senior classes of secondary schools, State PTUs, and technical schools listen to radio stations with more or less regularity. For the majority of these people, listening to foreign radio has become a habit (32% of students and 59.2% of students listen to foreign radio programs at least 1-2 times a week).

Research "Formation of worldview and value orientation student youth of Omsk" showed that 39.7% of the surveyed students periodically listened to broadcasts from foreign radio stations.

(According to sociological research“The audience of Western radio stations in Moscow,” 2/3 of radio listeners under the age of 30 are interested in music programs.) Further, the evolution of interests and moods largely corresponded to the pattern that was determined at an instructional meeting by the head of one of the sections of Radio Free Europe: “ Our correspondent is 16 years old. Now he is interested in records, but in 5-10 years, having gotten used to our programs, he will listen to the entire program."

Vladimir Tolts: After 10 years mentioned in the KGB paper, “perestroika” began. In 1991, Svoboda’s mature listeners were among the defenders of the White House, and Svoboda in those August days turned out to be one of their main sources of truthful and uncensored information.

To be fair, it is worth noting that even before, young people listened to not only music programs on our waves. And not only young people...

This is the story of our long-time listener - literary critic, Doctor of Philology, Professor Marietta Chudakova.

Marietta Chudakova: I can’t say that I listened to your radio station a lot in Soviet time, - my life did not provide such an opportunity: I went to work every day at twenty minutes to eight, returned 12 hours later, did household chores and sat down until late at night for my work... But precisely because Freedom was more than radio, that it was socio-political folklore, that is, passed on from mouth to mouth, I can judge it. We had friends for whom listening to Freedom after 12 at night was a daily ritual that could not be canceled by any circumstances.

Alexander Chudakov recalls the listeners of the very first years of the radio station’s existence in his novel, impressions of his school years. His father, my father-in-law, is a history teacher in a regional Siberian town and a lecturer at international themes, and then I quote a fragment practically devoid of fiction “I listened to the radio stations “Voice of America” and “Free Europe”, which for simplicity called “World Domination”. A ten-meter pole-antenna was installed on the highest poplar tree, which together with it every year more went up to him. A receiver with a round scale produced by the Riga VEF plant, which came from Germany as part of reparations, was brought from Moscow. Father said: “Quality! - One word - "Telefunken". (That is, this particular line of radios came from Germany, and it was carefully hidden in Riga, as Riga residents tell us.) But the quality helped little - “World Domination” was mercilessly jammed. True, for some reason they didn’t start right away, and one neighbor even came up with a theory - “they like to listen to it themselves.” And before they “started the millstones” (as they said among themselves), they managed to listen to some of the news. In the morning, another neighbor came, who also had a receiver, the listeners exchanged what they heard through the roar and grinding, and discussed it.

In general, one could hear better in Siberia than later in Moscow. But in terms of age, only today, through the tapes of Ivan Tolstoy’s “50 Years of Freedom” programs, we heard your then 50s, rollicking, seemingly Soviet, although in content anti-Soviet voices of the second emigration. Couplets similar to the then Nechaev couplets, almost heard every day on Soviet radio, only with the opposite content.

Yes, some broadcasts are similar in intonation to the Soviet voices of the painfully memorable Moscow radio. They resemble him in their straightforwardness. After all, these were people, announcers and participants in these programs, there were people who continued to feel like in the pre- and post-war Soviet Union on the ideological front. It was a continuation of the war on air. - The world turns red, and they hold the line, which was quite consistent with what was happening...

When the so-called “spirit of Geneva” arose in 1955, that is, a softening of relations between the Soviets and the West, the mood in Svoboda was “the Bolsheviks are giving up, they have retreated.” Both speakers and authors still continued the Cold War by inertia. The softening began after 1956 and also quickly; naturally, things changed after the Hungarian uprising.

Vladimir Tolts: One of our first listeners was now retired colonel KGB Oleg Maksimovich Nechiporenko - a former spy, and to this day proud of the fact that the CIA called him the best KGB operative in Latin America, and now - CEO Russian "National Anti-Crime and Anti-Terrorism Fund".

Oleg Nechiporenko: I remember now - during these years I studied at the Institute of Foreign Languages in Moscow - there was such a receiver, at the same time it had a player, it was “Riga-10”. When Radio Liberty appeared, at that time I was carried away as an amateur, listening to shortwave radio broadcasters, both professionals and amateurs... Somewhere, I remember, it was at that time that I first heard Radio Liberty, also, in my opinion , no measures were taken to “silence” or jam. During this period, I remember listening for the first time several times, and during my studies at the institute I periodically came across it. - I didn’t catch it on purpose, but found it while I was looking for shortwave signals and listening to your broadcasts...

Vladimir Tolts: Much later, already in the mid-70s, after he was expelled from Mexico for attempting to organize a coup there, Oleg Maksimovich became closely involved with us.

Oleg Nechiporenko: I headed a department whose functions included work on objects of, as they said at that time, “ideological sabotage,” among which was Radio Liberty/Free Europe. This belonged to the period of the late 70s - early 80s. During this period, I had to communicate quite closely with Radio Liberty.

I must say that here, unlike the early 50s, I did not need to listen to Radio Liberty broadcasts, since many programs or plans for the operation of this facility became known to me before they went on the air, thanks to our capabilities and, in in particular, to a person like Oleg Tumanov, who worked at this facility for a long time and who was able to provide us with very detailed information about the activities of this facility.

Vladimir Tolts: Well, I have already spoken about the quality of this information, which then reached the Politburo through Andropov. In my opinion, the KGB deliberately inflated its significance and distorted it, exaggerating the size of our then audience and the degree of its political danger and influence - all in order to raise the significance of its work in the eyes of the Politburo authorities. This opinion is shared by the former first deputy head of the International Department of the CPSU Central Committee, Doctor of Philosophy, Professor Vadim Valentinovich Zagladin, as well as Colonel Nechiporenko, a long-time participant in Freedom programs.

Vadim Zagladin: - You are absolutely right. You know, the point is that, of course, this influence was exaggerated, deliberately exaggerated, I think. It was exaggerated for a simple reason: in order to give greater efficiency, or, in any case, the idea of greater efficiency of one’s own activities, one must first exaggerate the opposite activity. - This, in my opinion, is the law in all societies and at all times. But that's how it was done...

Marietta Chudakova: ...In the 70s there was a different intonation. We began to listen to Svoboda when, for a fee - for a large joint article in Novy Mir about a modern story (humor!) - we bought a huge box - a VEF radio receiver - in 1966. Less than a year had passed when, in August 1968, every evening two heads began to lean against the golden curtain of our VEF, trying to hear something through the wild roar. (Chudakov and I were content with just retelling them - it was almost impossible to listen). It was Riga resident Lazik Fleishman, a recent student, future Stanford professor and world-famous Slavist - he then stopped at our house on the way from Yalta to Riga. The second was Muscovite Garik Superfin, an eternal student at the University of Tartu, a future prisoner, a future exile, a future employee of the archives of Radio Liberty. He then came running every evening to hear something with Lazik about the details of our invasion of Prague. - Only from the “box” with curtains could one find out what was really happening in these tragic days...

Vladimir Tolts: And here is Gabriel Superfin mentioned by Marietta Chudakova. Now he is an employee of the Institute of Eastern Europe University of Bremen.

Gabriel Superfin: Radio Liberty? - I probably heard it quite early, but I clearly remember only from the winter (December 67 - January 68), when I was in the Moscow region, lived for a week, and quite clearly, clearly heard this radio station for almost a whole day .

Vladimir Tolts: - What do you remember?

Gabriel Superfin: - No matter how funny it may seem, it was not the programs themselves that were remembered, but the “insets”. For example, “one often hears a statement about what communism is” and a request to “write about it,” which caused laughter from me and my co-listener, my now deceased friend.

Marietta Chudakova: Svoboda has always been more anti-Soviet than the more respectable and diplomatic BBC, Voice of America and the later Deutsche Welle. This was especially felt during periods of so-called “detente of international tension.”

We listened to what we could catch from several of these radio stations. The audience was large and varied. Those who dreamed of pouring more salt on the tail of the Soviet regime preferred Freedom! In addition, “Svoboda” was jammed the most and, perhaps, that’s why I still wanted to catch it out of spite...

Vladimir Tolts: We are talking today about the fifty-year history of the Russian service of Radio Liberty. Not only to Freedom’s listeners, but also to those who actively prevented it from being listened to, and even to those who worked at the Radio Station, now the half-century of Radio activity and its significance are seen differently than before.

Gabriel Superfin: When I worked [at Svoboda], I realized that Radio is not only something that goes on the air, but it is still an organization that has accumulated a huge amount of information materials and that for any Western Sovietologist it was a school about which, As for the school, everyone doesn’t mention it much and doesn’t express gratitude.

Vladimir Tolts: Naturally, the Soviet people, divided by the logic of history into two opposing, although interpenetrating groups - the supervised and the supervised - had different attitudes to the information they received from Freedom, and to its sources and presentation.

A word from the historian, rector of the Russian State University for the Humanities, Professor Yuri Nikolaevich Afanasyev.

Yuri Afanasyev: - Indeed, apparently, for different people, for different groups, for different institutions, Radio Liberty was not the same thing at all. If for some large part of normal people who were interested in what was happening in the country and in the world, the radio station was a kind of outlet. And only there in those early years it was possible to listen to the normal Russian language, and some unstamped thoughts, and so on, then for the authorities the radio station was always something very undesirable, with which the enemy’s voice was associated, and so on.

So here we need to approach things differently. For ordinary people It was also different for everyone, everyone perceived it in their own way. For example, someone simply listened and received some information. Other people, besides this, together, I would say, with Radio Liberty, comprehended some events, looked for the first definitions, tried to analyze some events. I consider myself one of these people.

Vladimir Tolts: At the time when Yuri Afanasyev was developing his “definitions,” one of the most informed people in the Central Committee, Vadim Zagladin, was doing the same thing, but in his own way. He did not listen to Svoboda, but he read in the most detailed manner the printouts of her broadcasts made for the Central Committee chiefs.

Vadim Zagladin: - You know, I have a specific view on this problem. Because for me personally, Freedom was not something special, because everything that you conveyed, I already knew and knew more... I was interested only from one point of view, that this is, so to speak, an oppositional view of our reality , which was probably, and even certainly, interesting for our internal oppositionists, which gave them some materials and knowledge of some things that they might not know from our press. This was of some interest, but not that much for me. It was interesting for me, when I was preparing for trips to the West, I had to conduct some discussions with opponents, it was clear to me approximately what arguments could be used, because they were the same arguments as yours.

Vladimir Tolts: And here’s what Zagladin’s colleague on the CPSU Central Committee, one of the former secretaries of the Central Committee and members of its Politburo and a full member, tells me Russian Academy Sciences Vadim Andreevich Medvedev:

Vadim Medvedev: The activities of the radio stations were somehow in the context of the general situation of that period, the split of the world, the confrontation between two blocs. And from here, it seems to me, today’s assessments of the station’s retrospective activities can be derived. Of course, for many people in the Soviet Union at that time it was an additional source of information, an alternative source of information. But I would not dare to say that she carried the truth and only the truth. Because it was an ideological war, as a reflection of the political confrontation between two blocs. In an informational sense, it carried a certain positive load, since it complemented and provided an alternative source of information, but at the same time it reflected the ideology of confrontation between two blocks of ideologies, two systems.

Vladimir Tolts: In contrast to the high-ranking recipients of Svoboda’s information, Oleg Nechiporenko, who led the espionage on it, is still inclined to believe that our station was not only a means of, as he puts it, “ideological sabotage,” but also an intelligence tool. He explains it this way:

Oleg Nechiporenko: Yes, here is the question: Radio Liberty was not an “either-[or]” object, it was an object that performed two functions - collecting information, and the second point in the activity of this object is how the information received by intelligence is implemented to influence the enemy. This is one of the functions of special services, and Radio Liberty was precisely this tool. That is, Radio Liberty, for example, carrying out or raising some questions, carrying out propaganda on the Soviet Union and seeking feedback, that is, receiving some letters from the Soviet Union in response to questions posed in programs or reactions to these programs, or even urging Under this, things that were prepared directly by American intelligence could present it all in such a way that this was information coming from the Soviet Union.

Vladimir Tolts: Well, the view, as another participant in our program put it, is “very specific,” and as an argument - general reasoning, nothing specific. When I reminded Oleg Nechiporenko that his “office” - the KGB - opposed Svoboda broadcasts ("ideological sabotage", as he puts it) not only with espionage, but also with real sabotage (I mean the explosion of our radio station, which resulted in human casualties), followed This is the answer from the current head of the Russian “National Anti-Crime and Anti-Terrorism Fund”:

Oleg Nechiporenko: Technologically, the “hot war”, that is, the hot confrontation, if such a metaphor is used in the Cold War, was waged by the opposing intelligence services using the same methods. And to say that we blew up Radio Liberty, and someone in relation to us... After all, Radio Liberty also contributed and tried to instill in the minds of, say, dissidents or some forces that were and were hostile to our regime - I don’t evaluate our regime in this case, what it was right about, what it was wrong about, what it was utopian about, and so on... But I’m saying that the propaganda that was conducted from the position of Radio Liberty, as a propaganda tool, influence on the enemy, the same thoughts were carried out and planted in the minds of opponents of the regime, including those pushing them to carry out some kind of violent action.

Vladimir Tolts: And again - no evidence! But Oleg Maksimovich knows very well that both the journalistic code and many internal Radio documents that his agents sent him, any calls for violent action are strictly prohibited! Well, contrary to the ancient maxim, times sometimes change faster than people...

Yuri Afanasyev: Somewhere from the 80s, I not only listened carefully to Radio Liberty, it was present with me almost every day, but in addition, I myself very often spoke on Radio Liberty and visited Munich. And that’s why I consider myself, it helps to be, I’m mistaken, but very close and even, perhaps, involved in what was happening at Radio Liberty. And therefore, based on the fact that I have been listening regularly for decades and based on the fact that I myself have spoken quite often and on various topics, it is of great importance to me, and it has filled some visible part in my life ...

Marietta Chudakova: ...The end of the 80s is the activity of Svoboda, in essence, together with ours and Russian journalism, with “Moscow News” and with “Ogonyok”. Knowledge Soviet history According to sources, it turned out to be especially in demand. Everyone in Russia thirsted for the truth!..

But in the first half of the 90s, the anti-Yeltsin scolding, accusatory tone often hurt unpleasantly. Moreover, our local journalists here, and not only journalists, but also famous cultural figures, almost did not ask it, or, in any case, did not correct it. (It was typical social behavior, which some of my like-minded colleagues reasonably call “compensatory”, that is, instead of looking for some kind of constructive positive role in the situation of decisive changes taking place, to be concerned with the prospects for the weak, nascent Russian democracy, our thinkers endlessly ridicule new government compensated for the long Soviet existence with a clamped mouth). It was a very easy task, since there were any number of absurdities happening around, and it could not be otherwise, and, most importantly, it was finally done safely. The moment came when the meaning of continuing the work of Svoboda was not entirely clear, since they were pouring water on Yeltsin and his team, talking about how badly and incorrectly we were emerging from socialism, as if someone knew exactly the way in which one could get out of socialism in a snow-white suit cesspool, it was quite possible in the domestic press and television.

By the way, today our media lacks a critical analysis of the Kremlin’s policies. Why, for example, with the president’s huge ratings, are reforms carried out so slowly and indistinctly?

Vladimir Tolts: Well, as you can see, we always had enough critics (of all kinds)! And the fact that they care about us personally encourages me...

Let us return, however, to the second half of the 80s, which Marietta Chudakova just mentioned. In 1987, something happened in the fate of Radio most important event: they stopped jamming him.

How was it? - I ask one of those who participated in making the decision about this - Vadim Valentinovich Zagladin.

Vadim Zagladin:

I don’t remember anything anymore... I can only say one thing, that, of course, this is an issue that was discussed for a long time, there were both supporters and opponents of this, like all those new phenomena that perestroika brought, they had the same opponents and supporters, as well as the issue of removing jamming.

It was a general tendency to either advocate democratization, some kind of freedom of information or not. This applied to everything - jamming and other things. And, perhaps, highest value there was a struggle on the issue of human rights, because it was the key point, everything else is derivative. And only thanks to Mikhail Sergeevich Gorbachev, it was possible to achieve what was achieved, that is, a transition from some kind of active rejection of the very problem of human rights in the form in which it was discussed, including the jamming of foreign broadcasts. If it weren't for him, nothing would have happened...

Vladimir Tolts: The then head of party ideology, Vadim Andreevich Medvedev, recalls the fateful party decision for Freedom as follows:

Vadim Medvedev: This was, of course, a collective decision, by the collective leadership, initiated by Gorbachev, but with the support of those around him at that time, although there were very serious disagreements on many issues even then. But as far as I remember, there were no disagreements on this issue, because everyone understood that this was already an urgent issue and could not be resolved without solving it. Moreover, the jamming was ineffective, you know this, a lot of money was spent, but there was no point.

Vladimir Tolts: I was especially interested in hearing about the political unanimity in making the decision to abolish jamming from Vadim Medvedev, who asserted in the same 80s (and Svoboda reported about this then) that “The Gulag Archipelago” by Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn, which was once read in our programs will never be published in the USSR. True, today Vadim Andreevich remembers this differently:

Vadim Medvedev: I was not opposed to the publication of "Archipelago", I believed that first of all magazines and, in particular, the magazine " New world“We must publish those works that were already being prepared for publication at one time before Solzhenitsyn’s expulsion from the country, and obligations for which he had already been given then. But then this was blocked. I thought that it was necessary to start with “Cancer Ward” “In the First Circle” to publish “The Gulag Archipelago”, but not immediately, because this could lead to a very serious complication of the situation around Solzhenitsyn.

But this was a kind of tactical step in this regard. I understood that “The Gulag Archipelago” could not be hidden from the Russian and Soviet audience; sooner or later it would have to be published, but not started right away. And in this regard, the views did not coincide. Alexander Isaevich insisted on starting the publication of The Gulag Archipelago right away.

Vladimir Tolts: Yes, a lot has changed since then. This is noted even by Oleg Maksimovich Nechiporenko, who is staunchly committed to the KGB ideals:

Oleg Nechiporenko: When I first heard these programs and for some time, stumbling upon them, I listened with a certain interest, because in the early 50s I was convinced of the correctness of the ideas that guided me in my life. Subsequently, when gradually, like the majority of my generation, doubts arose about a certain illusory and utopian nature in terms of the materialization of these ideas.

You know, what’s interesting is that it so happened that my schoolmates and teacher ended up at Radio Liberty high school. And it turned out that I ended up on one side of the barricades, and they ended up on the other side of the barricades. I mean, in particular, Yuliy Panich, with whom we studied together at school, and Alexander Alexandrovich Zinoviev. But then it happened that they became objects of my operational interest, when I was directly related to the work on this object, and at that time they were on the other side of the barricades. Right now, you know, I am meeting and reminiscing about the past with Alexander Alexandrovich Zinoviev. It is possible that we are planning a meeting with Yuliy Panich in the near future...

Vladimir Tolts: The 90s, which we reached in our program, turned out to be not only a time that clearly demonstrated dramatic changes in people, in “the country and the world.” It was a time of very serious changes in Freedom.

Marietta Chudakova: ...At the end of the 90s and at the beginning of the new century, the place of the radio station was completely clear. In Svoboda you can now hear what you have to search for all day long in the domestic media: letters from ordinary citizens to Kalinin, Voroshilov, these letters to the authorities, which are not in the wider domestic press, only in the scientific press, heartbreaking stories, sometimes inhumane resolutions... Staff Freedoms remained educators and propagandists when from Russian media enlightenment, always necessary in our country, with its huge inert and thoughtlessly nostalgic mass, has been practically banished, and anti-Soviet propaganda, I am not at all afraid of this word, has disappeared completely. And such propaganda now, when the hypocritical slogan “this is our history” about the entire Soviet century is being established in Russia, is especially needed. Therefore, let’s say, the “Soviet Film Twenty” program on Svoboda is about films that, unlike the early 90s, are shown here without any preambles.

We still need systematic broadcasts on Russian history. A significant portion of students in Russia were educated in Soviet times and have very little knowledge real story of your country.

About today's Russia - the most important program!.. - "Small Victories" about those who won trials against our authorities. In our media, as a rule, you can only hear about how hopeless the legal battle with the authorities is.

And in conclusion, I’m not afraid to say this: I would like the programs of today’s Freedom to become a model for our media, but hopes for this are weak. Our journalist, there are few exceptions, say, “Radio Russia” seems to me to be an exception, it seems that she is not going to set herself meaningful tasks today.

Vladimir Tolts: You know, it’s surprising to me, but this judgment of a freedom-loving writer quite unexpectedly echoes the reasoning of another participant in our program - a KGB spy colonel:

Oleg Nechiporenko: Radio Liberty, of course, is more qualified and understands the processes in our country more deeply. Because, no matter how you say that even such large radio stations that enjoy great authority in the West, they still do not sufficiently imagine this problem, including the ethnic psychology of Russia.

In this regard, I must admit that Radio Liberty has gained very rich experience in this regard and uses this experience very skillfully. Including, perhaps, somewhere this experience is richer than our modern Russian mass media, which now, if we compare it with something, is like young, vigorous, grown-up puppies that have broken free and are ready to gnaw right and left, conquering their space . But as far as professionalism is concerned, there is, of course, still a lot missing...

Vladimir Tolts: My interlocutors today told me a lot more about Radio Liberty. (This program didn’t even fit half of what was said.) There are a lot of critical comments of various kinds.

A lot of various flattering things. They expressed a variety of opinions (from rosy to cautiously skeptical) about the prospects of the Radio Station. Do you know that, in my opinion, they are now united by these former leaders of the former Central Committee and an employee of the KGB that is by no means as omnipotent as before, liberal professors and a former Soviet political prisoner? - Well, not only this program, of course. But what is directly revealed in it, one might say, according to the Marxist formula, is the attitude towards Freedom (to our Radio) as a “conscious necessity”.

The position of freedom as a cognized necessity is found in a certain place - in Marxist philosophy. This dialectical (Hegelian) relationship between freedom and necessity, reworked in a materialist key, has become one of the basic concepts of Marxism, which is often presented as an aphorism.

Indeed, in terms of the completeness and depth of thought, the refinement and laconicism of the form, the definition “freedom is a recognized necessity” fully corresponds to the aphorism. However, another undoubted feature of the aphorism, namely the immutability of its verbal form, i.e. the text itself turned out to be uncharacteristic of this situation. Cognition of necessity is easily replaced by awareness of necessity, as if these are absolute synonyms.

This observation is interesting: Yandex statistics show that the combination “recognized need” is requested approximately 166 times a month, while “realized need” is requested 628 times, and the second request produces mixed results - “conscious” together with “recognized.” For the first request, there is no mixed picture. Those. Obviously, it was not the original text that turned out to be more popular, but the modified one, and the confusion in the second case shows that different combinations are more often presented as identical.

What are the reasons for the substitution is an interesting question, and the substitution itself is a significant question, since opponents and critics of Marxism use exclusively the combination “conscious necessity,” interpreting the Marxist definition of freedom as either absurd or immoral.

Of course, the words “cognize” and “realize,” being cognate, are related, but obviously not absolute synonyms. To cognize means to comprehend, study, gain knowledge, experience. Realize - understand, accept, consciously assimilate. The difference is clearly visible in the examples. Any believer will confirm that he realizes the greatness of God (without this there is no Faith), but it is impossible to know the greatness of God through religion. Self-awareness is an indispensable component of a person, a person. Knowing oneself is a process that can last a person’s entire life, and not everyone necessarily engages in self-knowledge. We may be aware of some danger without, fortunately, ever knowing it.

What about necessity? Even without a detailed analysis, it is clear that necessity is a very broad concept. So, the need for water for life is one thing, the need for a foreign passport for travel is another. The need to have the correct condition for solving a formal problem is one necessity, the need to help one’s neighbor is completely different. It is impossible to reduce physical, normative, logical, ethical, linguistic necessity to one another. Not every need is realized or recognized. At the same time, what all necessities have in common is contained in the name itself: something that cannot be done without - in different areas, at different levels, in the objective world or in the subjective world of each individual person.

The same with freedom - free entry, free fall, free choice... What do all freedoms have in common? Probably the general opposite of any freedom, and most agree that this is the very necessity.

Then the simplest definition would be: freedom is the absence of necessity. But... “I am free, like a bird in the sky...” Does this mean that a free bird in the sky has no need? Even if the beautiful, but narrow poetic image of freedom is forced to make room, if we put next to it the narrow, but quite specific meaning of this flight - it itself is dictated by a certain necessity. Animals generally do nothing unless necessary; their whole life is subject to a series of needs. And then the animals have no freedom at all, although they do not realize it.

So we come to the conclusion that freedom as a category, concept, as a state, as a possibility relates only to a person - to a subject with consciousness. Necessity embraces the entire objective world, the entire reality, constituting in its various manifestations the conditions for the existence of all nature and society, as well as the individual.

It is unlikely that anyone will dispute the connection between object and subject, matter and consciousness, objective reality and subjective reality, necessity and freedom. Disagreement begins over the direction of this connection. A purely idealistic approach implies a direction from the subject, from consciousness, from subjective reality, from freedom. Vulgar-materialistic - direction from the object, from matter, from objective reality, from necessity. And then freedom as will exists completely independently of necessity and is only limited by it, or freedom as will is inevitably and completely suppressed by necessity.

This seems surprising, but the definition “freedom is a conscious necessity” is used not only to criticize Marxism on both sides (“how can freedom be unfreedom, and even consciously so?!”, “Marxism gives freedom to some to suppress the freedom of others and requires them to realize this”) , but can easily be accepted by both sides. I have read discussions that anyone can become free by recognizing necessity, accepting it as inevitable, and this frees the choice created by necessity. Or vice versa - awareness of necessity is a manifestation of the original freedom that a person is endowed with. Truly the definition of a chameleon...

The definition “freedom is a recognized necessity” is inconvenient for turning this way or that way. The dual connection between freedom and necessity is fixed by cognition, which is a process that constantly changes the ratio of freedom and necessity. Cognition of necessity is comprehension of the realities of the world, gaining knowledge about the connections of this world and studying their patterns. Knowledge is power; it provides tools for influencing necessity and subordinating it to human will. Free action is action, as Engels put it, “with knowledge of the matter.” The degree of freedom is determined by the depth of knowledge - the deeper the knowledge about the need, the greater the choice a person has for action.

Humanity in general and every person is born in the kingdom of necessity. The first knowledge not only means the acquisition of initial degrees of freedom, but also strengthens the desire to expand this freedom, which drives knowledge. Moreover, an action performed in certain conditions of freedom of choice becomes an objective reality, it is woven into common system connections of the objective world, changing necessity, i.e., in essence, creating it. This contradiction between freedom and necessity is resolved in the only way - by constantly deepening the knowledge of necessity - a process that constantly expands freedom.

The philosophical dialectical-materialist understanding of freedom denies the illusory nature of freedom, which is not associated with the knowledge of necessity, and also reflects the relative nature of freedom. Freedom is not abstract, but always concrete. The actions performed in the presence of a certain choice are specific, the consequences of these actions are specific, the necessity transformed as a result is specific, the knowledge of which is another free step towards a new level of freedom.

There is none of this in the awareness of necessity, and there is no real freedom in awareness. There is only a departure from real necessity into illusory freedom of awareness or conscious, and therefore free, submission to necessity.

Two simple examples. How freely could we move through the air today if we realized, and did not know to a certain level, the obvious need to move exclusively on land or water? How free will a person be if a child with early childhood not to motivate him to recognize the need, but to get him to realize it, which is easiest to do with the help of physical and/or psychological pressure?

The concept of freedom is especially important, complex and always relevant in relation to society, to the needs that arise in the course of its historical development. More details about this, as well as possible reasons replacing “cognition” with “awareness” in the Marxist definition of freedom is probably worth and will have to be discussed separately.

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