# About Our Young People: With Pain In The Heart

Вадим Венедиктов

What the modern average Russian student is like?

In today"s Russia it became fashionable to declare slogans in support of modern youth through various social and political organizations and parties, and speak about it as a basis for our future existence. Obviously it is the youth who provides for the future of Russia, either light or dark, depending on the moral and spiritual direction which the most intellectually gifted part of the Russian youth will take.

So let"s take a look at this element of intelligent young elite. What the modern average Russian student is like? The student whose view of life is just being formed, and who finds himself in ideologically pluralistic environment, in the country which does not even have single state ideology.

Certainly the answers to most of the basic questions can be found in Christianity, but modern Christianity is put in the conditions of leisure civilization, where people put "bread and circuses" in the first place, and then come family, motherland, God. It"s not surprising that today we can often come across people who give out phrases like "I am an atheist, but I am Russian, that is, an Orthodox". Or the other way: "I am an Orthodox, but, in fact, an atheist".

By standards of the "new thinking" a Christian should not respond to the criticism of Christianity and should not have any cordial attachments to symbols and shrines of his custom; so if today"s student on a seminar in a secular institution is told, for example: "Christian pedagogy is not a science, and there can not be such a science by definition, never and ever", he should silently swallow it and answer nothing, and even if he tries to object, he is again told approximately the following: "Take a broader look at things! Do not constrict yourself with any certain position on this issue".

Life without convictions (by diagnosis of K.G. Jung this is exactly the kind of life provoking schizophrenia) is becoming to be considered a norm. A person of religious convictions who is not ready to change them with every latest newspaper issue or meeting a new companion is considered to be a threat to public order. Is it possible for a Christian in such conditions to carry on an equal dialogue with the world around him?

Conflict between Christian ideas and secular society is obvious. N.A. Narochnitskaya in her famous work "Russia and Russians in the world history" quite fairly marks certain profanation of the deepest religious and philosophic themes in secular science. "Segregation, lack of knowledge of each other and mutual snobbism are still characteristics of relations between secular and church sciences, which develop in the Academy of Sciences and within theological and Orthodox higher institutions where the courses of Russian and world history, philosophic trends and culture foundations are read".

It should be noted that in any faculty of humanities even at a secular institution a student has the right to choose a specialized course in the bases of, let"s say, orthodox culture or philosophy and so on, but the major part of young people do not even think of drawing on their little brains, because they consider religious issues something which is abstract from life. And what they need from life is just "bread and circuses" (these are exactly the demands put forth by the unenlightened menials in ancient times). Basically our young intellectual elite have the only need for entertainments and various pleasures.

It"s not by hearsay that the author knows about such position of "progressive students" - he himself studied in a well-known Moscow higher educational institution where the students of History faculty have quite specific vital interests.

Unfortunately, the most part of the students just wantons away their blooming young lives. By the age of 22 a graduate student is already an exhausted vessel, tired, broke, experienced in many things in this life and aware mainly of its dark sides. It is rare that you come across a chaste young man or a girl who kept herself in purity and innocence. And we have to face it, and at the same time acknowledge general moral decline in all respects of students" life.

Science is out of fashion today! But new hobbies appeared: in students" environment one can discover any evil, experience any sensual pleasure, up to sodomy and drug addiction. Indeed, studentship is the time which fulfills the ideals of socialist utopia declared in early 19th c. by Fourier: "Those citizens are more useful to social mechanism who have more inclination to sophisticated pleasures and who without hesitation yield themselves up to satisfaction of their passions. In societies with combined form of government the most useful thing for victory of the truth is love of affluence." Socialist Fourier taught his adherents: "Enjoy the moment... Avoid any marital or other kind of union which does not give satisfaction to your passions immediately. Why should you work for the common good? The whole order of combined form of government will be a direct opposition to our human skills, and will bind people to encourage everything which we name evil" (Theory of four movements and general destinies", "Theory of universal unity").

There is an impression that people who study around you are "civilized savages" who know more or less the bases of their specialty, can speak at least one foreign language, know how to work on computer, but at heart turned into savages who ran wild.

Next problem which is probably the main one for students is drinking. Let me give an example: when at the beginning of this academic year my neighbour, a very intelligent lady, called me home and complained about her grandson, a second-year student who did not show up in the institute because every evening he"d come home drunk and overslept seminars and lectures the next day. I had to console her saying that this is a normal situation for a second-year student. "Do not worry", I consoled my neighbour, "I think this is temporary, because it has been noticed that many students often drink in the course of study." Understanding that such words will not convince my neighbour I advised her to share her grief with some experienced priest.

Still we have to admit that the second year is the drunkest year out of all time spent by a student in a higher institution. Well, and what can be said about drunk professors bursting into a lecture auditorium and murmuring their disconnected tipsy crap! Of course this is not just students" problem - it is a problem of all-Russian scale.

Many thinking students and postgraduates got the suspicion that in our country a special policy is conducted which aims at extinguishment of prospective Russian young people. As if the only thing the government needs is that some undistinguished people ruled while talented and dedicated young and creative minds are kenneled somewhere far away from their motherland working for Uncle Sam. And we shall have such impression until the executive authorities in Russia announce their well-defined and clear policy on the matter of Russian young people.

For today the government needs to define and, which is the main thing, to announce publicly its steps in support of Russian students.

Vadim Venediktov

Historian of Moscow State Pedagogy University ╘ Православие.Ru