Blinkov S. V. Tsarevich Dmitry. 2004-2005. Oil on canvas
Blood at the Foundation: On the Immorality of History
An essay-study inspired by the reflections of Natalya Gromova - Claude.ai
I. History as an Elemental Force
There is a temptation to judge history. We look at the past and want to pass a sentence — on this century, that empire, this particular people. But history is not a subject for moral judgment, not because it is "above" good and evil, but because it is an elemental force. Can you condemn a flood? A volcanic eruption? Yes, you can — if human will lies behind it, if someone intentionally opened the dam. And this is precisely where the boundary lies: people are moral, but the historical process as such is not.
The philosophy of history has long grappled with this question. Hegel saw in history the unfolding of the World Spirit — impersonal, indifferent to the sufferings of individual people. "World history is not the soil of happiness," he said. Happy periods are blank pages in this book. Karl Marx wanted to rewrite this book, to make it directed, teleological, moral. We know what came of that.
Natalya Gromova accurately captures the essence: history knows this better than we do. It holds within itself not moral lessons, but the consequences of the moral and immoral choices of individual people. The difference is fundamental.
II. Blood Laid as the Foundation
Pushkin's Boris Godunov is not just a historical drama. It is a metaphysical poem about the nature of power born from crime. Tsarevich Dmitry is murdered — and this murder is not merely a sin; it becomes an ontological crack in the foundation of the kingdom. The tragedy is set in motion. Its final chord — the death of Boris's children — is terrible, but internally inevitable. Pushkin understood: history works not as a judge, but as an echo. Blood returns — not because it is just, but because that is how the causal fabric of human events is structured.
It is important here not to confuse two levels. On a personal level, the murder of Boris's children is tragic and unjust. They are not guilty. But on the level of historical dynamics, it is a pattern. Power built on blood creates a field of violence around itself, which eventually consumes it. This is not the morality of history — it is its mechanics.
In psychology, this is called "trauma reproduction." Violence that is not processed and not redeemed reproduces itself in subsequent generations. Systems work the same way: totalitarian regimes born from terror inevitably devour their founders or their children. Stalin destroyed the old Bolsheviks. Robespierre ascended the very guillotine he helped build. This is not the "justice of history" — it is its blind mechanics.
III. The Absolute and Blood
Why does the attempt to embody the absolute inevitably lead to terror? This is perhaps the main question of spiritual anthropology.
The Crusades. ISIS. The Guillotine. The Gulag. Gromova's list is precise and merciless. Behind each of these phenomena lies the same structure: some absolute (true faith, a just society, a pure race, liberated humanity) + the conviction of the right to impose it = terror.
Dostoevsky understood this before many others. His Grand Inquisitor tells Christ: people are weak, they cannot bear the burden of freedom. We will take that freedom — and give them bread, miracle, authority. They will be happy. And in this "happiness" lies the most refined of all horrors.
The "Crystal Palace" — an image introduced by Chernyshevsky and demolished by Dostoevsky in Notes from Underground. What is the Crystal Palace? It is a utopia without cracks — without space for contradiction, for self-will, for a living person. Because a living person is unpredictable, irrational, free. He might, "out of spite," want something wrong, harmful, stupid — just to prove that he exists, that he is not a piano key.
Any attempt at moral totality shatters against this. Morality is a category of personal choice, and that is precisely why it is valuable. Virtue imposed under threat of death ceases to be virtue — it becomes discipline, fear, conformism. A society where everyone is "virtuous" by force is spiritually dead. And this dead society inevitably revives itself through blood.
IV. The Paradox of Compassion
Gromova mentions: one can feel pity for the family of a dictator. This is natural. And it is an important observation about the nature of our sympathy.
Human empathy is point-specific. We feel for a specific person, a specific fate. History operates on scales where the individual face dissolves. When we look at Boris Godunov's children — we see children. When we look at the thousands of victims of his rule — we see a statistic.
This is called the "scale effect" in the psychology of morality: one death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic. And it is here that the moral feeling of an individual and the "logic" of history diverge. History does not "feel" — it moves. We feel — and remain in our point-specific humanity.
But this does not mean that compassion for the dictator's children is inappropriate. On the contrary — it testifies that we still remain human, that we have not turned into "heartless historians." It is simply important not to confuse this compassion with the possibility of changing the course of tragedy once the flywheel is already set in motion. Compassion is our response to what has happened. The tragedy is already part of what has happened.
V. Morality as Personal Choice and the Boundary of Law
From all that has been said follows a crucial conclusion, which Gromova formulates very precisely: morality is a personal category. It cannot be imposed on society as a whole. The only instrument of collective coercion is the criminal code, that is, the minimum boundary below which society cannot sink without self-destruction.
This is the wisdom of liberalism in its original, currently unpopular sense: the state protects freedom, not virtue. It does not educate — it restricts. Everything beyond that is the realm of personal choice, conscience, religion, culture. Not coercion.
The problem is that this position requires colossal spiritual maturity — from both citizens and elites. Living in conditions where a neighbor can do something you consider immoral, and the law remains silent, requires a tolerance that is difficult to cultivate. Hence the temptation arises: "Let's just ban everything that's wrong." And the flywheel of tragedy starts again.
VI. What Remains
History is immoral — not because it is bad, but because morality belongs to a different level of being. It belongs to the person facing another person — and making a choice. This choice accumulates, forms culture, tradition, what Hegel called "objective spirit." And this spirit is no longer the morality of an individual person, but something larger and less controllable.
Therefore, the only answer to the question "how to prevent history from becoming a tragedy again" is not to build absolutes. Not to seek a final, pure solution. To remain in the space of unceasing moral effort — personal, concrete, not claiming totality.
Pushkin ends Boris Godunov with the stage direction: "The people are silent." This is not passivity. It is speechlessness before the incomprehensible. The tragedy has occurred. Words are finished. What remains is silence and memory.
And perhaps, only from this silence, from an honest look at the blood at the foundation, can we begin to build something that will not again be destroyed by this same blood.
History cannot be moral. But we — we can.
Source: https://t.me/natalyagromovadnevnik/1767
NatalyaGromova
Musings
History cannot be moral, neither good nor evil. People can be moral. Sometimes, communities. But not history as such.
One can feel pity for the family of a murderous dictator; it is a natural human feeling. But it is impossible to change the course of a tragedy once it has been set in motion. In the finale of Pushkin's Boris Godunov, the mob kills his family and children. It is terrifying. And at the same time, it is logical within the tragedy itself. Pushkin creates this finale not by chance: at the foundation of Boris's power lies the murder of Tsarevich Dimitri. The blood laid at the foundation returns.
Why does it happen that the attempt to make society "truly religious" or "truly just" almost inevitably turns to blood? The Crusades. ISIS. The Guillotine. The Gulag. Every time, it is an attempt to embody the absolute, to cleanse the world of imperfection.
Probably because this or that morality is a personal category. It is the personal choice of an individual person. Sometimes, the choice of a group of people. But it is impossible to impose it on society as a whole. Except within the framework of the criminal code.
Any attempt to drive humanity into the reservation of a "crystal palace" of universal happiness invariably ends badly. History knows this better than we do.
