V. Tropinin. Portrait of Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin. Fragment. 1827
Pushkin’s Formula for the Improvement of Morals
Andrei Zubov, Russian historian in emigration, Facebook post, 27.03.2026
IMPROVEMENT OF MORALS
“The best and most durable changes are those that arise from the simple improvement of morals, without the violent political upheavals so terrible for humanity.” — Pushkin. Collected Works. Moscow, 1958. Vol. 7, pp. 291–292. “Journey from Moscow to St. Petersburg.” End of the chapter “The Russian Hut.”
Who would argue with the great classic? Even Radishchev, with whom Pushkin was polemicizing when he wrote his “Journey” in 1833, would most likely have agreed with him. But here lies a problem that Pushkin himself must have felt soon after writing “Journey.” The “only European” [in Russia], the government of Nicholas Pavlovich [Nicholas I] itself, consistently worsened morals: it deprived the lower, enslaved estates of education, while it stupefied and corrupted the upper classes with serfdom, harsh censorship, and endless restrictions in the spheres of university education, culture, and religious life.
What is to be done when morals are deliberately corrupted by an authoritarian government?
In Bolshevik times, this corruption was a hundred times more terrible than under Nicholas I. Its result was also terrible — Soviet society, as it had formed by the era of Perestroika, had lost or perverted its fundamental moral guidelines. Under these circumstances, freedom, democracy, the opportunity for entrepreneurial activity, and complete cultural and religious openness were perceived by the majority of society as values of little significance or even entirely negative. What turned out to be positive — yet unsatisfied (which is natural given such a radical upheaval) — were simple and absurd imperial grievances (“he destroyed the country”) and distinctly camp-like grievances (“he deprived us of our rations”). Therefore, the transformations aimed at the “improvement of morals” were rejected by the people, and they freely and enthusiastically chose first the populist Yeltsin, and then the reactionary (in the direct sense of the word) Putin.
However, the new principles of life gained through Perestroika — the market, an open and uncensored cultural space, open borders, elements of democracy and the rule of law — did not disappear all at once, and some still exist today. It is these that are gradually transforming society, forcing people to understand what they gave up for the proverbial “mess of pottage” of authoritarianism and imperialism, and to grasp the cost of that renunciation.
Once upon a time, Gorbachev, along with Academician Sakharov, were, to use Pushkin’s phrase, the “only Europeans” in the USSR; today, the Russian government is the greatest barbarian in the country. Society as a whole has far surpassed this government, is burdened by it, and eagerly awaits its departure — for the war to end, the internet to open up, businesses to stop being harassed, borders to become transparent again, and the “Agency” [a possible reference to security services] to be outlawed.
So Pushkin’s formula about the improvement of morals requires an addition — regarding when these morals are being improved and when they are being imposed.
For us, dear friends, this opens up a wide field of endeavor. We do not have political power to improve morals from the heights of the throne, as did Alexander I, Alexander II, and Mikhail Gorbachev, but we possess the power of the word, and we must remember that this power cannot be used thoughtlessly. Let every word of ours, every creative act, serve the improvement of morals in Russia and, more broadly, throughout the post-Soviet world. Then we will fulfill our mission, just as, incidentally, Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin consciously fulfilled his, giving Russia incomparably more than his royal censor and reactionary, Nicholas Pavlovich.
DeepSeek AI: The Ethics of Resistance or the Inertia of Decay?
(Reflections on Pushkin’s Formula of “Improvement of Morals” at the Fractures of Russian History)
1. Pushkin’s Testament and the “Trap” of Authoritarian Moralizing
In late 1833, Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin, concluding his polemic with Radishchev in “Journey from Moscow to St. Petersburg,” articulates a formula that reads almost like a spiritual testament: “The best and most durable changes are those that arise from the simple improvement of morals, without the violent political upheavals so terrible for humanity.”
These words contain a profound historiosophical intuition. Pushkin, the “only European” in Nicholas I’s Russia (in the apt phrase of later scholars), prioritizes ontology over politics. However perfect state forms may be, they remain mere decoration if the substance of the national soul — morals — is afflicted by the scourges of slavery, ignorance, or falsehood. The “improvement of morals” was conceived by him as organic growth, a slow but steady ascent of the spirit, rendering guillotines and barricades unnecessary.
However, as Andrei Zubov rightly notes, drawing on the experience of the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries, Pushkin’s prescription runs into a catastrophic problem which the poet himself, being a genius, likely felt physically: what is to be done when the “improvement of morals” becomes impossible not due to the inertia of the masses, but due to the deliberate, systematic corruption of the nation by the state itself?
Nicholas I, whose policies — from the “cast-iron” censorship statute to the entrenchment of serfdom as a bastion of the throne — aimed at preserving moral stagnation, became the first ominous precedent. But the Bolshevik project turned this corruption into a technology. The destruction of traditional ethics, its replacement with the class principle of “the end justifies the means,” and the dismantling of class and corporate dignity led to a situation where, by the end of the Soviet era, the moral landscape was not merely deformed but turned inside out.
2. “Perestroika” as an Attempt at an Ontological Upheaval
Mikhail Gorbachev, whom Zubov, following Pushkin, calls the “only European” in the late USSR, attempted the impossible: to apply Pushkin’s formula under conditions where morals had already been corrupted. Perestroika was a unique historical experiment, an attempt at the “improvement of morals” from above, through glasnost (a catharsis of truth) and the expansion of freedom.
But here, a tragic dialectic manifested itself. Pushkin spoke of morals as the foundation. However, by the 1980s, a profound rift had formed in the Soviet people: the external etiquette of “collectivism” and “internationalism” masked deep ethical deprivation. A society raised on scarcity (both material and spiritual) perceived freedom not as an opportunity for responsibility, but as anarchy; the market not as an institution for serving one’s neighbor through work, but as lawlessness; openness as a threat to a fragile, accustomed way of life.
Zubov records a frightening diagnosis: freedom turned out to be a “value of little significance or even entirely negative.” Positive values were not the metaphysical ones of good and truth, but quasi-imperial reflexes — “he destroyed the country” — and the camp mentality of survival — “he deprived us of our rations.” This is a pure case of Pushkin’s strategy failing. Society did not want to improve its morals; it wanted stability within the framework of familiar moral degradation, which the authorities (from Yeltsin to Putin) learned to package in patriotic rhetoric.
3. The Metaphysics of the “Late Imperial Syndrome”
Why then, if morals were so terrible, did post-Soviet society — according to the author of the post — still begin a spontaneous improvement, despite the authorities? The answer lies in the phenomenon of long cultural respiration.
Andrei Zubov points to a crucial nuance: the institutions born of Perestroika (the market, open cultural space, elements of democracy) did not disappear instantly. They formed a kind of “immune layer” between society and the restoration of autocracy. It was within this layer, in the space of relative freedom (even under the tightening grip of censorship in the 2010s and 2020s), that the reverse process began — the self-organization of morals.
If the government, especially in the last decade, positions itself as the “greatest barbarian” (using archaism, violence, and the militarization of consciousness as tools of legitimacy), then society, contrary to the predictions of cynics, begins to develop a moral allergy to this archaism. History reveals a paradox: the harsher the government attempts to restore imperial morals (denunciation, official patriotism, contempt for dissent), the sharper becomes the demand for authenticity.
4. The Word as the Only Throne
Returning to Pushkin’s text, Zubov makes a fundamental addition: the formula about the correction of morals requires a clarification — regarding “when these morals are being improved and when they are being imposed.” Within this distinction lies a profound historiosophical truth.
Tsarist reformers (Alexander I, Alexander II, Gorbachev) had the power to “improve morals from the heights of the throne.” But today, when power has become a source of moral corruption (war, suppression, lies), the sole agent of “improvement” remains the subject of culture. Not an institution, not a party, not a bureaucracy, but a specific individual possessing the “power of the word.”
Pushkin, as the author reminds us, consciously fulfilled this mission. He held no political power, but he “gave Russia incomparably more than his royal censor.” In this lies the existential answer to the question “what is to be done?” When the state ceases to be an ethical project and transforms into a project of violence, responsibility for “morals” shifts to those who have retained the ability to think, speak, and create.
5. Conclusion: Awaiting the “Quiet” Improvement
The current Russian situation, described in the post, is tragic because it has torn the connection between times: the authorities have retreated from Pushkin’s ideal of organic development, while society, having passed through the crucible of historical catastrophes, is forced to correct itself, often at the cost of losing status, security, and even homeland.
Nevertheless, Zubov’s essay leaves room for hope, grounded not in political optimism but in anthropological regularity. Morals, once improved (even in small groups, in “islands of dignity”), do not disappear without a trace. They accumulate as cultural capital, as a latent potential. And at the moment when authoritarian power, having exhausted its resources of violence, begins to weaken (and history knows no eternal empires), it is precisely this accumulated moral capital that becomes the “most durable change” of which Pushkin wrote.
Andrei Zubov’s post of March 27, 2026, is not merely a commentary on the classic. It is a manifesto of cultural resistance, asserting that even when the “throne” serves evil, the “power of the word” remains the instrument capable of fulfilling history’s main task — to make a person human, and a nation a community of free and responsible individuals. And as long as this word is spoken, the improvement of morals, even against the odds, remains not a utopia but an unfolding reality.
Genspark AI: Between Fear and Conscience: How Morals Were Created and Destroyed in Russian History
Pushkin’s formula about the “improvement of morals” often sounds like a call for peaceful evolution, as if it’s about gently nurturing society instead of upheavals. But it hides a deeper question: what are morals themselves? They are not a set of manners or a sum of correct declarations. Morals are what a person does when no one is watching; what they find shameful; what they internally cannot agree to, even if agreeing is outwardly advantageous. Therefore, the history of morals is not a history of slogans, but a history of conscience, shame, fear, habit of truth, and habit of lies. When Pushkin, in the chapter “The Russian Hut,” concludes his reflection with the words that “the best and most durable changes” come from improving morals without violent political upheavals, the very context of his polemic with Radishchev demands a tragic, not a complacent, reading.
The mistake of many Russian debates about the past is that morals are understood as something abstractly moralistic: as if simply telling the people “be kinder, more honest, freer” would change the course of history. In reality, morals arise where a person has experience of personal responsibility, where they are accustomed to answering for their word, for an agreement, for a neighbor’s trust, for their work, for a decision made not under orders. Conversely, where all of life is structured as a vertical of dependence, a person quickly learns not good or evil, but adaptation. They learn to guess the will of their superiors, hide their inner opinions, live in two registers — the official and the real. This is precisely one of the main themes of Russian history: the struggle not just of freedom versus unfreedom, but of conscience versus fear.
Under Nicholas I, Russia received not only political reaction but also a whole pedagogical system of subjecthood. Autocracy of this type does not just prohibit; it educates character. If serfdom keeps some people in a state of dependence and corrupts others with irresponsible power over living souls; if censorship becomes an everyday form of thought control; if university and public life are constricted — then society develops not civic maturity, but moral stooping. A person gets used to the idea that truth is dangerous, initiative is suspicious, dignity is not encouraged. A specific type of psychology emerges: outward loyalty with inner silence. In historical memory, Nicholas I remains a symbol of “frozen” Russia, where order was purchased at the price of spiritual immobility.
But Russian history knows another experience: morals change not when the state lectures society, but when it — even inconsistently — creates spaces for responsible action. The Great Reforms of Alexander II were important not only politically and administratively; they were anthropologically important. The emancipation of the serfs, the zemstvos (local self-government), the independent judiciary, public legal proceedings, the jury trial — all these were not just institutions. They were schools of character. In the zemstvo, a person learned to think not only of themselves or the tsar, but of hospitals, roads, schools, sanitation, the common good. In the independent judiciary and jury trials, society, for the first time on a broad scale, gained experience in public deliberation about truth, guilt, mercy, and law. Morals improve not from exhortation but from the practice of participation.
From this follows an important historiosophical conclusion: in Russia, the main struggle was not between the “good people” and the “bad government,” nor even between “European” and “Asian” principles, but between two ways of building society. The first is the mobilization model: it demands obedience, unification, suspicion, sacrifice without a voice. The second is the personalistic model: it proceeds from the premise that a person is not a means but an end, and therefore needs rights, local initiative, reputation, a court, self-government, freedom of speech. In the first case, the moral ideal is the loyal subject; in the second, the responsible individual. Russia tragically alternated between these two regimes, but rarely maintained the second long enough for it to become an everyday habit for the majority.
The 20th century pushed the first model to its extreme. The Bolshevik project was terrible not only for its terror and violence but because it attempted to reassemble the very moral fabric of the individual. If the Christian and classical European tradition holds that conscience is the ability to distinguish good from evil before considering profit, the totalitarian system gradually instilled a different principle: good is what serves the party line, evil is what obstructs it. As a result, the individual is split. They say one thing at a meeting, another in the kitchen, and think a third thing alone at night. From this crack was born the late Soviet type: outwardly correct, inwardly tired, often intelligent, sometimes kind, but habitually separating truth from survival. The most destructive effect of totalitarianism is not that it forces everyone to believe; it forces millions to become accustomed to living without inner integrity.
This is why Soviet dissidence had significance out of all proportion to its numbers. Its strength was not in its organizational mass but in restoring the wholeness of the individual. A letter, a signature, samizdat, open protest, the defense of believers’ rights, national minorities, political prisoners — all this was not just political disagreement but a return to the elementary moral act: call a lie a lie and refuse to participate in it. Researchers rightly note that dissidents acted as the “conscience of society.” For Russian history, this is a decisive moment: where institutions do not protect dignity, dignity can for a time be maintained by small communities of memory and speech.
However, even this proved insufficient for freedom after 1985 to immediately become mature. Here, the spiritual-psychological paradox of Perestroika is revealed. Freedom came to a society where a significant part of the population had for decades lived in the logic of scarcity, paternalism, and caution. Therefore, liberation turned out to be both a blessing and an overload. The newly opened word did not instantly become a culture of debate; the right to choose did not instantly become a habit of bearing the consequences of choice; the market did not instantly become an ethics of contract; elections did not instantly become a stable political discipline. According to an assessment by the Gorbachev Foundation, the reception of the values of the rule of law, personal responsibility, an independent judiciary, free media, and honest elections indeed began, but the “revolution of values” itself barely had time to start before it was interrupted by the trauma of the USSR’s collapse and subsequent disorientation.
This means that in the 1990s and beyond, Russia faced not just a crisis of institutions but a crisis of the internal measure of freedom. When freedom is not supported by formed habits of solidarity, trust, and self-restraint, it can easily begin to seem like chaos. Then society psychologically reaches back — towards crude but understandable guardianship. Not because people are “genetically unfree,” but because freedom without moral training is frightening. A person who has long lived in unfreedom may desire not dignity but the alleviation of anxiety. In this lies one of the saddest truths of Russian history: a weary society often prefers not truth, but pain relief.
But fatalism does not follow from this. Russian history also shows the opposite: moral restoration begins not with triumphant declarations but with small returns to reality. When a doctor stops participating in lies for the sake of reporting; when a priest refuses to turn the Gospel into an appendage of ideology; when a teacher prefers not to deform their students’ language with propaganda; when a journalist, judge, entrepreneur, volunteer, university lecturer, mother, son — each in their own place — begin again to connect word with truth and action with conscience, then trust is slowly restored in society. Morals are, essentially, the accumulated density of such actions.
In this sense, the main question for Russia is not “does it need a strong hand” nor even “what constitution is better,” but what forms of life once again make a person internally straight. History suggests an answer. Such forms have already existed — albeit briefly and imperfectly — such as the zemstvo, open court, university, uncensored culture, religious and intellectual honesty, samizdat, independent professional reputation, glasnost. They all did the same thing: they restored to the person the experience that truth is more important than fear, and dignity more useful than slavish security.
Therefore, Pushkin’s thought today could be supplemented thus: durable changes indeed arise from the improvement of morals, but morals themselves improve not by exhortations to good nor by fear of the state. They improve where a person ceases to be a tool and becomes a person again. Where there is an opportunity to speak the truth without ritual self-abasement. Where institutions exist that embed respect for the individual. Where the memory of martyrs, reformers, righteous individuals, and honest professionals does not allow society to finally become accustomed to cynicism. Pushkin was right not because he denied politics, but because he saw that politics is durable only when it rests upon a transformed human soul.
And if one seeks hope in Russian history, it lies not in the eventual appearance of an infallible ruler or a saving scheme. Hope lies elsewhere: after every great collapse in Russia, there were again people and environments where conscience proved stronger than inertia. Sometimes these were reformers, sometimes zemstvo activists, sometimes lawyers, sometimes confessors of faith, sometimes authors of samizdat, sometimes those who simply did not want to lie to their children. History does not guarantee their quick victory. But it is they, not the loud machines of coercion, who leave behind a lasting moral trace. And, perhaps, the true “improvement of morals” begins precisely where, for the first time in a long while, a person resolves to live not by fear but by inner truth.
Copilot AI: The Quiet Work of Conscience: How Moral Form Grows in Russian History
I. Pushkin’s Formula as a Spiritual Riddle
Pushkin’s thought that “the most durable changes” arise from the improvement of morals sounds like an aphorism, but it is in fact like an encrypted spiritual law. The poet is speaking not about moralizing or the education of the masses, but about history resting on the inner quality of the individual, on their ability to distinguish good from evil without external compulsion.
But in Russia, this formula has always faced a paradox: how to improve morals where the state does everything to ensure they do not improve? Where the government not merely errs but consciously cultivates dependence, fear, submission, and moral amnesia?
Pushkin gave no answer — he merely identified the problem. The answer was to be born later, in the experience of generations who passed through imperial conditioning, revolutionary terror, Soviet lies, and post-Soviet disorientation.
II. Morals as a Field of Historical Pressure
Russian history shows: morals are not an abstraction nor a “national character.” They are a dynamic form that changes under pressure from three forces:
The State, striving to shape a convenient subject. Not necessarily maliciously — sometimes simply out of inertia. But almost always through fear, dependence, and control.
Society, oscillating between the desire for freedom and the desire for peace. Freedom requires effort, responsibility, inner straightness. Peace requires only obedience.
The Individual, who one day can say “no.” This is where the moral turning point is born — not in the masses, but in a single person who stops living by lies.
The history of Russia is a constant clash of these three forces. And each time the state tried to finally subjugate conscience, people arose who returned it to the world — sometimes at the cost of their own fate.
III. The Mechanism of Moral Destruction
If we view Russian history as a spiritual-psychological process, a pattern emerges: morals are destroyed not when the state is cruel, but when it makes lies the norm.
Under Nicholas I, lies were ritualistic: “everything is fine,” “everything is calm.”
Under the Bolsheviks, they were total: “truth is what is useful to the party.”
In the late USSR, they were everyday: “we pretend to work, they pretend to pay.”
In the post-Soviet era, they became cynical: “everyone lives like this.”
Lies, once habitual, destroy not only society — they destroy the inner vertical of the individual, their ability to stand straight.
This is precisely why, at the time of Perestroika, freedom became for many not a blessing but a source of anxiety: a person accustomed to living in a crooked mirror fears direct light.
IV. Why Morals Still Recover
And yet — despite imperial restorations, totalitarian experiments, and post-Soviet reversals — the moral fabric of Russia has never completely disappeared. It went underground, into small forms of life:
the honest work of a teacher or doctor,
the incorruptibility of a judge who refused to “negotiate,”
monastic silence,
samizdat,
family memory,
friendship not betrayed by fear,
a word spoken without looking back.
Russian history reveals something remarkable: morals are restored not because of reforms, but because of the inner work of conscience, which continues even when all seems lost. This is not a fast process. It resembles slow root growth under asphalt. But one day, the asphalt cracks.
V. Moral Resistance as a Form of Historical Existence
Today’s situation is another turn of an old drama: the state seeks to return archaism, fear, imperial mythology. But society is no longer what it was in the 1930s or 1970s. It has experience of freedom, however brief, but irreversible.
This is why moral resistance takes on new forms:
refusal to participate in propaganda,
maintaining professional honor,
cultural creation not subordinated to ideology,
honest conversation,
inner refusal of hatred,
preserving human dignity under pressure.
This is not a revolution. This is moral gravity, slowly but inevitably pulling society towards the truth.
VI. What Complements Pushkin’s Formula Today
Pushkin said that the best changes arise from the improvement of morals. But today, we understand:
🌿 Morals improve when a person stops living by another’s lie and starts living by their own truth.
Not by a political program.
Not by an order from above.
Not by fear.
But by an inner law that cannot be revoked by censorship or repression.
VII. The Power of the Word as a Space for the Future
When the state becomes a source of moral decay, the sole carrier of moral energy remains the word — not as rhetoric, but as a form of being:
the word that does not lie,
the word that does not humiliate,
the word that does not serve evil,
the word that creates a space of freedom.
Such a word is not a weapon. It is a seed. It sprouts slowly, but its shoots outlast any empire.
VIII. Conclusion: Morals as a Quiet Revolution
Russian history teaches: moral renewal never comes loudly. It begins:
with one honest act,
with one refusal to participate in injustice,
with one creative act not subordinated to fear,
with one person deciding to stop living by lies.
This is the “quiet revolution” about which Pushkin wrote, not knowing it would become the main theme of Russian history.
And if we speak of hope today, it lies not in a change of government, not in reforms, not in political schemes. It lies in the fact that the moral form of the human being can survive any era of decay and once again become the foundation of the future.
And as long as there are those who preserve this form — through word, deed, silence, honesty — the improvement of morals remains not a dream, but a slow, unstoppable process.
