The construct «Holy Russia» and its semantic actualizations

In moments of deep changes, various paths of historical development and in periods of non-obvious future there appears a necessity to find the ultimate bases of the society identity. Among these bases loaded by the meaning and supreme spiritual values, in relation to Russia, the construct "Holy Russia" is mentioned. Being originated in the era of Russian Middle Ages, it embodied in the well-known Philotheos's formula "Moscow - the Third Rome". Over centuries, the construct played the key role in political culture to substantiate the God's choice of Russian people and the combination of celestial and earth reality on Russian land. Thus, in accordance with the medieval idea, Russia was assigned the role of a kind of "icon" of Celestial Kingdom while the Russian Tsar played the role of the God's reflection on earth. Philotheos's political formula was embodied in the project "New Jerusalem" of Patriarch Nikon, it was adapted by the people and for the people properly to the construct "Holy Russia". Uniting etymologically "holiness" and "light", it manifested the adversarial position of light to the darkness that is to impiety or vicious belief. It can be traced by the author of the article through linguistic research materials and sources. A breakaway from power-religious orthodoxy which was reflected in religious poetry and pastorals, did not affect the basic idea of exclusivity of Russia, but at the same time, the attention was paid to the issues of truth and justice. Russian philosophy (Solovyov V., Trubetskoy E., Berdyaev N.), referring to the problem of "Holy Russia", spotlights the distinction between different levels of Christianity, such as a temple level, a home one and a universal idea. It shows the failure of chiliastic views on the structure of the Kingdom of God on earth. At the same time, being in thrall to the political situation, the philosophers of the first emigration wave repeated those mistakes which they were opposed to. Events of the recent years, complexity of foreign policy situation and a search for bases of identity boosted to quasi-religious writings, where the construct of "Holy Russia" is being newly exploited as a unique one in its originality, total, messianic to imperial desires. All this in a bizarre form combines the rhetoric of "spiritual poems" of the Russian Middle Ages, the first wave of immigrants journalism and at the same time it contradicts the main purpose of the construct - Orthodox unity, the great spiritual values united in this construct of holy men, holy word, holy images, which can only serve the rise of current Russian policy.

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