In the article, we will consider the life and work of the outstanding philosopher, cultural expert and writer Grigory Solomonovich Pomerants.
Childhood
Pomerants Grigory Solomonovich was born in March 1918 in Vilnius in the family of an actress and an accountant. For some time the boy lived with his mother, and his father was in Poland. In 1925, the family was reunited, but not for long: soon the parents divorced, the child stayed with his father.
In 1940, Grigory Pomerants graduated from the Institute of Literature (Faculty of Literature), immediately after receiving his diploma, he lectured at the Pedagogical Institute of Tula until the war broke out.
Years of service
The future philosopher Grigory Pomerants voluntarily submitted an application to the draft board, but since he had vision problems, he was not called up immediately. At first he was in civil defense - guarding a shoe factory. In 1941 he was accepted into the Communist militia battalions.
In January 1942 he was sent to the North-Western Front, a month later he ended up in the medical battalion, where he was wounded and shell-shocked again during the bombing. Six months later, again, but already lame, he arrived in the ranks of the defenders of the motherland. He was enrolled in the trophy team of the 258th Infantry Division. He was an employee of the divisional newspaper and the Komsomol organizer of management.
In the summer of 1944, he received the rank of junior lieutenant and was appointed to the post of party organizer of the 3rd battalion of the 291st rifle regiment. Participated in the liberation of Belarus. In the autumn of the same year, Grigory Pomerants was wounded in the arm and ended up in the hospital. While there, he was awarded the Order of the Red Star, and later received a second award from the head of the political department and the rank of lieutenant.
After the war
Grigory Solomonovich had to see and experience a lot during the fighting. But even after the war, fate did not stop testing him.
In the winter of 1945, Grigory Pomerants was expelled from the Communist Party of the USSR, of which he had been a member since 1942, for "anti-Soviet talk". After demobilization, he returned to Moscow, got a job at Soyuzpechat. But a quiet quiet life was out of the question. In 1949, Grigory was again accused, this time of anti-Soviet activities, and sentenced to 5 years in prison.
After his release, for three years he worked as a teacher in the Shkurinskaya village (Krasnodar Territory), and after rehabilitation (in 1956) - as a bibliographer at the INION RAS, in the department of African and Asian countries.
Political views
Why was Grigory Pomerants disliked by the Soviet authorities? His books and other publications have been called dissident. His report "The Moral Image of a Historical Personality", which he read on December 3, 1965 at the Institute of Philosophy, was frankly anti-Stalinist. However, the author himself claimed that he deliberately wrote it in "Marxist" language.
For a long time, Grigory Pomerants had disputes in absentia with the writer Alexander Isayevich Solzhenitsyn. The philosopher defended in his judgments the spiritual autonomy of the individual and the values of liberalism, opposing them to the nationalist ideas of the writer.
Philosophical ideas
Grigory Solomonovich Pomerants considered deep philosophy and, of course, religion to be the foundations of human existence. He argued that the only way out of political and spiritual crises can only be the "independence" of a person in culture and religion. According to the philosopher, only the path inside oneself, and not dissolution in the mass, will help to find the meaning of life and find peace of mind.
Private life
Grigory Solomonovich - writer, essayist, philosopher and culturologist - was married twice. His first wife was Irina Ignatievna Muravyova, who worked all her life as a literary critic. Their marriage lasted only a few years.
The second wife of Gregory Pomerants was Mirkina Zinaida Alexandrovna, a poetess and translator. Together with her husband, they conducted their own philosophical and religious seminar in Moscow. And they remained together until the departure of Grigory Solomonovich from life. It happened on February 16, 2013.
It is known that the philosopher has a grandson - a religious scholar and historian Muravyov Alexei Vladimirovich.
Main work
Pomerants Grigory Solomonovich left a great literary heritage to the descendants. Bookswriter surprisingly motivate the reader to explore the depth of his personality through the reasoning, thoughts and experiences of the author.
Among the works of the philosopher, it is worth highlighting the following: “Gathering oneself”, “Dreams of the earth”, “Openness to the abyss. Meetings with Dostoevsky”, “Notes of an ugly duckling”. Consider each separately.
The book "Collecting Yourself" touches upon the issues of the formation of personality through the contact of its spiritual component with the culture of different times and peoples, art, religion. The problems of metaphor of spiritual experience, the dilemma of freedom and love, religion and ideology are considered.
Dreams of the Earth was published in 1984 in Paris. This book is a true bibliographic rarity. Nevertheless, the problems that the author studies are incredibly interesting to the modern reader. The publication includes articles about Russian culture, the collapse of empires, the images of Russia in the poetry of the 19th and 20th centuries and a possible path for the development of the state on the eve of world cataclysms.
Grigory Pomerants studied the work of the great Russian writer Fyodor Dostoevsky and saw in its deepest sense the key to understanding the tragedies of the 20th century. All thoughts of the author are presented in the publication “Openness to the Abyss. Meetings with Dostoevsky.”
The author has experienced a lot in his life: the camps, and Stalingrad, and dissidence. His autobiographical book Notes of the Ugly Duckling is interesting not so much for its plot, but for the feelings and thoughts born in the author's head as a result of life's upheavals. The reader seems to be leadingdialogue with the narrator and along with him passes the path of spiritual transformation.
The joint work of the philosopher and his second wife Mirkina Zinaida - "The Great Religions of the World" - is worthy of attention. It explores the images of the world's most influential religions. The chapters of the book are devoted to prehistoric cults, Islam, Buddhism, Christianity, religious movements of the 20th century, which had the greatest influence on art, history and philosophy. The authors managed to combine poetic presentation with scientific reliability. The book will be of interest to anyone who is looking for a way into the depths without rigid dogmas.
Together with his wife, Grigory Solomonovich presented the reader with another work - the book "The Work of Love". It contains lectures of the spouses and essays on related topics. The main goal of the work is to help the reader restore the integrity of the world broken into pieces, to find himself as a person.
Grigory Pomerants: quotes
Some statements of the writer have become winged. Consider the most famous:
- "Without sensitivity, one cannot know either happiness or unhappiness."
- "Only in the very last depths of the human heart can God find himself in space and time. And when a person reaches this depth, he feels the presence of a certain spirit that helps him realize what is good and what is bad."
- "The ability to be happy is a sign of a person who is in harmony, free from fuss, fear and confusion in worries, a person who is able to take everything from life,what she gives, and give whatever she demands".
- "Love is so closely associated with pain that without the willingness to endure fear and pain, it is completely impossible."
- "When a person who has achieved a goal does not feel happy, it means that he took a false goal for a true one, and missed the main one."
- "The nuggets lie not on the swept pavement, but in the mud".
- "Our salvation is in the depths, where far from every moment is bright. At this depth, illusions disappear, and a person is left alone with damned questions, death and suffering. But I will never change the dawn that will have to wait, on electricity, which can easily flare up at the touch of a button. I believe in the dawn. I have seen it more than once."
The ability to convey the immense essence in a few short phrases is a real talent. Grigory Solomonovich undoubtedly possessed it.
