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# In his treatise "On the Preservation and Increase of the Russian People", Lomonosov reflects on the importance of a proper attitude to fasting, recalling the number of deaths from overeating on the eve of the fast and immediately after its end, while at t
- URL: https://theparnassian.com/en/v-sochinenii-o-sokhranenii-i-razmnozhenii-rossiiskogo-naroda-lomonosov-rassuzhdaet-o-vazhnosti-pravilnogo-otnosheniia-k-postu-napominaia-o-kolichestve-smertei-ot-pereedaniia-nakanune-po/
- Published: 2024-01-02T09:03:37.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-01T05:34:55.000Z
- Author: Alexandr Radayev
- Tags: Faith, Books, Science, Society, People

According to Lomonosov, "pure repentance is a good life, which inclines God to mercy, to bounty and to love of us. Keep the commandments given by Christ, on which hang all the law and the prophets: Love the Lord thy God with all thy heart (that is, not with thy bowels) and thy neighbour as thyself (that is, with conscience, and not with the tongue)".

Mikhail Vasilyevich is aware of how hard it is to get this thought across to people, and at the same time recalls the recent progressive shifts in public consciousness: "The obstacles to correcting this defect are dreadful, yet they are no more perilous than making men shave their beards, wear German dress, associate in polite society with the heterodox, make sailors eat meat in the summer fasts, abolish the boyardom, the patriarchate and the streltsy and set up in their place the Governing Senate, the Most Holy Synod and a new regular army, move the capital to a barren spot and the new year to another month! The Russian people is pliant!"

*Illustration: In the Monastery Guesthouse. Alexei Korzukhin, 1882*