# The Spirit of Russia/Volume 2/Chapter 25

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
DEMOCRACY AND REVOLUTION
§ 203.
THESE studies might well be entitled "The Russian Revolution," for since the days of Peter, Russia has been in a chronic condition of revolution, and the problem of the revolution is one of the leading interests of all philosophers of history and statesmen in Russia. We may indeed say that the problem of revolution is preeminently the problem of Russia.
In Russia, as well as in Europe, the French revolution gave rise to the development of modern philosophy of history and modern sociology (§ 46). Since the time of the great revolution, the problem of revolution has in Russia been a standing item upon the agenda, practically no less than theoretically. The reaction under Alexander I and Nicholas I, definitely directed against the revolution, forced Russian thinkers into two opposing camps, that of the revolutionaries and that of the antirevolutionaries. The revolutionary trend began with Pestel and Radiščev; the succession was continued by Bělinskii, Herzen, Bakunin, Černyševskii, Dobroljubov, and the nihilists, the terrorists, and especially the Narodnaja Volja, Lavrov and Mihailovskii, and finally the revolutionary exponents of socialism and anarchism (the Marxists on the one hand, and Kropotkin on the other).
The right wing is represented by the official policy, which was reduced by Count Uvarov to the simple formula of Orthodoxy, autocracy, and nationality, and which made an impression upon Puškin, and yet more markedly upon Gogol. The slavophils did their utmost to give this formula a philosophic content, but the philosophy speedily became dissipated into ​the prescriptions of the theocracy, for Katkov, Pobědonoscev, and Leont'ev were but spokesmen of the caesaropapist reaction. Solov'ev renewed the attempt of the slavophils, and a number of sometime revolutionaries have of late followed in his footsteps, for the interest in religion has been fortified by the writings of Dostoevskii and Tolstoi. In Ropšin, above all, we have been able to demonstrate the manifestations of the crisis in revolutionism. The first Russian mass revolution, and its conquest by the reaction, once more made the problem of revolution a matter of urgent actuality.
The concept of revolution secures graphic expression in current terminology. Everywhere when people speak of a rising, a revolt, a tumult, an insurrection, or a rebellion, they mean something quite distinct from revolution, for this last is regarded as a thorough transformation from the foundation upwards. In the last sense, people speak also of "the definitive revolution."
Civil war, again, is distinguished from revolution, and we distinguish between revolution from above and revolution from below. Reaction is a form of revolution, for reaction is the counter-revolution.
In most cases the idea of bloodshed is attached to the idea of revolution, but of course a revolution may be effected without bloodshed, though carried out by the use of force and even military force.
These terms afford a fairly accurate classification, or at any rate provide a survey, of the different varieties of revolution, and we may content ourselves with the simple enumeration of designations without attempting precise definitions.
As far as Russia is concerned we have to think especially of the difference between mass revolution and individual revolutionary acts (terrorism). Enough has been said in previous chapters to emphasise this distinction, for it is clearly explained in the history of the Russian revolution and in the doctrines of individual writers on the subject.
Ordinarily the term revolution, when used without qualification, signifies political revolution. But there are also non-political revolutions: religious, moral, and ecclesiastical; philosophic and scientific; literary and artistic. Much has been written concerning the economic and social revolution brought about by capitalism.
​The distinction between the varieties of revolution previously enumerated is based upon differences in causation. In some cases a revolution may arise from a momentary and transient dissatisfaction, or even from a more enduring dissatisfaction, and may aim merely at such a change as the removal of one or two oppressive personalities, or at the transformation of individual measures or institutions. Very different is the deliberate aim at the reconstruction of an entire political regime and of all-the institutions of society.
Thus the French revolution at the close of the eighteenth century is rightly distinguished as the "great" revolution. The peculiar significance of the French revolution and its sequels was that they aimed at revolution in the true sense of the word, at a fundamental transformation. There were philosophical, ethical, and religious preparations for the change; man was to be renovated, and the whole of life was to be built up anew from its very foundations. The reaction and the restoration served only to strengthen this aspiration; philosophically and historically, the revolution was represented as a necessary process of renewal, the reconstitution of society and mankind. This is the explanation of the modern faith in progress (§ 40), of the idea of the new age and of novelty in general, an idea which has now secured general recognition in theory, in practice, and in statecraft.
In our account of Marxism (§ 160) we pointed out that the idea of progress and evolution furnishes many persons with arguments against revolution. It is contended that the development of human history must be gradational, just as the world and the cosmos have evolved by infinitesimal stages.
The question arises here, whether those who argue thus have rightly understood the data of history. We learn from the history of revolutions, and above all from the history of the French revolution, that these happenings cannot be explained into non-existence by analogies drawn from the modern theories of those geologists and cosmologists who will hear nothing of catastrophe. Psychology and sociology teach us that in the spiritual or psychical sphere individual development, and therefore also the development of society, is characterised by crises, by crude contrasts, by revolutions. Struve is utterly wrong in deducing from the theory of evolution, the view that revolution is epistemologically inconceivable. ​Psychologically and logically, glaring oppositions exist (the so-called contrast effects), and to this extent the Hegelian dialectic is justified. We may admit that, objectively considered, the contrasts are less glaring than they seem to those who know them subjectively. Revolution may be accounted an exceptional happening; we may wish that there were no revolutions, that development could take place without such shocks. But revolutions have occurred, and it is undeniable that since the great revolution, revolutionism, the revolutionary mood, has become widespread and enduring. Socialism and anarchism as mass moods are definitely revolutionary. In philosophy, literature, and art, and also in the moral domain, revolutionary sentiment is general. Socio-political revolutions are intimately connected with revolutions in the mind. We may recall Čaadaev's saying that in the west revolutions have at first always been mental; "interests" have followed ideas.
Modern revolutionism has developed since the reformation and the renaissance. The religious and ecclesiastical reformation was revolutionary, and led by a natural development to the social and political transformation of Europe. The peoples which accepted and carried through the reformation subsequently exhibited a socio-political trend in the direction of democracy, so that among them the manifestations of revolutionism were less radical than these proved among the Catholic peoples, those that suppressed the reformation and for that very reason again and again broke into revolution against theocratic absolutism. The French revolution was the natural outcome of theocratic absolutism, against which the enlightenment and modern philosophy, fertilised by English and American ideas, directed their shafts. Diderot gave distinctive utterance to the mood of revolutionary Frenchmen when he expressed the wish that the last king might be strangled with the entrails of the last priest. Protestantism was comparatively favourable to modern ideas, to philosophy and science. Among the Protestant peoples, therefore, the revolution was less radical, and was predominantly theoretical, literary, and philosophical.
We must refer once more to Hume and Kant, and above all to the Kantian criticism. As we have more than once had occasion to insist, the world-wide historical significance of critical philosophy, as contrasted with uncritical mythology, is that the former effectively destroys the theoretical founda​tions of theology, and the practical foundations of theocracy. Hume and Kant have revolutionised the minds of believers once for all.
Marx and his successors are right in proclaiming philosophy and science to be essentially revolutionary; but they are wrong when they endeavour to limit the revolutionary spirit to atheism and materialism or to certain specified sciences (they speak of the natural sciences, but we may remember that F. A. Lange regarded moral statistics as the most revolutionary of all the sciences). The philosophic revolution consists in the recognition of the futility of mythology, in the growth of a critical self-consciousness. Atheistic and materialistic negation is the ephemeral and purely negative form of this revolution.
During and after the French revolution, many philosophers, jurists, and students of political science, endeavoured to define the essence of that movement. Peculiarly instructive are the writings of the adversaries of the revolution: in France, de Maistre, and the philosophers of the restoration, de Bonald, Ballanche, etc.; in England, Burke; in Germany, Baader, Görres, Stahl, such converts to Catholicism as Schlegel, and the Metternichian publicists, led by Gentz.
I am in accord with the analysis furnished by these reactionaries. From their stately series I may select the Prussian court publicist Stahl, an eye witness and analyst of the revolution of 1848. Stahl rightly recognised that the revolution was not an isolated act, but a permanent state from which the new order was to spring. "Revolt, expulsion of dynasties, overthrow of constitutions, have occurred in all ages. The revolution is the characteristic, world-wide, and historical signature of our own epoch." Stahl is right, again, when he refers the revolution to an attempt "to base the whole of public life upon the will of man instead of upon God's ordinance and disposition." Stahl is right, finally, when he proclaims rationalism in religion to be the original cause of revolution.
Though I agree with Stahl upon these points, I differ from him in that what he censures as "the extremity of sin in the political domain, . . . the essential defiance of God's ordinance, . . . the counter-belief in man rather than God," seems to me thoroughly justifiable.
Like Stahl and the before-mentioned philosophers and ​political writers, the Russian reactionaries rightly understood the nature of revolution. Whereas Stahl thought that one power only, that of Christianity, could overcome the revolution, and whereas de Maistre turned for aid to the authority of the pope, Count Uvarov and the Russian theocrats from Katkov to Leont'ev, pursuing the same end, consistently counterposed the theocracy to the revolution.
§ 204.
IT is comprehensible that the official exponents of philosophy should deny or gloss over its revolutionary effects. In this spirit, during the reign of Nicholas I, the liberal writer Polevoi took up the cudgels on behalf of French philosophy, saying that it had not been the cause of the revolution any more than Christianity had been responsible for the massacre of St. Bartholomew.
True, not every philosophy is revolutionary. Even Kant never attained to clear views upon the problem of revolution. He contended that revolution was inadmissible, and that the utmost the people might do was to refuse to pay taxes. He did not discuss the consequences of such a refusal, nor did he explain why he was sympathetic towards the French revolution, nor why he accepted the ideas of Rousseau. When the king commanded him to refrain from the public discussion of religious questions, Kant complied with the order.
But, in similar circumstances, Kant's successors, Fichte for instance, refused to comply. Hegel's disciples, the Hegelians of the left, had an influence in promoting the events of the year 1848, and some of them were direct participators in the revolutionary movements; but Feuerbach, the founder of the trend, held aloof, explaining that, though a republican, he desired to see a republic established only where men were ripe for republican institutions. For the same reason, the revolutionary Herzen went so far as to invoke maledictions on the year 1848; but his successors persisted in their ​endeavours to promote an intellectual and political revolution in Russia, and down to our own day they have continued to ponder the ethics of revolution.
In many cases a revolution is judged by its fruits, by the application of a utilitarian standard. Should it prove successful, its leaders and initiators are commended; should it fail, an unfavourable judgment is passed. That is the way in which the world judges wars, and most other enterprises.
Of course such judgments are apt to be unsound and unjust, and their only value is that they stress the consideration that the initiators of revolutionary undertakings must have foresight and a due sense of responsibility.
The ethical judgment of revolution is concerned with motives, for this is merely to apply to revolution the ethical standard by which all activities are to be appraised. By following such a rule we can overcome the difficulties which have troubled Ropšin and other writers.
All revolutions, including revolutions in the mental sphere, must be judged by these ethical canons. The philosophical and literary critic, and every conscientious and éarnest worker, will not fail to ask himself how his words and deeds will be received. Doubtless the thinker is not responsible for the various interpretations that may be placed upon his ideas; but a conscientious man pays heed to the environment in which he has to work, and takes into account the intellectual capacity of those before whom his thoughts will be laid. Thought is social.
But the writer is responsible for the consequences of his words when he demands, incites to, or suggests action. There are numerous grades of responsibility, according to the degree to which the aim was clearly conceived. When, for example, Tailhade was sentenced for incitements to murder, his defender was right in pointing to the manner in which the antisemites and the nationalists were continually inciting to murder.
In Europe, in days that are not yet remote, difference of opinion was punishable with banishment and even death. In Russia, Nicholas I had Dostoevskii condemned to death for the public reading of Bělinskii's writing against Gogol, the capital sentence being commuted to one of many years' Siberian exile. Nicholas might have appealed to the example of Locke, who proposed that atheism as a political crime should be punishable with death. For words are also deeds.
​Since the days of Bělinskii and Herzen, for Russian thinkers the ethical problem of revolution has been the question whether crime and murder are permissible. Ropšin became aware that as a revolutionary he had not merely to sacrifice his own life, but to slay others, and he asked himself, May one kill? Such is the real problem of conscience, and the question can only be answered in the negative. Man cannot play the part of God towards his fellows. In accordance with humanitarian ethics, all human life without distinction is sacred. There are no exceptions to the humanitarian law that no man has the right to kill his fellow man. The law is, of course, equally binding on rulers.
A further canon of humanitarian ethics is that everyone may, nay must, defend himself against anything that imperils his mental or physical life, and that he ought to do so in all circumstances, and whatever the source of the menace. Everyone should resist coercion and constraint. Tolstoi's doctrine of non-resistance is false. The only element of truth it contains is that the defender must confine himself to defence; the aggressor's violence does not justify the use of active violence in return. Humanitarian ethics does not appraise slaying in accordance with the Old Testament law of retaliation. The essence of moral progress is that the psychological motivation of every action demands individual consideration, so that every act of killing must be judged according to the attendant circumstances. To-day, not every killing is punishable with death; jurists distinguish between death and manslaughter, and legally there are varying degrees of murder.
The humanitarian standard must be applied in our judgment of revolution, and of revolutionary killing. Socio-political self-defence, defence of one's own and others' lives, the defence of the general weal and above all of moral and spiritual interests against the violence of rulers, are permissible and are indeed positive duties. Experience has shown that theocratic aristocracy in its absolutist form is essentially coercive, and is prone to the use of force; hence the resistance offered by the democracy is fully justified. Revolution may be a right and necessary means of resistance, and is then ethically justified. It may even become a moral duty.
My contention is, that revolution may be the right instrument for the democracy to adopt. It may be. But some ​revolutions are reactionary, undemocratic, unprogressive. A revolution may be unnecessary.
Thus the real question is, what is the guiding motive and what the ultimate aim of revolution. We have to distinguish ephemeral tumults from deliberately planned reformative revolutions. But a revolt brought about by the stress of poverty, hunger; or despair, must not be harshly judged. Goethe, though of aristocratic temperament, blamed governments for revolutions; these were never the fault of the people.
No one should ever promote a revolution or participate in one in consequence of vengeful or angry feelings. Vera Zassulič did well to insist upon this point. A justifiable revolution will not be the outcome of romanticism and its fantasies, will not arise from tedium or from a cynical contempt for mankind; nor must we confuse the hodmen and the condottieri of revolution with the progressive-minded revolutionaries. These distinctions of motive and of type are manifest among the participators in every revolution. What we are concerned with is the dominant motive of those who initiate the movement and of those who assume its leadership with a deliberate sense of responsibility.
In appraising a revolution, therefore, we must distinguish carefully between the movement as a whole, and its individual phases, periods, and activities. Our ethical approval may be given to the revolution as a whole even while we condemn the acts of individual participators. Kropotkin prescribes a sound rule for revolutionaries when he says that bloodshed must be reduced to a minimum.
The psychologist, analysing the mass movement, will furnish the moralist with a knowledge of numerous extenuating circumstances, and will be able in particular to point to the general atmosphere of revolutionary excitement, and to show how this may at times assume morbid forms. But the moralist, like the sound tactician, will never fail to insist that excitement is a bad leader for reformers. A desirable revolution springs from the calm conviction that no other means can bring about the requisite progress, and that revolution is consequently indispensable.
True revolution is reformative revolution, and therefore those who defend and advocate revolution, continually insist that preparatory work in the mental sphere is essential, that ​only those revolutions that have been deliberately thought out in advance can possibly prove successful.
We may unhesitatingly concede that revolutionaries do not invariably possess the requisite quotum of patience. But here they do not stand alone, for men are unduly prone to appeal to force. This is manifest in the case of war, which, like revolution, may be justified as a defensive measure, but is far too often used as a means for imposing constraint on others. Speaking generally, men are still apt to squander their vital energies, and they continually sustain the realm of death. Thou shalt not kill! The commandment is universally valid, and its significance is that the reflective man must do his utmost to husband his own and his neighbours' vital forces.
From this outlook, it must be admitted that the state institutions and the administrative methods that have hitherto prevailed are characterised by grave moral defects, and that for this reason even a blood-stained revolution may be excusable. As long as the state and its "god-given" monarchy bases its power on the army, whose force is turned not only against enemies abroad but against subjects at home, and as long as the death penalty is enforced, it is natural that many malcontents should have recourse to the violent means whose use seems sanctioned by the state. Tumults and risings are often manifestations of an unreflective dissatisfaction. If the conduct of state affairs be equally unreflective, such manifestations of dissatisfaction tend to become endemic, until ultimately reforms are conceived and effected. Oxenstierna was right when he contended that every government has the revolutions it deserves. Theocratic absolutism, using force, is responsible for the use of violence by the revolutionary opposition.
A correct judgment of any particular revolution will be facilitated by insight into the nature of the social organism, and above all by an understanding of the social harmony of the various forces at work. The cultured sociologist and philosopher of history will take a very different view from the ordinary taxpayer as to the question of blame for revolution in any given state of society. To give a concrete instance, such a philosopher may wonder whether de Maistre did not do more to promote reaction than was done by Louis XVIII, Charles X, or Louis Philippe. The philosopher of history, ​the man who has read and understood Kant's Critique and Goethe's Faust, will know how to discriminate between a needless popular rising and an indispensable revolution.
Moreover, our judgment of the revolution will vary according to our estimate of the significance of state organisation, of government, and of dynasties. One who does not regard the state as the most important and most valuable element of social organisation, will hardly regard a political revolution as a revelation from on high.
An insight into the nature of social harmony leads us to insist that the revolutionary, if he claims the right to be judge over others in life-and-death matters, must himself before all things think, feel, and live progressively and democratically. Democracy has its duties as well as its rights. Democracy is no mere political system of universal suffrage, but a new philosophy and a new conduct of life. It is essential that democrats should educate and train men for democracy. For the time being, the schools are in the hands of state and church, and an essential point to-day in the political struggle is therefore to liberate the school from the theocracy; political culture and education must for the nonce be secured outside the school, and in opposition to the official ideals of education. The supreme difficulty lies in the vicious circle, that the children are educated by the fathers, the young by the old, democrats by aristocrats. Hence the revolution is an uprising of the children against the fathers.
§ 205.
IN support of their opinion that revolution is justifiable, progressively minded and democratic jurists appeal to the so-called natural right which was formulated in the sense of the humanitarian ideal. Substantially, by natural right is meant that ethical rules are to be embodied in legislation, and numerous attempts have been made towards the formulation of this idea. According to Hume and Kant, however, no precise epistemological foundation has hitherto been provided for natural right.
A primary democratic claim is the right of individual initiative, and this applies in especial to revolution. The justification for a revolution is not furnished by the participation of the masses, but depends upon the motives of those ​who recognise and declare that the revolution is necessary, and who initiate and guide the movement. Always, however, it is essential to adduce proof that the revolution is actually in conformity with the true interests of the people, that it represents a real progress in democratic evolution, and that it is indispensable.
The modern right of initiative ascribes the leading role to the individual intelligence, emotions, and will. Side by side with the legally appointed and officially recognised leaders of humanity, (men need leaders in addition to thinkers), there arise in all domains persons who are assigned leadership or directly and deliberately seize it.
The right of initiative concurrently implies individual responsibility. He who talks of liberty, who talks of the right of initiative, talks also of personal responsibility. The ego, always the ego, is responsible, not the majority, not the plenum, this is the doctrine of modern progressive individualism, whereas the man of an earlier day took shelter behind the church, the state, the nation, the party, the majority, or even mankind as a whole.
The official conservative and reactionary jurists counterposed revolution by proclaiming legitimist right and by appealing to the so-called historic right. In actual fact, the formulas of historic right are fictions, invented to support the actual and historically extant relationships of power. The same remark applies to the attempt to formulate the special rights of reigning dynasts. Rulers appeal to ecclesiastico-religious sanction, to divine right, and Stahl was perfectly logical in referring historic right to the sanction of ecclesiastical Christianity. ​Whilst I thus emphatically reject the doctrine of historic right, and even regard the phrase as a contradiction in terms, we must be careful to avoid appealing to historic right to justify revolution. This is the error of those who in the name of progress would acclaim the demand for innovation as the only sound principle.
Neither the old nor the new is per se right and true. A thing is not necessarily true and right because it has actually existed and continues to exist. This settles the whole problem! The democrat who contests the validity of the principle of catholicity (quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus), realises clearly that history, chronology, cannot replace logic and ethics.
This conception must be emphatically counterposed both to the doctrine of the reactionaries and to that of the radicals. The defenders of revolutionism, no less than the defenders of a particular revolution, must attain to clear ideas on the subject.
The radicalism that is always apt and eager for revolution, stricken with blindness to philosophico-historical and political realities, is often a danger owing to the way in which it plays into the hands of reaction. All well-informed political thinkers of modern times have recognised how revolution may promote reaction, and it must therefore be the aim of true democrats and scientific statesmen to get the better of radicalism. I do not mean by this that we should attempt to discover a so-called golden mean between extremes, for the paltry doctrine of the golden mean has ever been a favourite with reactionaries, and it implies the continued existence of the oppositions it pretends to conciliate. What we have to do is to remain consistently progressive in our thoughts and in our actions, so that by creative progress we may render reaction and radicalism alike impossible.
​Radicalism is frequently unprogressive. The radicals fail to understand that earlier revolutions have provided us with other and often more effective means of democratisation, and they do not know how to turn these means to account. Once constitutionalism, and still more once parliamentarism, has been attained, constitutional channels offer scope for such effective political activities that revolution becomes needless and often futile. Ethically considered, revolution is permissible only in the last resort. Not until all other means have been tried must we have recourse to the extreme measure of revolution, and then only after the most profound searchings of conscience.
Progress does not signify a continuous and positively morbid lust for innovation. Radicals and revolutionaries, no less than conservatives and reactionaries, are affected with the malady of historism, are guided by chronology instead of by a study of the facts. The conservative regards that as good which existed yesterday; the revolutionary regards that as good which exists to-day or will exist to-morrow. The conservative succumbs to traditionalism; the revolutionary succumbs to radicalism, to philoneism, to modernism, to à-la-modism. In this sense I contrast historism with realism.
Progressive democracy desires to overcome both conservatism and radicalism, for both are utopian. Without a clearly conceived aim, and devoting all his energies to an attack upon the historically extant, the revolutionary is apt to exercise a purely negative influence. Such a revolutionary is the awful example of a politician for whom the existence of the old is a necessary presupposition, of one who could not live were it not for the existence of the old. The revolutionary becomes a reactionary, the opponent of philistinism is himself a philistine. Antiphilistinism is frequently nothing more than a form of philistinism.
§ 206.
IF I mistake not, among the participators in the French revolution Thomas Paine may be regarded as the most conspicuous example of a modern, democratically minded, deliberately progressive revolutionary. His writings supply the philosophical foundations of the democratic revolution. Precisely because his participation in the revolution was so ​deliberate, he was able to estimate very accurately the errors of the revolution, and yet would not allow these errors to confuse his mind as to the general necessity of the movement. Paine, and here he stood alone, had the courage to defend Louis XVI, saying, "Kill the king, not the man," thus modifying Augustine's maxim, "Diligite homines, interficite errores." Paine, too, was valiant enough to defend the republic and democracy against his brother revolutionaries.
The Russian revolutionaries lack Paine's qualities. The errors of the revolutionary movement alarmed Herzen, and warped his judgment both of Europe and of Russia. Bakunin clung to revolution, but his revolutionism was blind; it is always Bakunin to whom Russians appeal, to Bakunin's doctrine of revolutionary instinct, when what is requisite is intelligent revolutionary conviction. Černyševskii might perchance have developed into a Russian Paine, had he not been monstrously condemned to a living death in Siberia. But the Russian, who continues to believe uncritically in myth, still expects the revolution to work miracles. What Russians need, in a word, is a Kant to apply criticism to their revolutionary doctrines. For lack of such a Kant, they have never got beyond Stepniak's Old Testament theory of a life for a life.
The Russians are apt to forget that their goal is not revolution, but democracy; and Russian revolutionism readily lapses into anarchism and nihilism. Bakunin was perfectly right in demanding a new ethic for Russia and for Europe, but he was unable to guide his own actions consistently in accordance with the doctrines of this new ethic. A democrat in theory, he was an aristocrat in practice.
The new ethic is the ethic of democratic equality, and democratic equality demands critical thought. The Russian revolutionaries (and notably Mihailovskii) recognised that as a preliminary step the old ideas and customs must be destroyed, but the Russian revolutionary is himself none the less apt to cherish the old ideas and to follow the-old customs. He desires to be free, but cannot abandon the tradition and the persistent habits of serfdom. The first revolutionaries were the first of the emancipated serfs. It is not to the point to object that most of the revolutionaries were in actual fact members of the free, the aristocratic caste, for slavery was the social and spiritual condition alike of masters and of slaves.
​The uncritical character of the Russian revolutionary movement is exhibited in the strong sense of personal injury (if I may use the term) by which the Russian revolutionaries are animated. We may admit that in Russia it is far from easy to avoid feeling a positive hatred towards the reactionaries. For example, Burcey's personal campaign against the tsar is not difficult to understand. But there must be a sustained endeavour to conduct the struggle without personal animus, to avoid regarding individuals as responsible for collective sins. Tsarism is no more than a part of theocratic aristocracy; the tsar is but one among many.
The inchoateness of Russian conditions explains the emergence of terrorism as a typical feature of the Russian revolutionary movement. Terrorism is per se individualist, a method by which individuals attack individuals.
The Marxists are to be commended for their rejection of terrorism and for their attempts to pave the way for the mass revolution. They do well to strive to promote the political culture and education of the masses, for a definitive revolution can unquestionably be effected only when the bulk of the population shall have attained a high level of political development. But if culture and education are competent to secure the necessary reforms, a sanguinary revolution will be superfluous.
Marxism openly proclaims its revolutionary goal, and yet in most countries it has a recognised, or at least a tolerated, status side by side with the other political parties; this signifies a great political victory for democracy. To all intents and purposes, absolutism and monarchy have already been routed; the conceptual basis of the theocracy has been overthrown. To-day monarchy must seek utilitarian grounds for its support, for no reflective persons now believe in divine right. Constitutionalism and parliamentarism are the outcome of mutual concessions; they are half-way houses which will ultimately be replaced by the indispensable newer forms of popular administration.
What applies to Europe applies also to Russia. In Russia, however, the caesaropapist theocracy is more powerful than theocracy in Europe, and Russian conditions gave rise to the terrorist guerilla revolution. But long before the publication of Ropšin's books, the Russian terrorists had recognised and admitted the danger of terrorist tactics.
​First of all, the Russian terrorist cannot delude himself into believing that he is acting in the name of the Russian people. The Narodnaja Volja openly declared itself to be a mere preparative for the popular will, not that will in actual operation. Stepniak took refuge in Rousseau against the parliamentary doctrine of majority rule. In like manner Kropotkin, in his theory of the revolution, said that its success would depend upon the acceptance of its ideals by the classes against which it had been directed. The terrorists, it is true, never attained to clear views regarding their relationship to the people. The people, they contended, had independent rights as a subjective entity vis-à-vis the state, but their explanations of what they meant by this contention were exceedingly confused. Moreover, the mass revolution can only be brought about by the dictatorial leadership and the initiative of a few persons, it may be of a single individual. In the last resort, the individual must hazard the initiative in all revolutions. Kropotkin suffers from self-deception when he asserts that the sole function of leaders is to instigate, not to lead, and when he contends that the leader merely provides the theoretical forms for which the masses furnish practical expression. To these views there still clings the haziness of the narodničestvo concerning the relationship of the individual to the social whole.
The terrorists attempted to carry out terrorism systematically but practice convinced them that the method was an impossible one.
Recognising the ethical dangers of their tactics, the terrorists manifested their dubiety in various ways. First of all they explained that revolution was always waged in self-defence, and that they adopted revolutionary methods solely as a last resort and with reluctance. In 1862, even Bakunin said that it would be much better if revolution could be effected without bloodshed, and he continued to hope that the tsar would initiate the necessary revolution by granting the essential and fundamental reforms. Mihailov, one of the first victims of the revolutionary movement, says in his proclamation, "To the Younger Generation," that he and his associates desired a peaceful revolution, but would not shrink from using force, should force ultimately prove necessary. Similar was the language of the terrorists of the Narodnaja Volja and even of the adherents of the Cernyi Pereděl; to the last moment they all continued to hope for a peaceful solution of the intolerable situation
​After the attempted blowing up of the Winter Palace, when many soldiers were killed, the executive committee issued a proclamation (February, 1880) deploring the deaths of the victims, but declaring that such tragic incidents would remain inevitable as long as the army continued to protect the tsar. At the same time, the proclamation insisted that terrorism was armed defence against the tyranny and the cruelty of the government, and it held the government and the tsar accountable for all that was done.
As late as March 10, 1881, the terrorists issued a proclamation to Tsar Alexander II declaring that they would instantly and unconditionally submit to a government appointed by a national assembly. The same year, after the assassination of President Garfield, the "Narodnaja Volja," the organ of the terrorists, published the following declaration (No. 6, October 23, 1881): "The executive committee, expressing its profoundest sympathy with the American people on account of the death of James Abram Garfield, feels it to be its duty to protest in the name of the Russian revolutionaries against all such deeds of violence as that which has just taken place in America. In a land where the citizens are free to express their ideas, and where the will of the people does not merely make the law but appoints the person who is to carry the law into effect, in such a country political assassination is the manifestation of a despotic tendency identical with that to whose destruction in Russia we have devoted ourselves. Despotism, whatever may be the parties or whoever may be the individuals that exercise it, is always blameworthy, and force can be justified only when employed to resist force."
The ethical perils of systematic terrorism were plainly displayed in the combination of Jesuitism and Machiavellianism characteristic of Nečaev's underground activities. We have seen that Nečaev's tactics were condemned by Lavrov, Kropotkin, and others. It is true that certain European authorities (Mazzini, for instance) have condoned and even recommended assassination as a political weapon, but an honest and straightforward revolutionary finds it difficult to adapt himself to terrorist occultism. This is why the Russian terrorists were accustomed to pass death sentences on their victims by formal resolution and to announce the sentence to the condemned.
The secret tactics of the revolutionaries and their adversaries in the state police produce, in addition to vulgar ​traitors, those diplomatists of the revolution who, like Lassalle's Franz von Sickingen, wish to avail themselves of the "cunning of ideas," those who hope to bring about the great reform without shock and without arousing resistance. The attempt is vain, for the awakeners must have sufficient courage to knock loudly at the door of the theocratic bed-chamber.
Not everything is permissible in and for the revolution. Our refusal to admit that the end can always justify the means, applies to the revolution as well as to other things. Ropšin need not have allowed Dostoevskii's Ivan to influence him so powerfully. The formula "all things are permissible" originates because official absolutism sticks at nothing. Dostoevskii's Ivan wishes to give this formula a religious significance. Ivan, however, is not a revolutionist defending the people, but a self-willed man, an absolute egotist.
Many revolutionaries appraise the revolution by a purely utilitarian standard. Pestel deduced the utility of the revolution from the consideration that the Bourbon restoration had accepted the majority of the essential institutions of the revolution, and this writer declared that the recognition of the fact had marked an epoch in his political convictions and in his trend of thought. Pestel was speaking of a mass revolution, but it is another affair when we have to appraise the utility of terrorism. If we think of the great number of victims sacrificed in the cause of terrorism, and of the masses of men who have languished in Siberia or as refugees, if we throw into the scales the losses and gains, we find that even from the utilitarian standpoint which the nihilists have adopted in ethics, it is far from easy to come to a conclusion.
My own belief is that terrorism may have a revolutionary effect, but that the effect is not usually proportionate to the deed. Systematised terrorism I consider an erroneous method. The dangers of systematised terrorism have been recognised by those anarchists who have declared individual outrage useless, and on a level with ordinary crime (§ 172).
§ 207.
FOR the complete understanding of Russia revolutionism we must return to what has already been said regarding democracy in Catholic and in Protestant nations; we must return to the consideration that in political matters Catholic ​nations are more radical and revolutionary than Protestant. This was shown to be a historical fact, and we saw that it was explicable from the educative influence exercised by the respective churches. Not by chance, then, was it possible for me to point to Paine, Englishman and Quaker, as exemplar of a democratic revolutionary. The French, on the other hand, produced the revolutionary type of which Blanqui was the cardinal instance, and in this matter the Russians are more akin to the French than to the Protestant English, Americans, Scandinavians, and Germans. Bakunin the Russian, is the counterpart of Blanqui the Frenchman.
Bakunin grew to manhood in Orthodox, absolutist Russia, whereas Marx and Engels were reared in Prussia, which though absolutist is Protestant; the distinction is conspicuous in the two great adversaries. A Protestant, qua Protestant, is positivistically "disillusioned," as Herzen and all the Russians desired to be but were not. To a German Protestant, Feuerbach and Vogt with their materialism and atheism are not so stimulating and exciting as they are to a Russian. The Protestant has the great ecclesiastical revolution behind him; he grows up in a comparatively rationalistic church and gains experience in its administration; he has become habituated to philosophising; the transition from theology to science is not so sudden and unbridged as in the Russian Orthodox church, which has still faith in revelation, is still mystically inclined, and is still so theurgical as to regard theological demonstration (and even scholastic demonstration) of its doctrines and institutions as superfluous, and is satisfied to guide the faithful by its absolute and reputedly divine authority. This is why Feuerbach, this is why philosophy and science in general, affect so differently from the Protestant the Russian who has hitherto been firm in his faith The effect upon Roman Catholics was somewhat similar, but Roman Catholicism has to a considerably greater extent than Orthodoxy taken to ​itself elements from the world of science and from modern philosophy.
Feuerbach, in fact, drags the Russian down out of his Orthodox heaven, drags him down to an earth on which the Protestant and the Jew have already long ere this planted their feet. Herzen and Bakunin, like Bělinskii, were at the outset defenders of Christianity; Bakunin, like Granovskii, clung to the idea of immortality, but here too, in the end, agreed that Feuerbach was right; Bělinskii, Herzen, and Bakunin were all adverse to scepticism. In 1847, Bakunin reproached his friend Annenkov, the liberal critic, for being a sceptic; after his removal to Europe, Bakunin asked Herzen whether the latter was still a believer. Throughout life Bakunin himself remained a believer, nay, remained superstitious, remained a mystic, notwithstanding that the influence of Feuerbach and Comte had gone far to convince him that the old mythopoeic and mystical outlooks must be abandoned. The object of his faith was changed, but the old mental trend was still dominant; his belief in democracy was now a religion of whose truth he was profoundly convinced; it seemed to him that there was something inadequate in a system of political ideas untinctured by religion. He gave unambiguous expression to this opinion in his program of 1842, the philippic against the conservatives and the liberals which furnishes us with the clearest light on Bakunin's own philosophical development. Russian anarchists, socialists, liberals, even slavophils, all draw upon the same source of Russian anarchism; to all of them it seems that life in the political field is concerned solely with "externals"; and they all insist upon the need for an "inward" spiritual life. Precisely because they are religiously inclined do they value the extant state so little, and it is only those among them who are indifferent to religious matters (including a considerable proportion of the liberals) that are satisfied with the political and administrative state in its present form.
As an Orthodox Russian, Bakunin, like Herzen, felt throughout life the burden of the theocratic authority; this is why the two men were in revolt against religion, against the church, against theocratic authority in general; hence their detestation of this authority, their hatred of tsar, church, state, of power in all its forms. The revolution against the theocracy, against the extent absolute, filled Bakunin's whole mind, and he desired to replace the false absolute by the true and definite absolute; ​it seemed impossible for him to conceive of himself as ever resting quietly content with a seat in a parliament. Herzen, Bakunin, and K. Aksakov, all had a poor opinion of European constitutionalism and parliamentarism. Residing in Europe, residing in England, their estimate of the European state was identical with Pestel's. Herzen, too, had shrewdly recognised that parliamentarism and constitutionalism were Protestant products, which had never been organically incorporated into their structure by the Catholic nations. Concerning the Latin world, Herzen wrote aptly that it had sufficient energy for a movement towards liberation, but lacked the strength requisite for the enjoyment of freedom. England, on the other hand, was possessed of the latter capacity. Herzen's views on the matter were not clearly thought out, but he touched the fringe of the problem. It is striking to note how energetically he insisted that the Russians would never become merely constitutionalist, would never become merely liberal, would never become merely Protestant. For Bakunin, in like manner, Protestantism is preeminently disillusionment, is essentially characterised by its lack of enthusiasm—for Bakunin never realised the extent to which he was prone to mistake excitement for enthusiasm. In our detailed psychological analysis of the Russian revolutionary, we have already shown how the lamb grew to become a tiger.
Bakunin's whole method, his fondness for sudden leaps, his desultoriness, his rashness, were characteristic of the habitual indeterminist, of the man who expects a miracle. Whilst Fourier was ever on the look out for the millionaire who should provide him with funds for the realisation of his plans, Bakunin lived in daily expectation of the miracle of revolution. Herzen said of him very truly, that despite his demand for a positivist philosophy of history, despite Hegel, Comte, Feuerbach, and Vogt, he ever retained his mystical faith in miracle, ever remained the indeterminist, the man who has utterly failed to grasp the reign of law in nature and history. Moreover, Bakunin's outlook was that of the aristocrat who has not yet learned to work, for work is continuous attention to detail, and for this the Russian great landowner has as yet no inclination. He only can be industrious in the proper sense of the term who has thoroughly acquired the determinist constancy of purpose associated with deliberate foresight, who has recognised the importance of thinking out ways and means. In Russia, as a ​member of the landowning class, he had no experience of the life of industrial towns; in Europe he paid no attention to the effects of machine methods of production or to the effects of modern trade and commerce upon education and upon the formation of character. Bakunin was a political occultist; as leader of a secret society, he was, in the political sphere, to play the part of the wonder-working Russian pope, hidden behind the altar-piece.
Bakunin had studied German philosophy, and he studied French philosophy as well, but never came to realise that the two philosophies do not mix well. He had a special fondness for Proudhon and the French socialists. Blanqui, rather than Marx, was congenial to him. Catholic education, in Russia and in France, has similar effects on men's minds, forming them both positively and negatively. Bakunin took his ideas from the Germans, but the French were his teachers in practical matters. His anarchism was Russian, but it was Orthodox anarchism, and it is comprehensible only as a revolt against Russian Orthodoxy. This Russian anarchism is closely akin to the French socialism of those days; French socialism was strongly anarchist, and down to our own time anarchism has remained especially characteristic of Catholic nations. German and Marxist socialism, on the other hand, has developed chiefly in Protestant lands. Among Protestants, anarchism as a philosophical system, and anarchism as a mood, do not exist to the same extent as among the Catholic Latin races, the Catholic Germans (in Austria and South Germany), and the Slavs. It is therefore incorrect to speak of anarchism as simply a Russian manifestation, as a peculiar outcome of the Russian national character; and we must distinguish clearly between anarchism and revolutionism (§ 176). The mental stagnation of the Russian theocracy, the absence of intellectual life and activity, the inertia of absolutism, impelled the cultured aristocracy towards anarchism; Bakuninist anarchism is the anger and the irritability of the aristocrat upon whom inactivity has been imposed by circumstances and by education. Towards the close of his life Bakunin was extremely fond of reading Schopenhauer, the philosopher of bitterness, and the fact is psychologically characteristic of this aspect of Bakuninist anarchism.
Herzen might have been enlightened in this respect by his teacher Hegel. He accurately diagnosed the nature of Bakunin's ​revolutionary anarchism, and rejected that doctrine; he realised the defects of the French democracy of his day; but he failed to grasp the essence of the matter
Herzen declared that the revolution effected by Peter had made of the Russians the very worst that could be made of men, for it had converted them into "enlightened slaves"— the enlightened slaves of the theocracy. I may add by way of explanation that Herzen furnished a subjective analysis of this state of enlightened slavery; so did Bělinskii, Bakunin, and others; Mihailovskii's analysis of suicide is on the same lines. "Lapse into tormenting reflection; distractedness of feeling and of consciousness;" thus did Bělinskii characterise the mental state of himself and his fellow progressives. The problem of murder and suicide is discussed in the play written by Bělinskii during his student days.
This is the painful process of disillusionment whose nature ​Herzen grasped so accurately when he counterposed positivistic atheism and materialism, realistic nihilism, to ecclesiastical mythology and theocracy. Herzen was himself proof against this disillusionment, but he could not wholly escape the crushing influence of science. He was keenly aware of the extreme sobriety of Protestantism, in which faith his mother had brought him up; and he emphatically rejected Protestantism for the Russians, saying that it was a bourgeois creed.
Herzen never realised the true implications of the mental revolution he had personally experienced, and the same remark applies to his philosophical successors. He rightly rejected Bakunin's revolutionism, but he failed to recognise that an appeal to Feuerbach was requisite to revolutionise Bakunin the believer. Herzen understood that Bakuninist, that Russian revolutionism was not the democracy to which he aspired. He was on the right track, but to Herzen, as to Bakunin, and to all the two men's successors, the Kantian criticism was lacking. He was right when he declared that the Latin world, though it had sufficient energy for a movement towards liberation, lacked the strength requisite for the enjoyment of freedom: but the true significance of the remark becomes apparent to those only who have grasped the nature of theocracy, and above all of Catholic theocracy; to those who have understood how and why Catholicism, while favourable to the growth of revolutionism, is comparatively unfavourable to the growth of democracy.
* ↑ Stahl, What is the Revolution? (1852).
* ↑ "A revolution may perhaps lead to a decline in personal despotism and in oppression based upon desire for gain or love of power, but can never bring about a true reform in the realm of thought. The unthinking masses will speedily succumb to the sway of new prejudices." Kant is here referring merely to the effects of a transient revolt, and his remarks do not apply to the great revolution and its sequels.
* ↑ Bluntschli already formulated a natural right of the state to develop. Cf. Allgemeines Staatsrecht, 5th edition, 1876, p. 29.
* ↑ The discussion will be clarified by an example of the way in which jurists have endeavoured to master the problem of revolution. The instance I select is that of Merkel, who writes on the elements of general jurisprudence in the fifth edition of Holtzendorff's Encyclopädie der Rechtswissenschaft, 1890 (p. 12). From the binding force of legal prescriptions Merkel deduces the view "that a forcibly established order does not become a legally and rightfully established order (or a part of such an order) until the moment arrives when the preponderance of the moral forces of the people inclines towards its side, and condones its existence, so that a voluntary respect for the established order becomes a decisive principle of action. . . . It follows that right or justice can issue from force and injustice. This happens because through the influence of habituation and other intermediating factors the forces of the popular consciousness become favourable to that which has been brought about by force and injustice." Merkel is thinking of a revolution from above, of a coup d'état; but his remarks obviously apply with equal force to a revolution from below. The drift of his argument is that might precedes right and makes right, and the official jurisconsults are sufficiently ingenious to cloak these hard facts in legal terminology. What sort of "moral forces" are these, what sort of "condonation"; how can "habituation," how can "other intermediating factors," make "the forces of the popular consciousness . . . favourable" so that "right or justice can issue from force and injustice?" In face of such logic and such ethics, Engels was perfectly justified in contending that the right to revolution was the only true historic right.
* ↑ We recall Metternich's saying: "The sacred middle line upon which truth stands is accessible to but a few.'
* ↑ The radical lust for revolution is conspicuous in the life of Blanqui, and has given its peculiar connotation to the term Blanquism. Born in 1805, he died in 1881, when seventy-six years of age. Between 1827 and 1870, a period of forty-three years, he took part in thirteen risings, was condemned to death several times, and spent thirty-seven years in prison, although he was pardoned more than once.
* ↑ Marx was of Jewish birth. When he was six years of age the whole family was converted to Protestantism. Mosaism is even more "positivistic" than Protestantism.
* ↑ I have censured Plehanov for failing, in his polemic against the social revolutionaries, to make an adequate use of Hegel (§ 185). Here is Hegel's explanation why there had been a revolution in France, but not in Germany. The French, he said, had from the theory of enlightenment passed unhesitatingly to practice, but the Germans had confined themselves to theory. Hegel admitted that the first impetus to revolution had come from philosophy; but in Germany theology had itself adopted the enlightenment, whereas in France the philosophic enlightenment had besn directed against theology. The Protestants alone, continued Hegel, could be content with legal and moral reality, for the Protestant church had effected a reconciliation between law and religion. The reformation had brought about enormous improvements in secular matters. Poverty, sloth, unspeakable injustice, intellectual slavery, the disastrous institution of celibacy—all had been abolished. Monarchy was no longer regarded as absolutely divine, but was simply proclaimed to be based upon law.—Šelgunov has a much better grasp of the situation than Herzen. In his Sketches of Russian Life, he compares the Russians with the Germans and the Latins, and comes to the conclusion that what the Russians condemn in the Germans as mechanical routinism, is in truth precision and definiteness of ideas and rules. Now these qualities, he says, are to be found only among Protestant peoples; the Catholics, the French and the Italians, are disorderly, undisciplined, and do not begin to plan their actions until the time has already come to act. According to Šelgunov, Protestantism has disciplined all thoughts and feelings; Martin Luther was a thoroughly practical reformer; Catholicism and the papacy promise wonderful things in heaven, but Protestantism gives promise of the best order on earth. Lutheranism is a school for the organisation of mundane relationships, and provides ethical instruction to fit its scholars to deal with all possible situations. Šelgunov does not state in set terms that the Russian owes his peculiarities to the Orthodox faith, but this is implied. He shows a keen insight into certain traits of the Russian character and contrasts them with the traits exhibited by the Germans; the German character, he tells us expressly, is moulded by Protestantism. A the spiritual influences that formed prepetrine Russia, religion, according to Šelgunov, occupied the first place.