# The Spirit of Russia/Volume 2/Chapter 21

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
THE CRISIS IN REVOLUTIONISM; THE RELIGIOUS QUESTION
I
§ 182.
IN 1909 was published A Collection of Essays concerning the Russian Intelligentsia, this being the subtitle. The main title was Věhy (Signposts). The little volume was issued from Moscow, as if by geographical affiliation to claim connection with the slavophils (and following therein the example set by Pobědonoscev's Moscow Collection!). Several of the authors have been referred to elsewhere in the present work. The most noted among them, in addition to Struve, Bulgakov, and Berdjaev, were: Kistjakovskii, a sociological writer of European reputation; Geršenzon, the literary historian who has paid especial attention to the slavophil movement; Frank, a writer on philosophy; and Izgoev, a writer on philosophico-political topics. Some of those named have published comprehensive works to convey their views on the subjects now under discussion.
A book on the intelligentsia is sure of a hearing. To use an expressive colloquialism, Signposts "caught on." Edition followed edition; a brisk controversy was evoked; lectures were delivered pro and con; newspapers and other periodicals defined their attitude. Further, two detailed replies were published, one from the liberal, the other from the social revolutionary camp.
Signposts may be characterised, to begin with, by saying that it secured a friendly reception from theological critics, and that Archbishop Antonii of Volhynia wrote an article commending the book shortly after its appearance. He extolled the heroism of the authors, who had, he said, called ​Russian society to repentance, had issued to the Russians a summons on behalf of faith, work, and knowledge, had exhorted them to unite with the people and to enter into the heritage of Dostoevskii and the slavophils. Antonii reminded his readers of Saltykov's street arab, who had called after the German bourgeois, "You have sold your soul to the devil for a groschen!" But we Russians, said the archbishop, have let him have our soul for nothing, so we can demand its return. Reading the book in sleepless nights, the hierarch had regained faith in Russian society, and had acquired the conviction that Russia was not lost to Christ.
The archbishop's rejoicing over the repentant prodigal is not difficult to understand, for nearly all the authors of Signposts had been Marxists, and some even had been members of the Social Democratic Party.
Struve answered the archbishop. His rejoinder was an adroit parry to Antonii's cheerful adulation, the adulation that came from a man who, if I mistake not, had by one of the essayists been described as the most interesting figure in the black hundred group. Struve reminded the prince of the church of what Dostoevskii had said, that, since the time of Peter the Great, the church had been suffering from palsy; and Struve declared that he and his friends were filled with concern because the Orthodox church was so utterly subordinated to the state and to the aims of state policy.
Shortly afterwards, Berdjaev issued an open letter to the archbishop, declaring himself a penitent son of the church, but at the same time putting such awkward questions as to the spiritual poverty of the church, as to its violence, its condonation of capital punishment, and the like, that the reader was forced to wonder how the questioner could possibly have "come once more to recognise the church" as his "spiritual mother."
Signposts contained little more than a recantation of Marxism and social democracy. The docket "from Marxism to idealism" was tantamount to a condemnation of the revolution and even of political activity. The revolution of 1905–1906 and the subsequent events had been the test of the intellectual foundations of the intelligentsia, and these foundations, the values that had been esteemed by the intelligentsia for more than half a century, had been proved essentially unstable and fallacious.
​The authors of Signposts abandoned the earlier philosophy of the intelligentsia. The Russian intelligentsia must withdraw from the outer to the inner life; the spiritual life must secure a theoretical and practical primacy over the outward forms of the life of the community; the inner life of the personality was the sole creative energy of human existence; it was impossible for the political order to be the basis of genuine social creation.
As their spiritual fathers and teachers, the authors of Signposts acknowledged Čaadaev, Solov'ev, Dostoevskii, Homjakov, Čičerin, Kozlov, S. Trubeckoi, Lopatin, Losskii, and Nesmělov; on the other hand sentence was in effect passed upon Bělinskii, Herzen, Černyševskii, Mihailovskii, and Lavrov. Thus the writers make a distinction between Russian and unrussian philosophy. Russian philosophy is animated by the spirit of Plato, by classic German idealism, and by mysticism; essentially, its interests are religious; its mission is to mediate between religion and science. This Russian philosophy aims at the objectivation of mysticism.
Mysticism and positive science, we are told, are by no means mutually exclusive. The European west has succeeded in bringing to maturity a science that is neutral in religious and metaphysical matters.
Concerning the nature of Russian mysticism in particular, the writers inform us that it harmoniously combines the Dionysiac and Apolline elements, but needs to be objectivised and normalised in the philosophical aspect. Positive religion (i.e. the Orthodox faith) is full of the higher mysticism.
Conversely, the philosophy of the intelligentsia is the expression of nihilism, which on utilitarian grounds denies the existence of any absolute values. Nihilism is therefore atheism, and this means anthropo-idolatry. The members of the intelligentsia are the militant monks of a nihilistic religion of purely mundane wellbeing.
In political matters the intelligentsia is anarchistic, for it lacks the sense of the state and is devoid of a feeling for law.
Finally, we are told that the intelligentsia has grave moral defects. Reference is made to the sexual laxity and corrup​tion of youth and to the prevalence of masturbation, and in the same connection the writers speak of the increasing frequency of suicide, also on the part of the young.
It is needless to undertake a detailed criticism of Signposts, for most of the problems with which it deals have been discussed elsewhere in these volumes. Moreover, the writers make no serious attempt to establish their chief propositions, which appear merely as unsupported assertions.
It was not difficult for adversaries to discover numerous weaknesses in Signposts. There are frequent contradictions, as between the various authors; the style is often hyperbolical, and there are many overstatements upon matters of fact; the theses are not precisely formulated; the whole work gives the impression of an improvisation. The validity of these criticisms was recognised by some of the contributors, and in the course of the discussion the book evoked they modified and toned down their views. None the less the work had considerable significance, for it showed that quite a number of writers, much as they might differ upon points of detail, were agreed at least in this, that it was necessary to abandon the road trodden by the radical intelligentsia since the days of Bělinskii and Herzen, and to enter a new domain of united thought and activity. In_a_word, Signposts urged the intelligentsia to face the religious problem. A purely political revolution is futile, said the writers, for it can have, no more than political consequences; such consequences are not worthy objects of desire, for the aspirations towards them is based upon false philosophy and false sentiment.
Indisputably since the revolution the radical intelligentsia has been passing through a crisis. This crisis has involved all Russia, and the great problem that has to be faced may be formulated thus: Was the old path a wrong one; must a new path be entered; if so, where is that new path to be found?
Most of the writers in Signposts were by no means clear upon the last matter, and for this reason the real philosophical backbone of the book is furnished by Bulgakov's essay, for Bulgakov simply returns to Dostoevskii, and with Dostoevskii to the church. Like Dostoevskii, Bulgakov counterposes faith in God to atheistic nihilism, and the worship of Christ to the Feuerbachian worship of man. The intelligentsia must discard socialism in all its forms, for socialism is materialistic ​and atheistic. If the intelligentsia will abandon atheism, the chasm between the intelligentsia and the folk will be bridged over, and the disastrous apostasy in political, national, and religious affairs will come to an end. Bulgakov unreservedly accepts Dostoevskii's ideals, adopting that writer's explanation of the contemporary Russian crisis, and in especial Dostoevskii's explanation of the epidemic of suicide among young people, which is ascribed to the prevalence of atheism.
Bulgakov does not develop these ideas in detail, and plainly assumes that his readers will be familiar with Dostoevskii's writings. But he makes it sufficiently clear that the revolutionaries are to replace atheistic heroism by Christian heroism. "Seek humility, proud man," he exclaims with Dostoevskii; "return to Christ, return to Orthodoxy!"
The new path suggested by Signposts is thus a very old one, but this antiquity does not render the possibility of an agreement to follow it a matter of any less urgency.
It cannot be said that the detailed replies furnished by the liberals and the social revolutionaries did much to favour understanding and agreement, for they hardly touched the main issue, the ecclesiastico-religious problem; and moreover their treatment of all matters of detail was unduly abstract. Miljukov, for example, showed very well that religious evolution in Russia had been favoured by the influence of western ideas, but his conclusion was unduly liberal, if I may use the expression. To-day, said Miljukov, there are new possibilities of religious development. But we want to know, What possibilities? We wish to know, further, what part the liberal party has to play in this development, and what decisions the liberals must take upon religious and ecclesiastical affairs.
§ 183.
IN the early days of the movement, liberalism was inspired by the spirit of the enlightenment, was rationalist, deist, freethinking. Liberals sometimes denied religion on prin​ciple; in other cases they were content to reject theology and ecclesiastical religion.
Then came the reaction against eighteenth-century rationalism; romanticism arose, with its insistence upon imagination and the life of feeling. Liberals, too, were involuntarily swept away by the current, and many a liberal became a person of motley views, half rationalist and half romanticist.
Romanticism effected the restoration and established the sway of reaction, and liberalism, underwent an analogous evolution. Despite his rationalism, the liberal began to support the church in the social and political spheres, for the altar upholds the throne and the bourgeoisie, and the church dominates the masses. It became a liberal doctrine that religion must be preserved for the people. The liberal, the aristocrat of culture, might retain his private opinions, but religion was absolutely essential for the folk!
In Russia the attitude of liberalism towards religion was similar to that adopted in Europe. The more radical among the liberals were opposed to religion on principle, whilst the less radical declared against ecclesiastical religion and adopted, more or less, the creed of Rousseau and his Savoyard vicar (Radiščev, Granovskii); the earlier slavophils went so far, at any rate, as to idealise ecclesiastical religion. When socialism began to develop side by side with liberalism, the left wing of the liberals adopted the socialists' negative outlook upon religion and the church, whilst the liberal centre and right wing evaded any discussion of the principles of religion. We may recall that Solov'ev published his later views in the chief liberal organ. But at this stage it remained a matter of course for the liberals that they should fight theocratic ideas and theocratic policy.
The significant beginning of the constitutionalist era was the issue of the patent of toleration, The war with Japan, entered into with such high hopes in February 1904, soon proved disastrous. Pleve was assassinated; the zemstvos began to stir, and the liberals made common cause with the revolutionaries; in November 1904 Svjatopolk-Mirskii was appointed to succeed Pleve, and thoughts were entertained of summoning a zemskii sobor. On December 25th the ukase to the senate was issued demanding "provisional suggestions for the perfectionment of political institutions"; a committee of high officials was thereupon appointed, and this body dis​cussed among other questions that of freedom of conscience. The first tangible concession on the part of the theocracy was the ukase concerning toleration promulgated on April 30, 1905. The theocracy recognised clearly enough that certain renovations in the Uvarovian foundations were essential, but this matter, however characteristic, cannot be discussed here. My concern is to describe the disputes that ensued among the dignitaries who were discussing the necessary reforms. Information upon this subject is afforded by a recent publication containing the correspondence between the liberals and the reactionaries (Historical Correspondence concerning the Destiny of the Orthodox Church, 1912).
The leaders on the two sides were Witte for the liberals and Pobědonoscev for the theocrats. Witte admits that the church has been bureaucratised and subjected to hierarchical control, that the dioceses have lost their ancient right of electing bishops, that the congregations are decaying. He deplores that the clergy should lend themselves to misuse as police agents and detectives; he recognises the inadequacy of the lifeless church schools; he shares the views of those who have regarded Peter's reforms as uncanonical, and who have demanded that the church be rendered independent of the state, this independence being secured (above all) by the reestablishment of the patriarchate. He is aware that the congregations have lost their liberties owing to political centralisation and owing to serfdom (Uvarov, likewise, had recognised this connection). Witte eloquently defends the freedom of the church and of religion, advocates local self-government in ecclesiastical matters as against centralisation, and suggests the revival of the conciliary principle.
Antonii the metropolitan, who dreads the autonomy of the sects, prudently defends the freedom of his church; whereas Pobědonoscev is all fire and fury when he defends the existing order against the onslaughts of Witte. To the procurator, the synod is a permanent council; the centralisation of the church and the establishment of hierarchical authority have been essential; independent congregations are now impossible; and so on. In a word, all is for the best in the best of all possible churches.
It seems strange to find Witte defending the liberty of the church. It was Witte who had fought against freedom for the zemstvos, on the ground that such freedom would be ​a menace to autocracy. It was Witte who proved vacillating and indecisive as first premier, his only ideal being to maintain and fortify the state authority. The same ideal underlay his plea on behalf of the Russian church. He was not concerned about religion for its own sake, but hoped to strengthen the state by strengthening the church!
The modern liberal believes only in the state and its providence; but in an hour weighty with responsibilities Witte recalled religion to mind, for the infallibility and providence of his secular god seemed to him a broken reed in view of the personalities through whom that deity's activities secured expression.
Bulgakov contends that the mission of the intelligentsia is to secure a return to Christ—to Christ, not to Kant or to Hume. For Bulgakov, Christ means the Orthodox church, though he is forced to admit that all is not in order in the official church. His desire is that malcontents shall not leave the church, shall not exult over its defects, but shall endeavour to reform it from within. Moreover, to one who has faith in the mystical life of the church, the historically extant outward form of the institution cannot possibly be a stumbling-block.
It had been my impression that Bulgakov's conversion was the outcome of genuine religious need, and I was therefore eager to ascertain what had been his attitude towards the electoral alliance between the synod and the reaction. In his account of the elections to the fourth duma he speaks of the conduct of the synod with much indignation. He even goes so far as to say that Russia is actually perishing under our eyes, that "Holy" Russia has allied herself with the basest elements of the mob. Russia, he continues, is poisoned by a twofold nihilism, the nihilism of the intelligentsia and the nihilism of the bureaucracy, and the latter is the worse. He deplores that hitherto his attacks have been too exclusively directed against the former, but consoles himself in the end with the reflection that "belief in the church is not inseparably connected with the status quo of her extant local organisations."
These are remarkable concessions from a defender of the church. Bulgakov makes us feel that he finds the church too narrow for him, but that he is able for the time being to salve his conscience by talking of the churches as "local ​organisations." The association between the synod and the "black hundred" was not fortuitous, however, for the church is unprogressive and reactionary by tradition and on principle. "Sint ut sunt aut non sint,” applies to the third Rome no less than to the second.
Struve seeks a similar expedient, saying, "the Christian faith has no intimate connection with any specific political forms and institutions." But apart from the consideration that the authors of Signposts were concerned, not with ideal Christianity, but with the actual Christianity of the Russian church, Struve is merely evading a straightforward answer to the religious problem.
Miljukov, too, notwithstanding his hostility to Struve and the others, shuns the issue of principle. He tells us that Tolstoi and Tolstoi’s religious crusade are a proof of the existence of "new possibilities" of religious development in Russia. Yet we cannot but remember that Tolstoi was excommunicated from the church of Pobědonoscev, and that he would have been sent to Siberia had it not been for the personal intervention of the tsar; we have, moreover, to enquire, what are the "new possibilities" of religious development of which Miljukov is thinking.
Let me quote once mere from Feuerbach. "I would not give a rush for political liberty if I were to remain a slave of religious fancies and prejudices. True freedom can be found there only where man is free also from the tyranny of religion."
Most of the Russian liberals adopted the same attitude towards religion as had been adopted by their European prototypes. Fundamentally they followed the teaching of old Tatiščev, who had advised his son never to renounce religious belief publicly and never to change his creed. Pirogov, the philosopher and pedagogue, gives expression in his diary to these rules of Descartes in the following words: "As long as I make no attempt to leave the bosom of the state church, as long as I raise no hand against that church, as long as I pay it all due respect, in a word, as long as I do nothing which can be construed as hostile to the national and state religion which I and my family profess, my personal faith, a matter which I keep to myself, is no one's business but my own."
Thus in the religious sphere Russian liberalism has become a system of indifferentism, and therein lies the secret of its weakness. Liberalism is not sceptical merely, but indifferent; ​and indifferentism, not scepticism, is the true unbelief. This liberal unbelief clings to the church in which it has ceased to believe just as the tsar clings to the church.
II
§ 184.
THE social revolutionaries' reply to Signposts appeared contemporaneously with that of the liberals, and was entitled Signposts as Signs of the Time (1910), an apt name. Signposts was stigmatised as the most reactionary volume that had been issued from the press for many years, and Struve and his associates were taxed with falseness and equivocation. In points of detail the comprehensive work contained much that was good, but the main issue (the religious problem) was left unconsidered. Speaking generally we may say that the social revolutionary "anti-signposts" were directed to the wrong quarter. From the social revolutionary camp there was issued almost simultancously a critique of revisionism which was enormously superior to Signposts in respect of its analytic depth.
In January 1909 "Russkaja Mysl" (Russian Thought), a Moscow review edited by Struve, began the publication of a novel entitled The Pale Horse. The work takes the form of a diary extending from March 6th to October 5th of a single year. The author, V. Ropšin, was a man previously unknown. The implication of the title is conveyed by the first of the two mottoes: ". . . and behold a pale horse; and his name that sat on him was Death . . ." (Revelation vi. 8). Neither this motto nor the other, "But he that hateth his brother is in darkness, and walketh in darkness, and knoweth not whither he goeth, because that darkness hath blinded his eyes" (1 John ii. 11), can be regarded as attractive to the ordinary reader, for they suggest that the novel is to be a contribution to the prevalent mysticism, to the apocalyptic mysticism of Merežkovskii and similar religious decadents. But the opening pages arrest our attention. We learn that the diary is kept by the leader of a terrorist group of five persons who are to assassinate the governor of a provincial town. A terrorist ​who quotes the apocalypse and the disciple whom Jesus loved is a new type. A new feature, too, in terrorist fiction is the liaison between the hero and Erna, the chemist of the group. The relationship between George and Erna comes into the category of what is known as free love, and we are told at the very outset that when George holds Erna in his arms he thinks of another woman, Elena. The diary opens with the account of these love relationships, but passes immediately to the consideration of its main ethical problem, that of the right to kill: "Why shouldn't one kill? And why is murder justified in one case and not in another? People do find reasons, but I don't know why one should not kill; and I cannot understand why to kill in the name of this or that is considered right, while to kill in the name of something else is wrong. . . . I am not conscious of hate or anger when I think of him. At the same time I do not feel any pity for him. As a personality he leaves me indifferent. But I want him to die. Strength will break a straw. I don't believe in words. I do not want to be a slave myself, and do not want any one else to be one."
As I read, I feel that I am making the acquaintance of a new type of terrorist, and of a real terrorist, not an imaginary one. My Russian correspondents inform me that Ropšin, a young man of about thirty, married to a daughter of the poet Uspenskii, was the leading spirit in the assassination of Pleve and in that of the grand duke Sergius. In the periodical "Byloe," devoted to the history of the revolution, Ropšin's mother has given an account of the author of The Pale Horse. His real name, it appears, is Savinkov. Arrested and condemned for his participation in the before-mentioned assassinations, he escaped from prison a few days before the date fixed for his execution, and now lives abroad as a member of the Social Revolutionary Party.
Ropšin's George (and this, again, is something new in a terrorist) thinks and feels precisely after the manner of Ivan Karamazov. Whilst Ivan was a typical representative of the opposition intelligentsia, was a philosophic revolutionist, George combined the rôles of philosophic revolutionist and practical revolutionist. Dostoevskii, it must be remembered, ​employed the figure of Ivan to manifest his hostility to the revolution, but Ropšin accepts on behalf of his own generation Dostoevskii's analysis of the revolution.
Dostoevskii represented the ethico-political alternatives of force and love as religious in character, as the alternatives of unfaith and faith, as the alternatives of murder or suicide on the one hand and life on the other. Ivan and his half-brother Smerdjakov are contrasted with Aliosha. Ivan and Smerdjakov commit parricide; Smerdjakov kills himself; Aliosha is the apostle of life to the young men of his generation.
Ropšin puts Dostoevskii's philosophy into the mouth of Vanja, one of the members of the group:
"Now, tell me, have you ever thought of Christ?"
"Of whom?"
"Of Christ, of the God-Man Christ? Did you ever ask yourself what you ought to believe in and how you ought to live? In my lodgings, in the driver's yard, I often read the Gospels, and I have come to the conclusion that only two ways are open to men, no more than two. One is to believe that everything is permissible. Please, understand me—everything, without exception. Now that leads to the making of such a character as Dostoevskii's Smerdjakov, provided that a man has a mind to dare and not to shrink at any consideration. After all, there is logic in such an attitude: since God does not exist, since Christ is but a man, there is no love as well; there is nothing whatever to stop you. The other is the way of Christ which leads to Christ. Tell me, if there is love in a man's heart—I mean real, deep love—could he kill or not?"
Vanja is a mystic. He feels that his death is drawing near; before death the soul concentrates its energies and looks beyond the limits of sense and of the every-day understanding. There is something more than reason, says Vanja, but we have blinkers on.
George is a rationalist extremist. Just as Ivan extolled Euclidean reasoning, so does George extol arithmetic; like Ivan, he now believes in nothing, neither in God nor in Christ, nor even in the watchword of his party, in the war cry, "Land and liberty!" These for him are mere words. Can fifteen desjatinas of land (he asks in the phrase of Kropotkin) make a man happy? Socialism, he says, is only Martha, and Martha is only half the truth. The other half of truth is Mary— ​and where is Mary? George admits that the man is happy who believes in Christ, who believes in socialism, who believes in anything at all, and his chief longing is for religious faith: "I would pray if I could!" But George is a sceptic through and through, and his path therefore does not lead towards any goal; he is a rudderless ship; life is to him nothing more than a puppet show at a fair. "What is my law?" he asks, and replies, "I am on the boundary line between life and death, and there, where death rules, there is no law, for law relates to life alone."
If he could think like his comrade Vanja, he would not kill. But since his mission is to kill, he cannot think like Vanja. Besides, Vanja, the Tolstoian, is none the less prepared to kill.
George accepts Nietzsche's superman, more especially since an anticipatory sketch of the superman was given by Dostoevskii. The superman of Nietzsche and Dostoevskii loves no one, not even himself. "I am alone. If there is none to protect me, I am my own protector. If I have no God, I am my own God." George's reasoning recalls Feuerbach's "Homo homini deus"; and since the days of Herzen, Feuerbach's teaching has inspired revolutionary philosophy with atheism. Dostoevskii counterposed the God-Man to Feuerbach's man-god. George knows this, but follows Feuerbach and Ivan, not Aliosha. In Ivan's company he follows the first steps of Faust. Just as Faust is preserved from the sinister phial by the sound of the Easter bells, so is George's mood softened at Eastertide, and he philosophises upon Christ's resurrection. It then seems to him that he can and must believe in miracle, seeing that for one who believes in miracle there are no difficulties, and violence is therefore needless.
Like Ivan, George craves for life, for a full life. He would like to live "as the grass grows," without questionings, without pangs of conscience, without thought. That is why he loves to read ancient authors, to read the works of those who did not seek for the truth, but simply lived. Similarly in Siberia, after his escape from prison, he recovered his delight in life. During the first days after his escape there was dead indifference in his heart. He did mechanically all that was necessary to avoid being recaptured, but why he did it he could not tell. A day came, however, when he was walking alone in ​the evening, and realised that the spring was all around him, that life was before him, that he was young and strong and in perfect health. George loves nature, which has on him a tranquillising effect and fills him with the joy of life; then he becomes all contemplation, and must not think.
Thought, that is the trouble! Like his predecessors, the old German romanticists, George would like "simply to live, as the grass grows." In Nietzschean fashion, he would follow instinct only, and follows instinct, continually seeking after woman. He lives with Erna, but seeks and ultimately finds Elena as well. Elena's word to him is, "Give up thinking, and kiss."
George is not Faust alone, he is also Don Juan. He has read Arcybašev's Sanine, the Don Juan of the disillusioned revolutionists. But Ropšin's Don Juan (be it accounted to Ropšin's credit) is more human. Nevertheless, the mood of Solomon overcomes him; he finds life wearisome, saying, "All is vanity and lies!"
George follows Dostoevskii, Nietzsche, Goethe—he follows Goethe's Faust, relives Faust. We are told in the histories of literature that Faust is the representative of the modern type of man. But did not Faust, too, kill? Did not he stab Gretchen's brother? Must not Faust be held accountable for the death of Gretchen's mother and for the death of his own child? Was he not cowardly in the way in which he allowed Gretchen to go to her death? And did not Faust wish to put an end to his own life? The modern type of man? Do not we see in Faust an exemplification of Dostoevskii's formula, that he who abandons the ancient faith, he who throws the old aside, is confronted with the brutal alternative of murder or suicide? By Dostoevskii, this spiritual state is termed atheism, and in his Faust-Ivan he demonstrates its consequences. Is Faust, the whole Faust, really the modern man?
The first attempt on the governor's life is a complete failure. At the second attempt, though the bomb explodes, the governor is unhurt, whilst in the explosion and subsequent pursuit ten persons are killed or seriously injured, and Fedor, who had been designated by the group as the practical leader on this occasion, kills himself to avoid capture. The third attempt is successful, but Vanja, the thrower of the bomb, is arrested and eventually hanged.
From the purely utilitarian outlook, no less than ethically ​and philosophically, George is compelled to ask himself whether to achieve the death of a governor is worth so much sacrifice, and whether the sacrifice furthers the end, brings nearer the attainment of political and social liberty. Moreover, he doubts whether it is still right to practise terrorism now that Russia has a constitution.
Not merely, however, is George oppressed by the problem of the right to life and death, and by his doubts concerning the utility and purposefulness of terrorism; but further, the terrorist's outlawed existence is utterly repulsive to him. Without a country, without a name (for he is always appearing under some new alias), without a family, George has to lead a life of fraud and falsehood. There chase one another through his brain thoughts concerning God and human destiny, concerning the future of Russia and of humanity; he would like to sit down and quietly think out his own attitude towards the ideas of Dostoevskii, Nietzsche, Goethe, Tolstoi, etc. But his connection with the revolutionary party compels him to lead the life of a spy; all his thoughts and all his activities must be concentrated upon a single point; like Tihomirov, the revolutionary leader who abjured revolution at the close of the eighties, George feels the pettiness, deplores the restrictedness, of his mental horizon.
What to him is governor X or governor Y? Hecuba—and yet something more. When the first attempt miscarries, George's mood becomes tinged with gall, and from the moment when the governor has given him a friendly greeting in the street he conceives a personal hatred for the man. A strange sentiment of revenge overpowers him, and it becomes clear to him that he does not wish to lead a peaceful life, that blood-letting charms him for its own sake.
George, therefore, does not merely kill his political opponent. He challenges Elena's husband, feeling certain that his bullet will lay the man low. He cannot endure that he should not have exclusive possession of Elena. Elena does not believe in eternal love, and he has himself expressed to Erna his disbelief in such love, but in Elena's mouth the sentiment seems utterly wrong to him!
We are given an insight into a moral chaos. George feels, none the less, that to kill in the war with Japan and to slay Elena's husband are two different things, for the latter killing is something which he does solely for himself, is the ​act of an egoist. In the end it becomes perfectly clear to him that he has no ties with any one in the world, that he cares nothing either for any individual or for the world at large. The emissary from the central committee seeks him out. The party has a difficult task to entrust to George. But George suddenly decides that he will have nothing to do with the matter, that he does not wish to kill. "Why kill?" he asks. The emissary, probably a man who has spent his days in prison or in Siberia, seems to him only an old fellow in his dotage. "He looked anxiously at me and stroked my hand affectionately like a father. But I knew for certain: I was not with him, nor with Vanja, nor with Erna. I was with no one." He decides that he will cease to live. Memories of childhood and of his mother's love cannot teach him to love his fellow men. The world has become accursed to him. He had a desire of old, and accomplished his task. Now the desire is gone. The ultra-rationalist sickens from infirmity of will. "I am alone. I will leave the dull puppet show." The beautiful autumn day beguiles him for a moment, but when night falls George will say his last word. "My revolver is with me."
Ropšin gives a gruesome confirmation of Dostoevskii's formula, the alternatives of murder and suicide. Erna takes her own life, not merely because the police-spies are upon her trail. Fedor kills his pursuers and finally himself because, like George, he sees no meaning in the life he has been leading. "I will reserve the last shot for myself . . . that will settle it"—such is the mood in which he undertakes the affair. If he is not killed in the struggle, he will kill himself. Vanja is of a very different type. He kills, but knows even as he does so that he is committing a great sin. He hopes that he too will be killed by the bomb that he throws, conceiving that his own death will be an appropriate punishment for his crime. He submits quietly to arrest that he may atone with his own death, for he has no wish to continue living after he has committed murder. He was a peculiar Christian or half-Christian. In a letter to his friends which he managed to smuggle out of prison he wrote: "I did not feel in me the strength to live for the sake of love, and I understood that I could die and ought to die for the sake of it."
According to Vanja, and he is here reproducing Dostoevskii's thought, it is easy to die for another, easy to sacrifice one's ​life for mankind; but it is far more difficult to live for mankind, to live in love from day to day, from minute to minute. In his mysticism, Vanja supplements this theory by modifying the words of the Gospel. "Just remember," he says, "the words 'Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.' And he must lay down more than his life—his soul."
The logic is chaotic. Vanja presumes upon the boundless mercy of Christ, and hopes for pardon in the other world. He is superstitious, and George the rationalist is likewise superstitious.
Beyond question, Ropšin had in mind the frequency of suicide among the revolutionary intelligentsia. He must have been acquainted with the discussions concerning this matter which have formed a leading theme of recent literature. He may have been conversant with Mihailovskii's analysis. His own decision is entirely accordant with Dostoevskii's formula. He makes suicide appear as the logical end of the rationalist, the basis of whose mentality is his ego—an ego conceived as naught.
Stepniak's novel was written only twenty years before that of Ropšin, but how great is the difference between the characters portrayed in the two books, how widely sundered are the respective conceptions of the terrorist revolution. It is true that Andrei and George in Stepniak's book (presumably Ropšin was thinking of his predecessor's work when he chose the name of George for his hero) occasionally ask themselves whether they have the right to kill. The question was continually being asked by the opponents of the revolution, and Stepniak was certainly acquainted with Dostoevskii, but the enquiry is unhesitatingly answered by "a life for a life." Such is the creed of Stepniak's hero, and such was the explanation (if not the justification) of his own terrorist act. Shortly before his death (he was run over by a train in London in 1895) he wrote the following words in a girl's album: "Remain true to yourself and you will never know the pangs of conscience, which are the only real unhappiness in life." Stepniak, Brandes assures us, knew nothing of the pangs of conscience.
Stepniak's revolutionists have faith; they believe enthusiastically in Russia, in socialism, and in the social revolution; they are atheists, for atheism is one item of the nihilist program, but they have replaced belief in the old God by belief in ​Russia and the mužik. These atheists have not yet become man-gods, they have not yet become aristocratic supermen to whom everything is permissible. They carry on their war like formal belligerents, and are permeated with the conviction that their sacrifice is an act of duty. Environed by an atmosphere of death, these revolutionists regard themselves as victims of the sacrifice, feeling themselves in truth to be already dead. Such a man leaves his young wife without hesitation, but it is to go to his death, for his relationship to women in general and to his wife in particular is very different from that of Ropšin's George. George is a polygamist, a decadent polygamist, but Stepniak's revolutionist is a strict monogamist. We feel that in many cases the relationship between man and wife may have been in conformity with the ideal propounded by Tolstoi in the Kreutzer Sonata. Ropšin's George debilitates his nerves in accordance with all the rules of sexual pathology. Characteristic is the manner in which, simply from boredom, he visits the public places where women offer themselves for sale. (Does it not seem likely that Ropšin was familiar with Alphonse Daudet's Une petite paroisse, which contains an analysis of a decadent anarchist soul?)
In a word, the revolutionist of earlier days was quite objectively devoted to his party and to the cause of the people; free from subjectivism, devoid of scepticism, his faith rose to the pitch of fanaticism. The latter-day revolutionist is subjectivist, infidel, individualist to the uttermost limit of social isolation, a sceptic through and through. The man of the earlier type was a follower of John Stuart Mill, of the writer who, despite his utilitarianism, demanded the sacrifice of l fe; in offering up his life to an ideal, such a revolutionary felt himself to be a consecrated victim. The modern revolutionist does not believe in any ideal; he has carried out the thoughts of Feuerbach and Stirner to their logical conclusion; the desecration of all that is holy has culminated in cynicism. He will kill, but his act is a personal one; he feels personally injured by his opponent, the deed must shake him out of his own apathy, and the adversary's death acts on him as a stimulant. The earlier revolutionist had no thought of suicide, but would kill himself unhesitatingly to avoid falling into the hands of the police, or to spite the prison administration. For Ropšin's George, on the other hand, suicide is desirable in ​itself, is the means by which an escape can be secured from this dull variety entertainment which is life.
Much more might be said on this topic, but my present aim is merely to display the significance of The Pale Horse in relation to the contemporary crisis in revolutionism.
I have little space to devote to Ropšin as artist and man of letters, for the philosophic content of his book has so largely absorbed my attention. His style contrasts with that of the more modern decadents. It is extremely simple; he loves short, staccato sentences, this being in keeping with the diary form. As a whole and in its details the work is skilfully composed. For example, George's relationships with women are indicated at the outset, and the ethical and religious problem as propounded by Dostoevskii is placed in the foreground of the discussion. Ropšin's analysis of nihilism is at the same time an analysis of the Karamazov disease; Ivan Karamazov is Faust and Don Juan rolled into one. Revolutionary technique, which plays a great part in Stepniak's writings, is but cursorily sketched by Ropšin, whose leading interest is in the metaphysics of revolution. We feel that for the author these metaphysical problems have been matters of personal experience, that he has himself lived the Faust-Ivan life.
I must not be taken as implying that in George, Ropšin is merely describing himself and his own experiences. He deliberately distributes his personal experiences among the various characters, among George and his comrades. Dostoevskii employed a similar method. Much in the book is personal experience, but Ropšin is not analysing himself merely, for he considers also the psychology of his associates and of the whole revolutionary movement since the close of the nineties.
In A Mother's Reminiscences, S. A. Savinkova tells us that her two sons went to St. Petersburg in 1897 to study at the university. The two young men took part in the demonstration in Khazan Square. They were arrested, and one night the prescribed domiciliary visit was made at their parents' house. The mother hastened to the capital and was able to secure certain mitigations; but again and again the effects of her intervention and of that of influential persons (Lopuhin is mentioned among others) was overborne by the arbitrary powers of the police. The upshot was the ruin of the whole family. The father, a judge in Poland, died insane; the ​elder brother was sent to Siberia and killed himself there; the younger escaped shortly before the date fixed for his execution. Thus like an avalanche does a terrible destiny develop out of a students' demonstration, thus does the ruthlessness of absolutism force the most peaceable of men into revolutionary opposition, thus does absolutism as it were compel the very sceptic to the hesitating use of the automatic pistol.
I am unable to say how far A Mother's Reminiscences contains an accurate record of events, but the book suffices to show how Ropšin's conception of the fourth apocalyptic rider Death, whom Hell followed, was a necessary outcome of the pathological state of revolutionary and absolutist Russia.
The Pale Horse is a notable work both from the literary and philosophical point of view, but progressive criticism was extremely reserved in its attitude, partly perhaps because the writing was published in Struve's review. In 1912, however, a second novel by Ropšin, The Tale of What was Not, was published in "Zavěty," the new social revolutionary review. Discussion and polemic concerning Ropšin's writings now became general.
No fresh philosophical contribution is furnished by this second novel, but the philosophy of revolution is exhibited, or it might be better to say experienced by revolutionists, in a different situation. Ropšin describes the mass revolution and the subsequent constitutionalist epoch. The revolutionists bring forward their ideas on the barricades and during the proceedings of the new duma. Ropšin is wholly occupied with his own problem. He makes no attempt to show to what extent the terrorist tactics of the social revolutionaries contributed to bring about the mass rising; he merely describes how his party was drawn into the general revolt, and how this revolt was crushed by the triumphant reaction. The disaster is accompanied by an internal process of dissolution, for general disillusionment ensues upon the recognition that the party has been led by a provocative agent (Ropšin's Azev passes by the name of Berg), who destroys the central committee and therewith the whole party.
Philosophically, Ropšin restates his dilemma thus. Either it is lawful to kill always, or not at all. Nothing but belief ​in God, in the Christian God, in Christ, is competent to break the sword. Either we must follow Dostoevskii's Smerdjakov-Ivan and say "all things are permissible," or else we must follow Tolstoi and accept his gospel of non-resistance.
Bulgakov's return to Dostoevskii and his criticism of the revolution are far less effective then Ropšin's analysis of terrorist anarchism. On the barricade, Andrei Bolotov (once more the name of one of Stepniak's heroes is chosen) philosophises à la George after the death of the superintendent of police: "Look here, Sergii, I can't make it out. . . . They shoot us down, hang us, exterminate us. We in return hang, burn, and strangle. But why, because I have killed Slezkin, should I be regarded as a hero, and why should he be regarded as a contemptible wretch and a good for nothing because he hangs me? That's all humbug. Either one should not kill, and in that case both Slezkin and I are breaking the higher law; or else killing is permissible, and then we cannot say that one of us is a hero and the other a contemptible wretch, for we are both simple human beings who happen to be at enmity. Now answer me this. Do you admit that this Slezkin whom we have killed, hunted us from conviction, and not simply to make money out if it? Do you admit that he was not self-seeking, but did what he did for the sake of the people, holding (erroneously, of course) that it was his duty to fight us? Do you admit these things? It may well be that among a hundred or a thousand Slezkins, one at least is such a man as I suggest. In such a case, what is the difference between Slezkin and me? In my view, either we may always kill, or we may never kill. Does this mean that we may not, and yet we must? Where shall we find the law? In the party program, in Marx, in Engels, or in Kant? To say this is nonsense—for neither Marx, nor Engels, nor Kant ever killed anyone. They never killed, do you hear me, never. Thus they do not know, cannot know, what you and I and Volodja know. Whatever they may have written, it remains hidden from them whether we may kill or may not kill. But I know, with an absolute conviction, that a Slezkin ought not to be killed, whatever the circumstances, whatever I may be myself, and whatever I may think of him."
Noteworthy is Ropšin's analysis of expropriation. The revolutionary idealist, who confiscates state funds on behalf of the revolution, passes, resist as he may, beneath the sway ​of the bandit Muha, and has in the end to admit that between himself and Muha there is no essential difference. "The next thing after God is money," is held valid also by provocative agents, of whom two types are described by Ropšin. Dr. Berg, the leader, sells himself to the police because he has a taste for luxury. The young Nietzschean, on the other hand, seeks "protection," ostensibly in order to serve the party, a similar attempt having previously been made by the Narodnaja Volja; moreover there is at work in his mind a complex of "emotions" and stimuli. Of course the rascal, although he continually has Nietzsche upon his tongue, and is always quoting Zarathustra, is likewise in pursuit of money as the source of agreeable "emotions." The sailor who has recently joined the party, a man who has survived the disgrace of Tsushima, brother of the leader Andrei who is eventually executed, learns the spy's secret, and insists that he shall either kill the superintendent of police or be killed himself.
The details are powerful. The naval officer joins the party to continue the fight for Russia and honour; he is no philosopher, or analyst, and his simple formula is that of Stepniak, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth. Alexander has no decisions to make, for he lacks experience, and has not the whole revolutionary movement under his eyes. The youngest brother (Three Brothers is the sub-title of the book) with boyish enthusiasm, hastens from school to the barricade, and is shot on the way thither. But Andrei is familiar, not only with Nietzsche, but with the whole literature of the revolution, and aims at having a philosophy of revolution.
Ropšin shows us how the revolutionists do their deeds hesitatingly and in defiance of inward resistance. He shows us once more how suicide is esteemed the last resort. All these things we have learned from The Pale Horse. But The Tale of What was Not is a work of wider scope.
§ 185.
THE publication of Ropšin's second novel and the simultaneous appearance of the second edition of The Pale Horse put an end to the irresolution of the critics, whether of his own party or of the opposing camps. So unexpected, so incredible, seemed such a philosophy of revolution as the work of a social revolutionary, that people had been slow to ​realise the full significance of the ideas expressed in The Pale Horse. In a letter to the party review, Ropšin now defended himself against the reproach implied by his literary and philosophical comrades' silence concerning his first book. That work, he said, was merely an attempt to solve a moral problem and was not intended to deal with tactical questions; the figures that moved through its pages were purely imaginative creations and were not descriptions of any definite persons.
Shortly afterwards, in November 1912, the same review published a letter signed by twenty-two of its contributors, a protest against The Tale of What was Not. The novel was stigmatised as a false and biased description of the revolutionary movement, the author's outlook was declared utterly alien to the movement, and it was contended that his work ought never to have been issued by "Zavěty."
The editors of that periodical rejoined that doubtless there was good ground to complain of the accuracy of Ropšin's delineations, but that the columns of the review were open for the presentation of the other side of the case. They protested against any attempt to expel Ropšin from the party.
Simultaneously with the before-mentioned protest appeared a review of The Pale Horse from the pen of Černov; and a little later, in February 1913, Plehanov joined in the discussion. To us, of course, social revolutionary and social democratic criticism of Ropšin's philosophy of revolution is of especial interest and importance.
Černov, with whose "dynamic" philosophy and ethics we have already become acquainted, is found, on close examination, to have nothing new to say about Ropšin's book. Ethical maximalism, he tells us, insists that violence shall be done to no man; a deduction from this, continues Černov, is Tolstoi's doctrine of non-resistance. But ethical minimalism refutes Tolstoi's theory, for the maximum must be realised step by step (see above, p. 376).
This amounts to very little, and contributes absolutely nothing to the solution of the problem or of the doubts expressed by Ropšin. That author's question is perfectly definite. Have I the right to kill anyone, be his position high or low, who represents the authoritative order of the existing state? May I do this on my own initiative, or in pursuance of a party decree? In the second novel we are shown very clearly that Ropšin's terrorist longs to sacrifice ​himself. But he realises that in addition to sacrificing himself he has to kill others, and he enquires whether his voluntary sacrifice of himself gives him the right to rule Russia. Such a right cannot be founded on machine guns, any more than it can be founded on the Holy Mass, or on loyalty to the autocracy.
Bělinskii's and Herzen's answer to Černov would have run as follows: "Before the moral maximum can be realised, the times of the moral minimum must be fulfilled." Bělinskii, and subsequently Herzen, protested vigorously against the notion that the ideal, that free resolve, can be made dependent upon the time and upon historical facts. Besides, how is the moral maximum to be realised? For each individual the question takes the definite form, May I kill? If the moral maximum signifies a condition characterised by the non-existence of coercion, will not its realisation be more speedily effected if individuals should decide from the first to abstain from the use of force?
In any case, Ropšin challenges Stepniak's justification of terrorism by an appeal to the law of retaliation. The device, an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth, seems to him to smack too much of the Old Testament, and to be manifestly unjust.
Other members of the Social Revolutionary Party besides Ropšin were inclined, especially after the Azev disclosures, to doubt the utility, not merely of terrorism, but of the whole method of party organisation, and in particular of the rigid system of aristocratic centralisation. The committee appointed to investigate the Azev affair reported that provocative methods had not made their appearance by chance, for the party constitution fitted it to be the blind tool of an individual. In the party periodicals, increasing expression was given to the view that terrorist methods were unsound.
Černov's "moral minimalism" is not merely vague and obscure, but even from the purely utilitarian outlook it fails to throw light upon the problem of terrorism and revolution.
Plehanov's critique is no less inadequate. First of all, adroitly enough, Plehanov heaps coals of fire upon Ropšin's head and upon the heads of that writer's adversaries (social democrats among the number) by defending Ropšin against the charge of having no independent style. Ropšin had been accused of being a mere imitator, of aping Merežkovskii in ​his first novel, and Tolstoi (especially War and Peace) in his second. Some critics had gone so far as to speak of flat plagiarism. It seems to me that Ropšin's critics were attempting in this way to evade the discussion of the main problem, and Plehanov would appear to hold the same view; yet he, too, evades the issue, sheltering like Černov behind the screen of objective history. But Plehanov has the advantage over Černov in that his program entitles him to appeal to objective historism.
Plehanov, however, makes one concession to ethics. He admits that "the need to provide an ethical justification for the struggle is no light matter." Ropšin's problem, as stated in the alternative that either we are always justified in killing or else are never justified—this, says Plehanov, "is indubitably a most serious question." But he goes on to show us how Ropšin's doubts, or those of his hero, originated. Ropšin strayed into the paths of subjectivism, instead of keeping along the straight road of historical objectivism. But subjectivism, as Plehanov and his congeners are never weary of telling us, leads to scepticism; and subjectivism has made of Ropšin a revolutionary Hamlet.
Plehanov therefore refers Ropšin to Hegel and to his "algebra of revolution." Hegel had shown how the historical process had evoked struggle in society and had prescribed the functions of that struggle. On one side is the divine right of the existing order; on the other is the equally divine right of the individual consciousness and of subjective freedom, which rises in revolt against the antiquated objective norms. Hence the conflict, a tragedy wherein the best men of the day often perish. "But though men perish in this tragedy, no one is to blame. As Hegel says, those on each side are right in their own eyes."
With this "algebra of revolution," with such phraseology, Plehanov expects to uproot and to abolish Ropšin's Hamletism! It is not enough that Ropšin's heroes should be willing to ​sacrifice themselves, should be ready to die; what they need is a more accurate understanding of the historical process! It would be impossible to give a plainer demonstration of the futility of historism, to show more clearly how fond the exponents of that doctrine are of playing hide and seek.
As exemplar of the subjective struggle against the objective norms, Plehanov adduces Socrates, and he tells us that the struggle between subjectivism and objectivism is waged in the field of science. But assuredly a very moderate "understanding of the historical process" suffices to convince us from a study of this very example that Socrates and Ropšin's George have nothing whatever in common. Both, certainly, are in revolt against the traditional environment, but whereas Socrates deliberately accepts the poisoned draught handed him by the representatives of coercive authority, George kills certain men even while he doubts whether they are in fact his oppressors. In the Apology, Plato demonstrated the innocence of Socrates and the guilt of his adversaries. Ropšin, in his novels, displays to us the doubts he has come to entertain regarding terrorist methods. History cannot help us, nor yet Hegel, who tells us both sides are in the right. "Is it right for me to kill a man?"—there is the simple question, and what any historian or philosopher of history may have written concerning the historical process as an objectively given whole, is utterly irrelevant. What is the "historical process?" Is there any such process, over and above the individual consciousness of particular individuals, who continually, and amid varying conditions, have severally to face the ethical problems of life! Ropšin, we are told, has not a sufficient understanding of the historical process. Perhaps not! Perhaps not! But does the historical process, as Plehanov contends, determine the functions of the social struggle; and if so, how? Characteristic of the superficiality of historism and its objectivist amoralism is the continued evasion of the question of personal decision, of personal responsibility for action, for action in general, and not merely for ​terrorist and other revolutionary deeds. Let Plehanov tell us, what history, what the study of history, can do to meet the difficulty of Ropšin's George, to answer the question whether, here and now, the specific George is right to kill the specific governor. How can the "historical process" give any help; and what is this "historical process"?
The importance of Ropšin's revolutionary scepticism is unaffected by the criticism to which his writings have been subjected. Ropšin, as compared with his predecessors, effected a deeper sounding of the problem of revolution, and touched the ethical bottom of the matter. Moreover, he threw a clear light on the purely utilitarian valuation of revolution, which occupies much space in these discussions. In addition, Ropšin's personal authority as a social revolutionary leader gives his philosophy of revolution the requisite practical and political outlook.
For the Social Revolutionary Party, above all, the publication of Ropšin's works denotes the existence of a great crisis. If we take further into account the changes made in the social program of the narodničestvo, we are justified in sayings that in the Social Revolutionary Party, Russian revolutionism has come to a parting of the ways. Ropšin himself hesitates at this parting of the ways, and herein lies the tragedy of his situation, that while he recognises the fallacies of terrorism he cannot make up his mind to abandon the method. He knows that the maxim "everything is permissible" is false and wrong; he is forced to admit that he has no right to kill. Yet he kills, knowing that he does wrong, for, "One must have courage enough to say, This is wrong, cruel, and terrible; but it is inevitable."
* ↑ Kozlov (ob. 1901) was professor of philosophy in Kiev; Lopatin is professor at Moscow university; Losskii is professor of philosophy at St. Petersburg University and has written works in German; Nesmělov is professor at the seminary in Kazan.
* ↑ The liberal replies to Signposts were incorporated in a collection of essays published in 1910, entitled, The Intelligentsia and the People. Most of the writers were men of European reputation: Petrunkevič; Arsenev (literary critic), Gredeskul (historian), Maxim Kovalevskii, Miljukov, Ovsjaniko-Kulikovskii (historian of literature), Slavinskii (belletristic writer), Tugan-Baranovskii.
* ↑ Most of the authors wrote anonymously. Two of the articles were almost certainly from the pen of Černov, whilst Šiškov contributed one.
* ↑ The quotations are made from the English version of the novel, V. Ropshin, The Pale Horse, translated from the Russian by Z. Vengerova, Maunsel, Dublin, 1917, and Allen and Unwin, London, 1018.
* ↑ Kropotkin's brother, in like manner, died by his own hand in Siberia.
* ↑ In the text an account has been given of Ropšin's chief philosophic predecessors. Certain supplementary details may be appended here. The saying that a man must lay down more than his life, that he must lay down his soul, is to be found in almost the identical words in Arcybašev's Ševyrev the Worker. I am not sure which of the two books was published first, and whether we have to do with borrowing or parallelism. (The Pale Horse was published in January 1909; Ševyrev the Worker was likewise issued in 1909 as the third volume of a collection entitled Zemlja.)
* ↑ If Plehanov wished to turn to Hegel for a contribution to the "algebra of revolution" (the reader will recall that the phrase was used by Herzen), he should have given a philosophico-historical account of the relationships between the revolution and the enlightenment. But it is true that the Hegelian enlightenment (philosophy as mainspring of the French revolution, the differences between the Catholic and the Protestant peoples in the revolution) does not harmonise well with historical materialism.
* ↑ Whilst this work was in the press, there was brought to my notice a critique of Ropšin's second novel from the pen of the before-mentioned Ivanov-Razumnik, the historian of literature. He sees plainly enough that Plehanov's historism is superficial, but he succumbs to the same historism, although (in opposition to Marxism) he professes subjectivism. Ivanov-Razumnik does not recognise any ethical imperative; there are, for him, no universally valid ethical norms. But in his view there does exist what he terms a "psychological norm." To quote his own words: "This psychological norm grows with the growth of mankind. We cannot kill our personal enemies right and left, for the same reason that we cannot practise cannibalism. We are restrained, not by logical reasons (which are non-existent), nor yet by any ethical norm, but by direct sentiment. Neither logic nor ethic is determinative, but simply the psychology of men and of mankind." We remember that Pisarev used a similar argument. But whereas Pisarev regarded the disinclination to kill as a matter of individual taste, Ivanov-Razumnik refers it to "growth," that is, to the historical evolution of men and of mankind.