# The Spirit of Russia/Volume 2/Chapter 14

THE SPIRIT OF RUSSIA
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
REALISM AND NIHILISM. ČERNYŠEVSKII AND DOBROLJUBOV. PISAREV
§ 95.
IN Europe, Herzen was carrying on Bělinskii's work, and from 1850 onwards, unaffected by the censorship, was exercising a literary influence on progressive and radical Russia; in Russia, simultaneously, Bělinskii found a successor in Nikolai Gavrilovič Černyševskii. This writer made his literary debut in 1853. In 1854, he became a collaborator on the "Sovremennik" (Contemporary), a periodical founded by Puškin, and after 1847 edited by the poet Nekrasov. Soon he became the most active spirit in the production of this periodical, and during the responsible and difficult time that followed the Crimean defeat he was literary and political leader of the younger generation. The young writer was not slow to avail himself of the comparative freedom of authorship during the first years of Alexander's reign. His literary essays from 1853 to 1863 fill even large volumes, although the year of the liberation of the serfs and the subsequent epoch of reforms did not bring enhanced freedom to Černyševskii and his organ. On the contrary, to the government and even to many liberals his trend seemed dangerous, for a political ferment, largely due to Černyševskii's influence, now became apparent, and manifested itself in 1861 in the disturbances that broke out among the students and were directed against the reactionary policy in education. The first victim of repression (1861) was Černyševskii's fellow worker on the "Sovremennik," M. J. Mihailov, translator and poet. Next ​year the "Sovremennik" was suppressed for eight months and its editor was arrested, for during the days of the Polish rising, reaction could not be long delayed. After two years of preliminary imprisonment, Černyševskii, now in his thirty-fifth year, was sentenced to fourteen years in the Siberian mines, and to exile for life to Siberia—the scaffold comedy then customary in such cases, the ceremony of civil death, being first played. The reasons for the sentence are still unknown. All Černyševskii's extant works were passed by the censor, so it can only be supposed that he was condemned for some illegal publication, or for secret revolutionary propaganda. The police did in fact bring forward evidence bearing on such a charge, producing two depraved individuals (one being a nephew of Kostomarov) to testify that Černyševskii had written secret proclamations and had had these printed. The minister for justice submitted to the court a memorial Concerning Černyševskii's Literary Activities, and thereupon sentence followed.
​Černyševskii's philosophical development closely resembled that of Herzen and Bakunin, for like both these writers he was a student of Hegel and Feuerbach. To him, however, Hegel was less congenial than to Herzen, and Černyševskii became far more definitely Feuerbachian. All that he took from Hegel was the idea of development, whereas Feuerbach's influence upon his mind was decisive. Once more, like Herzen and Bakunin, Černyševskii learned from Comte and the French socialists, his views being formed in especial by those of Louis Blanc, Fourier, and Proudhon. But far more than Herzen or Bakunin, Černyševskii had recourse to English writers, studying philosophers as well as socialists and political economists. His readings of Bentham and Mill confirmed him in his positivist outlook and made him a utilitarian; he was familiar with the writings of Owen; in economics, he recognised the authority of Adam Smith, Ricardo, and Malthus, and in addition that of John Stuart Mill. It must further be mentioned that Černyševskii was intimately acquainted with the works of Buckle, one of the writers on historico-philosophical topics by whom Černyševskii was ever greatly influenced. He had also read Vico, and many earlier and later historians and philosophers of history, among whom Guizot deserves special mention.
Černyševskii devoted more attention than did either Herzen or Bakunin to the literature of his native land, especially when still quite young. At the university he immersed himself in Bělinskii's writings, and Herzen's work likewise affected him during the years when his mind was still eminently receptive. Thus Černyševskii's mental physiognomy became very different from that of either Herzen or Bakunin. Russian literature (Gogol as well as Bělinskii and Herzen), English impressions, and the main derivation of his thought direct from Feuerbach instead of from Hegel, give Černyševskii his characteristic philosophical stamp. Far more than Herzen or even than Bakunin, he was a positivist in the Comtist sense, a "realist" as the term is used in Russia. He consistently carried out the disillusionment postulated by Herzen, turning away from German ideas to Russian facts. With Bělinskii he conceived realism as the opposite of romanticism, and he fought sentimentalism in all its forms, demanding an accurate interpretation of human motives. We have further to remember that Černyševskii remained in Russia, where ​as publicist he was in uninterrupted contact with Russian friends and opponents. For this reason Černyševskii was, if the expression be permissible, more Russian than Herzen or Bakunin. Russian questions of the day and Russian conditions, were his chief concern.
In further contrast with Herzen, Černyševskii was in philosophical matters more consistent and more stable. At the university and during the first years of his study of Feuerbach he was still a believer; but in the end Feuerbach got the better of faith, and thenceforward, from about 1850, Černyševskii remained a consistent positivist and materialist. He exhibited no trace of the metaphysical struggles which affected Herzen and which Herzen repeatedly described. Černyševskii, like Herzen, had to pass through the process of disillusionment, but as soon as it had been completed, this chapter of development. was closed for ever.
This is a mere outline sketch of Černyševskii, which must now be filled in, so far as a study of his writings renders that possible. Let me repeat, however, that in the case of Černyševskii, the man who makes so few direct references to himself and who far less than most other writers furnishes us with indirect disclosures of his personality, the lack of an adequate biography is peculiarly unfortunate.
Let us begin with an account of Černyševskii's philosophy. In doing so we can justify ourselves by quoting the author in person, for he contended that a man's practical life and all his other activities are largely determined by his general philosophical outlook.
The very title of his leading philosophical study, The Anthropological Principle in Philosophy (1860), suggests Feuerbach to our minds. In view of the censorship Černyševskii did not mention Feuerbach by name, but the contents of the book, show clearly enough that, as he once wrote from Siberia, he knew Feuerbach almost by heart.
Alike epistemologically and metaphysically Černyševskii adopts Feuerbach's anthropologism. Man as a sentient organism is for Černyševskii the arch-reality. Like Feuerbach, Černyševskii combines rationalism with sensualism, and like his German exemplar (whom in this point he outdoes) he utterly ignores epistemological criticism.
A special study of the subject would enable us to display the many points of contact between pupil and ​teacher; at the same time there are differences, which are largely referable to Černyševskii's lack of criticism. But the question of which we are chiefly concerned is how we are to classify Černyševskii from the epistemological and metaphysical outlook.
Černyševskii speaks of himself as a materialist, and, by friends and foes alike, his doctrines are termed materialistic. He writes: "Philosophy sees in man what medicine, physiology, and chemistry see in him. These sciences prove that in man no dualism is discoverable; but philosophy adds that if man had a second nature in addition to his real [material] nature, the second nature would necessarily manifest itself in some way. But since no such second nature displays itself, since all human conduct and all human manifestations conform solely to his real [material] nature, it follows that he has no second nature." I select this passage because Černyševskii's materialism and his philosophical method are thereby presented in a nutshell. Černyševskii is a materialist sans phrase, materialist after the manner of Herzen and Bakunin, and therefore preeminently one who denies the existence of an immortal soul. Černyševskii recognises the distinction between the so-called material and the moral phenomena in man, but contends that the difference between these phenomena does not conflict with the unity of nature. Černyševskii believes that this unity of the physiological and the psychological can be illustrated and explained by the analogy with the three states of aggregation of water. "In these three states, one and the same quality is manifested in a threefold series of quite distinct phenomena, so that a single quality assumes the form of three distinct qualities; it is distinguished as three qualities simply in accordance with differences in quantitative manifestation; a quantitative difference is transformed into a qualitative difference." Here we see once more that Černyševskii's materialism is what may be termed "common sense" materialism. He stresses always the single nature of man. Every activity of the one and undivided human being is the activity, either of the entire organism ​"from top to toe," or of the activity of a special organ, and this organ must be studied in its natural associations with the entire organism. For Černyševskii, psychology is a branch of physiology.
Consistently with his materialism, Černyševskii teaches that egoism is the true motive of every action, however sublime.
Let us pause, first, to consider the metaphysical and epistemological problem.
Feuerbach, when he abandoned his primitive Spinozism, conceived monism in a less materialistic sense than Černyševskii and at least did not, as a positivist, come to a definitive decision upon the problem. Černyševskii had a great esteem for Spinoza as well as for Feuerbach. Accepting Spinoza's monism, he conceived it in a purely materialistic sense, and did this most emphatically, for he would not agree that positivism is metaphysically vague. For Černyševskii, the laws of nature apply equally in the domain of the psyche. Psychical processes are organic processes, and organic processes are no more than partial manifestations of nature, one and undivided.
I shall not undertake a refutation of materialism, nor shall I attempt to test Černyševskii's reasoning, for its weakness is obvious. Černyševskii had never thought out philosophical problems; his psychology and epistemology lacked precision; his work displayed numerous contradictions, the individual thoughts conflicting one with another and with the general principle. Materialism was for him an article of faith and a political program, and this is why his Anthropological Principle became the program of radical youth. Relentless daring, a sovereign tone, the energy of conviction in the name of science and not in that of any official metaphysic, ensured for Černyševskii a literary and political victory in the debates that ensued.
Černyševskii's outlook became the basis of the realism of the sixties, for which Turgenev introduced the name of "nihilism." Liberals as well as conservatives took the field against this realism. Jurkevič, professor at the Kiev seminary, writing as an expert, had little difficulty in indicating the weaknesses of extreme sensualism and materialism, and he was able to point out a number of by no means inconsiderable errors in matters of detail. Moreover, Jurkevič had good reason for his protest against the general tone of Černyševskii's essay. Vladimir Solov'ev endeavoured, though with scant ​success, to revive Jurkevič's memory and to make the most of his attack on Černyševskii. It was all too plain that Jurkevič was merely defending theology and theocracy, and that even if Černyševskii's psychology and epistemology were defective, this did not prove that Jurkevič's ideas in the same domains were correct. It was doubtless through Katkov's influence that Jurkevič was now appointed professor at the university of Moscow, but the latter's sentimentalities about the heart, and similar romanticist survivals, did not suffice to stem the rising tide of nihilism. Katkov's own onslaught on Černyševskii, and the attacks made by the liberals, were definitely political and literary in nature; as regards the general trend, Černyševskii carried heavier metal than his opponents, and his rejoinders afforded proof of this superiority. It is true that he failed to secure a better philosophical foundation, but the controversy made plain the untenability of the opposing arguments and aims, while in the struggle against the aims Černyševskii had the best of the dispute—and had right on his side.
Černyševskii's philosophy and his literary endeavours bear the stamp of the enlightenment, and it is that of the enlightenment in its aggressive phase prior to the French revolution. Černyševskii knew that his thought was revolutionary, for he desired to continue and to strengthen the revolution of Peter the Great. As far as Russia was concerned, Peter was for him the ideal. Whilst the French enlightenment and French materialism were his philosophical and political models, he found his literary guide in Lessing.
It was Černyševskii's ambition to be a modern Aristotle, one who should instruct, not Russia alone, but all mankind. Quite in the spirit of the enlightenment, he planned several encyclopædic works in which the ideas and the material and mental development of humanity were to be jointly presented as in a codex or in the Bible. A definitive encyclopædia of "knowledge and life," published in the French tongue, was to serve the needs of all mankind.
In Černyševskii's view, the enlightenment was necessary above all for Russia, of whose culture he, like Čaadaev, took a low estimate. Russia, he said, had an army of one and a half million soldiers, and could conquer Europe as the Huns or the Mongols had done of old, but that was all. For him, as for Čaadaev, it seemed the climax of patriotism to follow ​Peter's example in pushing the work of enlightenment; the west needed knowledge, but Russia needed enlightenment; Černyševskii felt that his own mission was that of publicist, and a publicist is "not a professor, but a tribune or advocate."
Černyševskii does not conceive the enlightenment as the propagation of a civilisation taken bodily from the west, and he accuses Herzen of a desire for such "civilisation snatching." Enlightenment signifies the getting rid of a false outlook on the universe, signifies a new civilisation on a materialistic basis. The German [Feuerbach] had indeed laid the foundations of this materialism, but the Russian would be its universal Aristotle. Realism notwithstanding, we discern here a species of popular messianism, even though it be only in the sense of Hegel or Feuerbach, each of whom proclaimed his philosophy the terminus of human thought.
Černyševskii frequently speaks of himself as a rationalist. Following the French usage, he employs the term with the connotation of reasonableness, but he also has in mind rationalism in the eighteenth-century sense of an unrestricted belief in reason, so that he deliberately attacks (in theory!) the life of feeling and emotion as "romanticism" and "sentimentalism." Černyševskii's rationalism is dogmatic in the sense in which that word was used by Kant; Černyševskii accepts Feuerbach's philosophy quite uncritically, he believes in Feuerbach.
Černyševskii takes Kant's subjectivism less to heart than his Russian predecessors had done. Putting this "metaphysical nonsense" aside, he passes directly to the order of the day. But in thus rejecting subjectivism, he rejects criticism as well. I mean that his belief in Feuerbach is not objectivist merely, but uncritically objectivist.
§ 96.
FOR Černyševskii the ethical consequence of the "anthropological principle" is the recognition of determinism as valid alike for the life of the individual and for society and history, and in the second place the proclamation of egoism as the basis of ethics.
In 1860 these doctrines were no novelty in philosophy and ethics, but nevertheless Černyševskii's use of them exercised a profoundly stirring influence upon his Russian contem​poraries. He made no investigation of the problem of the freedom of the will nor of that of egoism, and it is indeed evident that these problems were positively alien to his mind. Since Mill's Utilitarianism was first published in 1861, this treatise was not available to Černyševskii when he wrote in 1860, but he could have instructed himself regarding the difficulties from the works of Bentham, to say nothing of Kant and other ethical writers, including Feuerbach. Moreover, at a much earlier date Hume had effected so luminous a psychological analysis of egoism, and in particular of the "rational egoism" which was the peculiar recommendation of Černyševskii, that from the scientific outlook the theory of extreme egoism was in 1860 an anachronism. (Be it noted, I make my appeal here to such ultra empiricists and sceptics as Hume and Mill, and not to a man like Jurkevič!)
As far as concerns the psychological and epistemological foundation of the ethical principle, the doctrine that man's actions are determined solely by egoism, we find passages even in Černyševskii wherein this contention is modified by the assertion that love also is natural to man, that unegoistic, disinterested, direct love for his fellows is one of man's inborn characteristics. The essays concerning Bělinskii (Sketches dealing with the Period of Gogol, 1855) contain an explicit and severe condemnation of egoism. It is true that even in this account of the matter, egoism is treated as an inborn characteristic, but love and benevolence are likewise regarded as inborn, and the human being who acts upon exclusively egoistic calculations is positively stigmatised as an unnatural monster.
We read: "Positive is he alone who desires to be a complete human being. Inasmuch as he labours for his own advantage, he also loves others, for there is no such thing as isolated happiness. He renounces thoughts and plans which are disharmonious with the laws of nature, but he does not renounce useful labour." Following Bentham, Černyševskii takes as his standard the greatest happiness of the greatest number, which it is the business of the individual to promote. The general human interest seems to him to rank higher than the interest of an individual nation; the general interest of the entire nation ranks higher than the interest of any particular class; and, finally, the interest of the state is measured in accordance with the number of its members. ​But all this fails to give us a clear insight into the relationship between altruism and egoism.
As regards the problem of freedom, Černyševskii's materialistic determinism leads him to deny the freedom of the will, and this denial is based upon a general denial of the existence of the will (or rather of "willing," for on this occasion Černyševskii uses more concrete language). In earlier days, we read in The Anthropological Principle, man's actions were explained as the outcome of his "will"; he was said to "will" to do good or to do evil. But the anthropological principle teaches us that evil behaviour and good behaviour are not brought about by any moral (i.e. psychical) or material fact or combination of facts. "Willing is a mere subjective impression which in our consciousness accompanies the origination of thoughts, actions, or external phenomena."
I am well aware that, before Černyševskii wrote, the attempt had been made to refer will to the sphere of the intellect (Herbart), but Černyševskii does not make this endeavour deliberately. For him, the intrusion of the will into the affairs of the world of which the organism is a part seems inconvenient, for it disturbs his determinism, and will therefore becomes for him no more than a subjective "impression," a species of illusory epiphenomenon of the intellect, but an epiphenomenon also of actions and of external phenomena. Yet how, we must ask, do the thoughts and the actions arise, and how does willing accompany the "external phenomena"? Such questions as these, such questions as are inseparably associated with the problem of consciousness in general and with the problem of the separate psychical activities, are simply ignored by Černyševskii. Moreover, his materialism goes but half way. It is only the will which is a puzzle to him, and there is no difficulty about the determined intelligence! His teacher Mill, at least, was more consistent and thoroughgoing; so was Schopenhauer; so were all who have discussed the problem with full understanding.
To establish the principles of ethics upon firm foundations, to do this in the theoretical field with the aid of accurate epistemological criticism, is one thing; to live morally and to work practically on behalf of one's fellows is another. It has often been said of Černyševskii and of all the egoists of the sixties, that these men who were egoists in theory were the greatest idealists in practice. This is perfectly true. When ​we watch Černyševskii at work, when we contemplate his labours by day and by night, we can have no doubt concerning the true nature of his "very useful utility" (thus does he formulate his view in The Anthropological Principle), and we understand why his egoism is to be "rational." Černyševskii's opponents marshalled all the old arguments which have from the first been adduced against hedonism, and yet Černyševskii was anything other than hedonist and epicurean in the sense of their accusations. Černyševskii detested moral sermonising and the inert sentimentality of the altruists. He simply wanted people to do something for their neighbours, to work on their behalf. His "neighbour" was for him no abstraction, but the extant social organisations, graded in the way that has been previously described; and for these and with these the individual was to work. Černyševskii's ethic was eo ipso social. For him useful labour was the goal of all activity, and this implied for him the demand that each man should work for himself, and should never make another work for him and in his place. Černyševskii's ethic is not social merely, but socialistic; his conception of practical and active love is communistic, for he sets out from the naturally given equality of all men (or, as he would put it, of all the organisms of humanity). Materialism is ethical and socio-political communism; it is the equality of rights of organised human beings, who by nature lead gregarious lives. The love for his fellows, and the self-love which are inborn to man, lead, upon a materialistic basis, to an equality of rights; but this equality of rights is by Černyševskii carried to its logical term, is conceived by him socialistically or communistically in its applications to all departments of social life. His communism does not halt before family life and marriage. "My linen your linen; my pipe-stem your pipe-stem; my wife your wife": thus speaks Rahmetov in What is to be Done.
While imprisoned in St. Petersburg, Černyševskii wrote his first novel, What is to be Done? The work was published in 1863, and became the program of the younger radical generation, the program of the sons against their fathers. In Fathers and Children, Turgenev had analysed nihilism, then in its inception; in What is to be Done, Černyševskii wrote the gospel of nihilism, which was already at work. Kropotkin, ​and all who have an intimate knowledge of the sixties, recognise this. The young men of that day were less concerned with the philosophical foundations of the book than with following the positive example set them in What is to be Done.
It is easy for us to understand the powerful influence exercised by this novel. The mere fact that it was written and circulated during the author's prosecution could not fail to make its effects powerful upon young men of advanced views. But even Černyševskii's opponents could not close their eyes to the fact that in writing his book the captive had done a great deed. "This," he said in effect, "shows you what I want!" It would have been impossible for Černyševskii to give his official and unofficial inquisitors a more energetic or prouder answer than was given in this work.
The realists or nihilists (the latter name was given them by Turgenev, and was adopted by them) are in What is to be Done the consistent positivists, materialists, and egoists whose abstract principles Černyševskii, following Feuerbach, had previously expounded in his literary essays. The characters in the novel are guided by these principles. They are not learned, but they think scientifically; they are persons who feel it incumbent upon them to think scientifically and philosophically; they are accurate observers, and they draw logical conclusions from what they observe. The truth of actual fact and of positive knowledge is applied by them in the moral sphere. They have consistently carried out the "process of disillusionment" demanded by Herzen, not excepting the emotional life from its operations; pose of any kind is repugnant to them; naturalness, simplicity, directness, straightforwardness, are their watchwords, and characterise their lives. They therefore speak little, and would rather act or learn; but they debate much with one another, discussing chiefly philosophical and socio-political principles. One or another of them may carry his realism to an extreme, but on the whole they are persons who work for themselves and for their fellows, to whom the best which has hitherto been demanded as a great exception by the church and by society seems a mere matter of course, by which they are to guide their lives. They are at ease and self-possessed amid the most difficult problems and in the most difficult situations. Everything is so obvious.
What then is to be done? Society must be organised ​upon a socialistic and communistic basis; its institutions must conform to the ideals of Fourier; these ideals are to be realised through cooperative organisations à la Louis Blanc, and by the education of men, not only as suggested by Fourier, but also in accordance with the designs of Owen.
Věra, Lopuhov's wife, takes delight in organising productive cooperatives of sempstresses. Not merely does her husband assist Věra in these social endeavours, but when he learns that his wife loves the philosopher Kirsanov, and is loved in return, he voluntarily retires from the field. Having arranged the details of a pretended suicide, he betakes himself to America. His wife, now legally free, but privately informed as to Lopuhov's place of residence and designs, marries Kirsanov. As soon as Lopuhov is convinced that he has overcome his love for Věra he returns to St. Petersburg to marry a friend of his former wife. The two families live thenceforward on the most cordial terms.
The construction of the novel is not merely simple, but weak. In conflict with the principle of realism, there is little action, but a great deal of discussion. The most important psychical processes are not subjected to analysis—and this indeed is not to be expected from a realist. The socialistic institutions of society are presented to us in dreams. Many other criticisms might be made from the aesthetic outlook. The main interest of the novel is concentrated upon elective affinities (to use Goethe's phrase), and upon the description of the realists or nihilists. Persons of the younger generation were enthralled with the book; those of the older generation, and not conservatives alone, were angered by it. Even Saltykov used very ambiguous language about it, writing on the subject in Černyševskii's review, and comparing nihilist women with demi-mondaines, and nihilist men with the minor recipients of official distinctions. The literary debate concerning nihilism gathered strength to become an open fight.
The woman's question, and above all the problem of the relationship between husband and wife, has long exercised men's minds. Indeed, we might almost say that the whole of modern literature is devoted to the subject. Rousseau, Lessing, Goethe, and Byron, did not merely discuss it as a topic, but lived it in their personal lives. In Russia, during the forties, George Sand was the fashion, but Puškin treated the subject boldly and independently in the character of ​Tatjana. Družinin’s Polin'ka will not accept the sacrifice which her husband offers to make, and remains with him; the husband, aware of her love for the young, ardent, and romantic Galickii, condones it; but in the end dies of consumption. Similarly, Herzen makes his unhappy husband die of drink. Turgenev, Gončarov, and Ostrovskii, all treated the problem prior to Černyševskii. Thus the last-named had before him numerous attempts at its solution. Moreover, as a socialist, it was natural that he should devote serious attention to the subject, being impelled thereto by socialist authorities and by the members of his own circle. Mihailov early began to write seriously upon the woman's problem and Černyševskii followed in his footsteps.
Russian history contains records, not only of learned women like Daškova, but also of the valiant wives of the decabrists. Under Nicholas, wives and mothers suffered from political oppression no less than husbands and fathers; women shared men's political aspirations, and bravely played their parts in the revolutionary movement that followed 1861. The social position of the middle class, and above all that of the rasnočinec, was rendered acutely difficult by the liberation of the peasantry, and the woman's question consequently became more pressing. As a result of this, liberals and radicals busied themselves in securing the admission of women to the sources of education and to the means of independent livelihood. Even the government took some steps forward, and women's schools were founded as early as 1858.
The reproach of immorality which has been made against Černyševskii's novel, the reproach that the author is an advocate of "free love," may be unhesitatingly dismissed. Even those who refuse to accept Černyševskii's solution must admit that after separation and remarriage the two couples lived far more morally than many wedded pairs in liberal and conservative circles of the day—not to speak of court life. In youth, Černyševskii had made up his mind to remain continent before marriage, and kept his resolution. Writing in 1858 a review of Turgenev's Asja, he said: "Away with erotic problems. The modern reader takes no pleasure in them, for he is concerned with the question of perfecting the administration and the judicial system, with questions of finance, and with the problem of liberating the peasantry." This was and remained the dominant mood of the nihilists. Černyševskii ​was far from being an epicurean, and indeed as regards this department of life we must rather look upon him as a stoic.
Černyševskii desired to liberate woman from the Old Russian atmosphere, from the yoke of so-called patriarchalism, and to make her into a "thinking being." With this end in view, utilitarianism seemed to him to offer the best guiding principle where the love of man and wife was concerned, just as it offered the best guiding principle elsewhere. In the days of their courtship, Věra reproached Lopuhov for his theory of rational egoism. It was, she said, cold, prosaic, and harsh. The utilitarian egoist answered his wife as follows: "This theory is cold, but it teaches men how to create warmth. A match is cold, the side of the matchbox on which you strike it is cold, but in them is fire, which prepares warm food for man and warms his body. This theory is harsh, but if men will follow it they will cease to be the tragic sport of futile sympathies. The hand that holds the lancet must not flinch, for mere sympathy will not do the patient any good. This theory is prosaic, but it reveals the true motive of life, and only in the truth of life is poesy found."
Through the personality of his hero, Černyševskii expressed his detestation for the theory of self-sacrifice, which was always being held up against him. "The word and the concept are false," says Lopuhov. "Nobody ever sacrifices himself, for everyone does what he likes best. Sacrifice is mere fustian."
Černyševskii is perfectly right in his animadversions against sacrifice. His ethic in general is a serious and noble-minded attempt; but its foundation is unsound, and it is impossible to accept the solution suggested in What is to be Done.
Self-sacrifice? It is true that genuine self-sacrifice is a rarity. Such sacrifice is as a rule purely imaginary. But it exists. There is such a thing as self-sacrifice utterly devoid of egoism and utterly free from the spirit of mercenary calculation. This is where Černyševskii errs; there are feelings and impulses of a quite unegoistic order; and Černyševskii simply does not understand—himself! But from the days of Aristippus and Epicurus down to those of Bentham and Mill the same mistake has been made by more than one philosopher, by more than one of the best and noblest among mankind. They all desired an empirical and practical system of ethics, and believed they could base such a system upon the doctrine of egoism. Unquestionably society ought to be ​so organised as to render self-sacrifice superfluous, for as long as men exist who are ready and willing to make sacrifices, so long will egoists take advantage of these sacrifices. And seldom indeed have men any right to demand sacrifices from their fellows!
In America, Lopuhov overcomes his love for Věra. How does he effect this? Apart from the consideration that by the year 1863 a flight to America was already a somewhat trite expedient, we feel impelled to ask how Lopuhov could succeed in extirpating his first passion so radically as to be able, not merely to love a second time, but to live tranquilly in close association with his former wife. The author tells us how Věra finds Kirsanov and why she loves him; we understand that an inexperienced girl may delude herself concerning the depth and genuineness of her affection. But Lopuhov, a thinker, a man of wide experience and quite exceptional intelligence, was he also self-deluded when he married Věra? This can hardly have been the case, or he would not have had to journey to America in search of a cure. But the main point is this, that a man or a woman may resolve to love once and once only during a lifetime. What is to be done then? "I will love but once in all my life," is the entry we find in Černyševskii's own diary. What would Černyševskii have said had Lopuhov elected to follow this rede? Would he tell us that it was a needless sacrifice? All honour to utilitarianism, but there are times when it seems narrow and petty.
Černyševskii continued to ponder the problem in Siberia. In a comedy (this writer loved to convey his serious thoughts in paradoxes, jests, and shafts of irony) he shows us a woman who loves two men with an equally strong affection, and the way out of the difficulty is discovered in a marriage à trois. The development of the plot is as follows. First of all the heroine decides between the two men by lot. When the die is cast, she marries one, and the other disappears. The wife falls ill, and, acting on medical advice, goes upon a sea voyage, accompanied by her husband. A storm ends in a shipwreck, and the two are saved by being cast up on a lonely islet and rescued from drowning by the vanished friend and third member of the trio. Recapitulation of the earlier troubles follows, in an aggravated form. Jealousy, despair, thoughts of murder. It seems as if the affair must end in the destruction ​of all three. But why need this be so? The conflict terminates in a union à trois, and hell is transmuted into paradise. The "triple" now goes to Europe, and in England the unconventional relationship leads to a prosecution, but the jury acquits the accused after a brilliant speech from the wife. In America they are received with open arms.
§ 97.
AFTER the death of Bělinskii, Russian literature and criticism in St. Petersburg and Moscow were under the dominion of the police-aesthetics inaugurated by Nicholas' henchmen, who had been quite thrown off their balance by the revolution of 1848. Družinin and Annenkov, with their philosophy of moderation, their liberalism in politics, and their system of aesthetics which was tantamount to the advocacy of art for art's sake and desired to immerse itself in memories of the days before Puškin, had little influence on the rising generation, on the young people who had read Herzen. Annenkov had much that was informative and interesting to bring back from Europe. Družinin made a name for himself with the publication of his novel Polin'ka Saks (1847). His critical and literary essays were instructive, while his studies in English literature and his translations from the English tongue were of value as a supplement to the French and German trends; but Nicolaitan Russia, faced by the catastrophe of Sevastopol, looked for other pabulum than was provided by articles on Samuel Johnson and by the polemics waged by the English tories in the name of aesthetics against "the didactics," that is to say against writers on social topics and writers with a purpose.
Černyševskii's criticism satisfied the philosophical and political needs of his day. As we have learned, he made his literary debut in 1853, and shortly afterwards he took the field as champion of Bělinskii and continuer of that author's work. He secured general recognition for the forbidden name of Bělinskii (Sketches dealing with the Period of Gogol, 1855); and in his thesis for the degree of master of arts, The Aesthetic Relationship of Art to Reality (1855), he applied Feuerbachian principles to aesthetics.
Černyševskii feels the lack of beauty in life, in reality. He demands that art shall not merely represent life, but shall ​interpret it; it is the artist's function to embody imaginatively the development of mankind. "Beauty is life." But for this very reason, beauty, as beauty is defined by idealist aesthetics, is not the sole content of art. "All that has a general bearing on life, is the subject matter of art." Aesthetics becomes an ancillary science to ethics, to the utilitarian principle of the greatest good of the greatest number, and thus to the policy of social regeneration. From this point of view, we see that the doctrine of art for art's sake must be utterly rejected as epicureanism. To Černyševskii the work of art becomes the work of labour; labour with the axe is the starting-point of all art; Shakespeare and all poets and artists are judged by him in virtue of the utilities they have contributed and continue to contribute to society.
It is true that the artist does not work with his understanding, as does the thinker. The artist works with his imagination; but precisely for this reason he must keep all the closer to reality, seeing that imagination cannot attain to reality. But inasmuch as the artist reproduces life in his work, inasmuch as he endeavours to solve the problems set to him by life, willy-nilly (even while remaining an artist) he is compelled also to think, to become a thinker, and his work thus "acquires scientific significance." Art and science are handbooks for the beginner in practical life, and they are works of reference for the experienced.
Černyševskii wages war against false art, against romanticism and idealism, employing the latter term to denote German philosophy since the days of Kant; also against romanticist art, likewise contemned as characteristically German.
It is readily comprehensible that, from his outlook, Černyševskii should esteem poesy (imaginative literature) as the loftiest of the arts, for poesy seemed to him to have an especially close relationship to life, to be the most generally comprehensible of all the arts, and to be capable of exercising the widest possible influence through the instrumentality of the written and printed word. He does not admit that architecture can properly speaking rank as an art, and he has the same low estimate of music, at any rate in the form of song, which he regards, like speech, as a means of social expression. Painting and sculpture he esteems devoid of action, too rigid. It is natural, therefore, that he should give his full approval to imaginative literature alone, for this directly reflects and ​interprets life, socio-political life above all. In What is to be Done he furnishes a practical example of his theory. Hence we can understand his definition of poesy as "Life, activity, and passion." It may be pointed out that the despised romanticists would be warranted in claiming this device as their own!
In his socio-political estimate of art and the artist, Černyševskii is thus in agreement with Plato, the ultra-materialist with the ultra-idealist—with the romanticist as Černyševskii would have to term him. Plato in his Republic subordinates art to "life," and this would be the course taken by Černyševskii. He, the socialist, would not allot to artists any material compensation for their artistic labours, and he would not permit the enjoyment of works of art until the individual could no longer busy himself upon the useful (1861).
It is from this standpoint that Černyševskii classifies particular artists, and especially poets. Like his teacher Bělinskii, he rates Schiller exceedingly high. Among Russian poets he is far fonder of Gogol than of Puškin. He considers Puškin rather a pure poet than a thinker; his work lacks body; and he has no definite outlook on life. Gogol, on the other hand, in his analysis of Russian life, gives expression to the most definite ethical aspiration, and this must be included among the influences proper to the poet. Černyševskii condemns Turgenev's Asja as an example of unpractical romanticism.
The aesthetic conceptions of Černyševskii and his school were unjustly censured as hostile to art by the opponents of this school, who were animated by a dread of materialism and utilitarianism. Černyševskii wrote several novels, and it was to elucidate the questions which seemed to him of most moment that he had recourse to art.
§ 98.
ČERNYŠEVSKII abandoned his work as literary critic as soon as his disciple and friend Dobroljubov was able to take over this department in his periodical. An exposition must be given of the little that Černyševskii wrote concerning Dobroljubov as aestheticist and critic, and this not merely apropos of the friendly relationship between teacher and ​pupil and of their joint work on behalf of their literary organ and its supporters. The account will further be of interest because it will serve admirably to complete our knowledge of the teacher's own trend of thought. Since Dobroljubov was exclusively a critic, he was typical of the new realistic tendency especially from this aspect.
Dobroljubov's activities were not of long duration, but they gave a rich yield. He was animated with ah enthusiastic and inspiring love for intellectual liberty, and he fought to introduce the light into the Old Russian "realm of darkness" (his analysis of Ostrovskii's dramas depicting the mercantile classes). Writing of Gončarov's Oblomov, he described Oblomovism as the issue of this darkness and as characteristic of the Russians in general; but the errors, he said, were those of one already struggling towards the light. Oblomov was the representative of the liberal nobles, inactive but longing for activity, "superfluous persons." The effect of Dobroljubov's essays was all the greater because he had a closer and more realistic knowledge of Russian conditions than was possessed by his friend and teacher and because, too, he had in the highest degree the gift of satire.
Dobroljubov turned away from the "phantasmagorias of the orientalist imagination"; he turned to Bělinskii (of the last phase) and to Herzen; in this way, like Černyševskii and his radical contemporaries in general, he came to Feuerbach and the Hegelian left. He now adopted the political views of Černyševskii, and in the latter's review secured a free platform for the expression of his ideas. To Černyševskii we owe a biography of his young friend and disciple, who, in turn, exercised considerable influence upon the teacher.
As materialist and utilitarian, Dobroljubov could not fail to ask himself the question whether there was any justification ​for art in general and for literary criticism in particular, to ask himself whether literary criticism was "work" in the sense in which work was demanded by Černyševskii. In Dobroljubov's critical writings we often feel that this question is troubling him, and his answer does not always set doubts at rest. Whereas at first his judgment of Puškin coincided with that of Černyševskii, who, despite his admiration for Puškin considered the latter's work lacking in realist content, Dobroljubov's later opinions concerning the utility of poets, and of Puškin in especial, have a harsher ring. But a closer examination of Dobroljubov's studies leads us to recognize that all he insisted upon was a clear distinction between art and pseudo-art. Only the genuine artist, the truly great artist, has a justified existence, for he alone in his creative work is so permeated with the truth of life that simply by his faithful reproduction of facts and relationships he furnishes for us a solution of the problems we are endeavouring to solve. According to Dobroljubov, persons of mediocre talent must be content with subordinate parts, must serve in the interests of propaganda. It is true that the question arises who is to decide concerning the quality of the talent; who is to decide when an artist is to be classed as mediocre and excluded from the circle of Dobroljubov's recognised great ones, from the company of Dante, Shakespeare, Byron, and Goethe. Of those named, Dobroljubov esteems Shakespeare most highly, considering that his work marks a new phase in human development.
This realistic valuation of art does not differ greatly from the views of the romanticists, who could not stress the greatness of the artist's influence more strongly than did these realists, the reputed enemies of art. In matters of detail, too, we can discover points of contact between the two schools. Dobroljubov, for instance, considers that the natural, that nature, is psychologically manifested in instinct, instinct being to him the all-powerful energy of nature. Similarly, he gives a psychological explanation of the suicide of Katerina in Ostrovskii's The Storm. I do not myself think that instinct as a blindly working force takes us very far in the way of explanation, and this apart from the consideration that the theory is out of harmony with the high valuation of reason and culture which Dobroljubov shares with Černyševskii. Manifestly here Feuerbach's philosophy, and the endeavour ​to attain to a purely empirical and materialistic psychology, are at work.
According to Dobroljubov (and Černyševskii), the critic's task as propagandist mainly consists in a kind of reperception of artistic truth, and this led Dobroljubov to prize above all those works of art wherein the artist has revealed himself. It is continually urged against Dobroljubov that he was unjust to Puškin, but on the other side we must point out that he took delight in Gončarov. He admires Gončarov, not merely on account of the latter's creation of the Oblomov type, but he praises this writer's repose and objectivity and his superiority to the passions and influences of the moment. The desire to be swept along by the current "is Oblomovist, and arises from the wish always to have a leader even in matters of sentiment." As propagandist, Dobroljubov exhorts us to judge poets by their theories of life.
Dobroljubov is severe in his criticism of Turgenev, whose characters Rudin and Lavreckii have too much of the Oblomov in them; but the critic admires Inzarov, being perhaps here somewhat inconsistent with the theory above expounded. Personally Dobroljubov did not get on with Turgenev, finding him a dull companion, as Dobroljubov said openly to Turgenev. Turgenev, on his side, in Fathers and Children, inveighed against realists of the Dobroljubov type; but we cannot admit that Bazarov is a direct portrait of Dobroljubov, as was then maintained in literary circles. Subsequently, in Virgin Soil, Turgenev recognised the imaginative force of Dobroljubov's work, but spoke of the young critic's relentless onslaughts upon recognised authorities as "the attacks of a cobra." Marx compared Dobroljubov with Lessing and Diderot.
Following Černyševskii, Dobroljubov shows how the individual's merits and defects derive from the social environment. In his hands, aesthetic criticism becomes an analysis of the family, of classes (mercantile and aristocratic), and of social institutions in general. He condemns Russian patriarchalism, which enslaves the family and above all enslaves woman; and he endeavours in Katerina's suicide to discover a manifestation of the folk-soul unbemused by official morality. To selfish merchants and nobles he holds up the mužik, the folk, as models. In the political field he condemns as Oblomovism, not aristocracy alone, but liberalism as well, with its un​practical culture. "None of the Oblomovians have transmuted into their own blood and marrow the principles that have been instilled into them; they have never carried them out to their ultimate logical consequences; they have never attained the boundary line where word becomes deed, where principle becomes fused with the innermost need of the soul, is dissolved into that need, and is transformed into the single energy that moves the man. This is why such persons never cease lying; this is why they are so inconsistent in the individual manifestations of their activity. This is why abstract opinions are dearer to them than living facts, why general principles seem more important to them than the simple truths of life. They read useful books to learn what is written therein; they write well-meaning essays in order to luxuriate in the logical constructions of their own phraseology; they utter bold speeches in order to enjoy the sound of their own periods and in order to secure applause. But all that lies beyond, all that is the goal of reading, writing, and oratory, if not utterly beyond their ken, is at least a matter about which they are little concerned."
The reader will not fail to recall Bakunin's analysis of the liberals. In Dobroljubov's characterisation, the liberals appear as "superfluous persons," who begin with Puškin's Onegin and are subsequently represented by Turgenev's types and by Goncharov's Oblomov—dragging out a miserable existence whether in literature or in real life. These cultured and hypercultured individuals are affected with the malady of Oblomovism, they suffer from the paralysis and morbidity of civilisation. Dobroljubov here succumbs to a paroxysm of Rousseauism, and accuses Puškin of remaining too much aloof from the folk. The peasant, says Dobroljubov, is physically and mentally vigorous and healthy, in contrast with the "superfluous" weaklings. Černyševskii by no means shared this favourable opinion of the mužik, and would have rejected it as romanticist. Nor do we find the theory consistently carried out by Dobroljubov; but we have to remember that the mercantile "kingdom of darkness" was peopled for him by "living corpses" (Katerina's husband being among the number), and that he looked upon these Russians of the mercantile classes as persons remote from civilisation.
In this criticism and analysis of literary and socio-political types, Dobroljubov is one-sided and lacking in precision. ​Moreover, we can detect a certain vacillation, for despite his campaign against the Oblomovs and superfluous persons, he is almost mastered by an enthusiasm for Stankevič. If, he tells us, most of the members of human society were to resemble Stankevič, no struggles, no sufferings, and no privations, would be necessary—"those privations which unduly utilitarian persons are so fond of expecting from others." We here see the utilitarian discovering that the utilitarians are in the opposite camp.
Dobroljubov's pen, Dobroljubov's realistic criticism, became a political weapon. In his literary critiques the written word was actually transmuted into deeds—opponents declared, into deeds of violence. Doubtless much was said during the heat of battle which would better have been left unsaid, but we must not forget what weapons of word and deed the nihilists' opponents used! Dobroljubov was a fighter; this was his mission and this was the service we owe to him. In his study of Stankevič, he finely tells us upon what he is waging war, and it is, "the constrained and artificial virtue of inner falsehood towards oneself." Dobroljubov fought this fight honourably. We may perhaps note here and there in his polemic the seminarist's touch, that of the preacher or the professor. From his days as a theological student there had clung to him a tinge of the hermit spirit; yet his judgment and condemnation of the world, of society, was not religious but political. Though we learn from his diary that as a student he aspired in ethical matters to be guided by the stoics Cato and Zeno, he shows us often enough that he failed to adhere to his principles. Do we note in him, in fine, a touch of the Oblomov?
Dobroljubov never attempted a philosophical elaboration of his principles. He accepted Černyševskii's materialism without making any strict examination of its foundations. To him personally, since from childhood onwards and at school his education had been strictly theological and religious, materialism brought enfranchisement. Dobroljubov was nourished almost exclusively on Russian literature; European philosophers were practically unknown to him. Moreover, his interest lay rather in the direction of practical ethics than in those of abstract philosophy, as we may learn from his essay directed against the pedagogic principles of Pirogov.
Nor did Dobroljubov acquire his political and socialistic principles in the philosophic field. It is evident from the ​essays against Cavour and in favour of Owen that he was here wholly dependent upon Černyševskii. Besides, his socialism was the fruit of personal experience. Dobroljubov was the embodiment of the poor raznočinec, was the man who in his own frame had had experience of the blessings of poverty.
Dobroljubov's opponents made malicious reference to a number of the critic's literary oversights, saying, for example, that in Béranger, for whom he had an enthusiasm, he had failed to detect the small-minded adherent of Napoleon. Dobroljubov did not contribute any strongly original ideas to the general stock, but he was an energetic literary propagandist, such as the time needed.
§ 99.
ČERNYSEVSKII was a practical politician rather than a theoretical sociologist. From 1859 onwards he published in his review a monthly survey of political events, devoting himself to the questions of the hour, but always attempting to give the discussion a wide general bearing. This endeavour is extremely characteristic of Černyševskii. I am unable to determine whether it was simply a manifestation of his own philosophic trend, or whether he was influenced here by regard for the risks of the censorship.
He never wrote any connected account of his views concerning the philosophy of history. His fundamental outlook upon historical development was, that history is the unfolding of culture, of reason. Progress, the developmental process, is conceived by him as a growth of the organism of man and of humanity, a growth which follows a rigidly determined course in the individual and in the species. For him this idea of organic growth is so self-evident that he does not attempt any proof of its truth. After he had made acquaintance with the work of Buckle, the idea of progress (in Buckle's sense) was conceived by him as the history of enlightenment.
Černyševskii formulated as follows his thoughts concerning the general scheme of historical development. The aspirations of the best men, or at least some of their desires, are after prolonged and arduous labour understood by society at large. Society then works for a time at the realisation of ​these wishes, but, becoming wearied, desists when half way towards the goal. A lengthy period of arrest ensues, until at length the "optimates" get to work once more. In a brief period of noble stimulation (this is Černyševskii's euphemism for the revolution), extensive transformations ensue. Since these changes are effected somewhat hurriedly, we cannot expect that the new constructions will be beautiful. During the subsequent epoch of stagnation, the optimates are at work anew, and there succeeds a fresh period of active labour, followed again by slumber—and so on unceasingly.
The significance of this developmental process is more definitely represented as progress towards collectivism. The mir, we are told, was the primitive form of the economic and social organisation of society; next came private ownership; this will be replaced by collectivism. The change will take place in accordance with the law of historical evolution that society in its development returns to the primitive form, but the later manifestation will have a richer content than had the early one.
We have previously learned that Černyševskii's attention was drawn by Hegel to the concept of evolution. In What is to be Done we are told that work to promote the development of the individual and of society is the only true happiness. The evolutionary law formulated above was also taken from Hegel, but was modified in the sense of Vico's "ricorsi." Development, as we have seen, is a slow and gradual process. Černyševskii does not accept the notion of a definitive revolution; he considers that we never get more than approximations to the ideal.
This outlook is admirably expressed in What is to be Done. Černyševskii's characters display different stages of progress towards perfection, and we see how in capitalist society socialistic plans are being realised in varying degrees. Černyševskii shows us an entire gradation of characters, these being in a position to realise the correct principles, some to a greater and some to a lesser extent. All meet with his approval, but he esteems most highly the ideal figure of Rahmetov.
From time to time Černyševskii discusses individual factors of evolution. For example, he shows, in opposition to Buckle, that climatic conditions have little effect upon development. In another place he refutes the idea that the influence of racial qualities is decisive.
​The lack of a philosophy of history is partly the outcome of Černyševskii's rationalism. He followed Feuerbach rather than Hegel; he followed the rationalists generally, in whom the historical sense had not yet awakened. Černyševskii's whole dialectic is unhistorical; it is logical, rationalistic. Černyševskii adopts the prehegelian and precomtist outlook, the outlook of a day when the evolutionary idea had not become established. We can see that in part, too, he was influenced, in this connection, by the materialistic view of the individual and of the social organism, in accordance with which progress, history, is explained as organic or physiological growth. In his polemic against Čičerin (1859), we already find him defending the opinion that every really live man will and must, as a student of science, bring his conviction of what is right into play in his scientific work as well as elsewhere. "The only persons who will not display their convictions in this manner are those who have no convictions."
Černyševskii expressly condemns Roscher's historical method, and does so with much justice, for the method is utterly fallacious. He makes a distinction between "the theory of the object" and its history; he admits that the two branches of knowledge "are closely connected each with the other," but does not attempt a more precise study of the nature of the connection. He was perhaps thinking of Comte's distinction between sociological statics and dynamics. But all that his disquisition discloses is.that he chiefly had in mind the "constantly" existing objects, and above all had in mind the present, which he did not think of as history, for he thought of history (wrongly, of course) rather as the study of remote times.
Nevertheless we find that Černyševskii expresses the view that history is the basis of theory, at least in the domain of art. "The history of art is the foundation of the theory of art."
For the elucidation of economic ideas, Černyševskii makes use of a "hypothetical method" which is tantamount to the resurrection of our old friend Robinson Crusoe, so familiar in economic disquisitions. He "hypothetically" assumes the existence of a social order wherein the phenomena under consideration are displayed in their essential simplicity. He fails to notice that his abstraction from existing facts may readily become most unrealistic.
§ 100.
AS an appendix to what has just been said we must discuss Černyševskii's relationship to Marx and to historical materialism.
From the Marxist side we learn that Černyševskii was a utopian socialist, and that he was an "idealist" notwithstanding his materialism in the explanation of social phenomena. Some Marxists tell us, however, that Černyševskii came nearer than any other man of his day to scientific socialism and historical materialism.
It has been shown above that Černyševskii's conception of history differed from that of Marx. But the main point is that the Russian considered the understanding to be the motive force of history and of human life in general—though he failed to explain how and in accordance with what laws the understanding or the brain undergoes modifications. The understanding, culture, science, opinion (Černyševskii's terminology lacks precision and uniformity), are the primary motive force, that which sets other forces at work. In What is to be Done the mission of Rahmetov, the ideal man of the new time, is described in the following terms: "Such persons are few in number, but through them the general life blossoms, and without them it would be choked; they are few in number, but they enable all other men to breathe, for without them these would be stifled. Honest and good men exist in plenty, but those of whom I am thinking are rare specimens. They are like theine in tea, like the bouquet in a fine wine, they are the source of the strength and the fragrance. They are the flower of the optimates; they are the primal sources of energy; they are the salt of the salt of the earth."
Thus it is Rahmetov and his kind who count, and not the methods of production! In his novel, Černyševskii presented us with no more than eight such primal sources of energy. In history he had found one, Lessing. With contagious enthusiasm, Černyševskii describes this hero of the spirit and his significance for the Germany of that day. "Though politics and industry may move noisily along in the foreground of history, history none the less bears witness to the fact that knowledge is the essential energy to which politics, industry, and all else in human life, are subordinated." In the same sense, in his historical disquisitions, it is Černyševskii's way ​to draw special attention to individual forces when he is dealing with different countries and various times. Religion, science, literature and art, politics with journalism and parliamentarism, militarism, the economic or material conditions of social existence, may each in turn occupy "the foreground." But he insists that in all these forces the understanding is a factor, though he fails to show how and to what extent it operates, for here, as usual, precision of detail is lacking. He tells us more than once that all the evil in the world comes from the disorder in men's heads. He uses such expressions as the following: "The great facts of historic life give the tone to life." Criticise his want of precision as we may, at least we must admit that this is not the doctrine of historical materialism. Černyševskii does indeed tell us that material conditions "perhaps play the leading role in life and may be the fundamental causes of almost all the happenings in other and higher spheres of life"; but the hypothetical formulation suffices to show that Černyševskii's doctrine was not historical materialism.
There are other proofs besides the admiration for Lessing, for we find that Černyševskii assigns to literature a role very different from that assigned to it in the work of Marx. For example, Černyševskii thinks that Gogol's influence was profoundly important for Russia; great, he says, was the work done by Byron for England and for humanity as a whole (Byron was a greater power than Napoleon).
After his return from Siberia, Černyševskii wrote an essay against Darwinism, and this aroused much hostility, for he represented the Darwinian theory as a bourgeois discovery intended to justify the exploitation of the workers. Černyševskii declared himself an adherent of Lamarck, and his essay was signed "Transformist." References have been made to the relationship between Černyševskii's ideas and the newer Lamarckism. I only refer to these matters because Marx and Engels were Darwinians. In my opinion, Černyševskii more correctly diagnosed the aristocratic character of Darwin's teaching than the Darwinian Marxists who interpreted Darwinism democratically. However this may be, I may point out that Černyševskii condemned the struggle for existence on moral grounds, and I may also recall Dobroljubov's repudiation of struggle. The class struggle, again, is regarded by Černyševskii, in so far as he describes it, as a deviation from the norm, whereas to Marx this struggle is natural and normal.
​Finally a notable distinction between the two men is found in this, that Černyševskii employed the novel for the exposition of his most important theories, whereas Marx favoured a strictly scientific method and sought always for logical proof.
§ 101.
ČERNYSEVSKII'S socialism is not Marxist. As we have shown in our discussion of What is to be Done, Černyševskii, like his predecessors, finds an ethical foundation for socialism. Moreover, Černyševskii adopted the pragmatical trend of German philosophy, and was inclined to rate practice above theory. I have already drawn attention to his terminology, and have shown how he speaks of the sciences of the mind as "moral" sciences, and have pointed out that the moral aspects of his outlook are stressed in his mode of expression. Socialism is to him a matter of conviction; it is the categorical imperative of virile honesty; he is fond of using this latter expression to denote "the good" as he understands it in utilitarian fashion.
Černyševskii (and with him Dobroljubov, as we have seen) is far too strong an individualist to accept Marxist socialism. His best-known saying, which dates from 1859 and was frequently repeated, runs: "We perceive nothing on earth higher than human personality." He could not accept Marxist socialism because he had far too strong a belief in heroes of the spirit à la Lessing, too strong a belief in literature and in the powers of his own pen; and secondly, because he had far too little confidence in the masses. In the latter respect, Černyševskii may have vacillated; it is possible, as many of his exponents declare, that in later days he came to believe ​in the political, nay in the revolutionary, force of the broad masses of the people; but on the whole he was far removed from Dobroljubov's Rousseauism. In his essay on Thierry he writes in an almost elegiac strain when he represents the crowd as incompetent to understand and to esteem work done on its behalf. He consequently recommends the great men whom he admires to seek the justification for their activities in these activities themselves, untroubled by the question whether the crowd (he constantly employs the word tolpa, which contemptuously denotes the unintelligent mob) can follow them; and he writes, "to close one's career in bitter solitude of the understanding and of the heart, this is worthy of undying respect and admiration." The hero of a novel written by Černyševskii in 1889, after his return from Siberia and shortly before his death, says, "I love the people of my own nation, but I find myself out of touch with them."
In this mood, Černyševskii acclaimed the accounts of folk-life we owe to N. V. Uspenskii (not to be confounded with his nephew Glěb Uspenskii), for this writer scourged the misery and ignorance of the mužik. Uspenskii himself died poor and unknown.
Černyševskii's political activities began in the days when the liberation of the peasantry was being vigorously advocated. He energetically demanded that the peasants should be given land, and after the liberation he favoured the reforms necessitated by that step. His insistence that the peasant must have land was a logical deduction from his thesis that everyone must work for himself, on his own behalf. If the peasant were to be enabled to do this, he must own a plot of land. In this demand, says Černyševskii, are comprised all those contained in the so-called utopias, and the phrase shows how far Černyševskii himself was a utopian; he was content, at any rate, with the formulation of this modest aim.
Such was Černyševskii's language before the liberation. At that time (1858) he dissented from the view of Haxthausen and the latter's Russian adherents, that in Russia a system of agriculture based upon the workers alone was an impossibility.
In conformity with Russian conditions, he conceived of classes rather as estates, or at times as (political) parties. He did not recognise the class struggle in the Marxist sense.
His leading demand was for a harmonious distribution of the product of labour. He thought here, above all, of Malthus ​and his law of population, to which he had devoted much consideration, desiring to give it a better arithmetical formulation. He adopted from Malthus the latter's ideas on the relationship between the increase in population and the increase in the means of subsistence, but wished to correct the English economist's calculations, and it was typical of Černyševskii that he should fail to recognise how arbitrary is Malthus' mathematical formula. He placed Malthus beside Ricardo as one of the greatest of thinkers, and declared that a knowledge of Malthus was an essential precondition to accurate sociological thought.
In economics, Černyševskii followed the so-called classical economists, especially Adam Smith and Ricardo; but he had a personal preference for John Stuart Mill, and in his translation of this writer's work he gave expression in notes to occasional dissent, voicing his own radical views. He doubtless selected Mill owing to the latter's intimate association with utilitarian ethics and sociology. Moreover, Mill's political individualism was congenial to Černyševskii. His own conception of economics was ethical. Political economy was for him the medicine, the hygiene, of economic life, and not merely its pathology; the function of economic science was to teach what men must do in order to escape economic destruction. Competition and struggle were to be done away with.
His ethical outlook on economic relationships is conspicuously displayed in his valuation of labour. Following Fourier, Černyševskii maintains it to be a part of the very nature of work, that "almost" all varieties of it are agreeable or attractive; if work be disagreeable, this is "almost" always due to "fortuitous external conditions." Labour is not a commodity.
Černyševskii formulates the customary arguments against excessive division of labour—although the classical economists derive them from the conventional economic view that labour is essentially distasteful and that labour is a commodity.
The crimes of capitalist production, the proletarianisation of previously independent industrial workers, the heaping up of wealth in the hands of a few, and so on, are depicted by Černyševskii in vivid colours, but he admits that capitalism has favoured individualism; the fundamental evil of capitalism, he says, is free competition. He extols the growth of manufacturing industry and the modern spirit of enterprise which ​has promoted that growth. He anticipates that the victory of manufacturers, engineers, merchants, and technicists will bring greater advantages to Russia than the victory of Napoleon brought to Spain and Germany. The growth of manufacturing industry necessitates the diffusion of science and culture, promotes the growth of improved legal conditions, etc.
Černyševskii follows Ricardo in his analysis of the process of production, recommending that the yield of the soil (rent), of capital (profit), and of labour (wages), should be weighed one against the others, and should be harmoniously distributed in accordance with the greatest good of the greatest number. It is obvious that he is thinking here of Proudhon's "disharmonies."
In What is to be Done Černyševskii introduces us to the new social order and to the "new men." This new order will rest, above all, upon a new morality, and he therefore describes for us the relationship between man and wife, and their views concerning love. It is plain that he has far less interest in the economic organisation of the new society. The formation of productive cooperative societies is recommended. These cooperatives are to be private, but it does not appear that Černyševskii regards their regulation by the state as inadmissible. His plans here are altogether vague. When circumstances make it necessary for him to discuss and advocate social reforms in connection with the concrete conditions of his day, as for example when he deals with the decay of silk-weaving in Lyons, his suggestions are extremely modest; the weavers, he tells us, must have their workshops outside the town; must cultivate a plot of land in addition to working at their looms; and so on. Černyševskii never made any practical attempt at the inauguration of cooperative production.
Important are Černyševskii's views concerning the Russian mir and its significance for the future organisation of society.
His opinions as to the social value of the mir were not consistent. In 1857 there appeared in Černyševskii's review an excerpt from Haxthausen discussing the mir, and it would appear that at first Černyševskii agreed with Haxthausen and the slavophils. Subsequently, however, he recognised the weaknesses of the mir and its tendency to oppress the individual. He conceded, moreover, to the opponents of the mir that this institution is not specifically Russian or Slav, but a European ​development; and he even recognised that the mir represents a primitive stage of development. He believed, none the less, that Russia could be socialised upon the foundation of the mir and the artel.
The mir, however primitive, is for Černyševskii a means by which Russia is to be safeguarded from proletarianisation; and despite his scepticism concerning the peasant and the latter's capabilities, he esteems the mir most highly. He believes that Siberia, where the populace in general is in comfortable circumstances, must by the "democrat" be ranked higher than England, where the poverty of the majority is extreme. Černyševskii pays little regard to the position of the industrial worker, the proletarian. To him the mužik is still the genuine man of the people. He continually employs the term prostoljudin, which signifies "man of the common people."
These views explain why at a later date Černyševskii continued to speak so warmly of the mir, saying in an apostrophe to youth in his letter to Herzen, "Give your lives to maintain equal rights in the soil, give your lives for the principle of the village community." He demanded that the state should protect the mir. In his later and more revolutionary phase, he was opposed to private ownership of any kind, not excepting private ownership of land, though he had previously expressed his gratification at the acquisition of land by the peasants.
Černyševskii subsequently came to regard the mir and its agrarian communism from the outlook of the associative designs of European socialists, just as he came to regard the artel as the basis of the future productive cooperatives. In these matters his views contrasted with those of the slavophils and of Herzen.
Černyševskii's account of the transition from the primitive communism of the mir to the communism of the future society resembles that given by Herzen. Society, like the individual can overleap one or several stages of development, evolution being thus accelerated. Černyševskii appeals to a general law of evolution, in accordance with which the terminal stage is a return to the initial stage. He compares the primitive rope bridge with the modern suspension bridge. The latter is constructed upon the same principle as the former and is yet entirely different; similar will it be with the communism of the future, Russia need not develop "organically," need ​not, that is to say, traverse all the stages of European development; Russia can take over as a heritage all the desirable acquirements of European evolution, just as Russia has introduced railways though she did not herself discover them. It must be admitted that the analogy is a lame one, and that it displays the mir in a light which makes that institution seem anything but suitable to the socialism of the future.
§ 102.
IN view of the censorship, Černyševskii was unable to attempt a direct exposition of his opinions on political science. He judged the state from a utilitarian standpoint. The function of the state, he considered, was to promote the interest of the individual, and he rejected as unrealistic the theory that the state exists to further justice, or for similar ends. All his efforts were directed against absolutism; he fought against centralisation and tutelage, and favoured decentralisation and self-government.
Whilst still at the university he began to follow with close attention the course of political development in Europe; he witnessed the fall of the French republic and the commencement of reaction; and at. this early stage he had decided in the interests of liberty to adopt a political and publicistic career. In accordance with the ideas of Guizot he had formulated a scheme of political evolution: primitive natural freedom had been restricted by the establishment of the state, of the aristocracy, and of society; leading minds were striving to bring about the reinstatement of liberty, and with this end in view it was essential that the masses should be enlightened; the more highly evolved human beings became, the less necessary was government, the less essential was governmental centralisation.
In 1848, as a republican and a socialist, Černyševskii had asked himself whether absolute monarchy were not after all preferable to a bourgeois republic. The hereditary monarch could maintain a neutral and just attitude, and could promote the advantage of the peasants and workers. At that time, too, Černyševskii was doubtful as to the benefits of universal suffrage. But before long he came to recognise (1850) that a monarch willing to look upon himself as means merely and not as end, a monarch prepared to retire of his own free will ​as soon as the masses should become sufficiently enlightened, was not to be found; he saw that absolute monarchy was no more than the completion of aristocratic hierarchy, and that freedom can be established in no other way than from below upwards, democratically, by the democracy. Henceforward Černyševskii advocated the sound view that the opposition between democracy and aristocracy is fundamental to the political organisation of society, that monarchy is but a form of aristocracy. He refuted Čičerin when the latter pointed to instances in which monarchs had made common cause with the people against the aristocracy. With equal justice he considered that serfdom was the groundwork of aristocratic absolutism.
His individualism, the high value he placed upon culture, and his recognition that manufacturing industry is the leading motive force of the present time, frequently led him into a disapproval of and even a contempt for the state, and this gave his teaching a somewhat anarchistic flavour. Sometimes he displayed hostility to the word "government," and would at least hear nothing of "regulation." It is evident that he was greatly influenced by Proudhon.
His antipathy to absolutism led him, in the existing state of foreign affairs, to put his trust above all in France, "the European volcano." It was in France, in especial, that he studied the political evolution of the new age.
His opposition to Russian absolutism led him to approve the radical movement in Poland, heralded already by the events of the year 1863; and he desired complete independence, not for the Poles alone, but likewise for the Little Russians. He sympathised with the Magyars against Austria. Like Marx, he found it hard to forgive the Austrian Slavs for their reactionary and antirevolutionary conduct in 1848; and when the beginnings of constitutionalist freedom were manifest in the early sixties, it was his fear that the Austrian Slavs would become tools of the reaction.
Černyševskii openly declared himself in favour of "democracy," and occasionally spoke of his trend as "radical"; the political significance of these designations becomes clear in the light of the theory just expounded concerning the opposition between democracy and aristocracy (as a democrat Černyševskii was of course a republican); and it is further illuminated by his attacks upon the liberals or progressists. ​His terminology reminds us of Bakunin's democratic program. Černyševskii does not attempt to provide any definite philosophical foundation for the opposition between democracy and liberalism, and is content to accept the empirical opposition as a historic datum.
Černyševskii's criticism of Russian liberalism is severe. He is specially adverse to Speranskii's plans of reform; among his contemporaries he attacks Čičerin, Kavelin, and last, not least, Herzen. In 1859 Herzen had written an article against Černyševskii and his adherents, speaking of the decay and even the "corruption of spirit" characteristic of the trend opposed to his own. Černyševskii went to see Herzen in London, hoping to put an end to the struggle, but was unsuccessful.
The conflict between the two tendencies went on developing. In his study on the fall of Rome, published in 1861, Černyševskii made a fresh attack on Herzen. But Černyševskii was already ​in Siberia when his disciple Serno-Solov'evič wrote the before-mentioned pamphlet against Herzen. By this time, as previously explained, the younger generation had turned away from Herzen.
In attacking the liberals, Černyševskii wished to hit the bourgeoisie, those whom Dobroljubov termed the Oblomovs. He reproached the Russian liberals for desiring to secure the dominion of the mercantile classes, for he himself would have preferred the dominion of the peasantry. On principle, in opposition to the liberals, he approved state interference in economic concerns.
Detailed investigation would be required to enable us to determine whether the fierce campaign against the liberals, whose best representatives were then endeavouring to secure political and administrative reforms, was invariably discreet. It is true that at this particular epoch Lassalle and others were likewise attacking the liberals, but we must bear in mind the differences between the countries. It may be true that in Europe the question of constitutional government is already of small importance, but in Russia its importance is now only beginning. In Černyševskii and in Dobroljubov, we discern the rasnočincy; we see the democratic "children" rising in complaint against their aristocratic "fathers."
For the same reason, Černyševskii's condemnation of the bourgeoisie has a different ring from that of Herzen; the latter writes rather as an aristocrat, the former as a democrat
The liberals, in their turn, strongly opposed the trend of the "Sovremennik." It will suffice to mention that Kavelin, who had defended Herzen against Čičerin, did not hesitate to suspect Černyševskii's adherents of arson when great conflagrations took place in St. Petersburg in 1862.
In the question of nationality, which was an incessant topic of controversy between the westernisers and the easternisers, Černyševskii's view was that national character is conditioned, not by race, but rather by the degree of economic development or of division of labour; but he had not made a detailed study of the question either psychologically or sociologically. To some extent he threw light upon the problem by his view of the influence which a working life or an idle life has upon men. He considered the fact that the aristocracy and the well-to-do invariably live without working was a more potent cause of organic differences than any ​distinction of race. Classes or estates, he said, differ organically more than.do nationalities. National differences within the limits of a race are similarly explicable.
§ 103.
IN the before-mentioned controversy Herzen prophesied that Černiševskii and his adherents would receive the order of St. Stanislaus, which showed that even such a man as Herzen could misjudge the radical mood and could misunderstand the critics of liberalism.
The condemnation and exile of Černiševskii have not yet been fully explained. It was known already in 1862 that the government had long been afraid of Černiševskii on account of his influence, and it was not surprising that the third section should seize any chance that offered for getting rid of the dreaded tribune by sending him to Siberia. But from the legal point of view the grounds brought forward for the condemnation were insufficient, and it is fairly certain that false witnesses were employed against Černiševskii.
We do not know whether the government had at its disposal any true reports from its secret agents, or whether these latter possessed genuine information concerning Černiševskii's personal participation in the revolutionary movement. Such details as are furnished by those associated with this movement and by Černiševskii's acquaintances are indecisive and conflicting. Persons best acquainted with the available material can get no further than suppositions. During the trial, Černiševskii denied all the accusations made against him, and it does not appear that either before or after his arrest he ever said a word regarding his share in the revolutionary movement. His biographers are compelled to base their hypotheses upon his letters and other writings, those of presiberian days and those composed in exile.
During July to September in the year 1861 there were published in St. Petersburg three numbers of the secretly printed periodical "Velikorus'" (Great Russia). We now know that the proclamation To the Younger Generation which appeared in its columns was composed by Šelgunov, a collaborator on Černiševskii's review, and we are informed by Dostoevskii and others that it was not approved by Černiševskii. But the political program of "Velikorus'" was in ​harmony with Černyševskii's views, and there are traces of his hand or of his editorship in the literary style.
In the beginning of 1862 the secret society Zemlja i Volja (Land and Freedom) was organised, probably by members of the staff of "Velikorus'," which ceased to exist after the issue of its third number.
It seems indubitable that Černyševskii participated in the secret revolutionary organisation Velikorus', and also that he was a member of Zemlja i Volja. This much, at least, is certain, that he was part author of the proclamation to the peasants.
The catastrophe that befell Černyševskii, his participation in revolutionary propaganda, seem to conflict with the views to which he gave expression in his writings. We might recall what he said concerning the futility of sacrifice, but this would hardly be relevant. Černyševskii did not make any sacrifice but was coerced by the powers of reaction under Alexander II, and no one is secure against the tactics of absolutism. More weighty is the circumstance that prior to 1861, when he discussed the question of secret revolutionary activities, he declared that these were not wholly to his liking. In Lessing and his Time, a work published in 1856, he declared himself opposed to secret societies, saying that great and truly useful ends can be secured only by straightforward and open procedures. He went further, and expressed opposition to revolutions in general, or at any rate was very sceptical as to the practicability of their doing any good. He had no belief in the possibility of a revolution to be effected by the Russian peasants, for he was disinclined to idealise the mužik, and was under no illusions regarding the extent of the latter's enlightenment. We are told, however, that by 1861 and 1862 he had abandoned or modified his scepticism, having noted the unrest and activity among the peasantry, and having decided therefore, though sceptical, to take part in secret revolutionary work. The conclusion of What is to be Done may certainly be quoted in favour of the belief that its author looked forward to the speedy success of the revolution.
Reference is sometimes made to Černyševskii's Siberian novel The Prologue, which is considered to contain autobiographical confessions, and the following passage is quoted, "Wait, wait, as long as possible and as quietly as possible." Quoted, again, is the passage wherein Černyševskii criticises ​the participation of the French democrats in the February revolution, and refers to their action as utterly stupid owing to the lack of preparation. But he also tells us in this connection that circumstances may arise compelling us willy nilly to take part in such stupidity; that the rule "everything at the proper time" is an excellent one, but that we cannot always tell when the proper moment has arrived. When Černyševskii makes fun of those who expect a "thunderstorm in a bog," he may well be ironically condemning his own participation in the revolution.
If I am not mistaken, Černyševskii's adherents are much concerned because he made a mistaken diagnosis of the situation in 1861. It is considered comprehensible enough that Bakunin should have expected a rising of the Russian peasantry, but it is felt that Černyševskii's realism should have induced a different judgment of the then existing state of affairs, and should therefore have led to the formulation of a different policy.
I believe that Černyševskii did in fact make a mistake. He made many similar errors of judgment. In 1858, for example, he acclaimed Alexander II, no less warmly than had Herzen, as liberator and saviour of Russia; but the circumstances of the liberation of the peasantry wrought a change of mood, as is proved by the Unaddressed Letters (1862). These were published abroad and were directed to the tsar. It would not be anything extraordinary had Černyševskii changed his views regarding revolution. Moreover, a man may take part in an undertaking when he is extremely dubious about its results. To believe that all sceptics are persons with no capacity for action, is pure superstition.
I am of opinion, then, that Černyševskii had formed a false estimate of men and of conditions. I believe, further, that in Siberia Černyševskii came to recognise his mistake, and that this explains the peculiar passivity he displayed in Siberia in contrast with the activity that was typical of the days prior to his exile.
The poet Korolenko has written some reminiscences of Černyševskii, and these confirm my supposition. Černyševskii points out that practically all the political criminals atoning for their offences in Siberia are raw youths, and he says that he is ashamed to find himself in their company. The feeling, he continues, is all the more powerful since he recognises the ​futility of revolution. My impression is that Černyševskii's biographers are extremely concerned because Černyševskii, the Siberian exile, and the Černyševskii who returned to Russia, was no more (as the phrase runs) than the shadow of his former self. It has even been affirmed that in Siberia, Černyševskii became mentally disordered.
The impression produced on my own mind by the available data is that Černyševskii's mental health was perfectly sound both in exile and afterwards, but that he was none the less broken by Siberia. Černyševskii was a publicist and politician, a man whose intellectual faculties were kept alive by a daily pabulum of new material. When he was isolated and cut off from the outer world, he lacked energy to enable him to busy himself with theoretical questions or solve theoretical problems. As theorist and thinker, he was not so great a man as has been contended. Not merely did he adopt Feuerbach's views quite uncritically, not merely did he fail to see through the weaknesses of materialism, but when he discussed important questions of detail he failed to deal with them in the exhaustive manner demanded by his own doctrine of the supremacy of positive science. It seems to me characteristic that he attempted no scientific discussion of the problems of socialism; he lacked power for the independent treatment of economic questions, and was content with writing notes on Mill.
An examination of his literary activities in Siberia confirms this judgment. Let us recall how some of the decabrists worked in Siberia, how they continued to cultivate their minds. Černyševskii produced a few belletristic pieces, but displayed no inclination to undertake any difficult literary task. Černyševskii was no more than thirty-six when his exile began, and I contend that had he possessed a really vigorous interest in science, that interest would not have been annulled by the unfavourable conditions of Siberia.
After his return, Černyševskii translated the fat tomes of Weber's Universal History, adding a comment here and there. The choice of this book is in itself an indication of weakness in the intellectual sphere, but we must not forget that it was made after more than twenty years in prison and in Siberia.
From the very opening of his career, Černyševskii was a man of practice, a politician, a revolutionary. Above all he was a revolutionary man of letters; his incessant polemic ​was revolutionary in tone. His introduction to the practical revolutionary movement was by way of literature.
My final judgment is that by his participation in the revolution Černyševskii furnished a stimulating example to the radical generation of his day. Upon many, doubtless, his arrest and exile exercised an inhibitive and sobering influence; but conversely, energetic men were by his fate rendered more hostile to absolutism, and the revolutionary movement was thereby strengthened and accelerated. It is futile to enquire whether Černyševskii, even in exile, might not have written more and better. He was a fighter, and fell in battle without a word of complaint, and perhaps without a thought of repentance.
In 1874 the government attempted to induce Černyševskii to sue for pardon, but he rejected the suggestion with manly pride, and in the most decisive terms.
§ 104.
I MUST now say a few words concerning Černyševskii in Siberia. Since his literary activities before the days of his exile endured for barely half the number of years that he spent in Siberia, it will be interesting to consider his thoughts and his writings during banishment. This has been rendered possible by a report published in 1910 by Rusanov (Kudrin), a specialist upon Russian socialism in general and Černyševskii's work in particular, dealing with the latter's Siberian correspondence. We still await the publication of the actual letters, and there is other material that has yet to see the light—Černyševskii's diary, and his letters written before he was sent to Siberia.
My own views concerning Černyševskii were formed from my knowledge of the writings of the earlier phase, and I had hardly expected that these views would be confirmed as fully as they have been confirmed by the information that has now become available concerning Černyševskii's philosophical and literary occupations in Siberia.
​Rusanov refuses to accept the idea that the man who returned from Siberia was but the shadow of the former Černyševskii. He considers that the Siberian letters furnish proof that the exile retained energy and independence of thought, but his "titanic logical apparatus" often worked in the void because he had no opportunity for busying himself practically with living social problems; because the great electric cable (I am paraphrasing Rusanov) which had connected him with his readers and disciples, had been severed, and it had become impossible for him to react directly upon real phenomena as writer and practitioner.
I am in agreement with Rusanov in holding that Černyševskii did not lose his intellectual powers in Siberia, but I differ in my estimate of these powers. Doubtless there was lacking to him in Siberia living contact with his reading public; but just as he had done in the St. Petersburg prison, he might have concentrated his mind upon some definite theme; and perhaps he might have found Siberia a better point of vantage than St. Petersburg from which to observe the evolution of Russia and of Europe. No one would expect him to produce in Siberia encyclopædic works of reference well supplied with citations and similar details, but so much material was sent to him that he might have produced a few monographs. At least he might have translated some scientific book by one of the thinkers he so greatly esteemed. But in Siberia, Černyševskii lived only upon his memories, and it is questionable whether and to what extent his belletristic works were the artistic elaboration of these memories. As far as philosophy and politics were concerned, his Siberian letters and other writings offer nothing new, and nowise contribute to the amplification of the ideas and arguments he had earlier put forward. But as intimate utterances the letters furnish a valuable commentary upon his philosophy and upon his mental development.
To come to a brief account of the matters treated in the letters, I will begin with family affairs. I am astounded to find that he counsels his wife to remarry. Černyševskii's letters to his sons have an educational purpose; his judgments concerning many leading men are often little more than crude depreciations, whilst he represents himself as a leading thinker and author.
It is noteworthy that in Siberia he breaks and casts aside ​many of his earlier ideals and idols: Malthus has become a "charlatan"; Proudhon is a "blockhead"; Hume, Kant, and Berkeley are "those fellows"; Comte is a pure nobody.
Opinions are also given concerning the authors whose works had been sent to him. For example, he censures Hellwald (author of the History of Civilisation) and Bagehot as blind followers of Darwin. Darwin, and above all the Darwinian doctrine of the struggle for existence, are utterly condemned by him. This struggle for existence, carried out by mankind and applied to human history, will simply mean a surrender to nationalism; but exclusively nationalist struggles are invariably injurious. Thus Černyševskii's judgment of Darwinism is primarily ethical.
In political matters it is interesting to note that Černyševskii favours the peaceful spread of culture, and rejects revolution in all its forms. It is evidently in connection with his view of the gradual nature of evolution that he extols Lyell and Lamarck (the latter as contrasted with Darwin). He says also that he is and always has been weary of continual invective against the bourgeoisie, and that he is becoming tired of works upon the village community.
What he has to say about excessive division of labour and other matters is a mere recapitulation of views previously expressed.
Černyševskii's most vigorous utterances in Siberia deal with his fundamental views upon philosophy. Energetically does he assert the opinion strange in a materialist that alike in the individual and in the species all human activity has a moral, not a material explanation. Especially does he reprove the historians for their lack of convictions, and he recommends the study of moralists and jurists to those who wish to secure accurate conceptions of history. He writes: "The criteria of historical phenomena in all times and among all nations are conscience and a sense of honour."
Reason and uprightness are "the true laws of human nature," with reference to which history must be explained; events are determined by the general moral character of the time. Černyševskii dissents from those who propose to explain events as the outcome of so-called general national conditions. History is the record of great events and great men, and therefore the older historiography, that of a Herodotus or Thucydides down to that of Macaulay and Grote, of a ​Niebuhr or Sismondi, is preferable to the modern history of civilisation.
His historical speculations recall those of Buckle, who works he eagerly studied while in Siberia. For example, he considers that the cradle of the human race must have been in the equatorial regions, and suggests that it is a masked patriotism which induces various historians to contend that the climate of the temperate zones was once milder than it is to-day. However, the later stages of human development are determined, not by nutritive conditions, but by the political organisation of society.
Černyševskii gives a detailed exposition of his egoistic ethics, going so far as to equate good-rational-useful with bad-irrational-injurious. Černyševskii conceives the moral criterion as an imperative no less than does Kant; he is indeed positively apriorist when he declares that this criterion has an identical and absolute applicability, not to the inhabitants of this planet alone, but to the reputed dwellers on other worlds than ours. (We may compare the reserve which led Mill to say that the law of causality must be assumed as applicable only within the domain of the known solar system!)
In metaphysics, Černyševskii continues to profess materialism, and is faithful to his old love for Spinoza and Feuerbach. He has no fault to find with Feuerbach, but points out that the German discussed only the religious aspect of philosophy.
He tells us that his views are Newtonist, that the law of gravitation is universally valid, forgetting that he is here following in Comte's footsteps. Concerning Comte we read that the French philosopher had nothing to offer beyond a misreading of Kant; there had never been any theological stage of knowledge; nor will Černyševskii admit that there was a metaphysical stage such as was conceived by Comte.
Most energetically does he repudiate the pessimism of Schopenhauer and Hartmann, writing: "Melancholia is not science." His rationalism leads him to protest against scepticism. Pascal, he says, was the last of the honest sceptics; as a rule, scepticism is no more than a mask for obscurantism. Quite consistently, he expresses his disapproval of the positivist "ignorabimus."
Noteworthy is the admission that after the age of twenty-two he had read no works on natural science.
​Finally I may mention that he takes much trouble to show that the popes and also the Jesuits were of no account and were practically powerless. The middle ages, he says, were far less religious than is generally believed, and this explains the weakness of the popes.
I can say no more here regarding Černyševskii's Siberian phase. Upon certain points I reserve my definitive judgment until I have had an opportunity for studying all the correspondence and other material at first hand. But this much seems certain to me, that in any special study of Černyševskii, we should have in the case likewise of his Siberian exile to examine the various utterances in relation to the time and circumstances in which they were made, for in Siberia, too, Černyševskii's development was continuing.
Rusanov concludes his report by asking whether Černyševskii's socialistic opinions underwent any notable change in Siberia. "Of course not!" is his answer, but it is not unlikely, he says, that Černyševskii's views may have changed regarding the possibility of speedily effecting any thorough transformation in Russia. In the belief that an energetic attack upon the government and the great landowners was practicable, Černyševskii had sacrificed himself to the historical process; later he may have come to believe that, as a preliminary, reformist endeavours must be favoured, to secure the general diffusion of sound ideas, and that the rest would follow in due course.
Rusanov is himself in agreement with Volgen in Černyševskii's Siberian novel The Prologue, when Volgen tells his young interlocutors that the participation of the French democrats in the affair of 1848 came within the category of stupidity.
§ 105.
ČERNYŠEVSKII'S true significance for the mental development of Russia, and above all for philosophy, is found in his materialism. Materialism has frequently proved revolutionary. This was manifest in the materialism that preceded and followed the French revolution; the statement is especially applicable to German materialism before and after 1848; Russian materialism at the same epoch, and still more in the sixties, had like significance. In Russia as elsewhere, materialism was an ultraradical negation of the theocratic view of the universe and of life; in Russia it was a philosophical revolution against the oppression of Nicholas and Alexander. This philosophical revolution was all the more energetic inasmuch as after the Crimean catastrophe, and still more, after the liberation of the peasantry, hopes of thoroughgoing reforms had been awakened.
The objection may perhaps be made that in his writings Černyševskii had but little to say concerning or against religion and the church. It may even be asserted that he assigned small importance to religion.
It is true that in his philosophy of history Černyševskii ignored religion and church. He considered, for example, that the Thirty Years' war was not a war of religion, that its aims were secular. Similarly the role he ascribed in history to the papacy was insignificant, whilst his polemic had little direct concern with theology and the church. Striking, too, was the way in which he adopted Feuerbach's metaphysical materialism without making any exhaustive use of the anti-theological side of the German philosopher's doctrine, the reduction of religion to anthropomorphism. We have learned, moreover, that when in Siberia he accused Feuerbach of being one-sided, on the ground that the German had treated only of the philosophy of religion.
None the less, Černyševskii's materialism and materialist anthropologism were directed against theology and theocracy. Objectively considered, the reaction in Russia was a theocratic reaction, and for this reason the stress laid upon metaphysical materialism involved a direct attack, not merely upon the state, but also and above all upon the church. We must not fail to take into account this energetic insistence upon materialism, and we have to remember that Černyševskii was not a ​refugee, that he wrote under the eyes of the censor. It was impossible for him to express his opinions as freely as did Herzen and Bakunin, who emphasised Feuerbach's anthropomorphic explanation of religion.
Again, it was no longer necessary for Černyševskii to stress this explanation, since Herzen and Feuerbach had done it before him. For the very reason that Černyševskii had so warmly recommended Feuerbach's philosophy, Feuerbach was read in the original, and translations of his principal writings were freely disseminated (The Essence of Christianity in 1861, and The Essence of Religion in 1862). The influence of Feuerbach's works was reinforced by that of Renan's Life of Jesus, published in 1863.
Černyševskii's antitheological trend was manifest subjectively as well as objectively. I refer to the fact that, like Feuerbach, he had been trained for a theological career, and that materialism was a weapon for personal use against the views in which he had been brought up. At the university, before he had become acquainted with Feuerbach's works, he was still a believer, or at any rate he still accepted the conventional ethics of the church. Dobroljubov, too, had a theological training; like Černyševskii he belonged to a family of priests; to him, likewise, materialism and atheism were weapons for personal use against theology and the church. This is why both these writers make so much of materialism. This is why they are so insistent in their preaching of egoism and utilitarianism; this is why Černyševskii rejects the idea of sacrifice, herein directly conflicting with church doctrine. Černyševskii frequently inveighed against passivity and humility, which Herzen had so vigorously attacked as typical Christian virtues. Černyševskii, in fact, was fully aware of the import of his materialism.
It was impossible for him to say much that was openly directed against the church, but we can feel his hatred for religious and theocratic oppression. Černyševskii's nature differed widely from that of Bakunin, who always trumpeted his hatred from the housetops. Černyševskii was cooler, more reserved, more cautious, but not therefore less effective.
Special reference must here be made to one development of his teaching. Černyševskii came to stress philosophic ethics in proportion as he rejected ecclesiastical religion and the ethics of the church. Hume and Kant took the same course; ​so did all notable philosophers of modern days; so, above all, did the socialists, for these considered ethics and religion tag be the essential foundations of socialistic reform. This is the true light in which to regard Černyševskii's utilitarianism and the ethical groundwork he provided for socialism. He desired to replace Christianity by utilitarian morality, and this morality was to be carried out consistently in practical, political, and social life.
It amounts to little to say that Černyševskii's socialism was utopian. Černyševskii expounded his own views upon the so-called utopianism of socialism and of all the newer social aspirations. In his analysis of the reign of Louis Philippe he described Saint-Simonism and spoke of it as "utopian." The first manifestations of new social aspirations are invariably tinged with enthusiasm, so that they seem to belong rather to the field of poesy than to that of science. Černyševskii's view of utopianism resembled that taken by Marx. Černyševskii, like Marx, claimed that his own doctrines were scientific; and he based his science, once more like Marx, upon positivism. But whereas Marx subsequently discarded ethics and inculcated a positivist amorality, Černyševskii did not abandon morality, desiring rather to give ethics a "serious scientific foundation," and believing himself to have discovered this foundation in utilitarianism. I will not dispute about words, but I consider Černyševskii's standpoint more correct, and I do not think it utopian to retain ethics. Questions of a different order, however, are the respective values of Černyševskii's and Marx's contributions to science, and the influence which the two men respectively exercised upon the development of socialism.
§ 106.
ČERNYSEVSKII'S influence in the late fifties and early sixties was extensive, and this is why the government swept him out of its path. His influence was political, and consequently his banishment had strong political effects.
Černyševskii's influence was exercised through his peculiar intellectual trend. His energies were especially devoted to the elaboration of realism. He endeavoured on the philosophical plane and with the aid of Feuerbach's anthropologism to provide a stable foundation for the positivist disillusionment ​and sobriety demanded by Herzen. Such was the main trend, such was the method of Černyševskii alike in individual questions and in the configuration of his general outlook. What is to be Done was an artistic embodiment of this trend and this method.
Černyševskii continued the literary work of Bělinskii. Whereas Herzen and Bakunin supplied the younger generation with revolutionary ardour, Černyševskii made that generation aware of the decisive importance of rationalist preeminence and reasonable conviction. In the section on Saint-Simonism in his analysis of the July monarchy, he demonstrated with true realistic calm how natural is the occurrence of political persecution, saying that as long as society retains its existing structure, innovators will have to suffer, innovators in science and art as well as innovators in politics. "This is inevitable while the present state of society continues." What must be, must be—Černyševskii accepted his own destiny with a dash of fatalism, accepted it as a logical development. This is plainly shown in many of his letters from Siberia and from Astrakhan. Černyševskii's adherents took science and its conclusions as the ultimate and highest authority. In the name of science, they held that the same logical sequence proved the necessity for revolution.
Černyševskii highly esteemed and never failed to recommend logical and scientific consistency and unity of outlook. He disliked eclecticism (see his polemic against Lavrov), and unquestionably this strengthened his hold on the younger generation, since he did not display the cataclysmic variations typical of Herzen and Bakunin.
Černyševskii did little to further the solution of philosophical and scientific problems. His influence was educative, and the importance of his work lay in its general trend and not in particular doctrines. It is true, as we learn in the letters from Siberia and Astrakhan, that Černyševskii's own view was that his authority in the scientific field was extensive. He believed that his contributions to science were to be of far-reaching significance, not merely in Russia and for Russia, for he imagined that in their French rendering they would influence European thought. In this matter he was mistaken.
I have previously pointed out that divergent views prevail in Russian literature concerning Černyševskii's importance and concerning the effect of his writings. His adherents ​transfer his political influence to the domain of science, and his opponents do the same thing, the former over-estimating and the latter under-estimating the value of his contributions to science and philosophy.
In actual fact, Černyševskii was a brilliant publicist and literary critic, but as far as scientific work is concerned, his views on political economy had the effect for years of turning the younger radical generation away from the study of economics. His novel What is to be Done was and remained the most influential of all his writings.
In What is to be Done Černyševskii described the actual life of his "new men." He gave, it is true, a somewhat vague sketch of socialist plans for the future. Far more important and far more influential was his elaboration of the characters in the book, and especially of Rahmetov, the idealist, an exceptional man among the "new men," a "primal source of energy," upon whom Černyševskii makes extremely exalted claims. What the monk had been for the church, Rahmetov was to be for the new society, a man of iron will, one who on his own behalf and on behalf of those among whom his lot was cast accepted the dictates of reason as self-evident truths.
The revolutionaries of the sixties and seventies were affected more by Černyševskii's example than by his precepts. Černyševskii in Siberia was for them a living memento, and he was this not to them only, but also to the government and to the reactionaries—for these, as Bakunin aptly diagnosed, were privileged persons in point of political blindness. At any rate they failed to understand that, as Poerio, the Italian statesman persecuted by the king of the Two Sicilies, phrased it, "il patire è anche operare."
Černyševskii’s realism paved the way for Marxism and social democracy, but those Marxists err who contend that Černyševskii was a Russian Marx or something approaching this.
Nor is it right to assert that Černyševskii was founder or father of the narodničestvo. Černyševskii took a more realistic view of the mužik and the mir than Bakunin and Herzen had taken, and this enabled him to strengthen the more political and practical trends of the narodničestvo; but he conceived the mir to be an association in the European socialist sense and did not, like the later narodniki, ascribe exclusive importance to that institution. Nor did Černyševskii, as did the ​slavophils, regard Europe as decadent. In his view the European masses (the middle classes) had not yet entered into full activity. It must not be forgotten that we are writing about the beginning of the sixties, and that at that time there did not as yet exist a sharp distinction between socialism and narodničestvo, for the conceptual differentiæ of the two doctrines had not then been fully elaborated.
II
§ 107.
SHORTLY after his first appearance on the scene, Pisarev was branded by numerous opponents as the enfant terrible of the Černyševskian trend. Even to-day, "the annihilation of aesthetics," if not ascribed to him as a crime, is at least charged to his literary account.
Pisarev, like Dobroljubov, was a critic, and he carried on the work of Dobroljubov, but died in the flower of his youth. While still a schoolboy Pisarev had begun to write upon the burning questions of the day. His mind had been stirred by Černyševskii and Dobroljubov; Herzen, to a lesser extent Bakunin, and Feuerbach who was the spiritual father of them all, influenced him. He knew of Stirner's work, but I believe at second hand, (Pisarev occasionally admits that his knowledge even of Russian literature was second hand.) He preached radical individualism, understanding by this term the struggle for the emancipation of the individuality, a struggle which for him embodied the essential meaning of civilisation. ("Every living being is for himself the centre and the meaning of the universe. For the most insignificant subject, his personal joys, vexations, aspirations, and cares, are more important than universal revolutions which take place without his participation and exercise no influence upon the destiny of his individuality.") Pisarev believed that the securest foundation for his individualism, for individualist doctrine, was to be found in declared egoism, but at an early stage he was cautious enough to recommend a "rational egoism." To Pisarev it seemed self-evident that the healthy human under​standing would make the same recommendation to every man. To Pisarev "the healthy human understanding" was ever a leading authority.
Freely following Stirner and Feuerbach, Pisarev negates all principles, all ethical aims, the concept of duty, ideals in general. He laughs the idealists to scorn, and conversely he extols the realists. Plato, for example, was merely a general of philosophy, just as others are generals of infantry. What pleases oneself, this is real, this is the real, and all the rest is idle chatter.
The realist has no need of philosophy to guide him in the observance of a reasonable measure. Pisarev likewise condemns specialisation, and has a word to say in favour of dilettantism. He will have nothing to do with philosophic pedagogics or with maxims of education. Children are to be fed and protected, and to be provided with thought-material on which they can exercise their own thinking processes.
His occupation with literature led him to write criticisms, but these were never anything more than the recapitulation of the subjective impression which the piece of literature or the work of art had made upon the realist.
Pisarev, like Stirner, denies the existence of crime. Only by their subjective taste are such men as Turgenev's Bazarov restrained from murder and robbery. It is nothing but subjective taste which incites men of similar type to make scientific discoveries.
Pisarev had a special fondness for new and vigorous expressions. It delighted him to term Puškin and Lermontov rhymesters of consumptive girls and lieutenants. "That's the sort of thing they like, whereas pastry is more to my taste."
To a certain extent Pisarev may be compared with Nietzsche, with whom he has ideas in common. Waging a rude and relentless war against the traditional and against recognised authorities, it is his wish to "reanswer" the questions that have already been answered; in this struggle he demands from his contemporaries steadfastness and hardness; like Nietzsche he is an adversary of historism; and so on.
​The strong emphasis upon evolution and renovation led Pisarev, before Nietzsche, to the same conclusions. For the creation of the new, for the creation of the new men, the old must be relentlessly destroyed: "What can be struck down, must be struck down unceasingly; whatever resists the onslaught, is fit for existence; whatever flies to pieces, is fit for the rubbish heap. Hew your way vigorously, for you can do no harm." In Pisarev's view there are no great men. As a materialist, his outlook upon the historical evolutionary process is decisively determinist, and he explains great men as the sport of circumstance. He does not recognise that he has a false conception of determinism and of the historical process.
Pisarev approves Turgenev's Bazarov, and would make Bazarov his model. In his essay on Bazarov, he compares with that character Pečorin and Rudin, Bazarov's predecessors in the imaginary world of literature, and comes to the following conclusion. In its views upon good and evil the older generation was merely giving itself unnecesary torment to find nothing and do nothing in the end. Rudin had knowledge without will; Pečorin had will without knowledge; Bazarov has both will and knowledge, he knows his weaknesses but knows also his strength, he understands the situation in which he is placed and adapts himself to it practically. His condition is "one of calm despair, which culminates in absolute indifferentism, but leads to a personal development which is the extremity of steadfastness and independence. Since men cannot act, they begin to think and to investigate. Since they find it impossible to transform life, their anger at their own impotence makes itself felt in the sphere of thought, where the destructive work of criticism proceeds unceasingly. Superstitious ideas and authorities are shivered to a thousand fragments, and the outlook becomes absolutely freed from every variety of spookish concept."
Such is Pisarev's psychological description of the realistic process of disillusionment, and his terminology, with the reference to spooks, recalls Feuerbach and Stirner.
It is not difficult to understand why Pisarev should have thus inclined to make too much of realism in his struggle against absolutism. A young fellow of twenty-two, who had been forced for mere nothings to spend nearly five years of his life in a fortress prison, could hardly be expected to write ​without exaggeration. We must not in Pisarev's work mistake the envelope of style for the contents. I do not take the manifest exaggerations too seriously. Mihailovskii is doubtless right when he says that Pisarev's onslaught upon Puškin was a piece of vandalism; but the talk about the "annihilation of aesthetics" and similar extravagances indicate no more than that Pisarev was a literary protagonist at war with the abnormal political and social conditions of Russia in the epoch of the enfranchisement of the serfs. (Pisarev wrote from 1859 to 1868.) Such sayings as that a cigar is the realist's only happiness, that without which the realist (the "thoughtful realist"!) cannot think properly, and similar utterances, are in truth childish; but the saying is expressive of the mentality of a considerable proportion of young Russia, for Pisarev and his subjective outpourings were taken very seriously by the young.
Pisarev was even less concerned than Černyševskii to consider the philosophical foundations of his outlook and to excogitate the problems of principle. Just as Černyševskii adhered to Feuerbach or to Mill, so did Pisarev seek his teachers and authorities, expound their doctrines, popularise and disseminate them. Authoritatively he conducted the campaign against authority. There was no critical, epistemological reflection, or at least there was no determination of a course; his criticism did not deal with fundamentals but only with isolated doctrines and their consequences.
With him, as with his predecessors, the authority against which, on principle, he was campaigning was that of the theocracy, the state, and the church. Hence on the negative side he advocated atheism, and on the positive side positivism and materialism. From the first, no attempt was made to effect an epistemological and metaphysical settlement between positivism and materialism. The sources of his positivism were various, for he drew from Comte, Mill, and Buckle, as well as from Feuerbach. To Comte he was especially indebted, and he knew also the work of Taine.
Pisarev's materialism was derived from Feuerbach, but also from Vogt, Büchner, and Moleschott, whose views Pisarev popularised. He deliberately took his stand against the Hegelians, resolving the dialectical historical process into the physiological vital process, taking materialist sensualism as his starting point. Hence his preference for the natural ​sciences and for naturalism in general; hence his positivist esteem for scientific sobriety as contrasted with imaginings, illusions, and the like. "Facts," is one of his favourite words, as it is a favourite word with the realists in general. "Dreams and illusions pass; facts remain." Pisarev fights superstition. Were it not for the censorship, he would tell us plainly that he fights orthodoxy. Not merely orthodox theology but also the official philosophy and science of his day, are rejected by him as "scholastics," and in connection with these statements it is only just to recall the disastrous condition of the Russian universities. Pisarev, Černyševskii, and most of the oppositional writers, though they had a university training, were in literary and scientific matters self-made men.
But Pisarev is quite uncritical in the formulation of his leading concepts. Consider, for instance, his use of the term "utilitarianism." The significance is nowhere precisely explained, not even when Pisarev expressly wishes to make us understand what use, real use, is. He does not get beyond a rough statement based on the work of Bentham, Mill, and the accepted authorities of hedonism. The furthest he goes is to tell us that the idea of utility must not be taken "in a narrow sense." There is a marked difference between Mill's teaching and Bentham's; Mill does not recognise every desire as useful, but distinguishes between qualities of desire; these shades do not, however, disturb Pisarev, who is satisfied with the "healthy materialist human understanding."
Similarly as regards "materialism." Nowhere is this concept distinguished from that of positivism, though here Pisarev errs in the company of European philosophers, as for instance in that of Taine, who was an authority to Pisarev and many others. But further, Pisarev does not test his foundations. He does not distinguish the epistemological from the metaphysical or the religious. Thus, at one time when he talks of materialism he will mean sensualism ("the philosophy of the obvious"); at another time consciousness will be materialistically explained; and so on. It was natural that Jurkevič's protest against materialism should make no impression on Pisarev.
The concept of "positivism" is likewise left undefined. Pisarev, though a positivist, recommends dilettantism and rejects specialisation.
§ 108.
PISAREV'S philosophic impressionism is, of course, quite inconsistent; he contradicts himself frequently and in almost all points; his rapid development is effected catastrophically and by leaps. The "Prometheus" of to-day was yesterday still a "sheep"; yesterday's darling has to-day become a bête noire. Thus did he treat Puškin and many others.
Nevertheless we discern that Pisarev became calmer as he grew older, and it may also be said that he became clearer. Many critics suggest that his prison experiences and the diligent reading of many books had a favourable effect upon his mind. Pisarev himself ascribed his green extemporisations (I speak à la Pisarev) to the liberating influence of Heine.
I cannot in this brief sketch give a detailed account of Pisarev's mental development, but I must refer to his later study of Turgenev's Bazarov, which is the best criticism of the Pisarev of the first epoch, the Pisarev I have just been characterising; it has moreover literary importance, for Pisarev's name has a peculiarly intimate association with the literary disputes concerning Turgenev's Fathers and Children and concerning nihilism. A consideration of his febrile activity in this matter will furnish an excellent opportunity for a philosophic study of the nature and significance of nihilism.
Turgenev's novel Fathers and Children appeared during 1862 in Katkov's review. In the figure of Bazarov, the young doctor, we have an analysis of realistic youth, its outlook on the world, and its aspirations, and realism is given the designation of nihilism. The type, though not the term was new in Russian literature.
An analysis of the Bazarov type, in so far as Turgenev himself provides it, will follow later. At present we are only concerned with grasping the essence of realism as nihilism in the sense wherein the realists of that day, the realistic critics, became clearly aware of their own principles through the study of Bazarov. For decades Bazarov and nihilism remained a general theme of literary, philosophic, and political discussion.
​In March, Pisarev wrote his article Bazarov, accepting the type in the name of young Russia. Shortly afterwards, in the May issue of "Sovremennik," appeared Antonovič's criticism of the novel, wherein Bazarov was described as a worthless and vulgar fellow, who even in extremis desires to procure sensual pleasure and recuperation from the sight of Odincova. Antonovič regards Bazarov as an insult to realistic young Russia, as a caricature which has no correspondence with reality, as a caricature of something that does not exist. Antonovič therefore compared Turgenev with the notorious writer Askočenskii, author of The Modern Asmodeus; this distinctive and condemnatory title was borrowed by Antonovič for his essay.
​Pisarev and his literary associates (Zaicev, and others) took the field against Antonovič. Whilst in prison in 1864 Pisarev wrote a more detailed essay on Bazarov. This was entitled The Realists, and even its dedication was intended to blunt the weapons of opponents; it was inscribed, "To my best Friend, my Mother."
At the very time when the dispute about Bazarov was flaming high, Černyševskii's novel was published, and the more radical among the realists were not slow to perceive that the characters of What is to be Done represented the true type. Above all, the figure of Rahmetov became the ideal of the nihilists. From Rahmetov, Pisarev, likewise, borrowed a few lineaments, but to him Turgenev's conception was (characteristically enough) more congenial than Černyševskii's, though Pisarev admits that Černyševskii had a profounder insight than Turgenev into Russian life.
Pisarev began his analysis of realism (he did not use the word nihilism) by explaining that it was the first independent manifestation of Russian thought. All previous trends had been foreign mental products which our good forefathers borrowed from abroad, simply because they were then the fashion abroad. Martinism, Byronism, Hegelianism, and all the other "isms" were to relieve the terrible tedium which then prevailed. After the Crimean war, there had been a rapid development of accusatory literature, but it was feeble and inefficacious and had brought about no notable changes; the various panaceas that had been recommended had failed to work a cure.
The Russians were faced by two great facts; they were poor and they were stupid—poor because they were stupid, and stupid because they were poor. This was not to say that the Russian was an idiot, but the strength of his brain was not displayed in the field of action. A way out of this charmed circle must be discovered. First of all it was the duty of the government to enact laws which would put an end to poverty by arranging that the products which now passed from the hands of the producers (the workers) into the hands of non-producers should remain in the hands of the former. A practical influence must also be exercised upon the ​non-workers not by beating the big moral drum, but by the diffusion of live ideas, so that the Russian brain might at length set to work.
This latter task must be initiated with extreme caution. The work must be rightly chosen and rightly assigned; it must be of such a nature that it will be of real use to society. Pisarev considered that a guarantee for the correct solution of the problem was found in this, that his contemporaries were at length beginning to realise the necessity of employing their intellectual powers. "The economics of mental forces consists wholly in strict and consistent realism."
From the standpoint of ethical utilitarianism, in the sense of a reasonable and deliberate hedonism, Pisarev approves Bazarov, and expounds Turgenev's novel in order to refute the objections levelled against Bazarov.
Social or general advantage is to be found in universal human solidarity; with hand and head the realist must work to establish this solidarity on a firm foundation. "The realist is the thoughtful worker, the man who loves his work." (Turgenev's Bazarov looks upon nature as a workshop!) The realist is a practical thinker and a practical worker, he will therefore take due care concerning the way in which he is to work for the community in accordance with the principle of solidarity, and how under the conditions that are quite peculiar to Russia he is to work for Russia whilst simultaneously working for the wider world community. All work, all practice, is based upon knowledge; Russia needs knowledge, needs science. Pisarev distinguishes the natural sciences, those in which research for the new is undertaken, from such sciences as history and economics (he is thinking here not of Černyševskii but of Kirěevskii!) which confine themselves to a calm analysis of human social relationships. To Pisarev, science is merely the energy which is competent "independently of historical events," to awaken public opinion and to educate the thoughtful leaders of the national work. This liberating science takes for Pisarev the form of natural science, and he rejects history ("Macaulayism"). He therefore demands of the literary critics that they shall become students of natural science. He is dissatisfied with Bělinskii, whose thought was too much confined to the aesthetic field, and who ought to have studied natural science. Lermontov's Pečorin, the type of an earlier ​generation, was intelligent enough to escape from Macaulayism, but his chosen expedient, Don Juanism, is impossible in society which lives, or is beginning to live, a full life.
Pisarev proves his thesis on Germany, on the very land decried for its philistinism, and adduces a whole catalogue of investigators of natural science whose example Russia would do well to follow—Liebig, Virchow, etc., etc.
The reader recalls how Bazarov in Fathers and Children undertakes physiological observations upon frogs, and recommends such observations to others. Pisarev pounces upon the motif, and for all his stylistic extravagance, he is essentially in earnest when he writes: "There you have it, in the frog you will find the rescue and the renewal of the Russian people."
In brief, says Pisarev, "matters must be thought to a finish . . . we must be honest with ourselves." The realist must be straightforward and truthful to himself, to all his fellows, and above all to women; he must enter into no relationships that are other than straightforward and truthful. The realist must put before himself a rational aim, and must not fail to attain it. But this rational aim will become clear to him alone who has been scientifically trained, and the ultimate essential therefore is to diffuse and to popularise science in Russia. The essay concludes with suggestions as to the right method of popularisation, and sums up the nature of realism in the dictum: "Love, Knowledge, and Work."
Is this all? Was it merely for this that Pisarev was denounced as a robber and an assassin? We have to remember that in the early sixties this negation of Russia seemed an extremely revolutionary doctrine. Besides, who was the new authority who permitted himself such a liberty? He was a man four-and-twenty years of age, an aristocrat, indeed, belonging to a wealthy family, but apart from this a man of no account, an arrogant upstart without even a university degree to his credit. His adversaries, on the other hand, could truthfully say that he had spent several months in a lunatic asylum, whilst the conservatives could point to the fact that he was under lock and key in the fortress of St. Peter and St. Paul. But it was precisely this last consideration which commended Pisarev to his young contemporaries, and commends him to our own. This is why his words have been so eagerly read, and this is why people have been willing to ​pay as much as fifty roubles for a collection of his writings—though cheaper editions are now available.
Pisarev jettisoned all the literary and critical works of his predecessors, not even excepting the writings of Bělinskii, Černyševskii, and Dobroljubov. Čaadaev had at least retained approval for Peter, but Pisarev included in his iconoclasm Caadaev and all men of letters, together with the amiable Granovskii, whose writings and lectures were nothing but "futile Macaulayism." It is not surprising that even some of the radicals shared Antonovič's alarm; and as for the liberals, they were, on principle, opponents of Pisarev and his whole trend. Čaadaev had attacked theology and orthodoxy, and was therefore congenial to the liberals, but Pisarev renounced the liberal adversaries of theology and orthodoxy. He continually returned to the attack upon liberalism. He regarded a liberal as a pygmy, as a dwarf, or as a cow trying to gallop like a cavalry horse.
At that time Saltykov agreed with Antonovič, and it was all the more natural that Katkov, the conservatives, and the reactionaries, should share Antonovič's views.
As a matter of course, the slavophils were opposed to Pisarev and the realists, were opposed to the man who had the audacity to speak of Ivan Kirěevskii as a Don Quixote. The počvenniki, too, were strongly adverse to Pisarev and to nihilism; it was in the počvennik circle that Dostoevskii began his life work against nihilism. Nor was it likely that the narodniki and the socialists would be pleased by Pisarev's views upon economics and history.
Herzen, though he had himself interpreted Bazarov and nihilism in a Byronic sense, was opposed to Pisarev and to the nihilism of the sixties. There remained, therefore, to support Pisarev none but the most radical among the radicals.
Antonovič's essay split the radical camp.
§ 109.
JUST as Herzen endeavoured to harmonise his proud and contemptuous individualism with socialism and with love ​for Russia, so also did Pisarev advance from individualism and egoism to socialism. The question of "the hungry and the insufficiently clad" became to him the question of questions. Beside this, he exclaimed in 1865, there is nothing worth thinking or troubling about. Science and culture were the means by which the problem was to be solved and by which the goal was to be attained—not science as an amusement for wealthy and idle aristocrats and landowners, but the science that is the daily bread of every healthy human being and must therefore permeate the intelligence of manual workers, factory operatives, and peasants. Until this happened, the toiling masses would continue to languish in poverty and immorality.
In addition to these prescriptions, which remind us of Lassalle, of his utterances concerning science and its relationship to the workers, physical toil is recommended to members of the cultured class, for this alone "renders possible a genuine drawing near to the people." From this outlook a complete scheme was drafted for the reform of instruction and education, Comte's positivism being here combined with the experiences of Tolstoi as recorded in his works upon his childhood and youth.
Although Pisarev transformed the "thoughtful realist" into the "thoughtful proletarian," he did not advance beyond these plans for reform.
He felt assured that his socialism was only for the cultured. None but the most intelligent among the workers could respond to his demand that they should labour with love. For the time being, therefore, the manual workers were outside the domain of realism; were no realists, although theirs was the most real of all work. The manual workers could not as yet love labour; they were mere machines, though machines susceptible to fatigue. Consequently the realist must for the nonce leave the workers alone. Pisarev desired merely to train realistic leaders for the workers; the cultivation of the masses would be a subsequent task; meanwhile the realists were to turn to the peasants. Pisarev gave little or no thought to the factory hands, to the urban proletariat.
Pisarev's socialism may well be compared with that of Plato. Plato, too, demanded communism for the two higher classes alone, not for the peasants and operatives; the leaders of communist society were to govern the workpeople. Similarly ​Pisarev insisted upon realism for the intellectual workers, and these were to lead the manual workers, who could not as yet become realists.
The destiny of the folk, said Pisarev, will be fulfilled in the universities, not in the elementary schools.
Pisarev appeals exclusively to the middle class. Only the middle class, he said as early as 1861, really lives and moves; to the middle class belongs almost everybody capable of writing, reading, thinking, and developing. Though himself of aristocratic birth, Pisarev renounced the higher aristocracy as stagnant, but the people was likewise stagnant. It is true that when Pisarev referred to the middle class, he was thinking of those members of it who would accept his radicalism; to the ordinary bourgeois Pisarev was no less hostile than Herzen, whose socialistic program of brain equality was thus reproduced by Pisarev.
In his account of the realists, Pisarev dealt with the problem of objectivism and subjectivism, and illustrated it by a reference to Goethe. Goethe had had his ego, his subjective fiction, namely, the establishment of a unitary organism, which he ranked higher than the actual drama of social life. Goethe had considered the world of individual experience not as a refuge but as a temple, the most beautiful and the holiest in the world. "To enable him to see in himself a temple of light and in the environing life a squalid market place, to enable him thus to forget the natural solidarity between his own ego and the surrounding stupidities and sorrows of other men, he found it necessary to corrupt his critical understanding systematically, and to lull it to sleep with the beauty of exquisite phrases. Petty thoughts and petty feelings must be transformed into the pearls of creation. Goethe performed this work of art, and down to the present day similar works have been regarded as the greatest achievements of art; such hocus pocus takes place, however, not in the sphere of art alone, but likewise in all the other spheres of human activity."
Pisarev thus opposes extreme subjectivism and individualism in the name of social solidarity. He continues to strive for the independence of the ego, to strive like a titan, for these are the "titanic ideas" of which he speaks; but he considers ludicrous the Goethe auto-apotheosis in Faust. To express the matter in materialistic terminology, no single ​organism possesses the value of the massed organisms that constitute society.
In his first essay upon Bazarov, Pisarev found it the especial merit of Bazarov that he had refused to recognise any regulator, any moral law, any principle, whether above, external to, or within himself; but two years later, Pisarev's Bazarov has come to recognise a regulator and a moral law. We read that life must be built up upon an idea, and this idea is the general solidarity of mankind. Within a brief space, the realist à la Stirner has been transformed into the thoughtful realist.
At first he had endeavoured subjectivistically and egoistically to justify crime, but later, when he became a "thoughtful realist," he condemned bloodshed of any kind (see his account of Dostoevskii's Crime and Punishment, 1867–1868).
Pisarev's dissatisfaction with radical individualism toward the close of his career is further proved by the information recently made public that he desired to popularise the first volume of Capital (1867), for he had been charmed by the Marxist theory. But we must not forget that Pisarev's conception of socialism differed from that of Marx. In 1864 he had assigned to the individual a secondary role in the social and historical process, but in 1865 he exclaimed, "I, too, am a phenomenon."
Strong expressions are used in the essay entitled The Annihilation of Aesthetics, which appeared in 1865. Every man of artistic sensibilities must find it disagreeable to read that Dussiaux, a celebrated St. Petersburg chef, was worth just as much as Raphael; but when we go on to read that Pisarev would himself rather be a Russian cobbler or baker than a Russian Raphael or Grimm, it is not difficult to understand that this is the author's way of telling us that practical economic work is the greatest need of contemporary Russia. Doubtless Pisarev erred in looking upon Puškin's Oněgin as an apotheosis of the status quo, and in considering Puškin himself a colossal rudiment. Moreover, it was thoroughly unrealistic to dictate to Saltykov and Dobroljubov whether they should write verses or study natural science. All this was distorted and overstrained, but it did not signify that Pisarev rejected art in good earnest. In fact, he approved none but the genuine poets, the thought champions sans peur et sans reproche, the "knights of the spirit." The pygmies ​and the parasites had no claim to indulgence. As yet, he contended, Russia had no such poets. Griboedov, Krylov, Puškin, and Gogol, did not suffice him; whilst Russia could boast a Fet as against Shakespeare, Dante, Byron, Goethe, and Heine! Pisarev admired Dickens, Thackeray, George Sand, and Victor Hugo, who had awakened men from their slumbers and had done practical work. He could even admire metaphysicians like Pierre Leroux, for Leroux, despite his impossible doctrine of metempsychosis, had supported mankind in the great struggle, just as had Proudhon and others.
Nor must we forget that Tolstoi displayed similar feelings towards art, towards his own art. Many parallel thoughts can be discovered in the writings of Pisarev and Tolstoi. Students of aesthetics have become accustomed in the case of Tolstoi to his repudiation of art and to his realistic definition of art as absolute truth; but just as Tolstoi continually returned to art, so likewise did Pisarev no less than Dobroljubov and Černyševskii again and again immerse himself in works of art. This is what counts, not the "annihilation of aesthetics," not the campaign against Puškin, Schiller, etc. Besides, aesthetics is one thing, art another!
In studying Pisarev, we must always take into account this writer's tendency to polemic overstatement. In the very essay of 1862 in which he coquetted with the idea of crime, the essay on Bazarov, we read the following involuntary confessions of the Bazarovian realist: "In the depths of his soul he approves much which in words he denies, and perchance it is this, this element that he hides, which preserves him from moral decay and moral nullity." Moreover, as we have seen, the essay of 1862 concludes, like Herzen's similar writing, with love. We are told by Pisarev's biographers that he was very strictly brought up by his mother, and that while at the university he continued to be guided by the teachings of his youth. The dedication of The Realists confirms this statement, and shows us in Pisarev the very dualism of theory and practice which, as a theorist, he attacks.
The "titanic ideas" announced by Pisarev were not notably distinguished for incisiveness, momentum, or originality; the main secrets of Pisarev's influence were the fire of his enthusiasm, and his relentlessness. The hum of battle sounded in his essays; their aggressive negation, their revolutionary mood, won the heart of ​youth. The power of Pisarev's writings was enhanced because the government imprisoned the raw student for a proclamation in which he had defended Herzen against the reactionary minions of authority. The most widely influential of Pisarev's essays were written in prison.
Pisarev did not exercise an illuminating influence upon literature and philosophy, and still less can it be said that his work was creative, but among all the radicals of his day his was certainly the most philosophical intelligence.
Pisarev, like Černyševskii, was essentially a philosopher of the enlightenment. The "thoughtful realist" aims at a "rational comprehension" of the world. He strives to secure a precise and scientific conception of the universe. With Buckle, he sees human progress, and anticipates its continuance solely through the diffusion and strengthening of the reasoning powers, through culture. Pisarev knows of only one evil thing in humanity, ignorance; and he has but one remedy to ​recommend, knowledge. Brehm's Animal Life delights him, for he finds it an embodiment of genuine, real, realistic science.
In his struggle for enlightenment, the impassioned philosopher, a man of nervous temperament, becomes an ultrarationalist. "Reason is worth more than all the rest; or, to put the matter more precisely, reason is everything." The Russian "annihilator of aesthetics" has in him an element of enlightened absolutism, a spice of Josephan utilitarianism.
Pisarev, therefore, rejects theory; or rather, and this is the true formula of realism, he demands the personal verification of theory by practice. Word and deed, as Dobroljubov says, are to be one. Pisarev repeats this.
III
§ 110.
THE designation "nihilism" was not new in Russia. As far back as the thirties, Nadeždin, in his campaign against romanticism, had given the name of nihilist to those who in literature and art would recognise no leading principles. In 1858 Dobroljubov made fun of the reactionaries who stigmatised young men and their justified scepticism as nihilistic. At this date the nihilist onslaught began to become active, and Turgenev, in his novel, did not merely present a new type but gave it its name.
Let us now attempt to analyse the concept nihilism, to display its leading content.
i. The concept of realism was first formulated in the domain of literature and art. This is readily comprehensible when we consider the importance of literature under the oppressive regime of absolutism. From the days of Bělinskii onwards literary criticism became an endeavour to present the essence of realism as contrasted with romanticism. In this sense, Bělinskii accepted for Gogol's work the name given it by opponents, who had said that this work belonged to the "natural" school. Defending such naturalism, Bělinskii presented romanticism and realism as generalised outlooks, as philosophies. Naturalness, simplicity, truth, now became the watchwords of the realist aestheticists; and folk-songs were held up to the poets as models. The advocates of this trend did not demand any slavish imitation of nature, did not ​demand merely photographic reproduction, but they insisted that the artist, too, should cultivate the sense of exactitude and precision which modern science was developing and maturing. They clung firmly to objectivism as contrasted with the subjectivism of the romanticists.
Černyševskii and his successors (Dobroljubov and Pisarev) conceived realism in the sense of philosophic positivism, conceived it as naturalism. Seeing that Russian social and political conditions made even of literature an instrument of "accusation," it is not surprising that the literary critics, the aestheticists, should approve these accusations. The question was now mooted whether the ugly, no less than the beautiful, could properly be the object of art. To the realists, who answered this question in the affirmative, Gogol seemed preferable to Puškin, although Puškin, and our classical writers in general, had paved the way for realism. After the days of Černyševskii and Dobroljubov, French realism began to make headway in the form of naturalism. Zola, in especial, came to the front in the middle sixties; a decade later (1875–80), through the instrumentality of Turgenev, he expounded his theory (which was likewise directed against romanticism and sentimentalism) in the periodical "Věstnik Evropy." But many authors and critics failed to keep within reasonable bounds; exaggeration prevailed in art as well as in criticism; hence resulted the nihilistic "annihilation of aesthetics."
ii. Philosophically, realism is positivism. Comte taught the realists to regard mathematics and its exactitude as the scientific ideal, and thus whereas the romanticists had extolled the nature philosophy, the realists proclaimed that mathematics and those natural sciences in which mathematics were employed were the genuine and proper knowledge. The mental sciences were condemned, or the attempt was made to transform them into natural sciences. Psychology, in especial, became physiology and biology. Positivism was conceived by the realists in a materialist and sensualist sense. As a rule, stress was laid upon positivist method.
Pisarev, in the presentation of his views, sometimes followed Comte's definition, although he failed to conceive it with precision. He said, for example, that the realist desired to establish scientifically nothing more than the relations of phenomena, not general results. But this term "general results" is extremely vague, and does not belong to the true ​positivism of Comte. Pisarev, like so many others, is in truth an empiricist, and he himself frequently speaks of the realists as empiricists. This interchange of empiricism with sensualism and materialism is a stereotyped phenomenon in the history of thought. In like manner, the idealisation of the natural sciences, of naturalism, frequently occurs, and is typical of empiricism. Enumeration, weighing, measuring, the precise record of facts, these constitute for Pisarev the only right method, laboratory methods being applied to life by the nihilistic Bazarovs.
Facts, this is the realistic and nihilistic slogan, used to wearisome iteration, palpable facts being recognised naturalistically and materialistically, whilst impalpable facts are simply ignored. The nihilist is extremely hostile toward everything which he terms abstract or general; he demands the concrete, concreteness is his war-cry. "There is no such thing as an abstract truth; truth is concrete. . . . Every thing depends upon the conditions of time and space" (Černyševskii). "Let us have the real man of flesh and blood with his doings, not fantastic relationships to the entire outer world" (Dobroljubov). We must have facts, therefore, isolated facts, no philosophy, no metaphysics, no general outlook on the universe, no theory, no illusions, no verbiage.
Pisarev positively condemns a general outlook, writing: "There can be nothing more disastrous for the student of nature than to have a general outlook on the universe."
The nihilist distorts positivism further, inasmuch as, in contrast with Comte or Mill, he subordinates theory to practice, life being in this sense opposed to science. Looking at the matter more closely, we find that science in this connection means official academic science. Thus Pisarev tilts against "modern scholasticism."
The genealogical tree of nihilism is not difficult to draw up. Comte and Mill; Taine and Littré; Büchner, Moleschott, and Vogt. The three last-named, in especial, exercised great influence over the majority of nihilists. Moleschott proclaimed the nature student as the Prometheus of the modern age. He expounded The Circulation of Life, explained that chemistry was the supreme science, and actually expected from it the solution of the social question. The Russian students, hungering for knowledge, and the budding reformers, were fascinated by these materialistic pronunciamentos and watch​words of Vogt and Büchner, these utterances of the Force and Matter type which were then arousing widespread interest.
Subsequently Darwinism and naturalistic evolutionism found eager acceptance.
The positivism of the nihilists was derived from Feuerbach and Stirner, and in part from Hegel. We have seen that the Russian Hegelians had much to say about the rationality of the real. The development from Hegel to Feuerbach and to materialism was the same in Russia as in the west.
Schopenhauer must likewise be mentioned as a teacher of the nihilists. His pessimism, his criticism of official philosophy, and his literary style, had during the sixties a potent influence in Russia.
Most of the nihilists acquired their philosophical culture at second hand, from Russian teachers. First of all came Herzen, and subsequently Bakunin. Herzen's influence was displayed chiefly in the theoretical field, whilst Černyševskii directly affected practice, above all in the sphere of ethics.
Russian literature, and in particular accusatory literature, supplemented philosophical schooling, and for many, indeed, replaced philosophical schooling.
Foreign belletristic literature came to play a part beside that of Russia. We may refer to the positivism of George Eliot; to the realism of Dickens and Zola (and Spielhagen with his novel Problematic Natures may also be mentioned in this connection); to Victor Hugo, George Sand, etc. The corrosive criticism of Heine was especially influential.
iii. Turgenev's Bazarov is a man who bows before no authority, one who will not accept any principle as an article of faith, be that principle furnished with as many testimonials as you please. The definition may seem somewhat vague, somewhat tortuous, but we can and must make it clear. Nihilism criticises and negates the authorities and principles of the elder generation; in the concrete, it criticises and renounces the Uvarovian trinity of church, state, and nationality. "Destructive" criticism is aimed chiefly at orthodoxy and theocracy, even though in view of the censorship the onslaught must be indirect. Atheism and materialism are at once preconditions and logical consequences of nihilist criticism and negation.
When Pisarev, like all the realists, is continually engaged ​in the attempt to destroy authority, superstition, illusion, and falsehood, he is campaigning against orthodoxy. But the nihilists have by no means thought out their doctrine metaphysically; their nihilism is social and political; they aim at destroying Old Russia, the Russia of Nicholas. They read Mill and Schopenhauer, but the metaphysical nihilism of these authors was largely ignored; the criticism of the Russian nihilists was turned against the oppressive theocracy.
Fundamentally, Pisarev's attack on aesthetics is an onslaught upon the illusions of theology.
Atheism and materialism repudiate teleology, offering their own causal explanation of the universe, of the individual life, and of the life of society. Materialism is mechanism, naturalistic mechanism.
In Herzen's writings, nihilism already makes its appearance as positivist disillusionment. The opposite of positivist disillusionment is metaphysical and religious intoxication. It is a case of nihilism versus mysticism.
Pisarev frequently condemns the "intuitive" philosophy, to which he counterposes practice, the daily bread.
Dostoevskii was the first to force upon nihilism reflection upon its own relationships in the field of metaphysics and in that of the philosophy of religion; he was the first to make a serious attempt to grasp its gencral significance, though preliminary essays in this direction may be found in the writings of Bakunin and Herzen. Subsequently, building upon the foundation laid by Dostoevskii, Nietzsche conceived nihilism metaphysically and in its world-wide and historical relationships.
However much the nihilist might read Schopenhauer, however greatly he might esteem the German writer's works, he did not become a pessimist, did not surrender to despair. The nihilist is fierce (Herzen is right here), and he turns wrathfully against oppressive authority. The nihilist accepts the views of Stirner, but Stirnes does not make him indifferent. Stirner himself, refraining in 1848 from participating in the revolution, incorporated into his life the true significance of his book The Ego and his Own, whereas the Russian "ego" is a theoretical and practical revolutionist guided by the teaching of Bakunin, his aim is socio-political destruction, pandestruction. The nihilist is a politician, not a metaphysician; he is opposed to the theocracy, but he is not ​aware of having any philosophy of religion; he holds fast to his Moleschott or to his Pisarev, and that suffices him.
The nihilist is fundamentally an unbeliever, but he believes in the frog (Pisarev), in the electric cable (Herzen), or in the railway (Bělinskii). The nihilistic atheist and materialist believes in his atheism and materialism; often his belief is no less fanatical and blind than that of his orthodox opponents. The nihilist has merely changed the object of his faith. In infancy and boyhood he had believed in the doctrines of the catechism; in the higher classes of the middle school and at the university he has come to believe in the doctrines of Feuerbach and Moleschott. The nihilistic philosophy of enlightenment is negative, negational; it is not critical; the unbelieving nihilist is a believer, just as the "infidel" Mohammedan becomes a fervent Christian.
This unbelieving belief is typical of Russian philosophical development, as we have had occasion to see in the case of numerous Russian thinkers.
iv. The emphasis laid upon practice led the nihilists to morality. Ethics was the most important nihilistic discipline. The influence of German philosophy was here partially operative, for since the days of Kant that philosophy had preferred the practical reason to the theoretical. Personal motives, too, played their part. Černyševskii and Dobroljubov had had a theological training, whilst Pisarev's home education had been on rigidly moral lines. A determinative influence was exercised by Russian social and political conditions, by the intolerable character of theocratic absolutism, which rendered, a new conduct of life essential. It is true that the nihilists fulminated against morality, but they were referring to the old ecclesiastical morality. Bakunin desired a "new morality," Černyševskii desired "new men."
Hoping to establish ethics upon irrefutable principles and unshakable foundations, Černyševskii and his successors had recourse to egoism and utilitarianism. This system has often been extolled as empirical and practical, and was contrasted by the nihilists with the moral phrasemongering (in fact unpractical) of many so-called idealists.
Just as to the nihilists empirical natural science seemed to be the true, the absolute, the mathematically demonstrable basis of philosophy, so was hedonism to safeguard their ethic, and was above all to make it thoroughly practical. Bazarov, ​says Pisarev, has knowledge and will; he desires to act. What is to be Done is the distinctive title of the nihilistic evangel, which is competent to give a definite answer to the most burning questions.
Many critics of nihilism have referred to the religious character of the movement. Unquestionably this was a new trend, one which involved an attempt, moving forward with logical consistency from its base, to regulate the whole of life anew. The nihilists were quite in earnest in their desire for "new men." Their consistency and their tenacity may be compared with religious endeavour, in so far as religion is employed mainly as a sanction for morality.
It has already been pointed out that the egoism and hedonism of the nihilists must not be taken quite at their face value. The nihilists railed against the unpractical and fanatical rigours of monastic morality and Christianity in general; they rejected the idea of sacrifice; but only too often they were themselves zealots and fanatics, giving their lives with a delight in sacrifice, with a positive desire for victimisation, which frequently reminds us of the morbid love of religious martyrdom. Vladimir Solov'ev wittily remarked of these men of the sixties that their logical inference appeared to be, "Man sprang from the ape, therefore love thy neighbour as thyself."
What does the egoist Černyševskii actually preach? "We recognise nothing higher on earth than the human individuality"; and again, "A positivist man, one who is positivist in the proper sense of the term, cannot be other than loving and noble-minded." Pisarev and Herzen return to love.
The nihilists wish to be consistent; they endeavour to apply in practice, at once and universally, the theories they have so recently acquired; deed and word are to harmonise. In brief, the nihilists are campaigning against the system of conventional lies.
The nihilists wish to escape the consuming tedium from which the unoccupied aristocracy, and above all the landed gentry, suffer; they desire to find practical and genuinely useful work.
Herzen adduces in example Homjakov, who fled to Europe to find refuge from boredom, who there wrote his tragedy Ermak, who held converse with all possible and impossible Czechs and Dalmatians, and then flung himself into the Turkish war; Puškin's Oněgin envied general paralytics; Lermontov's ​Pečorin betook himself to Persia; Čaadaev consorted with Catholics; other writers became orthodox and slavophil. It was all the outcome of tedium vitae. In his Realists Pisarev gives a similar account of the effects of boredom.
The nihilists, therefore, attack romanticism on ethical grounds as well. "Oh why was I not a block of wood?"—thus Pisarev quizzically of the romanticists weary of life; their German romanticist colleagues à la Schlegel envied the quiet existence of the plants.
Against romanticist sentimentalism and extravagances of feeling, the nihilists entrench themselves with irony and cynicism. Concerning the irony and cynicism of Bazarov, Pisarev writes that irony, internal cynicism, is directed against sentimentality, gushes of feeling, and similar absurdities. Bazarov, he says, is animated by this cynicism. Pisarev likewise approves outward cynicism, a rough method of expressing this irony, extreme bluntness in general. But these characteristics do not constitute the essence of realism; they are mere ephemeral manifestations; and they are less formidable than they appear.
The ultra-positivist impassivity of the nihilist was in fact a mere mask.
The nihilists were democrats (they used the familiar "thou" to all). In practice this meant that they were to work for the recently liberated mužik, and were themselves to work like the mužik. The liberation made the nihilists turn to the peasants; the movement "towards the people" began. The nihilist wished to enlighten the peasant. As a democrat and as a worker he would not distinguish himself from the peasant; assuming a peasant mode of life, he endeavoured to become simpler; outwardly, and in part inwardly, he grew to resemble the peasant. The nihilistic democrat therefore adopted plebeian manners and customs.
Pisarev recommends agricultural work to the member of the intelligentsia who, when he becomes for practical purposes a peasant, is thus best in a position for carrying on his work of enlightenment.
This utilitarian democratic movement therefore aimed at "annihilating" aesthetics. In times of social and political difficulty and oppression like the years which immediately followed the liberation of the peasants, excellent men incline ​to take a very depreciatory view of art, and still more of philosophising about art. "L'art gâte tout," Mably had said just before the French revolution; the sansculottes had other things to think about.
The nihilists, therefore, would have nothing to do with aesthetics either in externals or in the forms of social intercourse. This was the outcome of their fraternisation with the mužik and the operative. But in addition many of them were in truth extremely poor, and those that had any money to spare devoted it to the purchase of books and other things that seemed more important to them than arts and graces. Not without justice could their opponents censure them for lack of cleanliness, for being badly dressed, and so on.
As we see in Bazarov, in Rahmetov, and even in Pisarev's style, nihilism was hostile to all needless formalities. Pisarev wrote and spoke "without ceremony," as the Russians phrase it. For instance, when he differed from Goethe, this was enough to make him accuse Goethe of philistinism. He was ever fond of strong expressions. Whenever possible he minted new words to help him in the campaign against obsolete opinions and ideas. For example, the old-fashioned daughters of good families were by him designated "muslin girls," and so on. Pisarev, like his predecessors, was an enemy of phrases, but he knew (and declared occasionally) that phrases are indispensable, and he therefore coined nihilistic phraseology.
The nihilists, being a hunted minority, held firmly together, and without deliberate conspiracy a kind of secret society came into existence. The nihilists recognised one another by dress, language, methods of criticism, general views. To this extent, therefore, Mihailovskii was right in comparing the nihilists with the disciples of Tolstoi, and the former resembled the latter in their sectarian spirit.
In personal relationships, and above all in friendship and in marriage, the nihilists consistently carried out their ethical principles. In nihilist circles, friendship was based upon inexorable straightforwardness, all conventional trappings being discarded.
Side by side with friendship, the sex relationship, love and marriage was regarded as the truest of all the relationships of life. The love and the marriage of the "thoughtful" realist became "thoughtful" love and marriage. Thus nihilism was the most radical emancipator of the Russian ​woman. The opponents of the nihilists fail to recognise how great was the service which Černyševskii, Dobroljubov, and Pisarev rendered in this field. Even Saltykov, as has been shown, was so short-sighted and old-fashioned that he could not judge the big words of the nihilist spokesmen in accordance with their real significance, in accordance with their actuality. The utterance of Černyševskii's Rahmetov concerning the community of wives is still quoted shudderingly against the nihilists.
v. It was a logical development that nihilistic ethics with an aspiration towards the practical should bring the nihilists into politics. The criticism and negation of authority, scientific and artistic individualism, the spirit of independence, the struggle against theological and theocratic idealism, necessarily led to social and before long to political rebellions, revolts, and revolutions. The horror which Gogol had voiced in Dead Souls, affected persons of conspicuous intelligence; and in a society based upon serfdom it was natural that vigorous nihilism, a nihilism eager for deeds, should originate. The inadequate reforms of the sixties did not convert Černyševskii into a professor, but made it essential for him to become the tribune, the advocate of the mužik. What happened to Černyševskii happened to all the others; absolutism precipitated the younger generation in the direction of revolution.
The nihilists followed Rylěev, and gave ear to his appeal on behalf of civic duty. When Nekrasov, in his Poets and Citizens, fulminated the phrase, "Thou canst not be a poet, but it is thy duty to be a citizen," the nihilists took the matter quite in earnest, regulating their theories in accordance therewith, and devoting their leisure to politics and other practical work on behalf of the people. It was for this reason that Pisarev "annihilated aesthetics"; it was for this reason that Bazarov was hostile to poesy and art; it was for this reason that, somewhat earlier, Bělinskii had given utterance to his heretical judgment concerning the Sixtine Madonna,
In actual fact, nihilism embodied an endeavour to introduce poesy into life, or, to put it in another way, to transfigure life poetically. From the time of Puškin and Bělinskii, Russian literature and literary criticism had been so intimately concerned with Russian life, and had so vigorously endeavoured to fathom its meaning, that the day naturally came for men to attempt the practical, ethical, and political realisation of ​the teachings of literature. The nihilists were the heirs of Russian literature and literary criticism.
Turgenev rightly presented Bazarov as an enemy of the aristocracy, as a revolutionary, as a pendant to the followers of Pugačev. The democratic hostility to aristocracy was enhanced and concreted in the social sphere by the proletarian position of the literary rasnočinec. The nihilist felt proud of his contrast with the aristocrat; he was class conscious; he was in revolt against oppression, theoretically at first, but before long practically, ethically, and politically as well.
The nihilist was opposed to the political doctrines and ideals of the aristocrats. He renounced state and church, and he renounced the aristocrat's nationalism. When his adversaries closed their ranks against him, when they reproached him with atheism, materialism, and russophobia, the nihilist, cynically enough in many cases, admitted all these counts in the impeachment. Nevertheless the nihilist, the nihilist above all, loved Russia, in his own peculiar manner; he loved in Russia that which seemed to him loveworthy and sacred.
The nihilist was radical to the extreme; he was the sworn foe of political liberalism and of the bourgeoisie. He spoke of himself as a democrat and a socialist.
Nihilist sentiment was to a large extent anarchist. Thus, as we have seen, Pisarev's realist did not shrink even from crime. He recognised no objective authority competent to forbid murder and robbery, competent to restrain him from crime. To the nihilist, all things were lawful. Such had been the doctrine of Bakunin, such had been the doctrine of Herzen and Bělinskii. The problem of crime occupied his mind from the first appearance of nihilism. Initially, the interest was theoretical, when he discussed the moral implications of Byron's Cain, discussed them in association with the metaphysical doctrines of subjectivism and solipsism, but soon the interest became practical and the nihilist developed into the revolutionary and the terrorist.
vi. Intimate analysis discloses several distinct varieties of nihilism, and the literary presentation of nihilism created several distinct types of nihilist. The nihilists themselves disputed which type was the model, some seeing in Bazarov, some in Rahmetov, etc., the correct and genuine incorporation of nihilism.
​A definitive judgment of nihilism is far from easy, for the nihilists were active in very various fields, in theory and practice, in philosophy and in science, in ethics and in politics, in medicine and in other technical spheres—universally.
Moreover, nihilism evolved, and assumed various forms.
Frequently a distinction is made between degrees of nihilism. Herzen, for example, who dissented from Černyševskii, spoke of the ultras, of the Sobakevičs and Nozdrevs, the Dantonists of nihilism. This subdivision of nihilism into moderate and radical wings is still current to-day. Herzen, despite his antipathy to Černyševskii's trend, himself accepted nihilism as a radical philosophical tendency. The conservative and reactionary opponents of nihilism denounced as nihilism every movement aiming at liberty, and an elementary knowledge of Latin was sufficiently widespread for the mere name to inspire terror.
A summary criticism of nihilism would be futile. We may recall the opinions of Herzen and of Strahov, that nihilism made no new contributions to thought, that the nihilists had no real understanding even of their own principles, and so on. Many took an adverse view of nihilism as the philosophy and politics of the young.
To me the true significance of the matter, the signum temporis for Russia and for Europe as well, is indeed found in the youth of the spokesmen of nihilism. In Fathers and Children, Turgenev, though half unwittingly, hit the mark. The children demanded an account from their fathers; the children wished to learn from their fathers what they themselves were to do; the children drew the logical conclusions from the parental premisses. So accurate, so logical, often enough were these deductions, that the parents were apt to become alarmed. Herzen, with sacrilegious hand, overturn the altars of the old gods, and Pisarev thereupon asks him "Are not all things now lawful?"
The Russian "children" of the sixties attempted to upbuild a new and complete philosophy of life upon the foundations that had been laid by their fathers in the forties; in all seriousness these "children" wished to become new men, desired to begin the new life. Such was the sense in which Dostoevskii conceived nihilism, looking upon it as the leading problem of the day, returning again and again to its criticism, and attempting to refute it. Following Dostoevskii's example, ​Nietzsche formulated the problem, and in this spirit the problem of nihilism is to-day being reconsidered with renewed zeal by many thinkers.
Since the sixties, nihilism has been the question of questions for thoughtful Russians—and for thoughtful Europeans.
IV
§ 111.
THE great hopes which, after the Crimean catastrophe, had been founded upon the liberation of the peasantry and upon administrative reforms, were speedily dashed, and a revolutionary movement ensued, culminating in the assassination of Alexander II. The outward history of this movement is known; partial freedom stimulated aspirations for complete freedom. We have now to consider the views which found expression in and through this movement, to discuss the program disseminated by secret presses and unlawful secret societies, both in Russia and elsewhere.
i. In 1862 was established in St. Petersburg the first secret society, known as Zemlja i Volja (Land and Freedom). It maintained relationships with the Polish revolutionaries, and through the instrumentality of Bakunin was likewise in correspondence with Herzen, though the last-named mistrusted it.
The program of the Central Committee of the Russian People maintained the duty and the right of revolution as a means of defence against the oppression and cruelty of absolutism; it sharply counterposed the interests of the the cooperation of those whom no danger could affright. The ultimate aim of the revolution was stated to be the summoning of a national assembly which was freely to decide a social organisation of Russia; the activity of the society would terminate when freedom of election to the national assembly had been secured.
Another secret society, to which reference has already been made, was Velikorus' (Great Russia). Černyševskii was said to have participated in the work of both these societies (§ 103).
The secret organisation of the radical revolutionary elements began at various places and assumed many different forms. ​A secret society came into existence in Moscow, and towards the close of 1865 was consolidated under the name of Organisation. In this society, two trends were manifest, one comparatively moderate, which aimed merely at the diffusion of a socialist program, and the other more radical, desiring to bring about the revolution by direct action and if needs must by tsaricide. Karakozov, who belonged to this left wing, made the first attempt upon Alexander's life on April 17, 1866, Karakozov and his associates were adherents of Černyševskii, but the attempt was made by Karakozov upon his own initiative and in opposition to the wishes of the society.
Agitation was carried into wider circles by the proclamations issued from the newly established secret printing presses, The aim of these proclamations was not so much to formulate a program as to function as instruments of political propaganda and to promote a political awakening. Such proclamations were sometimes issued by authors and publicists of note, were ascribed to these, rightly or wrongly. They were addressed either to the community at large or to particular strata of society, to cultured persons and to students, to soldiers, to peasants, to operatives.
As early as 1854, proclamations were issued (by Engelssohn); but not until the radical movement of the sixties was in full swing did they become an effective means for political propaganda.
Much attention was attracted by the before-mentioned proclamation Young Russia (May, 1862), which contained threats of a bloody and pitiless revolution; Russia was to be transformed into a republican and federative state; there were to be national and local parliaments, a judiciary appointed by popular election, just taxes, "social" factories and shops, "social" education of children, emancipation of women, abolition of marriage and the family, abolition of monasteries, provision for invalids and the elderly, increased pay for soldiers, etc. Should the tsar and his-party, as was to be anticipated, turn upon Young Russia, then: "Inspired with full confidence in ourselves, in our energies, in popular sympathy, in the splendid future of Russia, predestined to be the first of all countries to realise socialism, we shall sound the clarion call, 'Seize your axes.' Then we shall strike down the members of the tsarist party, shall strike them unpityingly as they have unpityingly struck us, shall hew them down in the squares ​should the rout venture forth into the open, hew them down in their dwellings, in the narrow alleys of the towns, in the wide streets of the capitals, in the villages and the hamlets. When that day dawns, he that is not for us will be against us, will be our enemy, and our enemies must be destroyed root and branch. But with each new victory and in the hour of struggle, never forget to repeat, 'Long live the social and democratic Russian republic!'"
The proclamation purported to be issued by the "Revolutionary Central Committee."
The excitement aroused by this bold document was intense. The liberals, no less than the authorities, were outraged beyond measure, for the liberals were stigmatised as henchmen of the tsar. Even Bakunin was ill pleased, for he considered that those who had issued the proclamation failed to understand the situation, that they had no definite goal, and that they lacked revolutionary discipline. Herzen, who was attacked by name in the proclamation, criticised it, but did not take it too seriously, saying that it was an ebullition of youthful radicalism, that its authors had wished to instruct politicians and officials more far-seeing than themselves. The proclamation, he said, was unrussian; it was a mixtum compositum of undigested Schiller (Robber Moor), Gracchus Babeuf, and Feuerbach.
The proclamation is an interesting testimony to the nature of the epoch. We see that the younger radical generation of the sixties is socialistically inclined, that liberalism and its constitutionalist formulas have been found inadequate; that society is to be rebuilt from its foundations on a socialist plan.
According to the philosophy of history of the writers of the proclamation, society consisted of two classes, the members of the tsarist party and the non-possessing revolutionaries, for the existing order was based solely upon private property; the tsar was merely the man standing on the highest rung of the ladder, whose lower rungs were occupied by landowners merchants, and officials—all alike capitalists. Private property was to be abolished; above all, the land was to belong to the whole people, and therefore the mir with its provisional subdivision of the land was accepted; but such property as had been hitherto held privately was to be held only on terms of usufruct, and after the usufructuary's death was to accrue to the mir. Since every individual must belong to a village ​community, the social and democratic Russian republic would take the form of a federative union of the village communities.
Federation was to be free, and therefore the "brother" Poles and Lithuanians could form independent states should they be unwilling to enter the Russian federation.
Herzen was wrong in describing the proclamation as unrussian. Not merely may we consider Sten'ka Razin and Pugačev to have been its forerunners, but it likewise embodies the ideas of Pestel, from whom the authors learned, as well as from Černyševskii and Bakunin.
The influence of the French socialists is likewise discernible, and perhaps also that of Marx.
The proclamation is unquestionably obscure in point of political outlook, as regards ways and means; this becomes obvious in its appeal to the people, to the "millions" of the old believers, to the army and its officers, to the Poles and the peasants, and above all to young men ("our main hope").
Analogous in its outlook was the proclamation To the Younger Generation, which has hitherto been ascribed to Mihailov, who was sentenced on this account and sent to Siberia. In actual fact the proclamation was written by Šelgunov.
The proclamation represents the younger members "of all classes" as successors of the decabrists, animadverts against the pitiful economists "of the German text books" and against narrow-minded individualism, and repudiates the attempt to make an England out of Russia. In support of Herzen's and Černyševskii's doctrine that Russia could skip certain stages of European development, we read: "Who can maintain that we must necessarily walk in the footsteps of Europe, in the footsteps of a Saxony, an England, or a France? The Gneists, Bastiats, Mohls, Raus, and Roschers, serve up to us masses of excrement, desiring to make the refuse of dead centuries into laws for the future. Such laws may do for them, but we shall find another law for ourselves. It is not merely that we can find something new, but it is essential that we do so. Our life is guided by principles utterly unknown to Europeans." Quite after the manner of Čaadaev and Herzen, the Russians ​are described as backward in their development, but are said to be competent for this very reason to undergo a different evolution, non-economic and peculiar to themselves. "Therein lies our salvation," that we are backward in our development. The Russian bourgeoisie, manufactured by Catherine II, is to be swept away, for the bourgeois are nothing but peasants, only peasants without land.
In addition to these proclamations, addresses to the tsar and to the general public were circulated. Such addresses were sometimes issued by radicals, but still more by liberals and especially by some of the liberal zemstvos. For example, the Tver zemstvo issued a document of this character in 1862. Secretly printed addresses were likewise circulated for propaganda purposes. As far as political demands are concerned, these writings ask for nothing more than constitutionalist reforms.
ii. Bakunin is of leading importance in connection with the further development of the revolutionary movement. It is therefore necessary to consider a Bakuninist program, and we will choose for this purpose the program of the year 1868, as formulated in the "Narodnoe Dělo" (The People's Cause) Bakunin's Genevese organ. Herein the liberation of the mind is proclaimed as the basis of social and political freedom; the belief in God and immortality and in "idealism of any kind" is proscribed, the spread of atheism and materialism being announted as definite party aims; religion is said to produce slaves, to paralyse the energies, and to prevent the realisation of natural rights and true happiness.
The economic condition of the people is affirmed to be the "corner stone," and this economic condition is said "to explain political existence"—thus runs a somewhat obscure formulation of economic materialism. In essence the state is based upon conquest, upon the right of inheritance, upon the patria potestas of the husband and father, and upon the religious consecration of all these principles. The necessary outcome of the existence of such a state is the slavery of the working majority and the dominion of the exploiting minority, of the so-called cultured class. For the abolition of these ​privileges it is necessary to do away with the inheritance of property, to secure equal rights for women, this involving the abolition of the patria potestas and of marriage; to maintain children until they reach full age, and to secure for them at the hands of a free society an education which shall make them equally competent for "muscular" and "nervous" work.
In ultimate analysis the basis of economic organisation must rest on the two principles, that the land is the property of those who till it, the property of the village communities, and that capital and all the instruments of production belong to the workers, are the property of workers' associations. The entire political organism is to be a free federation of agricultural and manufacturing associations (artels); the state is to be destroyed. The separate peoples in Russia may, should they so desire, unite to form a free federation, becoming members "of the Russian folk," and this will affiliate with the equall free societies of Europe and the entire world.
iii. Important for the further development of secret revolutionary propaganda was the Society of the People's Assize, a secret society founded by Nečaev in 1869. Nečaev, Bakunin's disciple, secured widespread notoriety through his Catechism of Revolution. This work was an introduction to conspiracy and to propaganda by deed, and presupposes the acceptance of Bakunin's program.
In the Catechism the arts of the secret conspirator are urged with consummate Jesuitry, this word Jesuitry being understood in its most evil connotation as political Machiavellianism. The members of the secret society have to obey their leader absolutely, and for the most part remain unknown one to another; the revolutionary conspirator must be a blind instrument, must abandon all personal interests and sentiments, must break every family tie and must give up even his name, to devote his whole individuality to the life and death struggle; the genuine revolutionist abandons all romanticism, even hatred and personal feelings of revenge being subordinated to ​the revolutionary idea. The secret conspirator may and must do anything needful for the cause; he may lie if lying will promote the working of the revolutionary forces; he must enter into suitable relationships with prostitutes, with the police, with "the so-called criminals," etc. The members of society, against which Nečaev is campaigning, are divided by him into six categories. The first of these consists of individuals whom the revolutionaries have sentenced to death, and who must be removed forthwith, whereas the most evil of creatures may be left alive if his misdeeds promote the growth of revolutionary energy. The second class consists of persons whose lives may provisionally be spared. In the third category are "highly placed beasts," wealthy individuals who are personally of no importance, but who can be exploited for the benefit of the revolution. In the fourth class are aspiring officials and liberals of various grades. With these the revolutionary remains ostensibly on friendly terms that he may learn their secrets, may compromise them, may make it impossible for them to draw back, and may compel them to serve the revolution. Fifthly come the doctrinaires, those who are conspirators and revolutionaries in word merely, and similar chatterers; these must be urged to deeds and converted into genuine revolutionaries. Women constitute the sixth category, the most important of all, and these are divided into three sub-classes: (a) those of no account must be exploited like the men in categories three and four; (b) the enthusiasts among them, who however are not yet fully won over to the cause, must be treated like the men of the fifth category; (c) the adepts, the genuinely revolutionary women "must be regarded as the greatest of our treasures, without which we could do nothing."
The real aim of the secret society is to secure perfect freedom and complete happiness for the workers. But since this freedom and this happiness can be secured in no other way than by an all-destroying revolution carried out by the people as a whole, the guiding purpose of the secret society must be to increase the existing evils in order that the people may lose patience and may be stimulated to a mass rising.
In 1869 and 1870 Nečaev published a periodical in Geneva. It was entitled "Narodnaja Rasprava" (The People's Assize), and no more than two numbers appeared. Herein was preached absolute negation and pandestruction. The formulation of ​plans for the future was condemned, and condemned too therefore was all exclusively theoretical rational activity. The only knowledge to be tolerated was that which directly promoted practice, the practice of "radical and universal pandestruction." As for reconstruction, "to upbuild is not our work, but that of those who will come after us." The immediate concrete aim was "to sweep away the tsar with all his family." If, none the less, Alexander II was still permitted to live, this was merely because his proceedings were stimulating the revolutionary movement among the people. Nečaev was willing to leave his condemnation and punishment to the people's assize; the Russian folk was entitled to inflict a death sentence on the man who had deceived them with his lying reforms.
During 1869, Nečaev organised among the Moscow students a secret society which, under his leadership was speedily to shed blood. An alleged traitor, a student named Ivanov, was sentenced and murdered, the Bakuninist revolution having thus an ominous beginning with the assassination of one of its own adherents. Nečaev had an additional reason for this blood-letting in that he desired to intimidate his own followers, to knit them more closely together, and to promote the spread of the idea of pandestruction by the excitement which the murder would cause.
Bakunin condemned Nečaev in strong terms—though not until after Nečaev's "deed." In 1870 Bakunin spoke of Nečaev as a traitor, and in 1872 censured his Machiavellianism and Jesuitism. It is difficult to decide to what extent Nettlau is right in maintaining that Nečaev had fooled Bakunin and Ogarev. It was certainly characteristic of Bakunin that his plans for world-wide destruction laid him open to be befooled by such as Nečaev. From the very first Herzen distrusted Nečaev. In 1872 Nečaev was extradited from Switzerland as a common criminal, and in Russia was condemned to twenty years in a penitentiary, but was confined in the fortress of St. Peter and St. Paul where he died in 1882. Even had this not been his fate, he would have been unable to maintain his position in the revolutionary world. As Kropotkin shows in his Memoirs, Nečaev's program was promptly repudiated by Čaikovskii's adherents. Moreover, in Lavrov's program Nečaev's position is denounced. Above all, the later members of the Narodnaja Volja disapproved of Nečaev's methods. ​Further, the anarchist followers of Nečaev and Bakunin, Čerkezov, for instance, the opponent of Marxism, did not accept this aspect of Nečaev's anarchism. Kropotkin does not reject the idea of armed revolution, but he is opposed to all deception, whether practised against friend or enemy.
Not until much later, when the younger generation had forgotten the facts established by Herzen against Nečaev in 1871, were certain attempts made to idealise him.
Once only was the method of Nečaev practically applied, this being in the peasant revolt of 1877 in the Chigirin district. Here a false "secret charter issued by supreme authority" was dangled before the eyes of the peasants.
iv. Of a very different character was the program of those organisations which made it their business to promote the revolutionary culture of the masses as a precondition of the definitive revolution. I may refer for example to the program of the Čaikovcy who were organised in the year 1871.
For the Čaikovcy, the social revolution was the terminal aim of all revolutionary organisation, and the greatest possible number of peasants and operatives must be won over to the cause. Adherents among the operatives, returning to their native villages, would promote the spread of revolutionary ideas among the peasants. Local disturbances, such as were advocated by Bakuninist groups, were not approved, for it was held that these casual risings diverted people's attention from the terminal aim, the definitive revolution. But no objection was raised to local disturbances and local acts of resistance to government when these originated spontaneously.
The Čaikovcy sympathised with the workers' international of Bakuninist trend, and sympathised with the Russian refugees, to whom they attributed an independent and peculiar influence upon the Russian folk.
v. The program of the Lavrovists, the adherents of Lavrov, has important bearings upon revolutionary developments during the seventies. It will be found in the periodical "Vpered" (Forward) which was published in Zurich and in London in several different forms during the years 1873 to 1878.
The Lavrovist program recognises the existence of two ​universal tasks, two struggles, in which every thoughtful man must participate; the struggle of the "realist" outlook against the theological and the metaphysical, the struggle of science against religion; and the struggle of labour against the idle enjoyment of the good things of life, the struggle to secure complete equality for individualities, the struggle against monopoly in all its forms. The former struggle, we are told, is nearly finished, and as far as Russia is concerned has no notable significance(!). But for the latter, the principal struggle, we must now prepare the ground and provide a realist foundation. By a realist foundation, Lavrov means positive or scientific socialism.
Lavrov opposes the conservatives and the pseudo-liberals, but likewise opposes Nečaev and Bakunin, energetically rejecting falsehood as a weapon for use in the campaign to secure juster social institutions. Falsehood must be overcome, just as must all the instruments and methods of the old injustice; the new order cannot be founded upon exploitation, nor upon the dictatorial dominion of the few, nor upon the forcible appropriation of unearned wealth. Against an enemy (Lavrov emphasises the word) it may doubtless be permissible to make use of falsehood in moments of extreme and temporary need, but the employment of such methods among equals and among persons of like views is a crime. In answer to Bakunin and Nečaev, he points out that even those who say that the end justifies the means will always add, with the exception of those means whose use will per se prevent the attainment of the end.
Lavrov declared that the social question was the first and the most important of all questions. He expressly subordinated the political problem to the social and above all to the economic problem, and he insisted that in view of the importance of the social struggle we should put all thought of nationality out of our minds. Accepting Marx's theory of the class struggle, Lavrov's primary demand was, therefore, for the organisation of the "entire" working class movement, and he was here thinking of the Russian peasants as well as of the factory operatives. An all-embracing organisation was essential because isolated struggles were irrational and purposeless in view of the powerful organisation of the enemy.
Lavrov was convinced that the terminal aim would not be achieved at one step; there would be intermediate stages. ​He therefore held very strongly that during the progress of the struggle we should never cease to pursue the possible, and to choose suitable means for the attainment of the goal.
Political programs and parties of a constitutionalist and liberal character were regarded as inadequate. Just as little as Herzen, would Lavrov accept the bourgeois republic in place of the bourgeois monarchy, for the whole principle of the bourgeoisie was faulty. It was no doubt essential to make the best possible use of liberal institutions in so far as these could be made to subserve socialist aims (Lavrov was thinking of freedom of conscience, the right of free combination, and the like); but the socialist ought not to think of making common cause with the liberal, though perhaps here and there the two might occupy common ground.
In respect of nationality, according to Lavrov's program human beings only were to be recognised, and the common aims of mankind; all the nations, therefore, were to unite for joint work, regardless of linguistic traditions. Rivalry between the Russians and the members of other nationalities was unsocialist.
In Russia, the peasants constitute a preponderant majority of the population, and consequently work for the peasant masses was the special mission of the Russian socialist. The Russian folk must not merely be the aim of the social revolution, but its instrument as well. It is the work of the Russian revolutionary, the intellectual, to expound the socialist aim to the people; he must not desire to exercise authority over folk, for his only role is to carry into effect the universal social aspirations. It is the task of the intellectual to instil into the folk confidence in itself, conceived as an individuality, to enlighten the people concerning its own aims and activities; his work is to pave the way for the coming of Russia's better future. "Only when the course of historical events indicates that the moment of revolution is at hand and that the Russian folk is prepared for it, are we justified in appealing to the folk to realise the great transformation." Revolutions cannot be artificially evoked, for they are the issue of a long series of complicated historical processes, and are not the result of individual wills. Nevertheless, every attempt at a popular revolution, even should it prove unsuccessful, is a means of social education. "But whether a particular revolution be useful or injurious, history leads up to revolutions with in​evitable fatalism." Lavrov declares in conclusion that for Russia, too, the revolutionary path is "the most probable."
For Lavrov, likewise, the mir seems the social and economic foundation upon which the socialistic transformation of society as a whole can be based. But it is necessary that, as a preliminary, the peasants shall receive enlightenment, for otherwise, even should the revolution prove successful, they would be exploited by the minority.
Marx and Comte versus Bakunin, such is the gist of this revolutionary program. In view of the lust of battle which animates the young Bakuninist revolutionaries, Lavrov voices the exhortation, "Look before you leap!" As against the secret society men (buntari), Lavrov emphasises the advantages of propaganda, and the opponents of the Lavrovists therefore spoke of them contemptuously as "progressives."
vi. "Nabat" (The Alarm Bell), a periodical published in Geneva, and edited by Tkačev, was the organ of Lavrov's adversaries. Tkačev was a Blanquist who took part in the opening political demonstrations of the early sixties, and was sentenced in the Načaev trial. His aim was to continue and outbid the radicalism of Bakunin and Nečaev, so that for him not Lavrov merely but even Bakunin were "bourgeois pseudo-revolutionaries" in the sense of Nečaev's Catechism, Tkačev denominated his system, jacobinism. The immediate aim of the revolution is to seize political power, but this seizure of power is not itself the revolution, to which it is no more than a preliminary. The revolution will first be realised by revolutionary state, which will attain to the negative and positive aims of the revolution.
The revolutionary state will strengthen itself by summoning a national assembly (narodnaja duma), and will conduct revolutionary propaganda, will, that is to say, guide education in accordance with the principles of the new order. Whereas Lavrov laid the principal stress upon the education of the people for the revolution, and made the revolution dependent upon such education, Tkačev taught that the forcible overthrow of the old order would precede the revolutionary propaganda.
In matters of detail Tkačev recapitulates Bakunin's ideals. The existing mir with private ownership will be transformed into a completely communistic local community; all private tools and machinery for production will be expropriated; ​and the exchange of products will be effected directly, to the exclusion of all intermediaries. Physical, mental, and moral equality will be abolished by degrees; all will be educated alike, in the spirit of love, equality, and fraternity; the existing family, with its subordination of woman and its indulgence of man's egoism and arbitrariness, will be abolished. The centralised state will gradually be replaced by the self-government of the communes.
Since the immediate aim of the revolutionaries is the seizure of political power, they must organise themselves in a "state conspiracy." By this Tkačev means something essentially similar to the Lavrovist "mass organisation." He expressly condemns isolated revolutionary outbreaks on the part of small circles, but he demands like Bakunin a rigid hierarchical subordination to the "general leadership," for this alone "can bring definiteness of aim and can secure unity in the activity of all the members." For to Tkačev the immediate and sole program of revolutionary activity is "organisation as a means for the disorganisation and annihilation of the power of the existing state."
Tkačev remained editor of "Nabat" till 1877, and the paper was continued under other editors until 1881. It was disavowed by the Narodnaja Volja as Nečaev had been disavowed, for the blood-curdling glorifications of terrorist deeds were too compromising.
The influence of "Nabat" in Russia does not seem to have been great, but Tkačev, writing under pseudonyms, used his views also in authorised radical periodicals. Though he had to choose his words carefully, in view of the censorship, he was, like other radical writers, perfectly well understood. Tkačev had an effective style as publicist and as literary and historical critic, and his writings exercised a revolutionary influence upon the young.
​vii. In the year 1877, a new Zemlja i Volja came into existence. The organs of this association advocated peaceful revolutionary propaganda. The agrarian problem was represented as the supreme social problem for Russia. The factory problem could be "left in the shade," since it did not really exist for Russia, but was the social problem of the west. In Russia, the supreme demands had always been for land and freedom. Land must be the property of those who tilled it, and must therefore be taken away from the landlords. For the Cossacks, liberty signified free self-governing communes, in which those elected to carry out the popular will were subject to recall. Quite similar were the views of the secret society Zemlja i Volja, as the successor of the revolutionary socialists Pugačev and Razin, men of the people. No attempt was made to formulate a more specific program; the future could take care of itself; for the time being it was necessary to realise "the revolution of the folk," that is to say to revolutionise the masses of the people, in order to render possible the socialistic organisation of the Russian nation.
The organisation of the society was directed towards the attainment of this aim. Its leadership was centralised, but not in accordance with the prescriptions of Bakunin and Tkačev. Where important questions had to be decided, the officers took a vote of the council, and in matters of supreme importance a ballot was taken of all the members. The council consisted of the members residing in St. Petersburg, which was the centre. The league was subdivided into four groups: intellectuals (for propaganda and for the organisation of university students); operatives; the village group (which contained the largest number of members); and the disorganisation group. The last-named was the most important, for it had life and death powers over the members. Its duties were to help imprisoned comrades, to set them at liberty whenever possible, and to protect them against the violence of the administration; from time to time these duties brought the society into open conflict with the government, although such conflict was not a regular part of its program. As a precaution against treachery, traitors might be killed in case of need. The disorganisation group kept the details of its plans and doings strictly secret, communicating them to the council in general outline merely.
In addition to the four groups there existed certain sections ​for special tasks, the most important of these being the "heavenly chancellery" of the central executive, whose business it was to provide passports, etc.
viii. The aim of the Zemlja i Volja was peaceful revolution, but nevertheless the heralds of this peaceful revolution advanced to terrorist methods, the white terror evoking the red. In July 1877, corporal punishment was administered in prison to Bogoljubov, a revolutionary, and the authorities committed a number of revengeful actions. In consequence of these, Trepov was shot by Věra Zasulič (1878), Mezencev was stabbed by Stepniak, and various other terrorist acts were committed or attempted.
In June 1879, there was organised a declared terrorist party, Narodnaja Volja (People's Will) replacing the Zemlja i Volja. The purpose of the new party was to terrorise the government and the reactionary elements of society.
The party declared itself socialistic in the sense of the narodniki. Only the people's will had the right to sanction social forms; every idea which was to be realised politically and socially must "first of all traverse the consciousness and the will of the people." To this people's will, which strongly reminds us of Rousseau, the capitalist state was counterposed as oppressor. In accordance with the principles of pcople's weal and people's will, the Narodnaja Volja desired to restore power to the people by political revolution, and a legislative assembly would then undertake the reorganisation of society. The leading socialistic principles, notwithstanding their infringement by the arbitrary proceedings of the monarchy, had remained alive in Russia. These principles were, the consciousness of the people that it was justly entitled to the land, communal and local self-government, the rudiments of federal organisation, freedom of speech and conscience.
The political program of the Narodnaja Volja comprised the following items: continuous national representation; local self-government; independence of the mir as an economic and administrative unit; ownership of land by the folk; all factories and similar industrial enterprises to be in the hands of the operatives; absolute freedom of conscience, speech, press, assembly, combination, and electoral agitation; universal suffrage; replacement of standing armies by a militia.
More important than the program, were the organisation and the work of the Narodnaja Volja. The leadership of ​the party was vested in the executive committee. The work was subdivided into the popular diffusion of the idea of a democratic revolution, and into agitation which was to give expression to the dissatisfaction of the folk and of society with the existing order. Terrorist activities were to take the form of the removal of the most noxious individualities in the government. The killing of spies was another terrorist duty.
With this end in view, small secret societies were to be organised everywhere, these being affiliated to and directed by the central executive committee. Members of the party were to endeavour to secure influential positions and ties in the administration, in the army, in society, and among the people.
Aware of the fact that a secret organisation whose members comprised no more than an infinitesimal minority could not properly express and sustain the people's will, the energy of the party was concentrated upon preliminary labours, upon the preparations for a rising. "If, contrary to our expectations, this rising should prove needless, our collected forces can then be applied to the work of peace."
These general principles were incorporated in a number of specialised programs, which prescribed the work to be done among the urban operatives, in the army, in the intelligentsia, and among young people. Moreover, the party had to attempt to arouse European sympathy for its aims, and this, it was considered, could best be effected by suitable literary activities.
The Narodnaja Volja conducted all the terroristic attemps and enterprises, and was before all responsible for attempts made upon the life of the tsar. Three such attempts had been undertaken before the society was organised, whilst the Narodnaja Volja was responsible for four. Despite its declared terrorist aim, "to break the charm of the administrative power" by the assassination of the most noxious members of the administration and the government, the Narodnaja Volja condemned the blind campaign of destruction advocated by Bakunin and Nečaev, Nečaev's methods being rejected as charlatanry. After March 13, 1881 (the assassination of Alexander II), the terrorist activity of the society came to an end. In the general belief this change of tactics was brought about by the alienation of public sympathy from the Narodnaja Volja, but according to Stepniak this was not the determinin cause of the change. The Narodnaja Volja, he declares, dis​continued individual outrages because it had decided to devote itself exclusively to the preliminary work of revolutionising he masses.
It continued to exist, but seldom played any public part. (After Turgenev's death in 1883, the Narodnaja Volja issued a proclamation, and there were a few other manifestations of activity. During the revolutionary movement of 1905, it was reorganised as the Social Revolutionary Party.)
ix. Besides the terrorist Narodnaja Volja, there issued in 1879 from the Zemlja i Volja the party of the Černyi Pereděl (Black Redistribution, that is to say, redistribution or re-allotment of the black earth—see vol. I, p. 154). The aim of this party was to promote an agitation among the operatives and peasants. Plehanov, who was its leader in the theoretical field, strongly condemned the methods of the Narodnaja Volja.
The Černyi Peredél likewise declared itself representative of the narodničestvo, of the revolutionary section of that movement, seeing that its members considered that the solution of the agrarian problem was the very essence of the social question, and being guided in this view by the same reasons as those which influenced the narodovolcy. Socialism was declared to be the last word in sociology, and collectivism was considered to be the goal of the "radical reformer." This radicalism must be "economic" radicalism, meaning that the radical reformer must strive to the utmost to secure the betterment of economic conditions, since these constitute the real basis of all other social and political conditions (historical materialism). In 1879, Plehanov believed that collectivism could develop in Russia out of the mir and the artel, especially since capitalism was preparing agriculture, too, and landownership for socialisation—for in Russia as in Europe capitalism paved the way for socialism. Plehanov and his associates in the Černyi Pereděl believed that capitalism in Russia would concentrate landed proprietorship, and would therefore prepare conditions for the "black redistribution" essential to the mužik.
The Černyi Pereděl was likewise revolutionary, but its view of its mission differed from that of the narodovolcy. The members of the Černyi Pereděl considered that political revolutions had never secured economic freedom for the people, nor had even afforded anywhere guarantees for political freedom. Constitutions were exploited by the bourgeoisie against ​the monarch and against the working masses, and the same thing would happen in Russia. It was a matter of no importance whatever whether Alexander II or Alexander III did or did not serve out these "social cates" (the constitution); the bourgeoisie would eat them whilst the revolutionaries looked on. Doubtless the intelligentsia and also the folk desired political freedom; but for the mužik freedom was intimately connected with economic conditions, and it was to such conditions that the mužik must look in the first instance. The business of a genuinely practical revolutionary party in Russia was to awaken men intellectually and to prepare the means for the struggle. Such, at any rate, was the work of peaceful days; when the revolution came, the party would have to regulate the movement and to determine its trend. The special function of the intelligentsia was initiatory merely, the folk would do the rest for itself and would create its own leaders. But the function of the intelligentsia did not consist in the mere handing on of culture in accordance with legally authorised methods; an energetic revolutionary secret agitation must be promoted.
In 1881, the Černyi Pereděl was forced for a time to suspend its journalistic activities, but in 1883 the party was reorganised as the Group for the Liberation of Labour, and developed henceforward along Marxist lines, in continuous and close connection with the Marxist and socialist movements in other lands and above all in Germany. In 1883, and in fuller detail in 1884, Plehanov defined the attitude of his party towards other parties and trends, condemning from the Marxist outlook the socialism of Herzen and Černyševskii, the anarchism of Bakunin, and the Blanquism of Tkačev. We shall have more to say about this matter when we come to discuss the history of Marxism.
§ 112.
When we survey these programs which appeared during the space of two decades, we recognise that political radicalism has taken the form of socialism. All the programs preach socialism, those of earlier date chiefly in the French sense, whilst the later ones are formulated more along the lines of Marx and Lassalle. To speak of Russian socialists, the ideas of Pestel, Herzen, Bakunin, Černyševskii, and Lavrov, are prominent. The leader of the Marxists was Plehanov.
​The socialism is, as Herzen put it, "Russian socialism." That is to say, it is agrarian socialism, for the peasantry represents and is the mass of the Russian people. Everyone of the programs pays its homage to the narodničesivo, this statement being no less true of the early Marxists than of the adherents of Černyševskii, Bakunin, and Lavrov.
The radical narodniki believed in the peculiar social institutions and the peculiar mission of Russia, according general recognition to the independent evolution of Russia, and contrasting that evolution favourably with the development of Europe.
It was necessary to win over the folk to the cause of its own liberation, to win over the mužik, and thus originated the movement "towards the people," some going towards the people as teachers, others as agitators, the respective aims being to educate and to revolutionise the folk. The revolutionary enthusiasts soon learned by experience that they were officers and generals without an army; they perceived that the masses of the folk were incompetent for action and that no more than small peasant circles, like the small circles of operatives, could be induced to make up their minds for the revolution. Very rarely could a local rising be expected to achieve success, and it was not possible to reckon with certainty upon anything more than the willingness of isolated individuals to sacrifice themselves. More and more did it become evident that a widespread popular rising such as that of which Bakunin had dreamed, must remain in the land of dreams.
The movement "towards the people" was of brief duration. It began in 1872, became considerably more extensive in 1873, but was already checked in the following year, the government having imprisoned or banished hundreds and even thousands of those engaged in it (trying them in great batches, as in "the trial of the one hundred and ninety-three"). Those who had no worse fate were placed under police supervision, and all suffered socially.
Simultaneously the radicals began to grasp the nature of the contrast between country and town, between peasant and operative, and to apprehend the revolutionary significance of this contrast; in the programs of the later seventies we find that the urban proletariat is already declared to be the incorporation of revolutionary ideas and revolutionary ​energy. The most emphatic and effective revolutionary propaganda was carried on in the towns and above all in the capital; this, too, was a necessary outcome of the revolutionary aim, which was to abolish the monarchy, to get rid of the dynasty, and to do away with the highest organs of the government.
In proportion as the urban proletariat became recognised as a distinct class, did the Marxist ideas of the class struggle and of economic determinism secure general recognition.
From this point of view, we recognise that terrorism was a guerilla warfare of intelligentsia versus absolutism. The struggle has been frequently represented as nothing more than a students' movement, but the view is erroneous. Apart from the consideration that the total number of students was at this time inconsiderable, among students revolutionists were certainly in the minority. Students of both sexes participated in propaganda by deed and functioned also as teachers and agitators; but by the end of the seventies the majority of terrorists were members of the working class, and even in the leadership of the movement these latter competed with the intellectuals.
Precise statistics of the terrorist movement are still lacking, and we do not even know how many revolutionary groups existed. In a retently published history of the Narodnaja Volja it is asserted that the members were few in number and that the executive committee was quite a small body. This may be true, but it does not lessen the significance of the radical and terrorist movement. The government and the police considered the Narodnaja Volja the chief enemy, and fought the organisation with all the means at their disposal. There can be no doubt that the terrorist revolution was rendered possible solely by the understanding, sympathy, and support it secured among wide liberal strata of the urban population and the intelligentsia, and even among the bureaucracy.
In Russia at that epoch there were few indications of a spontaneous folk-movement in the social direction. The most distinctive manifestation of a social movement occurred in the year 1881, after the death of Alexander II, in the form of the vigorous antisemitic movement which took place in the south and in the west. At any rate, by adherents both of the Narodnaja Volja and of the Černyi Pereděl, the pogroms were regarded as the beginnings of a movement which, while ​directed at first against the Jews, would subsequently develop into an attack upon the master class as a whole. Antisemitic articles were published in the organs of both these revolutionary associations. The Narodnaja Volja went so far as to prepare an antisemitic manifesto in the Little Russian tongue addressed "To the Ukrainian People," but it was never circulated. This took place in August 1881, and it must be remembered that after the assassination of the tsar on March 13th the party was in a state of incipient dissolution.
Terrorism and its revolutionary practice gave expression to the vigorous individualism characteristic of literature and of all liberal aspirations. I do not mean to imply that socialism and individualism are mutually exclusive, but I wish to emphasise the fact that these radical and revolutionary programs were not the issue of clear concepts concerning the revolution.
Their aim was the definitive social transformation, the social revolution, the inauguration of the new society and of the new man. We learn from the programs that the revolutionists were themselves doubtful whether terrorism, above all in the form of individual outrage, was the true tactic of the social revolution. The evolution of radicalism and terrorism shows, to put the matter in concrete terms, the way in which Marx was continually gaining wider influence as compared with Bakunin. The definitive social revolution was distinguished from preparatory revolutions, and still more from isolated terrorist outrages. Outrages, local disturbances, revolts, and revolutions, were appraised from the utilitarian utlook, their value as means to an end was estimated by the utilitarian calculus. Nihilist utilitarianism took a critical attitude towards Bakunin's revolutionism.
In this connection, the fact is distinctive and one to be stressed very clearly that the more Marxist members of the Zemlja i Volja, those who conceived the social revolution as a mass revolution, were beginning to part company with the terrorists even before the assassination of Alexander II and the ensuing reaction.
It is true that the ideas and programs of the respective sections had not yet been fully clarified. In all the programs we can discern uncertainty and vacillation in the delimitation frontiers between the social and political spheres. Between Lavrovists and the Bakuninists, for example, there were ​many disputes concerning the differences between propaganda and agitation, but since in practice both the opposing groups adopted the same methods, the distinction between Lavrovist propaganda and Bakuninist agitation was fluid.
Its socialist program notwithstanding, terrorist radicalism, in virtue of its whole practice and in view of the character of its secret organisation, was political rather than socialist. The goal of the movement was the abolition of absolutism, and when practical questions concerning political and social institutions came under consideration, the views of the radical terrorists were, after all, not so remarkably radical. In the letter to Alexander III which the executive committee of the Narodnaja Volja issued after the death of Alexander II, it was conceded as possible that the national assembly would legalise the monarchy; the revolutionists would accept this if the election of the deputies had been effected freely and in due form of law.
§ 113.
IN Europe, and in Russia as well, revolutionary terrorism was from the first identified with nihilism. One who was in the movement and who suffered personally under the white terror, Šiško, who was writer as well as revolutionist, tells us that after Karakozov's attempt, the accused were asked whether they belonged to the sect of nihilists, and that many had to sign a declaration renouncing the errors of nihilism, of the periodical "Sovremennik," and of socialism.
Nihilism was and was not identical with terrorism. Nihilism was the aspiration for new men and the new social order, was the attempt to attain to the philosophy and to the mode of life of these new men and of this new social order; terrorism is merely a means to an end, and may be a means to this end. But not all the terrorists were nihilists in theory or in practice. Kropotkin says with perfect justice that nihilism was far more profound than terrorism.
Philosophically considered, the revolutionary programs are based upon materialistically formulated positivism; we encounter in them the thoughts of Feuerbach, Comte, Mill, Vogt, Büchner, and Moleschott. Marx, too, begins to exercise an influence; so also, through Lavrov's instrumentality, do Kant and Schopenhauer; whilst the teaching of Spencer and the doctrine of evolution (Darwin) play their part. Among ​Russian teachers of revolution, in the sixties, next to Bakunin. Černyševskii was most influential. Enough has been said previously regarding the influence of other Russian thinkers, above all of Herzen.
Atheism and materialism are definite demands in these programs, being counterposed to the Russian theocracy; atheist and materialist teaching is popularised to make it palatable to the common people.
The problem as to the permissibility of revolution, and above all as to the permissibilify of assassination and crime, will subsequently be considered in fuller detail, when we have made acquaintance with the views of the other theorists of revolution. The theorists of terrorism do not treat the question in association with the various philosophical problems formulated by nihilism, but content themselves with asserting the revolutionary jus talionis. A Life for a Life was the title of the pamphlet published by Stepniak shortly after the assassination of Mezencev. This title gives concise expression to the ethical theory of the terrorist revolution, and it is found also in Stepniak's other writings on terrorism, above all in his novel The Career of a Nihilist, which describes the life of the nihilist terrorists.
Stepniak compares the arbitrary use of force by the gendarmerie, the way in which the members of that body cynically oppress on the large scale all who cherish thoughts of freedom, depriving them of life, with a band of robbers, against whom everyone is by natural right entitled to defend himself by force. Faced by the absolute and arbitrary power of the gendarme, the socialist's only resource is to take up arms in his own defence. Mezencev was formally condemned to death by Stepniak's associates, and the sentence was carried into effect. But Stepniak was aware that political slavery was conditioned by economic slavery, not conversely. The bourgeoisie is the real enemy of the socialists; the gendarmes, and the government generally, protect the bourgeoisie and the economic inequality sanctioned by the bourgeois class; only in so far as they do this, are gendarmes and government attacked by the socialists. Stepniak therefore demanded of ​the government that it should abstain from all arbitrary acts and forcible methods, and should concede complete amnesty to political offenders; if this were done, the socialists wold leave the gendarmerie and the government alone; the government could do nothing more for the socialists. The rest was in the hands of the bourgeoisie, and from the bourgeoisie the socialists would seize the rest, taking the very life of the bourgeoisie as well. But this fight is the concern solely of the two opponents, the socialists and the bourgeoisie; if the government does not interfere in the struggle, the socialists will not trouble the government. The socialists are quite indifferent how the rulers arrange with the bourgeoisie for the partition of power. "Grant a constitution or do not grant it, as you please; appeal to the electors or do not appeal; make the landlords, the popes, and the gendarmes, electors if you will—we care for none of these things. Do not infringe our elementary human rights. This is all we ask of you."
Altogether on these lines was the decision of the executive committee of the Narodnaja Volja that the tactics and activities of that body could only be admitted and justified as exceptional measures of defence and in view of the peculiar circumstances of the time. After the attempt on the Winter Palace, the committee issued a proclamation (February 20, 1880) deploring the death of the soldiers who had guarded the palace. When Garfield was shot, the committee condemned the assassination of the president (September 23, 1881). In a country where individual liberty renders it possible to carry on an honourable campaign of ideas, where the free popular will determines the laws and chooses the rulers, in such a country political assassination as a method of warfare is no more than a manifestation of the very despotism against which the Russians are fighting. Individual despotism and party despotism are equally to be condemned, and force can be justified solely when it is directed against force.
It is obvious that Stepniak's ideas concerning the relationship between the state and the economic basis are somewhat crude. Moreover, we may doubt whether the terror had any real revolutionary effect, and we may contest its utility for the very aims advocated by Stepniak. As we learn from the programs, many of the revolutionists harboured doubts of such a character, but men like Stepniak were not accessible to these and similar considerations.
​Stepniak had no profound insight into the ethical and philosophical problem, for he was nothing more than a revolutionary practitioner. In his novel he described the revolutionaries, noting among other things that they were men of atheistic views, but he went no further, he did not discuss the relationships between atheism and terrorism. Yet the philosophical problem of nihilism and terrorism, and in particular the problem of crime, to which we have just had occasion to recur, was far more deeply considered by Bělinskii, Bakunin, and Herzen. These writers had asked themselves what was the connection between nihilist atheism and materialism, on the one hand, and revolution with the associated method of assassination, on the other. Pisarev vindicated for the nihilists the right to kill and to rob; the opponents of nihilism, led by Dostoevskii, endeavoured to prove (above all from the works of Pisarev) that nihilist atheism was the parent of revolution and crime. But a word of caution is here necessary. We have to remember that certain theologians have defended tyrannicide, and we shall have in due course to ponder the problem more deeply.
V
§ 114.
IN the various literary works devoted to nihilism, those of Turgenev, Černyševskii, Dobroljubov, etc., we find many contributions to the psychology of the Russian terrorist. In addition to these imaginative pictures, we have authentic records, and in especial we have autobiographies of noted revolutionists and terrorists of the epoch under consideration. Among these may be mentioned certain writings by Věra Zasulič, the memoirs of Debagorii-Mokrievič, etc. Those who read Russian can study the data furnished by clandestine periodicals, and all the literature of the movement towards freedom. Of especial importance are the works of Stepniak, wherein he described the revolutionary activities of the sixties and seventies. In my Russian library I have a special section for the revolutionists, containing, in addition to clandestine journals, the memoirs, diaries, political treatises and pamphlets, sociological works, short stories, and novels, which were written by men, young for the most part, in fortresses, Siberian prisons, ​or in the foreign lands to which they had fled for refuge. I must confess that it arouses in me a strange emotion to read the poems or the political writings of the decabrists who paid for their bold views on the scaffold (Rylěev, Pestel, etc.); and still more remarkable is the impression aroused by the works of those who were personally engaged in the work of political assassination, or who furnished the leading inspiration to some terrorist outrage involving the deaths of large numbers of persons.
In 1889, Stepniak's novel The Career of a Nihilist was published. In 1878, the author had in the open street stabbed General Mezencev, chief of the secret police, and Stepniak's experiences in the service of the revolutionary secret society formed the topic of the novel, which Georg Brandes and Prince Kropotkin commended to the European public. The work affords considerable insight into the psychology and ethics of the nihilist revolutionary.
From the first, the revolution, whether theoretical or political, had no base of support among the masses, for these or at any rate the peasants, were opposed to it down to a quite recent date. For a long time the Russian revolutionary idea was restricted to a small circle and to isolated individuals so that the revolutionary thinker and the revolutionary propagandist lived a life apart. The revolutionary circle had a world of its own, and formed a state within the state.
Moreover, the revolutionaries were isolated through the inadequate development of means of communication in a country of vast extent, and the movement therefore lacked living continuity, so that in one town after another the work was ever being begun anew by some little circle. Hence the Russian terrorist revolution was episodic and desultory, the work of unknown leaders, many of whom resided in Europe. The movement, it is true, was diffused throughout Russia, but there was no direct communication between the different circles and individualities; the nihilists acted independently, though, being exposed to the same influences, they worked everywhere much in the same manner. There thus came into existence a kind of muted harmony.
The Russian revolution, like Russian revolutionary literature, was at the outset the work of persons of aristocratic birth, and this circumstance influenced its character. For in the first place the aristocrat, though theoretically a socialist ​and man of the people, had a mentality alien from that of the peasant (and in early days the Russian operative was no more than a peasant). Despite its socialistic and democratic program, the revolution was essentially political; it was an aristocratic struggle for freedom waged against tsarist absolutism. The aristocratic revolutionary had an individualist conception of his task; it was to him a point of honour. Not being habituated to daily physical toil, he aspired to distinguish himself by deeds of personal heroism. In a word, he was strongly individualist.
The Russian terrorist was young. In Italy, in Germany, etc., revolution was the work of Young Italy, Young Germany, and so on; but Young Russia was much younger than Young Europe. The papers were full of news items about revolts among schoolboys and girls. Pisarev began authorship at his school desk; Herzen was barely thirteen when he joined with Ogarev in a vow to take vengeance for the executed decabrists.
The youthful terrorist had a fine enthusiasm, but he was green in judgment, he lacked knowledge of men and things, he knew little of political and administrative institutions. For these reasons, his enmity was concentrated upon individuals, and was frequently directed against the tsar alone. Owing to this political anthropomorphism (it might even be termed fetichism), the young terrorists were in social and political matters utopian, unpractical, and negative.
The boyish nihilist, in his inexperience and simplicity, was naïve also in the ethical and political fields; he was frank and straightforward, devoid of understanding for compromise, and with no fears concerning the consequences of his logic. Thus the "children" made their "fathers" very uncomfortable. Ščedrin, who at first condemned the nihilists, subsequently expressed his respect for these "nestlings," discerning in their callowness a great welling up of energy.
Russian women and girls played a prominent part in the terrorist revolution. The wives of the decabrists were renowned for the devotion and tenacity with which they clung to their husbands' ideals. Nihilism and the revolutionary movement secured from women and girls a notable contingent of persons of fearless temperament and indomitable will. We may recall the high estimate placed by Bakunin and Nečaev upon feminine cooperation in the revolution; and the Russian ​government, from the adverse outlook, took a similar view. The poet Polonskii, although he acted as censor, wrote in 1877–1878 an enthusiastic description of a girl propagandist languishing in gaol. Turgenev's prose poem The Threshold is an apotheosis of the woman terrorist Perovskaja.
Girls often consecrated their lives to the revolution when they were still little more than children.
Many writers on the Russian revolution ascribe a religious character to the movement, but it is necessary here to be precise in our use of terms. The revolutionist, especially if still quite young, believed in the revolution as shortly before he had believed in heaven. He delighted in self-sacrifice, and had a certain resemblance to the early Christians with their love of martyrdom. Nolens volens the terrorist shunned self-indulgence; he had no taste for bodily pleasures; despite his theories he was not, could not possibly be, a practical materialist and hedonist. He sacrificed everything to his ideal, even personal inclinations, even love and marriage. There was something of the ascetic about him.
The Russian terrorist was frequently a mystic; he had a mystical faith in the revolution; he had exchanged his religious creed for a philosophical and political creed, for a kind of revolutionary gnosis. Just as the religious mystic immerses himself wholly in the anthropomorphic idea of his god, so did the revolutionary devote himself wholly to the contemplation of the deed to be performed and of the person to be destroyed. The horror of crime, the horror of assassination, had a deliriant influence upon these young minds, made them drunken with death, and in proportion as it did this, it unfitted them for detail work. The Russian revolutionist could die for his idea, but he could not always live for it.
Not infrequently the Russian revolutionist became utterly indifferent to life; he grew accustomed to the dangers, the ​death risks, to which his friends were exposed, and in the end his own death seemed to him nothing more than a means cowards a revolutionary end. He took to heart the saying of Mihailov: "In truth it is no whit easier to die in a room than to die on the battlefield!"
But because of this very indifference, the revolutionary shunned detail work, and when he was forced to undertake it it was because he was attracted to it by the stimulus of danger, not because he desired it as an occupation.
The peculiar technique of revolution made of the revolutionary a specialist who was unfitted for all other work.
This remarkable terrorist occultisms had a powerfully stimulating effect upon the revolutionaries and upon the population at large, for the mysterious, the unforeseen, the inalculable, has ever a strange power.
In his occultism and mysticism, the Russian revolutionary was a zealot, a fanatical autocrat, a revolutionary tsar. Such was Bakunin. Despite his democratic program and his socialistic ideals, the revolutionary, no less than his adversary, was an aristocrat.
In conjunction with revolutionary occultism, there developed a species of revolutionary augurship, and not inaptly did Herzen describe as a new priestly caste, the revolutionary minority which desired to lead the European majority. This augurship readily passed over into Machiavellianism and Jesuitry; a Nečaev was produced as soon as the terrorist outrage ceased to be a duel and became a murder. The revolutionists, as we learn from Lavrov's utterances concerning falsehood, felt how delicate, how terrible, was the situation; and was it not terrible that the revolutionary, who was willing to stake his life unhesitatingly, should in his tactical caution be constrained to falsehood and misrepresentation? The executive committee did no doubt as a rule inform its victims that sentence of death had been passed upon them, but the actual outrage had to be planned and carried out with the utmost secrecy. This hero, this martyr, was one who must be prepared to lie unceasingly. But indeed we shall do well to remember that the hero's death on the field of battle is supplemented by the death of the spy. The Trojan war knew, not Hector alone, but also Ulysses. The revolution, revolutionary organisation, has its tacticians and diplomatists as well as its technicists. It has, moreover, its bureaucrats.
​Let us try to form for ourselves a vivid picture of the Russia terrorist's life. In the majority of cases his existence, full of vexations and hardships, had to be passed in bitter poverty and deprivation. For the refugee, Europe was but a civilised Siberia. Whilst the Siberian prisoner or exile succumbed to misfortune, the refugee was prematurely worn out by his activities. In many cases, the revolutionist was driven to suicide to escape the informers, who even in Europe would not leave him in peace. In Russia itself, the struggle between the police and the nihilist was of a most exciting character. The secret police waged a life and death warfare against the conspirators, using all possible means to gain the upper hand. The conspirator had to be ever on his guard, even against his most intimate friends, as is evidenced by the frequent assassination of spies and traitors. Finally we have to remember that for the revolutionists all family ties were dissolved that they had been torn from their customary environment, from their familiar social sphere; that they had been isolated, had been plunged into a sea of tears and blood, had become indwellers of a realm of death.
The revolutionist frequently became a proletarian, a déclassé, losing all interest in culture, and judging society and social organisation from this narrow outlook.
The Russian terrorist, like Russian liberal and progressive society in general, had, notwithstanding his realism and realistic nihilism, a nervous and restless element in his composition. I have numbered among my personal acquaintances several Russians who, burning with curiosity and eagerness, came to Europe as to the promised land, and yet hardly had they become settled there when they began to feel that European life was too uniform, too bourgeois, too orderly and philistine too monotonously grey. The European intelligentsia, Europe political and socialist parties, appear to the Russian utterly unrevolutionary; parliament is insipid; Russia, with all its horrors, seems to him more attractive, and he is seized with violent home-sickness.
"We need something different; we need storm and life, ​a world that is lawless and therefore free," wrote Bakunin. To him and to Herzen, the revolutionary seemed successor to the Cossack. It is certainly true of the revolutionary and of the Russian intellectual, that he has in him something of the nomad. He may perhaps be regarded as a combination of the monk and the Cossack or of the monk and the pilgrim.
The Russian terrorist cannot withdraw his hand from the plough, however much he may wish to do so; he has no place under the government and official society, unless he becomes an inert tool in the hands of his former enemies. In certain instances, a revolutionary author and leader may openly go over to the opposite side, as happened in the case of Tihomirov, but it was impossible for an ex-revolutionist to resume a quiet working life in Russia. Whenever the Russian revolutionary movement became stagnant, the champions of that movement sought a field for their activities in foreign lands. Men like Stepniak took part in the Herzegovina rising and in the Benevento revolt; others were active in the Paris commune. Bakunin was the prototype of Turgenev's Rudin.
If we are to form a just estimate of the Russian terrorist, we must take into account the way in which tsarism fought him.
The outlook of absolutism towards revolutionary valour cannot but remind us to some extent of John the Terrible. The tyranny exercised over literature and over academic freedoms was all the more intolerable in Russia, because in these respects liberty had already for the most part been secured elsewhere in Europe, and because such liberty could not be kept out of Russia, unless the tsarist censorship should attempt to gag the whole of Europe. None the less the impossible was attempted. Forcibly and brutally Russian absolutism stamped on every movement towards freedom. Each revolutionary outrage had to be atoned for by the sacrifice of countless victims on the scaffold, in fortresses, and in Siberia. The revolutionists fell sick and died by hundreds in the fetid gaols. Many of them, unquestionably, were perfectly innocent. Numbers became insane. Many terminated their protracted martyrdom by suicide, often in some unprecedented manner, as by the hunger strike. Even more inhuman than the cruelty was the depravity of the bureaucracy, the arbitrary infliction of corporal punishment upon political prisoners, and all the brutality to which the official tyrants were prone. Cases of the violation of nihilist girls and women are on record.
​Kvjatkovskii, a member of the Narodnaja Volja, prosecuted in 1880 for participation in the terrorist movement, gave in his speech for the defence the following account of the psychology of the Russian terrorists. While frankly admitting that his party was preparing for a popular revolt he protested against the designation "anarchist." The revolutionary party, he said, recognised the necessity for a government; its opposition was merely to the existing absolutist form of government; it was, therefore not an anarchist party. "I do not propose to maintain that terrorism plays no part in our program. I admit that this is one of our activities. But it occupies only the second or third place in order of importance. We practise it for the protection of our members, but not as a primary means to secure our ends. It is not necessary to have been a tiger from the first and by nature in order to display tigerish qualities. Social conditions exist by which lambs are converted into tigers. Political assassination was evoked by the horrible cruelties practised by the government against the revolutionaries."
The student Balmašev, who in 1902 shot Minister Sypjagin, made a similar answer to the court when he was asked to disclose the names of his helpers and confederates. His sole assistant and fellow conspirator, he declared, had been the government. "I do not deny that in earlier days, at school and at the university, | carried on propaganda against the government, but I never favoured terrorism or the use of forcible methods. Far from it, I was always an advocate of legal order and constitutional procedure. But the Russian ministers convinced me that right and legality do not exist in Russia, that they have been replaced by unpunished illegality, by a regime of arbitrary force, against which force is the only weapon."
Bakunin was not merely the theorist of Russian terrorism, but was in addition the spokesman of the hatred which tsarism had stored up in the minds of the cultured classes, hatred for the church, for religion, for the state, for the Russian theocracy. Kropotkin no less than Bakunin, Kropotkin the anarchistic apostle of humanitarianism, was overflowing, with a like hatred. Again and again the Russian lamb has become a tiger. "Gods pass. Kings pass. The prestige of authority passes. Who shall take the place of gods, kings, and priests, if not the free individual, confident in his own powers? Simple faith vanishes. ​Make way for science! Caprice and charity disappear. Make way for justice!" Kropotkin teaches, with Nietzsche, that the strong individual must win for himself the right to force. In his strength, he may kill the tyrant as he may kill a viper.
"A life for a life."
These incentives of the Russian revolution must be sensed behind the revolutionary deeds if we wish to understand the true nature of the movement. The revolutionary negation of Russia was the offspring of mingled love and loathing.
The loathing often made the Russian revolutionaries blind, blinder than was consistent with the achievement of the revolutionary aim.
The traits that have been previously described as typical of the realists, the roughness of their forms of social intercourse, their laconic speech, their contempt for everything that was not relevant to the ends immediately in view, the cynicism analysed by Pisarev—all these qualities were still more fully developed in terrorist circles. It was natural, for the terrorists were men consecrated to death.
Whatever the faults of the Russian revolutionists and terrorists, it is impossible, in a final survey, to judge them unfavourably. Their ardent devotion to intellectual and political freedom, their self-sacrificing enthusiasm for the folk, their reckless disregard of their personal interests and of their own lives, their fidelity towards their comrades—these are brilliant characteristics, are qualities of the utmost value, which cannot fail to arouse respect and sympathy for individual revolutionists and for the Russian people from which they sprang.
* ↑ As the reputed author of the proclamation, To the Younger Generation, he was sent to Siberia, where he died in 1865.
* ↑ There is no good biography of Černyševskii, and we know little of him as a man and in his intimate personal relationships with friends and family. We even lack details concerning his labours as author and politician. He was born at Saratov in 1828, and passed the earlier years of his life in this town. Sprung from a non-aristocratic clerical family, he was at first trained by his father for the priesthood, but since he showed unmistakable talent for literature and science he was entered in 1846 at the historico-philological faculty of the St. Petersburg university. In boyhood, Černyševskki was already a great reader and practical philologist, acquainted with many languages both ancient and modern. Apart from poetry and the Bible, the young man was chiefly interested in historical writings, the works of Raumer, Schlosser, etc. In St. Petersburg, Černyševskii joined a literary circle, whose leader, Irinarh Ivanovič Vvedenskii, introduced him to the study of Bělinskii. He also read German philosophy, and became acquainted with the works of the French socialists. In 1850, Černyševskii returned to his native town as teacher at the gymnasija, and there met Kostomarov, the historian, who had been sent to Saratov. In 1853, Černyševskii married and returned to St. Petersburg, to join the staff of the Sovremennik in 1854, and to devote all his energies to that periodical. Little is known regarding his life in Siberia, He was visited by friends in 1871, 1873, and 1875; but for nearly twenty years all attempts to secure his liberation were fruitless. At length, in 1883, he was permitted to return to Russia. Through the intermediation of the liberal journalist Nikoladze the government entered into negotiations with the committee of the revolutionary society Narodnaja Volja, in order to secure that there should be no disturbances at the coronation of Alexander III, and one of the revolutionists' conditions was that Černyševskii should be set at liberty. In 1883, therefore, he was sent to Astrakhan, although a promise had been given to permit his immediate return to Saratov. Not until 1889 was he allowed to revisit his native place, and he died there a few months later at the age of sixty-one.—Consult G. Plechanow, N. G. Tschernischewsky eine Literar-Historische Studie, Dietz, Stuttgart, 1894.
* ↑ Take, for example, the well-known saying, Man is what he eats. In Černyševskii this runs: "Nutrition and sensation are so intimately associated, that the character of one determines the character of the other."
* ↑ Černyševskii here follows the French terminology, "moral" meaning "mental" or "spiritual." This terminology has important bearings upon his ethical ideas.
* ↑ An English translation by Nathan Haskell Dole, has been published in New York under the title, A Vital Question or What is to be Done?
* ↑ Dobroljubov was born in 1836 and died in 1861. His father was a priest of Nijni-Novgorod, and he was educated in the ecclesiastical seminary of that town. Since his parents were unable to maintain him at the university, on leaving the seminary he entered the Pedagogical Institute in St. Petersburg. His parents died next year, so that while still a student he had to maintain his brothers and sisters, which he did by translations and private tuition. He made Černyševskii's acquaintance in 1855, Černyševskii refusing to accept a short story by Dobroljubov and advising the latter to leave literature alone. Černyševskii's influence upon Dobroljubov was decisive. In 1856, Dobroljubov became critic on the staff of Sovremennik, and from 1858 onwards he was editor in chief of the critical and bibliographical department, editing likewise the satirical supplement, Svistok (Whistle).
* ↑ I have not been able to learn whether Černyševskii knew the work of Marx or that of Engels. Engels was quoted in the Sovremennik; in 1872 a copy of Capital was sent to Černyševskii in Siberia; but he never mentioned the book or its author. Rusanov who in 1910 gave an account of the contents of Černyševskii's Siberian letters, expresses surprise at Černyševskii's silence upon this matter. It is certainly remarkable, for Černyševskii was accustomed to write about the books sent to him even when these were of little importance. Yet more striking is it that before his exile to Siberia, Černyševskii should have failed to come across the writings of Marx: the newspapers; the Communist Manifesto; the first controversy with Bakunin; the Holy Family, 1845; the polemic against Proudhon, 1847; A Criticism of Political Economy, 1859. In the postscript to the second edition of Capital, Marx gave a word of praise to Černyševskii's work on Mill.
* ↑ Černyševskii's hostility to liberalism is displayed in his judgments of Macaulay, Thiers, Ranke, Guizot, Cavour, etc. Černyševskii devoted special attention to the study of postrevolutionary France, discussing in carefully written essays the Bourbon restoration, the regime of Louis Philippe, and the revolutions of 1830 and 1848. It is necessary here to make a specific allusion to his terminology. He is erroneously supposed, when he speaks of democracy, to think of socialism in contrast with liberalism, but this view is incorrect, for he speaks of Cavaignac as a democrat. True democracy is in any case social. The terminology shows that to Černyševskii the political seemed of greater importance than the social. He frequently spoke of the socialists as "reformers," but he also spoke of "reformative parties"; this implies that nonsocialist parties aim at reform, including social reform. He distinguished the liberals from the democrats and from the radicals, and used the expression "radical-democratic." Radicalism was to him the name of a method, the revolutionary method; democracy was the substance of what that method would achieve, the regime of the masses of the population, hitherto subjugated; liberalism aimed at the dominion of the upper, cultured, and well-to-do classes. A comparison of Černyševskii's historical essays above enumerated with Marx's writings on the same subject confirms what has been said about the difference between the two men. Marx, although at this early date he had not yet formulated his doctrine of historical materialism, gave a far more thorough account of economic conditions, and looked upon the struggles of party as class struggles. Černyševskii, on the other hand, considered that party struggles sprang from erroneous judgments concerning the political situation, concerning the intentions of opponents, and concerning the tasks which the partisans themselves believed their respective parties had to perform. Moreover, Černyševskii paid much attention to individuals, and often to persons of subordinate importance, whereas Marx dealt only with the general situation in France and in Europe. It must be admitted that Černyševskii's essays do not furnish an adequate expression of the historical knowledge of the fifties. They contain, indeed, many surprising statements: for instance, that Napoleon, as an absolutist, was the first to introduce centralisation into France; that the Monarchy acquired its strength in the struggle with ultramontanism; etc.
* ↑ The first draft for this study of Černyševskii was based upon the older editions of his works, those published in Europe; it was completed after my examination of the edition of Černyševskii's writings undertaken by his son in 1906. The belletristic works composed in Siberia and the writings of Černyševskii after his return from exile, must now be taken into consideration. On the whole, however, I have been guided in my estimate of the man by the work he did before he was sent to Siberia.
* ↑ Rusanov, too, asks why Černyševskii had nothing to say about Capital, though the book was sent him. It was impossible, says Rusanov, for Černyševskii to write anything about socialism owing to the supervision to which he was subjected; besides, Marx's work was unlikely to please Černyševskii. Marx's explanation of history was largely based upon the workings of the blind force of instinct, and to Černyševskii, Marx would seem a mere Ricardian, and a poor Ricardian at that, writing in an unpopular style. Even if both these suppositions were accurate, none the less, since Černyševskii looked upon Ricardo as a primary authority, this new presentation of Ricardian views could hardly fail to interest him, especially seeing that he found time to write at length about such authors as Hellwald. Besides, the authorities would not have objected to a criticism of Marx—if unfavourable.
* ↑ Pisarev was born in 1840; his first lengthy essays were published in 1861; from 1862 to 1864 he was a political prisoner; in 1868 he was drowned while bathing.
* ↑ Pererěšit', literally, to rehear a lawsuit.
* ↑ The Russian tverdost' has this double signification.
* ↑ Pisarev's personal biography may to some extent be compared with Nietzsche's. Pisarev, too, suffered from mental disorder, and twice attempted suicide whilst in a state of morbid mental excitement. But Pisarev got through the struggle early in his career.
* ↑ Turgenev had already begun to deal with the problem in Dmitri Rudin. Rudin, whose character was conceived at the beginning of the liberal era of Alexander II (1855), was Oněgin advancing to become a nihilist; Bakunin was the model for Rudin. But not until he came to write Fathers and Children did Turgenev provide in the figure of Bazarov a completed portrait of the nihilism of his day, whilst in Smoke (1867), and Virgin Soil (1877), he described the further development of nihilism and recorded his own personal experiences. I have previously pointed out that Černyševskii's What is to be Done (1863) had an even more powerful influence upon youthful radicals than had Turgenev's Fathers and Children, Černyševskii in particular pointing out the path which radical youth was to follow. All the great writers of that epoch, Gončarov, Dostoevskii, and Tolstoi, discussed the problem of nihilism, Dostoevskii, above all, dealt with it in his books and in numerous articles, returning to it again and again, and probing it to the depths. In a sense, the entire Russian literature of these decades might be referred to in this connection, Saltykov (Ščedrin), Nekrasov, and Ostrovskii, also contributed to the analysis of the new trend. In addition to these men who are generally recognised as great writers, during the sixties and seventies many talented authors were busied with the problem of nihilism, of whom I may mention the following: Pisemskii (The Unruly Sea, 1863) and Lěskov (Nowhither, 1864). To the same category belong a number of books which were widely read at that time by progressively minded persons, such as Pomjalovskii's Molotov (1861) and Philistine Happiness (1861), Slěpcov's Difficult Times (1865), Fedorov's (Omulevskii's) Step by Step (1870, published in 1871 under the title Světlov), and the novels of Šellers-Mihailov, Fetid Swamps (1864) and many subsequent works. A novel by Sonja Kovalevskaja, the woman writer and mathematician, published posthumously in 1891, must also be mentioned; it was entitled The Voroncov Family; a German translation appeared in 1896 as Die Nihilistin. I may also refer to Andrei Kožuhov (1889), a novel written by the terrorist Stepniak (Kravčinskii), the man who killed Mezencev, chief of the secret police. Most of the writers mentioned above were opponents of nihilism. The attacks of these philosophical adversaries were reinforced from the conservative and reactionary side by semi-official polemic and propaganda directed against nihilism. The following antinihilist novels were of this character. Kljušnikov's Mirage (1564—this work was fiercely attacked by Pisarev); Krestovskii, The Sheep of Panurge (1869), Two Forces (1874); Markevič, Twenty-Five Years Ago (1878), The Revolution (1880), The Bottomless Abyss (1883—unfinished); Avsěenko's Gnashing of Teeth, The Evil Spirit, etc. This type of literature was sedulously cultivated; the famous Prince Meščerskii wrote, I Want to be a Russian Woman, etc.; Ustrjalov introduced nihilism upon the stage in Word and Deed (1863).
* ↑ Askočenskii (1813–1879), as professor of patrology, a liberal who had abandoned theology (1846), was the official defender of obscurantism. From 1858 onwards he published Domašnjaja Becěda (The Family Journal), the instrument for his campaign against the progressive movement. The novel mentioned in the text was published in 1858.
* ↑ The following are mentioned by Pisarev among his liberal opponents: Gromeka (wrote a polemic against Herzen in 1862, and in the same year condemned Černyševskii and his teaching); Dudyškin, the real editor of Otečestvennyja Zapiski; Zarin (the translator of Byron's plays), who in the same periodical attacked Černyševskii, Dobroljubov, and Pisarev.
* ↑ During the sixties and seventies there were a number of other authors and journalists besides Pisarev to represent the realistic trend; their names are but little known today, and their works lie buried in the various reviews that have been named above. Antonovič acquired a reputation from 1859 onwards as a critic, contributing to the Sovremennik; after Černyševskii's arrest he became editor of that periodical; subsequently he achieved notable successes in his speciality, geology. Šelgunov worked unremittingly from 1859 to his death in 1881. Noteworthy were his studies upon the English proletariat, based upon the work of Engels, and published in the Sovremennik; and many other articles. There has been a collected edition of his works. Zaicev was, with Pisarev, a leading collaborator on the Russkoe Slovo. In materialistic fashion, Zaicev declared that artistic work was a manifestation of stimulated sensuality, of spinal irritation; he was an eager adversary of liberalism and aristocracy. His literary criticisms were far more radical than those of Pisarev. For example, Lermontov's hero was denominated "a disillusioned idiot"; manual workers were stated to be far more useful than poets. Despite his radicalism, Zaicev favoured negro slavery, and therefore attacked Harriet Beecher Stowe. If the Irish would eat peas instead of potatoes they would become more cultured, wealthier, and freer—and so on. When the Russkoe Slovo was suppressed, Zaicev took refuge abroad, and in 1880 wrote, Concerning the Utility of Tsaricide. Blagosvětlov was of note at this period. From 1860 onwards he was editor of the Russkoe Slovo and had considerable influence upon Pisarev's development. Tkačev, an associate of Blagosvětlov, will be considered in § 111, vi. Among men of a still younger generation, Protopopov, the critic, who came to the front in 1877, has best regarded as a successor of Černyševskii, Dobroljubov, and Pisarev, although he wrote some sharp things about Pisarev. Subsequently he was under narodnik influence; and finally he became a mystic. The positivist Skabičevskii, who died quite recently, deserves mention as critic and historian of literature; he formulated his critical credo in the polemic against Pisarev's exaggerations, but continued down to our own day to represent the realistic trend. Skabičevskii, however, though a realist, was a bourgeois realist.
* ↑ This analysis of nihilist cynicism is found in the first essay on Bazarov.
* ↑ In the year 1873, Dostoevskii referred to a proclamation, To the Younger Generation, which he had shown to Černyševskii, and concerning which Černyševskii had expressed an adverse opinion. If Dostoevskii's statement that this proclamation was quite short is accurate, it cannot have been the one usually attributed to Mihailov.
* ↑ There should be mentioned in this connection the plan for an address to the tsar, written wholly or partly by Černyševskii and outlined in a proclamation issued by the secret society Velikorus' (1861). In 1862, Herzen and Ogarev drafted such a document, which was condemned by Turgenev. It was never circulated.
* ↑ The Catechism is reprinted in Dragomanov's edition of Bakunin's Correspondence, p. 371. Many regarded the Catechism as the work of Bakunin, who never denied the supposition. Dragomanov left this question open, and it needs reconsideration, G. Adler, in the article Anarchism in the Handworterbuch der Staatswissenschaften, 2nd edition, p. 308, adduces certain passages as doctrines and utterances of Nečaev taken from the Catechism, but they are in fact utterances by Bakunin and are not to be found in the Catechism. Cf. Dragomanov, op. cit., pp. 353 and 363.
* ↑ Cf. W. Tcherkesoff, Pages d'histoire socialiste, I, Doctrines et Actes de la Sociale Démocratie.
* ↑ N. Čaikovskii was a refugee from Russia in the year 1871, but returned to Russia in 1905. His program was revised by Kropotkin.
* ↑ Tkačev was a consistent expounder of economic materialism. He rejected in its entirety Russian aristocratic literature with its excursions into the domain of the humiliated and the suffering. Owing to the new developments, said, the position of writers had become economically insecure, and in their creative work this insecurity betrayed itself in the form of weltschmerz. Consequently every aristocratic author exhibited two sides. For example Turgenev, Gončarov, Pisemskii were great writers, but "apart from this their horizon did not extend further than the length of their noses"; with one of his nature, Tolstoi loved the people, but with the other side he loved to chatter; Dostoevskii was not worth mentioning; and so on.
* ↑ For example, in the popular pamphlet The Story of the Kopeck (1870?), the mužik philosophises as follows concerning God: "God takes care of us, for without the mužik he would not have so much as to buy a candle for himself, and he would have to do without incense. In fact, but for the mužik, God would have perished long ago."
* ↑ Cf. the article entitled, Woman, in the collective work, Russia by Russians. In this article we find the 1874 report of Count Pahlen, Minister for Justice, who ascribed the success of the revolutionary organisations to the collaboration of women and girls. Amfiteatrov, the writer of the article, estimated that among the revolutionists the numerical proportion of the women to the men was as 1:4.
* ↑ We find, for example, in the reminiscences of Breškovskaja, "By sixteen I had read much of Voltaire, Rousseau, and Diderot, and I knew by heart French revolution."
* ↑ The average duration of life of the Russian terrorist was estimated two years. The number of victims of the terrorist revolution during the 1866 to 1892 is stated to have been 30,000.
* ↑ Lieutenant-Colonel N. V. Sokolov, an administrative exile, wrote The Renegades (1866) in which he ascribed all human progress to the activity of the déclassés.
* ↑ In 1894, when two calumniatory articles had been published by the New Review (London) attempting to discredit in the eyes of Europe the whole Russian revolutionary movement, Kennan, in Free Russia, found apt words for the defence: "In the course of my late visit to Russia and Siberia I made the personal acquaintance of more than five hundred men and women who were regarded by the Russian secret police as 'Nihilists.' Some were still at liberty in European Russia, some were in exile in Siberia, and some were in penal servitude at the mines of Kara. Among them all, I did not find a single human being who could be called, by any stretch or licence of language, an Anarchist, nor did I find a single human being who would have approved—still less encouraged—such crimes as those recently committed in Paris and Barcelona. Most of the 'Nihilists' whom I met in Siberia were simply moderate Liberals, and even the members of the extreme and radical fraction of the revolutionary party, known as the 'Terrorists,' declared to me, again and again, as they had already declared to Alexander III in their famous letter of March 10, 1881, that they were fighting merely for a free representative form of government, and that if the Tzar would summon a national assembly, to be elected by the people, they—the 'Terrorists'—'would submit unconditionally to the decisions of such an assembly, and would not allow themselves to offer violent resistance to any government that such an assembly might sanction.' Men and women who make declarations of this kind can be called 'Anarchists' only by those who are grossly ignorant of their character and aims. In conclusion, I can only say again what I have already said elsewhere, that, morally, the Russian revolutionists whom I met in Siberia would compare favourably with any body of men and women of equal numerical strength that I could collect from the circle of my own acquaintances. I do not share the opinions of all of them, but it is my deliberate conviction, nevertheless, that, tested by any moral standard of which I have knowledge, such 'Nihilists' as Volkhovsky, Chudnofski, Alexander Krapotkin, Kogan-Bernstein, Charoushin, Klements, Natalie Armfeldt and Anna Pavlovna Korba, represent the flower of Russian young manhood and young womanhood. General Strelnikof may say that they are 'fanatics' and 'robbers'; secret agents of the Russian police in London may call them 'Anarchists'; Mr. Galkine-Wrasskoy may describe them as 'wretched men and women whose social depravity is so great that it would shock the English people if translated into proper English equivalents'; but among these men and women, nevertheless, are some of the best, bravest and most generous types of manhood and womanhood that I have ever known. I am linked to them only by the ties of sympathy, humanity, or friendship; but I wish that I were bound to them by the tie of kindred blood. I should be proud of them if they were my brothers and sisters, and so long as any of them live they may count upon me for any service that a brother can render."