# The Spirit of Russia/Volume 1/Chapter 10

CHAPTER TEN
WESTERNISM.V. G. BĚLINSKII
I
§ 71.
THE harmless geographical designations "westernism" and "westerniser" connote a definite program, the Europeanisation of Russia, the continuation of Peter's reforms. What do we mean by Europeanisation? Europe contains various cultural elements, specifically distinct civilisations. It is undeniable that the differences between French and Germans, between Germans and Englishmen, etc., are considerable. To the Russian, however, these differences appear trifling in comparison with the remove between Russia and the countries of European civilisation. To Russia, in its hunger for civilisation, the west seemed "the land of miracles" (Homjakov).
Westernism, like slavophilism, originated in the days of Nicholas I. Since European influence was then restricted in every possible way, thinking persons became for the first time fully aware of the contrast between Russia and Europe.
As we have learned, the influence of Germany was at that time preponderant, but France continued to play a stimulating part in Russian development; the influence of England was comparatively small, whilst that of Italy and the other European countries was insignificant.
Westernism in the wider sense of the term dates from the epoch when European influences began to exercise considerable effect upon Russia, and in this wider sense all the later progressive tendencies, including the Marxist tendency, are westernist. But more commonly the concept is inter​preted in a narrower signification, the term being used to denote the theories and tendencies that were formulated in the literary dispute with the slavophils.
The contrast between westernism and slavophilism was not definite at the outset, nor was it equally marked in all questions. The slavophils were of one mind with the westernisers in recognising that a great cultural difference exists between Russia and the west, and the members of both schools were in truth agreed that Russians would do well to learn from the west. Divergence between the two tendencies became marked in the answer they respectively gave to the question whether Peter, as Čaadaev expressed it, "had really had before him nothing but a blank sheet of paper"—whether Russia did or did not contain cultural elements peculiarly her own, valuable elements which it was desirable to retain and foster side by side with those introduced from Europe. The westernisers differed from the slavophils in their answer to the great historico-philosophical question concerning the significance, the value, and the trend of Russian development. This main question and the subsidiary questions it involved were not answered by all the westernisers in the same manner. On many points the westernisers agreed with the slavophils and pursued the same aims. The members of both schools constituted at first a single circle and drew nourishment from the same European source. It is true that the friendship did not long endure, and that the two camps speedily became hostile, the animosity often taking a personal form. As early as 1841 Bělinskii was censured by Ševirev for lack of patriotism. Jasykov, Homjakov's brother-in-law, wrote some verses in which he levelled accusations of heresy, and this made bad blood. He spoke of Čaadaev as an apostate, of Granovskii as a corrupter of youth, of Herzen as a lackey in western livery. In 1845 Granovskii became permanently estranged from Aksakov and Samarin, though Aksakov by no means approved of those who, à la Jasykov, regarded themselves as "Slav gendarmes in the name of Jesus Christ." A year later a breach occurred between Herzen and Granovskii.
As I have previously pointed out, Europe contained de Maistre and Stahl as well as Hegel and Proudhon. From Europe the Russians could derive reactionary as well as progressive ideas. could learn reaction as well as revolution. The great revolution was followed by a strong reaction. Europe ​was and still is split into progressive, democratic Europe and conservative, aristocratic Europe. We must bear this main distinction in mind when we are appraising slavophilism and westernism as tendencies, and no less when we are forming our estimates of the individual representatives of these tendencies, and we must distinguish between the separate doctrines of the systems. It is often far from easy to classify a particular thinker, to decide whether he is to be designated westerniser or slavophil. Of Kirěevskii, for instance, it is certainly right to maintain that he always remained a westerniser; whereas Čaadaev, though a typical westerniser, was extremely conservative.
Marked differences exist between individual westernisers, and between individual slavophils.
As regards the general distinction between the westernisers and the slavophils, the most important divergence of outlook concerned ecclesiastico-religious and metaphysical questions. Even here, however, manifold transitional phases and numerous points of agreement can be discerned. To the westernisers, too, it seemed that the most profound cause for severance in minds and in tendencies was discoverable in variations of outlook upon ecclesiastico-religious and metaphysical questions.
The westemism of the eighteenth century and of the opening part of the nineteenth was "enlightened." It contained elements derived from the rationalism of the German philosophy of enlightenment; many of its advocates were inclined towards Voltairism. They were sceptically minded. Alleging themselves superior to the superstition of the mužik, in actual fact they were indifferent in religious matters, though, following Voltaire, official religion seemed to them necessary on political grounds. Some, however, in religious matters held the views of Rousseau rather than those of Voltaire. Of these was Radiščev, who during his banishment to Siberia defended theism (using Robespierre's terminology and speaking of the "grand être suprême"), and championed the doctrine of immortality with especial warmth. Most Russian freemasons held similar views.
In Russia too, after the French revolution and the Napoleonic wars, there ensued a movement equivalent to a restoration. German idealist philosophy, the philosophy of Kant, Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel, practically thrust Voltairist liberalism into the background. This was as obvious in the case of ​Čaadaev the westerniser as in that of the early slavophils. But even before Čaadaev and Kirěevskii, such liberal westernisers as Odoevskii and Galič expressed themselves as decisively opposed to scepticism, demanding that there should be "ﬁrm convictions for the conduct of life." Galič, a Schellingian, declared, "One cannot live without conviction." "To be happy," wrote Odoevskii, "man must have a luminous axiom, an axiom of wide implications, one that is all-embracing, one that brings deliverance from the torment of doubt." In harmony with this aim, Odoevskii considered that it was the fundamental characteristic of his time "to flee from scepticism, always to believe in something," and his beliefs were grounded on the sciences.
For these reasons enthusiasm was demanded and stimulated in all fields. Such was the dominant spirit in the circle of Stankevič, who then exercised great influence. Stankevič declared that a frigid man was necessarily a rascal, and was himself an enthusiast for music (Schubert) and literature. His most intimate friends were of like mood. It is noteworthy that the primary ideas of the westernisers and the slavophils were struck out in personal intercourse, and that the literary formulation of these views came later. Neither Čaadaev nor Stankevič nor Granovskii was a proliﬁc writer. They were all concerned quite as much with new ideals of life, with new trends, as simply with ideas and views. Both parties to the conflict we are considering were believers, enthusiastic believers, the westernisers in European ideals and the slavophils in Russia.
But as regards the content of their respective beliefs there is this great divergence between the westernisers and the slavophils, that the westernisers turned away from the Orthodox creed, whereas the slavophils clung to it, though in idealised form.
Philosophically the difference between the westernisers and the slavophils is tantamount to the difference between Hegel and Schelling. Cherishing Hegel, the westernisers cherished the rationalism condemned by the slavophils, and Schelling's belief in the absolute was replaced by Hegel's relativism. Whereas, with de Bonald, the European philosophy of restoration and reaction declared reason to be an emanation of the devil, the westernisers, though they frequently admitted the one-sidedness of rationalism, were of the school which does not underestimate the importance of reason.
​But this differentiation in Russia between the schools of Hegel and of Schelling was not manifest at the outset, for the first westernisers were, like the slavophils, Schellingians.
Within the westernist movement, the religious and metaphysical question was the cause of a segregation into right and left camps. This segregation occurred on exactly the same lines as in German Hegelianism.
We can follow the matter in Herzen's reminiscences.
From childhood upwards Herzen had been a Voltairian and a freethinker. At the university of Moscow, where he studied natural science and medicine, he was a materialist and an atheist. He tells us that his renewed and profounder study of Hegel led him to this metaphysical and religious outlook. A light broke in on him when he recognised that Hegel was "the algebra of revolution." Whilst his friends were intoxicated with Hegelian scholasticism and were satisfied therewith, Herzen, with Hegel's aid, liberated his mind from all traditional political and religious views. Feuerbach's anthropologism likewise played a notable part in this development. To Herzen, therefore, science in the positivist sense became absolute mistress, whereas many of the liberal westernisers, no less than the slavophils, were moving in the direction of religious romanticism. Herzen detested the expedient of liberal symbolism and allegory, deciding clearly and unambiguously in favour of materialism and atheism, which in his belief were imperiously dictated by science. It was for this reason that in 1846 he definitely broke with many of his friends, and especially with Granovskii. Granovskii desired to leave the religious question open, and himself cherished a belief in personal immortality. Botkin's metaphysical outlook was identical, and Čičerin held similar religious views.
French socialism likewise exercised a decisive influence upon Herzen. Hegel, Feuerbach, and Proudhon were his spiritual leaders. A man, said Herzen, who has not vitally experienced Hegel's Phenomenology and Proudhon's Contradictions cannot be considered a complete, a thoroughly modern ("contemporary") human being. Feuerbach brought enfranchisement from mysticism and mythology. Materialist, positivist, scientific sobriety was to free Young Russia from inherited religious mysticism; the sobriety of science was to disintegrate, dispossess, and replace the ardency of mysticism.
Herzen was followed by Bělinskii; by Ogarev, who inde​pendently arrived at the same results as Herzen and introduced Feuerbach's work to Herzen; by Bakunin; and by the youth of Russia, despite their love and veneration for Granovskii. Herzen's philosophy was the education of the more radical generations, and is still to a large extent their education to-day.
Young Russia thus became differentiated into three camps, that of the slavophils (I refer here to the founders of the school), the liberals, and the socialists or radicals. These designations lack precision, it is true. They fail, above all, to give an adequate indication of the religious and metaphysical outlook of those found in the respective camps, though it is this outlook which constitutes the classificatory mark. Herzen spoke of his own tendencies as materialist and positivist, and the term atheist might just as well be applied.
To conclude, we may say that, while the contrast between the slavophils and the westernisers is striking, in concreto, in the phenomenal world of history, manifold and numerous transitional phases exist, and the representatives of the two trends mutually influence, correct, and supplement one another. The contrast between Russia and Europe is no more absolute than the contrast between present and past.
The advantage or perhaps it would be better to say the charm, of the slavophils as defenders of Russia and her past is that they have a circumscribed general outlook, which is, however, rather an artificial, imaginative construction than the product of active research. The strength of the westernisers, as defenders of Europe and modernity, consists in their scientific elaboration of certain debatable theories. Whilst the slavophils were chiefly philosophers of history, the westernisers were rather historians, jurists, specialists. The westernisers were representative or scientific Russia and progressive philosophy; the slavophils were conservatives in philosophy. The slavophils believed in Russia ("Russia cannot be grasped with the understanding; one can only believe in Russia," said Tjutchev); the westernisers believed in Europe, but were critical alike of their fatherland and of Europe, and desired to attain the utmost possible scientific clarity concerning both.
In the political field the slavophils were conservatives and reactionaries, whilst the westernisers, as liberals and socialists, distinctively constituted progressive and democratic Young Russia.
The Hegelian left in Russia, like the Hegelian left in ​Germany, was radically opposed to absolutism. The positivist materialism of Herzen and his radical associates found its fiercest opponent in official Orthodoxy, in the theocratic program of Nicholas and Uvarov. Since in Russia (and indeed in Europe as well) the state is so intimately associated with the church, metaphysical opposition to the church and church doctrine simultaneously became political opposition to the state. As time passed, this opposition developed, and displayed varying degrees of intensity. If the earlier liberals, such men as N. Turgenev, had been compelled to emigrate owing to their political demand for a constitution, it was all the more natural that Herzen and his fellow radicals should be forced to take refuge in Europe.
Westernism is sharply distinguished from slavophilism by the political trend of the former. The slavophils were unpolitical; they desired merely "inner," moral and religious reform, whereas the westernisers' aim was for "outer," political reform. Thus westernism became radical, oppositional, and directly revolutionary.
§ 72.
THE westernisers were distinguished from the slavophils by their estimate of the value of the state and of politics. To the westernisers the state was a political rather than a moral entity, and they attached to it a greater value than did the slavophils. But this is true only of the liberal westernisers, those of the right or comparatively conservative wing, for the radical westernisers, Herzen for instance, agreed rather with the slavophils in their valuation of the state and of politics. A difference further exists between the theories of the westernisers and those of the slavophils as regards the origin of the state in general and of the Russian state in particular.
Whilst the slavophils considered that the Russian state originated in the family community and the village community, the westernisers taught that the Old Russian state, like all European states, had developed out of the patriarchal tribal organisation. To the Westernisers (and indeed to the slavophils as well), patriarchalism was the explanation and perhaps the justification of absolutism. Konstantin Aksakov, however, was strongly opposed to the patriarchal theory, and expressed the view that Russia least of all had been a patriarchal state. ​Aksakov thus defended the moral nature of the Russian state, and to this extent was perfectly right in that he considered that patriarchalism was not eo ipso ethical. It has already been pointed out in sketching the development of the Kievic state that the tribal theory does not adequately account for the facts.
The westernisers, and especially the historians and jurists among them, attempted to show that political and legal institutions had developed along analogous lines in Russia and in Europe, and in both cases out of the same or very similar conditions. They considered, for example, that feudalism prevailed in Russia during the middle ages. They were little inclined to stress the independence and peculiarity of Russian law; they discovered traces of the influence of Roman law; the differences between Russian and western law to which the slavophils pointed with much emphasis were by the westernisers reduced to differences in point of customary law, and so on. Both westernisers and slavophils were able to turn to account the conflict in Europe between the Latinists and the Teutonists. In the political field the demands of the westernisers differed from those of the slavophils. The latter asked for the reintroduction of the Muscovite zemskii sobor, whereas the westernisers desired a constitution. In certain respects, however, they voiced identical demands, both favouring freedom of the press, and both espousing the cause of the raskolniki (though for different motives).
The westernisers looked upon Peter the Great as the most vital and splendid representative of the state and its cultural tasks.
The westernisers' valuation of the state differed from the slavophils' valuation because the former were in opposition to the church even if they considered religion of importance. Whilst the slavophils looked upon the church as the leading historical and social force, the westernisers considered that the state was this force. The westernisers, consequently, conceived the relationship between state and church in a way peculiar to themselves, their outlook being for practical purposes legalist. Čičerin, for example, was opposed to the thought of an intimate union between state and church; in religion's own interest he accepted Cavour's formula of a free church in a free state.
A word must be said here about the Russian bureaucracy, ​against which the slavophils were animated by aristocratic prejudices. It was doubtless far from being an ideal institution. Nevertheless the bureaucracy never failed to number among its members intelligent, legally cultured, and liberal officials. To a certain extent the bureaucracy was westernist, in so far as since the days of Peter the administration had sought its models in Europe, and in so far as a university education was essential to the maintenance of the state machine and of the army. If the slavophils opposed bureaucracy, so also did Pobědonosčev. It need hardly be said that the bureaucracy was instrumental in carrying out the reaction dictated by the court and by the decisive powers in the Russian state.
Gradovskii reproaches westernism for its apotheosis of the state machine. The accusation applies mainly to the conservative westernisers, and in especial to the jurists.
The two parties differed in their valuation and explanation of the mir. The westernisers, led by Čičerin, inclined to regard the mir as an institution of comparatively late development, predominantly administrative in function, fiscal in its aims. But some of the westernisers, the more radical among them, while accepting the slavophil theory of origins, gave the mir and the artel a socialistic significance. The mir, they held, preserved Russia from the growth of a proletariat, and represented the communism desiderated by the socialists.
As regards the liberation of the peasantry, the outlook of the westernisers was more energetic because more distinctively political. Stankevič, indeed, held that serfdom ought first to be abolished, and a constitution subsequently ​introduced, but the majority of the westernisers, following N. Turgenev's example, favoured the simultaneous introduction of the two reforms.
In contrast with the slavophils, the westernisers took a lively interest in economic problems."
As regards the nature and significance of nationality, the westernisers were cosmopolitans and humanitarians in the eighteenth-century sense, whilst the slavophils being nationalists, considered nationality more important than the state. Whereas Karamzin had insisted: "The national is nothing as compared with the human. The main thing is to be men, not to be Slavs," the slavophils declared that man was man only as a Russian, a Frenchman, etc. Samarin therefore finds that expression is given to nationality even in individual sciences, but Čičerin opposes him in the name of science. It cannot be said that all the westernisers rejected nationalism in toto, for the liberals advocated a moderate nationalism, but the radicals as a rule were antinationalists.
All differences notwithstanding, it is necessary to point to an agreement where questions of nationality were concerned. Both parties subordinated nationality to a higher principle, the slavophils to religion and the church, the liberals to the state. On individual points, therefore, peculiar and astonishing agreement was manifest. The more conservative among the westernisers, placing a high value upon nationality and the state, approximated to the bureaucratic conception of "official" nationality. The later slavophils went so far as to demand Russification, doing so in the name of religion and of the church, but many of the westernisers voiced similar demands in the name of the state—Pestel among the first! On the other hand, the stressing of nationality led to liberal and democratic views, in so far as nationality was opposed to political centralism, and considered to be of superior importance.
The westernisers were opponents of panslavism, both in its slavophil and in its political forms.
The rejection of panslavism was not, however, universal, nor when it occurred was it always equally vigorous, and we ​have previously referred to the panslavism of the freemasons and the decabrists. In any case it cannot be asserted that the westernisers had no political interest in the Slavs, and we might even speak of westernist panslavism as more realist than that of the slavophils. Pypin, the westerniser, did much more to promote knowledge and due appreciation of the eastern and southern Slavs and their respective civilisations than did the panslavist and slavophil utopians. In the political field, Čičerin considered the importance of the Slavs to Russia (thinking of a free Russia) as a European power.
The difference of outlook of the two parties upon the national and Slav question is especially notable in their attitude towards the Poles. The westernisers sympathised with Polish efforts to secure liberty, and even-with the Polish revolution. The decabrists had had direct associations with Polish secret societies, and these relationships were renewed by the more radical among the westernisers (Herzen, Bakunin). Conservative westernisers were adverse to the Poles.
It is necessary to emphasise the fact that the westernisers had just as strong an affection for Russia as the slavophils. Herzen says of the two parties: "By them and by us from youth upwards a powerful, unpremeditated, instinctive, and passionate sentiment was operative, a sentiment of unbounded and all-embracing love for the Russian folk, for the Russian way of life, and for the Russian mode of thought. . . . We were their opponents, but opponents of a quite peculiar kind. We and they were animated by a love that was single though not identical; like Janus or the two-headed eagle, we looked in different directions while a single heart was beating within our breast."
The westernisers criticised Russia and hated the errors and defects of their country, but their knowledge of Europe taught them to love Russia with all her errors and defects. This combination of love and hatred was extremely characteristic of the westernisers. More than one among them came to the conclusion that Europe had the same defects as Russia, and had them perhaps in even greater degree. Odoevskii, who intellectually and emotionally was westernist through and through, declared that Europe was perishing. Among the later westernisers no less a man than Herzen had for Europe a feeling tantamount to hatred. We see the same thing to-day in Gor'kii.
​The westernisers differed from the slavophils mainly in this, that the westernisers, not admitting the existence of absolute differences between Russia and Europe, recognised in Europe the same faults as in Russia. Hence the westernist messianism of a Herzen or a Bakunin was less passivist than slavophil messianism; to the westernisers it seemed that the salvation of Russia, and of Europe lay in revolutionary reconstruction. Some of them, whilst recognising that Russia had her peculiar mission, did not believe that the European nations were decadent. In this matter the westernisers were in agreement with Schelling, the slavophils' chosen philosopher, for Schelling held that every nation had its mission. Hegel, the philosopher of the westernisers, spoke of the mission of the Teutons and the mission of the Latins, but left the Slavs out of the reckoning.
§ 72 a.
A BRIEF account will now be given of some of the leading westernisers.
Čaadaev is commonly referred to as one of the first westernisers. The possibility of doing this is an illustration of what has previously been said, that opposition to slavophilism was the leading characteristic of westernism. At the same time, it is manifest that Čaadaev, the advocate of romanticist Catholicisation, preached a restoration and reaction which were not westernist in nature. Čaadaev's passivism brings him nearer to the slavophils than to the progressive westernisers.
In Moscow, Stankevič, pupil of Pavlov the Schellingian, exercised great influence over his friends and associates. Pavlov was supposed to deliver lectures upon political economy and physics, but he really lectured upon Schelling's natural philosophy. His pupil Stankevič became centre of a circle of men of like aims, who eagerly discussed Schelling, Hegel, German literature (Hoffmann, Schiller, Goethe), and Shakespeare. Bělinskii, I. Kirěevskii, K. Aksakov, Bakunin, Botkin, Katkov, Granovskii, Ketčer (the translator of Shakespeare), etc., belonged to this circle. Stankevič went to Berlin to study philosophy, and here Turgenev was influenced by him.
Stankevič, at ﬁrst a Schellingian, subsequently became a Hegelian. His was one of those beautiful personalities which ​in the German literature of that day are displayed before the reader's eyes like figures compounded of morning mist—gifted, aspiring, but without the strength of body and of mind requisite for the fulfilment of his aspirations. We owe to Stankevič the discovery of the folk-poet Kolcov.
Similar was the lot of Granovskii, from whom we learn that Stankevič's influence upon himself and his friends was boundless and all for the good. As professor of history his lectures on universal history had considerable effect, though only of a preparatory and stimulating kind. He, likewise, was too weak a man to do much in the time of Nicholas I to promote the development of character in others.
On the other hand the influence of Bělinskii, the critic, was extensive and indeed decisive for Russian readers. In addition to Bělinskii there were a number of literary critics and historians who made Russia acquainted with the world of European thought: Nadeždin (1804–1856); Annenkov (1812–1887); Družinin (1824–1864); Botkin (1810–1869); V. Maikov (1823–1847). Among more recent writers Pypin, the learned historian of literature, may be mentioned. In his larger works and in numerous essays he was an antagonist of slavophilism.
Among publicists and journalists Polevoi (1796–1846) deserves mention, and has been previously referred to. A critic of Karamzin and author of a history of Russia, Polevoi recognised that Russia had her own task to fulfil in history, but as regards the other nations of Europe he considered that these were far from being decadent, and that their task was only now beginning. Bělinskii reacted vigorously against Polevoi and his literary criticism.
Čičerin may once more be named as representative of moderate liberalism in politics and the social movement, ​whilst N. Turgenev, the decabrist, living abroad, was likewise an advocate of constitutionalist liberalism.
Kavelin the jurist (1848–1908), personally acquainted with the slavophils and the westernisers, endeavoured to adopt an intermediate position between spiritualism and materialism. He had discussions with the slavophils and also with Herzen.
Gradovskii (1841–1889) was another member of the younger group. A meritorious historian and systematic writer on Russian public law, he worked also as journalist. He agreed with the slavophils in his esteem for folk-organisation, and considered that Russian development was a manifestation of the universally human.
Among historians, S. M. Solov'ev (1820–1879) may be mentioned. As regards Old Russia he attached especial importance to the tribal theory, and he considered that Russian development and European development ran on parallel lines. Whereas Karamzin had written a history of the Russian state and above all of Russian absolutism, Solov'ev's History of Russia was a history of the Russian people. From the time of John IV onwards, he said, Russia had been striving for organic union with Europe, and this union was effected during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Herzen and Bakunin, the exiles, were leading founders of the more radical tendency in politics. Herzen's friend, the poet Ogarev, another émigré, was full of ideas but weak in the field of action. In Russia, Černyševskii and Dobroljubov represented similar tendencies.
The younger literary generation of this epoch was liberal and westernist, the most typical representative of the trend being Ivan Turgenev.
II
§ 73.
VlSSARION GRIGOR'EVIČ BĚLINSKII was leader of the progressive westernist intelligentsia owing to his indefatigable and many-sided literary labours. He was a really hard worker, whereas Stankevič, Botkin, and Granovskii, and even Čaadaev and Kirěevskii, must be spoken of rather as improvisers than as workers in the literary field.
Bělinskii's works were published a long time back in twelve large volumes which ran through several editions. Of late ​more accurate and completer editions have appeared, furnished with introductions and notes. His extensive correspondence is unfortunately known in part only, through the efforts of Pypin and recently through those of Ivanov-Razumnik, the historian of literature. In the days of Alexander I, and still more in those of Nicholas I, literary criticism became the philosophical forum for the discussion of questions of the day, and therefore became also a political forum. The autocracy was able to harass literature and literary criticism, but could not completely suppress these activities.
Bělinskii's personal development was characteristic of the progressive endeavours of the thirties and the forties. While still no more than a schoolboy, he was devoted to literature, the theatre being an education to him; when he was a student at the university, German philosophy and literature played their part; when he became an author, he was influenced by French socialism. At the outset Bělinskii trod in the footsteps of Schelling, then Fichte attracted him greatly, but he soon turned to Hegel. It was in Stankevič's circle that he ﬁrst became acquainted with the ideas of Schelling. To Bakunin he owed his knowledge of those of Fichte. In the same circle Bakunin was the promulgator of Hegelianism; by Bakunin, too, Belinskii was initiated, like Proudhon in Paris at a later date, into the philosophy of the Prussian philosophers of court and state.
Ripening experience and the philosophy of Feuerbach, to which he was introduced by Herzen, turned him during his fourth decade towards democracy and socialism in the form these had taken in France after the July revolution. In the metaphysical field, Bělinskii, .like many other Russian progressives, passed on from German idealism and romanticism to positivism, materialism, and atheism.
It is by no means easy to give a more precise account of this development. It was Bělinskii's way to take up new foreign ideas with great enthusiasm, but this enthusiasm was soon succeeded by a phase of sober criticism. During the stage of transition he was apt in his literary compositions to continue to expound his older views, whilst in letters and conversations the new faith was already fermenting. Letters and criticisms must therefore be weighed one against the other, for whereas in the letters things are cooked over a hot fire, in the criticisms they are served comparatively cold. Hence ​the interpretation of Bělinskii is difficult, and divergent opinions are possible. Moreover, about persons his views were liable to frequent and rapid changes.
Some biographers and literary historians distinguish three periods in Bělinskii's development. The first, extending to the year 1840, was that in which he was engaged in the recognition of reality, with Hegel's assistance. From 1840 to 1847 he was devoted to the struggle for western culture and social institutions. In 1847 occurred a sort of slavophil conversion, leading to a campaign on behalf of nationality.
This classification is extremely superficial. As regards the third period, it is obvious that a recognition of the importance of nationality is not peculiar to slavophilism. We need only recall that in 1847 appeared the writing directed against Gogol, a convert to Orthodoxy, for this will sufﬁce to convince us that Bělinskii was no slavophil. Besides, in this very year 1847 Bělinskii expressed himself very energetically and in extremely definite terms as opposed to the slavophil doctrine of the mir and the artel. If in 1847 (it was really in 1846) Bělinskii experienced a new crisis, it was of a different kind, for at this epoch he became somewhat unsympathetic towards socialism.
Agreement with the slavophils in certain respects is characteristic rather of the first of the alleged phases. At the university Bělinskii, having been made acquainted by Pavlov with the work of Schelling, passed under romanticist influences, but simultaneously Nadeždin drew his attention to the pitfalls of romanticism, and his youthful drama is permeated by this cleavage of views. Through renewed acquaintanceship with Schelling and German philosophy in Stankevič's circle he came in certain important respects to share the opinions of the slavophils, and employed some of the expressions which the slavophils had made current. He spoke of the importance of the "inner" life as contrasted with the "outer"; he condemned the French for the way in which their understanding tended to lapse into criticism (making use of the word razsudok); he considered that will was the essence of the mind—and we have seen that all these views were characteristic of the slavophils. At this period for Bělinskii eternity was, as he puts it, ​no fantasy, and he would not allow his reason to instil critical doubts during the intoxicating minutes of faith. These are moods and opinions which manifest his agreement with the slavophils in leading points. Bělinskii himself speaks of this first phase of the thirties as his epoch of "abstract heroism," and he analyses it psychologically by saying that he then lived in the sphere of feeling alone, giving feeling precedence over understanding, whereas at a later date, he tells us, he came to recognise that feeling and understanding are identical. Thus did Bělinskii write at the end of 1837.
In this state of inward disintegration he endeavoured (1836) to find relief in "sensuality," seeking "to tranquillise desperation by dissipation," fruitlessly, it need hardly be said. About this he wrote to his friends quite openly and with a certain repressed wrath. In the same year appeared Čaadaev's protest against Russia, but for the time being Bělinskii would pay no heed to him. In philosophical and political matters he had for a short time been taken captive by Fichte, but now shook himself free with Hegel's aid. At this period he wrote an extremely weak play entitled The Fifty Year Old Uncle and hoping to earn money he compiled a grammar for which no purchaser could be found.
Despite these internal and external troubles, Bělinskii for a brief period now became reconciled with reality. Pogodin would have had more reason than the slavophils to rejoice over the Bělinskii of the years 1837 to 1839. He was opposed to politics, which might alter the real; he was opposed to the French to politicians to philosophers (Voltaire!), and to poets; poets were too political for him, and therefore he clung to Goethe. "To the devil with politics. Long live science! . . . . German philosophy is a development and exposition clear and distinct as mathematics, a development and exposition of the Christian doctrine founded on love and on the idea of raising man towards the divine." Hegel notwithstanding, his view of civic freedom resembles that of the slavophils, for he says that it can derive only from the inner freedom of the individual. He rejects European constitutions and French politics, with their insistence on experience and history. But he praises Germany, and even Prussia, appealing to the pure understanding and to idealist and apriorist philosophy. Germany is to him "the Jerusalem of the new humanity." In this phase Bělinskii goes so far as to forget the youthful ​drama which had closed for him the portals of the university, coming to terms even with the reality of serfdom. He gives utterance to the proposition, "Might is right, and right is might." But Bělinskil did not shut his eyes to the fact that Russia was culturally weak. "We suffer from the weight of Chinesedorn," he said in 1839, and four years later he again expressed his horror of Russian Chinesedom. To the same period belong Bělinskii's essays upon the battle of Borodino and upon Wolfgang Menzel which are regarded by critics as the climax of this phase of development.
Liberal historians of literature, affected by a kind of shame and unwilling to put weapons into the hands of their opponents, are apt to refrain from a close analysis of these essays. As a rule Sketches of the Battle of Borodino is dismissed with a casual mention, the reader being told that in this article, with the aid of Hegel's proposition "The rational is real and the real is rational," Bělinskii had reconciled himself to Russia and to the state of Nicholas, and that Herzen quarrelled with Bělinskii on account of the article—Herzen refused to shake hands with Bělinskii, and even the gentle Granovskii considered Belinskii's article "vulgar."
Tolstoi considered the battle of Borodino unmeaning; Napoleon declared it a struggle of titans; to Bělinskii it seemed "the manifestation of the eternal spirit of life," for thus was he influenced by Glinka's book, worthless from the literary and scientific outlook, but penned in an access of mystical ecstasy. To Bělinskii this revelation is simultaneously the revelation of the folk-spirit, and he seizes the opportunity to deliver himself concerning the folk-spirit—a subject about which at that time much was being written in Germany.
To Bělinskii the Russian folk, the nation, is identical with the state, folk and state being a historically given and full-grown organism. The state, continues Bělinskii, is the work ​of heroes, and in the case under consideration it is the work of the tsar whom Bělinskii places upon the same footing with God, hero, and nation—for the concepts merge into a single mythical and mystical complex. Bělinskii is so obsessed by this political anthropomorphism, or rather sociomorphism, that in the name "tsar" he discovers, like every Russian, poetic depths and a mysterious significance. "Our tsar" is of course Tsar Nicholas. Bělinskii reiterates the patriarchal theory of the origin of Russian absolutism, and he opposes the Russian state and the Russian folk to Europe; just like the slavophils, and also just like Count Uvarov.
From this standpoint, cosmopolitanism was to Bělinskii a phantom, something hazy and impalpable, and in no sense a living reality; liberalism as a whole was nothing but French chatter. Power, says Bělinskii, with Paul, is from God; the tsar is the real "vicegerent" of God; a president, like the president of the American republic, is doubtless respectworthy, but he is not sacred, for he owes his existence to the revolution.
If we were to judge Bělinskii's article on Borodino solely by political canons, we could appeal on his behalf to the great authority of Hegel. In his acceptance of reality Bělinskii was certainly no worse than Hegel. Whilst Hegel came in the end to discover his mystical and mythical "absolute reason" in the Teutonic world, in the Prussian state and the Prussian monarchy, in Frederick William III of Prussia, Bělinskii, for the same reason and with much the same justification, could be an enthusiast for the Russia of Uvarov and Nicholas. But Bělinskii could appeal to other authority besides that of Hegel. Bakunin approved the article and at this time the views of Bělinskii's friends in Moscow were, speaking generally, far from being clarified and differentiated. Of Belinskii too, it must be said that he lacked philosophical clarity. Besides, in his essay on Borodino he is by no means the orthodox Hegelian that he might be supposed in view of his adopting the proposition concerning the rationality of the real. This is plain from his insistence upon the organic growth of the Russian state, and from his whole conception of the world as an organism, for here Bělinskii inclines more towards Schelling, the romanticists, and the historical school of law, than towards Hegel. Again, he identifies the Russian state with the nation in a manner which is not wholly Hegelian. He stresses the ​distinction between the state and the nation, and in the case of Russia alone are state and nation identical. In a more detailed exposition of Bělinskii's views due weight would have to be given to these and to many other considerations. The essay upon Wolfgang Menzel, which is in the form of a review of a translation of Menzel's German Literature, likewise betrays the composite factors of Bělinskii's views. He condemns Menzel, clings to Goethe and Hegel, but energetically opposes the ethics of George Sand, and so on. It is impossible here to undertake a precise analysis of all these works, nor is such an analysis within the scope of the present sketch, which aims merely at a reference to the philosophical and metaphysical problem which busied and disquieted Bělinskii in his essay on Borodino, namely (to use the phraseology of the schools) the fundamental problem of the relationship between subject and object, between I and not-I. Fichte continued to disturb Bělinskii's mind; but Hegel's rational reality of history was in the end to overthrow Fichte's extreme individualism and subjectivism.
§ 74.
BĚLINSKII, too, plunged into Turgenev's "German sea," but he did not wish to drown in it, nor was there any reason why he should, seeing that in Germany itself Fichte and his successors refused to perish there (§ 44).
Bělinskii accepted objectively given history, and above all the objectively given state, just as Hegel and also Schelling and Fichte accepted them—the two last-named in so far as they sought objective standing-ground upon historic data.
Bělinskii was fully aware that his historism was directed against subjectivism. In Hegel's sense he endeavoured to avoid a cleavage between the subject, as individual and as chance product, and the object, the world-all, as universal and necessary, in this way, that the subject was to give itself up to the object so that the individual and chance-given might raise itself to the level of the universal and necessary, and become justified thereby. The universal and necessary is discerned in history, and properly speaking in historically developing society; society is identified with the state; but never for a moment does Bělinskii forget himself, the subject, continually enquiring, What must this ego, the subject, do to ​render possible the giving of itself up to the whole, and how is the sacrifice morally justified?
Bělinskii concedes to the subject the right and even the necessity of negating the object, for the individual human being must struggle with the object; but this negation of the object, of society, and of history, can be nothing more than a transient stage of development, and must not long endure. The contest with society is necessary, but this contest must not degenerate into revolt, into revolution; it must be a striving towards perfectionment, and must end in the recognition of society. "Woe to those who are disunited from society, never to be reconciled with it. Society is the higher reality, and reality insists that man shall live completely at peace with her, shall completely recognise her; failing this, reality crushes man beneath the leaden weight of her giant hand."
Ultimately the conflict between extreme subjectivism and objectivism is reduced to the following formula. The subjective side of man is likewise real, but extreme subjectivism, like any one-sided truth pushed to an extreme, leads to an absurdity; through extreme subjectivism the understanding is narrowed, concepts are rendered arbitrary, feeling is degraded to arid and immoral egoism, and the will in action manifests itself as evil-doing and crime.
Bělinskii thus combats extreme, absolute subjectivism, solipsism; which for him degrades the world into illusion and in effect annihilates it; he clings to Hegel's reality, which in ​his view is identical with God. But he combats also extreme, absolute objectivism. Of peculiar philosophic importance in this connection is an account given by Bělinskii in 1839 of two prophetical books published at that time. In this criticism he rejected absolute objectivism on the ground that it led to superstition and was itself superstition. The essay is one of the most original of Bělinskii's philosophic writings and bears witness to the penetrating powers of his understanding. Superstition, we are told, is a developmental phase of the individual ego, a phase in which the ego seeks truth exclusively in the object. In this extreme and absolute objectivism, the ego denominates as truth the very thing which is diametrically opposed to the understanding, and that precisely is selected for esteem which is most alien and most void of thought. Bělinskii therefore distinguishes between the mysterious that is beloved of superstition and the mysterious of mysticism. The mysterious in which superstition lives is cold and dead, and its mystery originates in despotism and caprice.
As far as I have been able to discover, the importance of these aperçus is nowhere recognised in the literature dealing with Bělinskii, and they have been simply ignored by his critics. Yet here Bělinskii touches upon the deepest problems of German idealism and of philosophy in general.
In the ancient dispute over the relationship between subject and object, a dispute so profoundly treated by German philosophy, Bělinskii rejects both extreme subjectivism in the form of solipsistic, egoistic individualism and extreme objectivism. For him the dilemma is one of crime versus superstition. He refuses to be intimidated by this dilemma, categorically insisting that we need have neither crime (revolution) nor superstition. He gets rid of the dilemma by refusing to admit that either subjectivism or objectivism is valid beyond a certain point, and by endeavouring to establish a harmony between them.
He turns away from Fichte, and still more from Stirner. He knew nothing of Marx and Engels as extreme objectivists, but interesting and brilliant is his discovery that in extreme objectivism lies the essence of superstition. In precisely the same manner did Vico and Hume characterise as extreme objectivism the first stage of mental development, and, following the lead of these philosophers, Feuerbach represented that the essence of religion was anthropomorphism, was extreme ​objectivism. Not until later did Bělinskii become acquainted with the ideas of Feuerbach after he had been introduced to them by his friends Herzen and Bakunin, and all the more interesting, therefore, was the insight he displayed into extreme objectivism.
I do not contend that Bělinskii grasped the problem accurately and in its entirety. Systematism in philosophy and epistemology was not his gift. He was content with an ethical solution of the problem, with demonstrating its limits, and with pointing out how to harmonise subjectivism and objectivism. His subsequent development enables us to learn what were the ethical ideas which did him this important service.
§ 75.
IN St. Petersburg, Bělinskii was able to watch the realities of Russian officialdom close at hand. Three or four months, he tells us, sufficed to inform him regarding these matters, and henceforward to the day of his death he was at one with Herzen on the subject, whilst diverging in outlook from Polevoi, who had now grown reactionary. Hardly had the article been published when to his friend Botkin, Bělinskii reported the intellectual crisis through which he had been passing, and anathematised the detestable whimsey which had led him to make peace with the detestable reality. Removing Goethe from the place of honour in his critical sanctuary, he now extolled Schiller, the noble advocate of humanity. "I am told; Develop all the treasures of thy spirit that thou mayest achieve free self-satisfaction for that spirit; weep to console thyself; mourn to bring thyself joy; strive towards perfection; mount towards the highest steps upon the staircase of development; and shouldst thou stumble—well, thou wilt fall! The devil take thee then, for thou wert fit for nothing better. . . . Most humble thanks, Egor Feodorovič Gegel [Hegel], I bow before your philosophic nightcap, but notwithstanding my respect for your philosophic philistinism I must dutifully assure you that if l should succeed in creeping up the developmental stairs to attain the topmost step I would endeavour, even there, to take into the reckoning all the victims of vital conditions and of history, all the victims of misfortune, of superstition, of the inquisition of Philip II, and so on—and in default would hurl myself headlong from the summit. I do not desire ​happiness in any other terms, and I must be tranquillised concerning the fate, of every one of my blood brothers." Such were the sentiments animating Bělinskii in 1841, and more and more he tended towards the conviction that "every man is an end for himself," and that universal harmony is too dearly bought at the cost of individual disharmonies, disharmonies in individual lives.
Bělinskii readily came to understand that the idealisation of the all, the idealisation of history (this to include Russian history, and Russian history to include Nicholas), was too gross an imposition. He could not fail to say to himself that just as little as Napoleon and the "respectworthy" president of the United States, was Nicholas a truly real reality. In a word, the basing of the political theory of legitimacy upon Hegelian pantheism had to Bělinskii become suspect through and through. It is true that Bělinskii might have transferred to Bakunin's shoulders some of the responsibility for the Borodino essay, but Bělinskii was not the man to attempt to shuffle off responsibilities in this way. Besides, Bakunin too had perceived his error, and had come to the same way of thinking as Bělinskii.
A light had broken in on the latter with the recognition that the Hegelian metaphysic, that Hegelian pantheism, could be used to demonstrate that the illegitimist rulers as well as the legitimist, that Robespierre and Napoleon as well as Louis XVI and Nicholas, were "an expression of the universal and the infiinite." Both are historically given, and if we hold fast to history we pass from Hegel to revolution. Herzen, as we know, found in Hegel "the algebra of revolution," nor was it difficult to Herzen and Ogarev to induce Bělinskii to share the new outlook. "The executioner exists, and his existence is rational, but he is none the less repulsive," wrote Bělinskii at the close of the year 1840.
Herzen and Ogarev brought about Bělinskii's movement from Hegel to the Hegelian left and to Feuerbach. From Feuerbach it was but a step to Young Germany and to Heine. It would be inaccurate to say that Bělinskii abandoned Hegel and went over to Feuerbach and the socialists. Nor did Bělinskii himself throw his Borodino essay altogether overboard, for all that he would admit was that he had drawn false conclusions from correct principles. The man harassed by Fichte's subjectivism had accepted the Hegelian reality ​as a God, and by degrees only did he come to recognise the nature of this god. He came to recognise that we are not concerned with every reality (his friend Stankevič had warned him, quite needlessly, that these doctrines are not meant to apply to the realities of commonplace life), but with the objective reign of law manifest in and revealed by the succession of phenomena, that reign of law which in social life he recognised as the realisation of humanity.
Feuerbach showed the Russians, who were wholly objectivist, how to harmonise objectivism with subjectivism. Whilst Bělinskii, as he admits, had hitherto considered subjectivism and objectivism only in their more extreme and radical aspects, he now learned from Feuerbach that a logical and methodical peace could be made between moderate subjectivism and moderate objectivism, learned, indeed, that such a peace offered the only possibility of understanding the essential nature of philosophical development and above all of German philosophy, and that it offered the sole means of bringing that development to its proper conclusion. Feuerbach made of man the only goal and issue of human experience, and to Bělinskii, stimulated by Fichte. he displayed the boundary line between ultra-subjectivist illusion and objectivistically true and rational reality.
Whereas Bělinskii had conceived the ideas of God, tsar, hero, and nation, as a complex unity, Feuerbach had shown him the fallacious character of this fusion, and with Herzen and Ogarev he had become an opponent of theocratic theism and tsarism. The anthropomorphic God having been deposed from his heavenly throne as unreal, it naturally followed that the divinely appointed earthly throne of the tsar fell with it, whilst the president, previously no more than "respectworthy," was now raised to the rank of "sanctity."
For the Hegelian left of Russia, Feuerbach's anthropologism and his explanation of religion as anthropomorphism were now reinforced by Strauss. Bělinskii had learned from Strauss to take an adverse view of Christianity and Christ. Vogt and the whole materialistic current fortified him and his intellectual colleagues in their materialist views.
Bělinskii now preached humanity quite in the sense of Feuerbach. But "man," he said, was identical with "liberal," and by liberalism he understood freedom from the oppression of Nicholas. Bělinskii modified the Hegelian program. France ​became the new Jerusalem; her policy and her revolution were the determinative example of the self-sacrificing idea of humanity; monarchy was anti-human. The French always exercised much influence over Bělinskii even though German ideas constituted his program. He tells us that he could not speak German well. We know that he studied Hegel in Russian translation, and it is improbable that he had much knowledge of the original writings of any of the German phiIosophers.
After this estrangement from reality and especially from Russian reality he came again to a more friendly view of the French recognising that in their revolution French blood had been poured out for the sacred rights of humanity. He knew well enough that there were many phrasemakers and chatterers in France; but Germany, too, had her Hofrats, philistines, and other rabble. He came to admire Robespierre. The millennium would be constructed on earth, not by the sugary and stilted phrases of the idealist and fastidious Gironde, but by the terrorists and by the two-edged sword of word and deed wielded by Ropespierre and Saint-Just. Bělinskii thus passed from the "inner" to the "outer" truth.
In 1841 Bělinskii went over to the French socialists. George Sand was rehabilitated, for the woman's question had always seemed of great importance to him. He desired for women equality of position with men and an identical education; marriage was to be free from conventional contracts, and was to secure its moral value as a true union of love. Saint-Simon and Fourier, Pierre Leroux, Cabet, Proudhon, and Ledru-Rollin, instilled into him the conviction that socialism was "the idea of ideas, the being of beings, the question of questions, the alpha and omega of belief and knowledge"; for him socialism now embraced history and religion and philosophy. Louis Blanc, in his Histoire de dix ans, had made clear for him the nature of the bourgeoise, and had enabled him to understand the proletarianisation of the masses which the bourgeoisie had brought about. But we must not suppose that Bělinskii owed his interest in social problems solely to these theorists ​of socialism. From the first he had been socialistically and democratically inclined, for he was numbered among the earliest of the writers who then really constituted the third estate. Doubtless, like almost all Russian authors of his day, he sprang from the nobility, but he belonged to the petty and impoverished nobility. The liberation of the peasantry, liberation in general, had always been his ideal, as we may learn from his youthful drama which, modelled upon Schiller's Robbers, freely condemned serfdom. "Sociality is my watch-word," he tells us after his philosophic discussion with Herzen. We must be careful, however, to avoid the mistake of confusing Bělinskii's socialism with the socialism of today, with Marxist socialism. Bělinskii remained throughout a strong individualist, resembling in this Lassalle rather than Marx, considering that the individual must not be sacrificed to the whole. As we have seen, he will not accept happiness on any account if one fellow-man, if a single brother, continues to suffer; and we often read assertions which imply that wellbeing cannot exist in a community if individual members suffer.
Bělinskii modified Louis Blanc's exposition of the rôle of classes, at any rate as far as Russia was concerned. for he considered that in Russia literature had enriched the bourgeoisie with "a kind of class," the intelligentsia. This class was composed of members of all classes, and was brought together by the love of culture. Such a view was expressed by Bělinskii in 1846. In the following year he explained more precisely that the development of all nations had proceeded by way of class differentiation, and he stated in set terms that the bourgeoisie, as a middle class, was essential to the welfare of the state. He did not fail to see the evil of modern class society as manifested in the dominion of capitalism, but he did not consider that the bourgeoisie and manufacturing industry were responsible for this dominion. It was his opinion, further, that the Russian aristocracy must undergo transformation into a bourgeoisie, for not until then in Russia could the internal process of civic development begin.
Civilisation and culture are regarded by Bělinskii as the most important motive power of progressive peoples, and he often adds the humanitarian idea as an additional energising factor, whilst he regards the intelligentsia, the supplementary bourgeois class, as the instrument of civilisation and culture. He accepts the given gradation of classes, and accepts more ​especially the intellectual leadership of the intelligentsia, this leadership being exercised by select individualities. He thus rejects (1848) the "mystical faith in the people" characteristic of the slavophils and the socialists.
It is indisputable that from the German and French socialism of his day he took over the principles of the philosophic and political revolution without accepting the economic doctrines, the economic materialism, of the movement. It must, however, not be forgotten that in those days, when the revolution of 1848 was brewing, Marx had not yet clearly formulated his economic materialism, and it must be remembered that he was then revolutionary in sentiment; revolutionary in the political sense of the term.
Bělinskii's closing years (from 1846 onwards) were, therefore, characterised by a more vigorous insistence upon individualism, which found expression in sharp sayings about the French socialists. It never became clear to him that his struggle for the rights of the individual personality must not conflict with socialism. But Bělinskii did not cease to participate actively in the campaign against superstition and mysticism.
He was a born fighter, and in describing his own polemic attitude he says, "I am by nature a Jew." His mission as combatant was to organise progressive Russia against absolutism. A cell was already prepared for him in the fortress of St. Peter and St. Paul, and it was only his premature death which saved him from occupying it.
Bělinskii's philosophical credo secured its climax of expression in his Letter to Gogol. For years Bělinskii had championed Gogol, and in the end was forced to turn against him. In 1847 Gogol published his Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends, drawn for the most part from letters written in 1845 and 1846, when Gogol's religibus emotionalism was tragically in the ascendant. In the Correspondence, Gogol unreservedly favours the old order and the established Orthodox religion, having good words even for the abomination of serfdom, his passivist Christianity now leading him to approve the institution. Bělinskii, who was then in Europe and could write without troubling himself about the censorship, incorporated a flaming protest in a Letter to Gogol. This was circulated far and wide throughout Russia in manuscript copies; men of the cultured classes learned it by heart; Dostoevskii ​and the Petraševcy had to atone in Siberia for reading it in public; and it became the living program of progressive Russia. "Russia does not need Orthodox mysticism," exclaims Bělinskii; "she needs rights and laws in harmony with the healthy understanding and in conformity with justice. At an epoch when and in a country where men sell men like cattle, Gogol wishes to soothe our minds with empty sermons."
The Letter to Gogol throws light upon Bělinskii's general outlook as well as upon his personal character.
Feuerbachian atheism and materialism take the form of a socialistic struggle against the old order of the Russian theocracy. Feuerbach's socialistic sentiments are elucidated and fortified by those of the French. Bělinskii now feels towards the French the sympathy which Saltykov declared characteristic of himself and the younger generation. This is not to say that Bělinskii turned from Feuerbach to Stirner, and indeed Annenkov tells us that Bělinskii rejected Stirner's teaching most emphatically. He did not, however, entirely reject egoism; he clung to Feuerbach's ego and alter ego. But egoism was valid solely upon a moral basis, and this moral basis was social and socialistic altruism. Not even Homjakov was more vigorous in his refutation of Stirner. Bělinskii's fighting spirit enabled him to sense the passive bourgeois in the ostensibly radical anarchist.
Nor, on the other hand, did Bělinskii fall into the error of Marx. Marx and Engels, passing beyond Feuerbach in their opposition to the idealist subjectivism of German philosophy, arrived at a no less extreme objectivism, not merely throwing Stirner overboard, but sacrificing the individual to the mass. From Feuerbach, Bělinskii learned a moderate objectivism, and contended that the individual, as a strong personality, should carry on the struggle against society. In this matter Bělinskii thought and felt as a Russian. In the Russia of that day the masses were composed of the peasantry, they were illiterate serfs, and it was impossible therefore for Bělinskii to subordinate (as did Engels) the "paltry" individual to such a mass. Nor could Bělinskii see in the Russian masses those who would carry on the tradition of German idealistic philosophy, as for Lassalle and Engels the German working classes seemed predestined to carry it on. Bělinskii read Marx's essays in the "Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher," and recognised their radicalism, but Bělinskii remained ​unsympathetic towards the philosophy of Marx, despite the latter's atheism and materialism.
Bělinskii's study of Hegel had not led him to the objectivist historism adopted by Marx and Engels. He expressly declared that the freedom of the idea must not be sacrificed to the fetters of the time and to deadening fact, and he refused to offer up ethics to history, as the Marxists and positivists had done.
There was doubtless a positivist element in Bělinskii. Like Marx and Engels, he first became acquainted with positivism in a German form, in the teaching of Feuerbach and Hegel—for the historism of Hegel and Feuerbach is to a large extent positivist. Moreover, from 1846 onward Bělinskii was acquainted with the work of Comte and Littré, and was thus familiar with the more precise formulations of French positivism. To the Russians in general as well as to Bělinskii this French and German positivism was a welcome elucidation and reinforcement of their native realism.
But it is important to note that Bělinskii did not regard the realism and positivism of time and fact as the real and true reality. He was, as he said, unwilling to abandon the capacity for freedom of movement in the moral sphere.
Continually, and at every opportunity, Bělinskii fought scepticism and especially the "hectic" scepticism of Russia. From 1840 onwards Bělinskii condemned scepticism just as had Stankevič or Odoevskii, and had indeed expressed his opposition at an earlier date. Scepticism seemed to him an abnormal mental state, one apt to be widely diffused during periods of transition, when the old has been abandoned whilst the new has not yet come into being. In scepticism, too, there existed degrees and differences. In a sense scepticism seemed to Bělinskii a necessary condition of progress, but this form of scepticism was not a cold negation. None but the petty and the base fall prey to such negation; men of great and vigorous nature, suffering under their scepticism, react against it by creating new and higher things. This dissertation conveys an excellent psychological analysis of Bělinskii's own Letter to Gogol, and indeed explains his literary activities in general, his literary work of opposition and revolution.
This revolution had, properly speaking, but one opponent, theocracy and its ecclesiastical religion. The enthusiasm of Bělinskii's campaign was directed against the superstition and mysticism of the Russian church. Hegel, Feuerbach, ​Comte, and their positivist rationalism, were to scare away superstition and mysticism. Bělinskii knew Russia and knew himself.
For from the first, Bělinskii was by no means inaccessible to mysticism, of which throughout life he had a lively appreciation. As a good Russian he could only understand religion as a form of mysticism. Similarly the slavophils were zealous advocates of mysticism, whilst their most conspicuous opponents, Kirěevskii, Homjakov, and Samarin, had strong mystical leanings.
We learn from Turgenev, Dostoevskii, and others how much the religious problem interested Bělinskii, and we can see this for ourselves in his Letter to Gogol and in his whole struggle for light and knowledge. Dostoevskii is unjust to Bělinskii in that he fails to understand the latter's blasphemous antichristian utterances. Not the historic, the real Christ, but ecclesiastical Christianity, the falsified Christ, was a stumbling block to Bělinskii. "We have not yet solved the problem of the existence of God—and you say you want your dinner!" he once reproachfully exclaimed to Turgenev who had become weary of a philosophical discussion. This reproach conveys the whole Bělinskii. Neither in social nor in metaphysical questions did he show any trace of the indifferentism not uncommon in liberals.
As we learn from his correspondence, Bělinskii was troubled by the question of personal immortality as well as by that of theism. He was not satisfied with faith, as were Botkin and Stankevič. Being no longer able to believe, he wanted to know. In these questions, too, he desired light. Hence romanticist renunciation and resignation did not suffice him, and outspoken atheism and materialism seemed preferable. In the Letter to Gogol he passionately defends the thesis that by.nature the Russians are profoundly irreligious. They are superstitious, but civilisation will drive out superstition; in his inward soul the Russian is indifferent to an exemplary degree. It is true that much religious zeal was shown by the raskolniki, but these sectaries were so few in number as to be negligible.
The very passion with which these views are expressed, the passion that animates the whole Letter to Gogol, confutes Bělinskii's own contention. Gogol roused the religious sentiments of his contemporaries, but in their spiritual need these ​were as little able as Gogol himself to find a way out of the difficulty.
Bělinskii carries on his campaign against mysticism with the aid of the philosophy of history as well as with that of the philosophy of religion. The contrat between mysticism and rational knowledge is the standard by which he judges Russia and Europe, the standard he applies to the old Russia and the new. The disciple of Feuerbach and Strauss recognised in the old Russia a well-developed national and independent life, but this life was one of unconscious contemplation, essentially mystical, such as is characteristic of the east, of Asia. The Russian consciousness awakened with the coming of Peter; Russia began to live the European life of willing and knowing; the Russian struggled towards the light and endeavoured to strengthen his individuality. But since the days of Peter, Russia had been cleft in twain, for the people continued to live as of old, whilst the world of society had abandoned and forgotten the ancient tradition, and continued to stride forward along the path of Europeanisation.
The agreement with Čaadaev and also with the slavophils is plain, but the agreement with the slavophils extends only to the recognition of the difference between Europe and Russia and the difference between prepetrine and postpetrine Russia. When the difference comes to be appraised, there exists between Bělinskii and the slavophils the difference between Europe and Old Russia, the difference between rationalism and mysticism—if we may use these concepts summarily in Bělinskii's sense. The word mysticism is applied by Bělinskii to religious mysticism, but he uses it also to denote the theological outlook in general, the entire outlook of Old Russia on the universe.
Dostoevskii tells us that Bělinskii, when he went for a walk, was fond of going to watch the building of the first railway station at St. Petersburg. "It cheers me to stand there for a while and watch the work going on. At last, I say to myself, we are going to have one railway at least. You can’t imagine how this raises my spirits!" Dostoevskii here gives us the real Bělinskii. His delight in the building of the railway is his faith in Europe and in Young Russia, his faith in the saving power of knowledge, his faith in the deliverance of Russia from the slackening bonds of theocratic absolutism.
Bělinskii fights superstition, and, as he uses the term, superstition embraces religion and theology in general. Feuer​bach and Comte lead him astray, lead him to the old fallacy to which Hume had succumbed, the identification of religion with anthropomorphism and superstition. The struggle against official church doctrine and official religion perpetuates this fallacy even to-day, and it is therefore easy to understand why Bělinskii and his contemporaries were prone to it.
Bělinskii failed to undertake a thorough and systematic discussion of the basic problems of philosophy, and failed especially to discuss the epistemological problem, for in the reign of Nicholas he was more concerned with practice than with theory. He was content to make the most of the practical and ethical tendency of German philosophy, deriving from that philosophy his general epistemological outlook. He was mainly busied with questions of the day as shown forth in literature. He was not a philosopher in the German sense, not a professor of philosophy; the Germans with their thoroughness and their elaborate systematisations seemed to him unduly philistine. He reproached Gončarov with being a German and a philistine. He esteemed the Germans as "the seminarists of mankind"; but he frankly declared that a successful coup against Bulgarin and Greč gave him more pleasure than an article weighty with detail. He was, in fact, a literary revolutionist, and Gončarov spoke of him as a "tribune."
Bělinskii had an almost morbid thirst for knowledge. "Learn, learn, learn!" was his earliest watchword, and one to which he remained true throughout life. Most of his critiques were in fact written for self-instruction, and this is why they exercised so lively an influence. His opponents were not slow to reproach him as a callow student, to censure him for defective culture, and the reproach was again and again reiterated. It is true that in literature Bělinskii was a self-made man, but so were many of the most talented authors of his day.
Bělinskii was aware of his own defects, but he had a fine intelligence. With the aid of German philosophy he grasped clearly enough the nature of Russia's essential defects, and ardently throughout life did he strive to mend them ("the vehement Vissarion"). He was but thirty-seven when he died. Had his life been prolonged he might have written one or more books for which he cherished plans, but his work as it was was more important to his contemporaries than that of many who have lived an orderly literary career. Nor must ​we forget that Bělinskii's friends and BěIinskii's opponents, the slavophils and many of the westernisers, likewise failed to produce systematic works.
§ 76.
AS critic and æstheticist Bělinskii was able to appraise rightly the individual poets and other writers whose works comprise Russian literature, and was at the same time competent to give an accurate characterisation of the development of that literature. He had a notable influence upon contemporary poets. In his very first writings he gave due recognition to Puškin's talent, whilst Gončarov, Turgenev, Grigorovič, Nekrasov, Dostoevskii, Kolcov, and Poležaev, learned much from Bělinskii.
Bělinskii showed his contemporaries that the thoughts of great poets, such men as Griboedov (whom Bělinskii did not understand before 1840), Puškin, Gogol, Lermontov, Dostoevskii, and Gončarov constitute a positive national treasure, one of supreme, nay of vital importance. Benediktov, who was then much overvalued, was appraised at his proper worth. Homjakov's didactic partisan verse was estimated at its just value. Bělinskii may be reproached for having failed to understand the character of Tatiana in Puškin's Onegin, and for other failures of insight, but it is important to note that he thoroughly recognised the positive Russism of Puškin's and Gogol's work, and that as far as Gogol, in particular, was concerned he recognised that this writer's realism (which he spoke of as belonging to the "natural" school, as contrasted with the "rhetorical") was a Russian way of regarding life.
Great was Bělinskii's influence upon the literary circles of Moscow and St. Petersburg. This was shown by his relationships with the slavophils and the westernisers, and in particular by his relationships with the literary critics Nadeždin and Annenkov, and with many other connoisseurs of literature, who already abounded in Russia.
Despite the derivation of much of his thought from German philosophy, in æsthetics Bělinskii was an empiricist. Art, he declared, existed before æsthetics, and æsthetics therefore must be guided by art, and not conversely. Bělinskii had no theory of æsthetics worked out in all its details; he was concerned almost exclusively with poesy and the written word, ​his realism leading him to advocate the characteristic view that the poet thinks in pictures. But he did not fail to emphasise also the work done by the poet in the field of thought. In 1842 he wrote that living contemporary science had become the foster-mother of art, for without science talent was weak and enthusiasm lacked energy. At an earlier date Venevitinov had said that Russian literature "must think rather than create"—a one-sided rule, but one whose formulation was readily comprehensible in the Russia of Nicholas.
These views remind us of Schelling, but also of Hegel, for in æsthetics as in philosophy Bělinskii was influenced by both the German thinkers. The giving of art precedence over practice and theory is Schellingian, and when the author is in this vein we are told that the good is based upon æsthetic sentiments; but after Bělinskii has made acquaintance with Hegel his tendency is rather to range the beautiful beside religion and philosophy, and to insist that the beautiful too is moral.
We find echoes of Schelling and Hegel, in addition, in the conflict between romanticism and classicism which continues unceasingly in Bělinskii's mind, and which Russian realism hoped to bring to an end. But Bělinskii himself is as little successful here as in his attempts at a more precise demarcation between subjectivism and objectivism in general. On the one hand we are told that art, as the product of genius (genius being appraised à la Schelling) is subjective; yet at the same time he assures us that art is objective and must be nothing else. During the years when Bělinskii was idolising reality it was natural that in the sphere of æsthetics he should insist that art must represent reality alone.
The question whether art may have a purpose, exercised Bělinskii's mind greatly. At one time he would insist that art must never be tendentious, and yet shortly afterwards he would say that art pure and simple must be supplemented by tendentious belletristics, for this was extremely useful.
Bělinskii never failed to esteem the beautiful, the artistic, most highly; but as his mind matured he came more and more to look for ideas, for thought-content, in works of art. This ​thought-content, he insisted, must derive from society viewed as a whole.
Literature, in particular, is to Bělinskii the consciousness, or the growth into consciousness, of the people. He adopts the theory which is referable to Schelling that the poet is the orator, the instrument, of his nation. But it was not Schelling's authority alone which led him to form this estimate of poetic art. It is generally held that at that epoch in poetry alone had the Russians produced original work, whilst further, and before all, it is necessary to remember that before the revolution of 1848 (for here I am not thinking of Russia alone) poetry and literature in general had to function as a parliamentary forum. Bělinskii never failed to advocate the view that the poet's gifts must be such as to enable him to sympathise directly with the ideas and the Spirit of his age, for Bělinskii regarded the poet as the instrument, not of party or sect, but of the hidden ideas of society as a whole. In accordance with Hegel's teaching, he declares it to be the poet's mission to give expression, not to the individual and fortuitous, but to the universal and necessary.
It was beyond Belinskii's powers to analyse more precisely the nature of nationality, but here the slavophils and other Russian writers of the day failed no less. He was content with casual references to certain physiological peculiarities which might have been brought about by the influence of climate and soil, and some of which might manifest themselves in the mental sphere. He advanced beyond Hegel in his distinction between nationality and state, but as far as the Russians were concerned it sufficed him to note that they possessed well—marked national lineaments. He demanded, therefore, that the ideas created by the foreign world should be independently elaborated by the Russians in the spirit of their own nationality. Russia, he said, possessed the energy to complete this task and to say "her word" to the world.
In contradistinction to the slavophils and the romanticists Bělinskii's conception of nationality was not mystical, and in individualistic fashion he attached more importance to individual poets, this determining his critical outlook towards folk-poetry. All he could see in Russian folk-poetry was childish lispings, sound without sense; and for the like reason he considered prepetrine literature practically valueless because ​it had not yet awakened to consciousness. I may mention in this connection that Bělinskii formed an unfavourable estimate of the literary attempts of the Little Russians. (He condemned Ševčenko's political endeavours without further ado.)
Bělinskii paid homage to the slavophils for their fidelity to conviction. As regards the substance of their doctrine he said that humanity in the concrete consists of definite nationalities, that as a historic fact the universally human finds its expression in distinct nationalities. To him, as later to Turgenev, humanity in the abstract, humanitarian cosmopolitanism, was a phantom. The excellence of his disposition is shown by the continuance of his cordial friendship with the slavophil Konstantin Aksakov, notwithstanding their dissent upon theoretical matters.
Bělinskii's enthusiasm for Europe has led the historians of literature to regard as a lapse into slavophilism his disquisitions upon nationality, formulated in 1847. It was alleged, moreover, that his critical attitude towards Maikov the positivist was due to personal dislike. This is erroneous. We have already referred to his attitude towards the slavophils. In the opening period of his literary activities he declared himself opposed to cosmopolitanism, and continued to hold this view throughout life.
Whilst in his first critical writing (1834) he said that Russia did not yet possess a literature, he subsequently came to recognise Russian literature as an independent and notable entity. At an early date he considered that the work of the four poets, Deržavin, Krylov, Griboedov, and Puškin was of the first importance; in 1841 he added to his list of noteworthy Russian writers Žukovskii, Batjuškov, Gogol, and Lermontov; finally, in 1844, he took it as a matter of course that Russia had a genuine literature of her own.
Æsthetic feeling, artistic understanding and sympathy, have been denied to Bělinskii because he considered that the Sixtine Madonna manifested indifference to earthly needs, deficient love, a proud consciousness of a high mission and of personal perfection, whilst in the Christ child, he thought, was foreshadowed the development of the Old Testament God of revenge. But surely Bělinskii was within his rights in thus interpreting Catholic mysticism? Kirěevskii, too, declared that he found this Raphael Madonna incomprehen​sible, though Žukovskii, with romanticist enthusiasm, was eager to bring the divine repose of the picture home to the understanding of his contemporaries.
As historian (and before all he was historian of literature) Bělinskii was unable to arrive at a unified result concerning the tasks of history and in especial those of the history of literature. Hegel's influence did not make itself felt in any consistent application of the dialectic method. Nor can we discover in BěIinskii's work unified and distinctly formulated theories regarding the motive forces of historical development. Bělinskii was neither sociological expert nor philosophical historian, although he took frequent occasion to express his views concerning the evolution of Russia. We have learned what he thought about the struggle towards culture and humanitarianism, and I may reiterate here that Peter's personality and Peter's reforms seemed to him a confirmation of his opinion regarding the historical importance of leading individualities. All his efforts were directed towards the intensification of Peter's great work, which Bělinskii regarded as the necessary civilising impulse coming from without.
Bělinskii's influence upon his contemporaries and upon the younger generations was enormous. Down to 1856, during the reaction that followed upon 1848, he could not be mentioned by name, and writers alluded to him only as "the critic of the forties" or "the critic of the Gogol epoch." Bělinskii directed the rising generation into the political and social path, and contrasted the freedom of democracy with the absolutism of theocracy. In this matter, of course, he was not alone; nor was he the first, for he was himself influenced by Bakunin and Herzen; but he had a remarkable understanding of the way in which men's minds could best be stirred despite the pressure of the Nicolaitan censorship. He felt democratically. Even though often enough he uttered complaints against the masses he had ever before his eyes the reading public and the difficult and responsible mission of the Russian author. His humanitarian teaching was necessarily directed towards readers and not towards illiterates, but he was well aware that in point of character the cultured man may be no higher than the uncultured. I may recall as typical the utterance: "The masses live without thinking, and live meanly; but to think without living—is that any better?"
From the very first, alike from friends and from opponents, ​Bělinskii's personality received due appreciation. Not infrequently, indeed, such praises were lavished upon the goodness of his heart that the prestige of his head might well suffer in comparison!
Bělinskii became political, social, and philosophic leader of the younger generation. His work, it is true, was that of literary critic, but for him criticism applied, not to books, but to the life which, as he said, was mirrored in literature. Ivan Aksakov relates that during an inspection tour made in 1856 he encountered large numbers of persons intimately acquainted with Bělinskii's Letter to Gogol, which many of them knew by heart. Bělinskii touched upon the most important and profoundest problems of his time. Half unconsciously, with the aid of his philosophy of religion, he preached the political and social revolution under the very eyes of Nicholas' censors. Bělinskii's youthful drama is his own life program.
This work could not have direct effects in Bělinskii's own day, for it was not published until eighty years after it had been written, but the thoughts which Bělinskii here conceived for the first time, recurred continuously in his later works, being reproduced with greater precision and in more intimate association with the interests of the day.
Kalinin the hero, son of a serf, loves his lord's daughter. They enter into a free union of hearts, hoping that the approval of the family may subsequently be secured. But the family desires to bestow the girl in marriage upon a prince. Kalinin thereupon arms for defence, has a quarrel with Sof'ja's brother, who apostrophises him contemptuously as "slave." Having killed the brother in this quarrel, Kalinin then kills Sof'ja at her own request, and subsequently makes away with himself, for he has learned that he is Sof'ja's half-brother, and that his suicide will merely put the crown upon the crimes of incest and murder.
Kalinin is thus at war with society and the social order, but his censures are chiefly directed against the all-powerful God who has arranged the world so ill and who has fore-ordained that man should be powerless. In the character of Surskii, Kalinin's friend, Bělinskii delineates the optimist, the believer in divine providence who accepts life and all that it brings, seeing in the world and in life a harmony that is perfect even if it be not fully understood.
This antithesis of the two characters reminds us of Schelling ​and his three epochs, that of blind destiny and that of mechanical determination by natural law being succeeded and superseded by the stage of providential workings. Kalinin represents the first two stages, Surskii the third stage, wherein the history of the world assumes the aspect of a pre-established harmony. But the newer German philosophy and literature may have acted jointly with the work of Schelling to lead Bělinskii to deal with the problem of freedom and necessity.
However this may be, Bělinskii at nineteen years of age formulated the problem of freedom and responsibility. This is not to say that he solved it, for the problem is one which continued to vex the maturer man until the close of his career.
Dmitri Kalinin is poor as a work of art. It is the program of an immature mind in revolt against the Nicolaitan social order. Bělinskii's Kalinin preaches the right and duty of revolution. If laws conflict with the rights of nature and humanity, with the rights of the understanding, man must disregard the laws. Kalinin rails against the "snakes, crocodiles, and tigers which live on the bones and flesh of their nearest, drinking blood like water; he introduces us to several types of slave-holders; he struggles against the bonds of marriage, sanctioned by the church but fundamentally immoral, setting up against marriage the ideal of free love. Nor is Bělinskii content with levelling complaints against society and its official props. In blasphemous pride he calls God to account, for this lying and miserable world is God's work—or is it after all the work of Satan?
We can understand why this play led the professors to threaten Bělinskii with Siberia, and we can understand, too, how his literary misadventure, in conjunction with these threats, threw the youthful revolutionary into a fever.
Now that we are acquainted with the vicissitudes of Bělinskii's philosophical development we shall be able to understand his continued vacillation between the philosophy of Kalinin and that of Surskii. He first endeavoured to find peace in Schelling, next in Fichte and subsequently in Hegel, Feuerbach and the socialists in turn, ever searching, moving ever to and fro between faith and doubt.
Again and again we read in his letters of metaphysical struggles concerning God.
At the time when he clung to reality as to a god he declared (1838): "I am God's soldier, and I march at His word of ​command." But in 1840, when he learned of the death of Stankevič, he pondered much over life and death. "To what end," he asks, “ are we in the world? We die and rot, men and nations perish, the world itself will perish, Shakespeare and Hegel will be as if they had never been." A year later Bělinskii declares that negation is his god. A year later still he writes to Bakunin: “!What is man without God? A cold corpse. Man's life is in God; he dies and he prospers, he suffers and he rejoices, in God."
We have seen that Bělinskii desires faith, seeks faith. "Without faith," he writes in 1842, "I cannot live." When he found faith in socialism he said: "I can live more easily . . . In my soul there is now that without which I cannot live, the faith that furnishes answers to all questions. But this is not faith merely, nor is it knowledge, but it is religious knowledge and conscious religion."
By the analysis of these and many other of Bělinskii's sayings it might be possible to secure a more precise definition of the concepts faith and religion, but it is enough for our purpose to know that the problem occupied his mind. His demand for "a conscious religion" and for "religious knowledge" is significant, and we learn from his letter to Gogol that in his opinion official religion offers nothing of the kind. In 1846 he had declared that for him the terms God and religion signified darkness, ignorance, chains, and the knout.
In the analysis of Lermontov (1840) he discerns in The Hero of our own Time "the lapse of the spirit into tormenting reflection, the disintegration of feeling and self-consciousness." Bělinskii exposed here the secret of his own searching and struggling soul.
For in Bělinskii, also, there dwelt two souls. From the æsthetic outlook he embodied the contrast between romanticism and realism, even though for Bělinskii himself this was a contrast between two utterly divergent outlooks on the universe. Romanticism was for him the inner mystical world of mankind, and by mysticism he practically meant the same thing as religion. The struggle with and concerning romanticism was therefore the struggle with and concerning religion. On one side was the yearning for faith, the faith that can move mountains; on the other side were reason and negation. "Long live reason and negation! To the devil with tradition, ​forms, and ceremonies! "wrote Bělinskii in 1840 to his friend Botkin.
Like significance must be attached to his campaign against the religious slavophils, whom he numbered among the romanticists. There was much that was congenial to him in these opponents. In fighting them he was fighting himself, his own religious past. But, said Bělinskii once, "the man of noble mind does not perish in the light, as bourgeois philosophers hold." We know, too, Bělinskii's utterance concerning strong and creative scepticism.
* ↑ In the grey primeval age, says Čičerin, the mir may indeed have been patriarchal, but during historic times it was produced by political organisation from above. The commune was a fiscal organ of the state, each commune, as a whole, guaranteeing the payment of a definite sum in taxes. The state of Kiev originated in the conquests of the Variag Norsemen, the soil becoming, as in the west, the Conqueror's private property. Čičerin's article, Survey of the Historical Development of the Peasant Community in Russia, was published in 1856. As early as 1851, Běljaev, writing in opposition to Čičerin, had endeavoured to adduce historical justification for the slavophil view. Solov'ev the historian, writing in 1856, endeavoured to mediate, and so did Kavelin the jurist, and many others. Čičerin, like the slavophils, agreed with Haxthausen, who held that the mir was a patriarchal expansion of the family. The institution had disappeared before the Muscovite epoch, but had been revived in the eighteenth century under the impulsion of the Petrine poll tax. Haxthausen extolled the mir as a means for preserving Russia from proletarianism.
* ↑ In the liberal periodical "Otečestvennyja Zapiski" (1845) the Turks were considered to be more interesting than the Slavs they had subjugated. The "Atheneum" (1859) ascribed an important civilising role to the Austrian police in Slav countries. The slavophils and panslavists protested against such views.
* ↑ Stankevič (1831–1840) studied from 1831 to 1835 at the philosophical faculty in Moscow, where he was influenced by Kačenovskii, leader of the sceptical historical school. In 1837 he went to Berlin, where he was on terms of intimate friendship with Werder, the Hegelian.
* ↑ Granovskii (1813–1855), who studied law at the university, was in Berlin during 1837 and 1838, where he worked under Werder, Ranke, Ritter, and Savigny. From 1839 onwards he lectured at the Moscow philosophical faculty. His lectures to the wider cultivated public were especially popular.
* ↑ His history of Slav literature was published in German translation during the years 1880 to 1884, the section on Polish literature being contributed by Spasowicz.
* ↑ Čičerin (1828–1901) was professor of constitutional law in Moscow. His works deal with the philosophy of law, the history of political ideas, constitutional law, ethics, and philosophy. Though a Hegelian, his ethical principles were borrowed also from Kant. He took the field as an opponent of the philosopher Solov'ev and was likewise an antagonist of Herzen.Čičerin was burgomaster of Moscow, and while holder of this office delivered a liberal speech on the occasion of the coronation of Alexander III, this costing him the imperial favour.
* ↑ In the year 1861, when the disorders among the students (vide supra) began, he was compelled to leave the university, and the like fate befell a number of others: Pypin; Stasjulevič, for many years editor of the liberal newspaper "Věstnik Evropy"; Spasowicz, Polish liberal. historian of literature, and eloquent lawyer; Utin.
* ↑ Vissarion Grigor'evič Bělinskii was born on May 30, 1811, in Sveaborg, where his father was stationed as army surgeon. In 1816 his family removed to the town of Chembar in the administrative district of Penza. Home-life was a martyrdom for this vivacious and gifted boy, for neither father nor mother could or would give their son an education. Bělinskii had to leave the third class of the gymnazija prematurely, for he preferred working at home to being bored at school. In 1829 he began to attend the philological faculty of the university of Moscow. Here he was introduced to German philosophy and literature by the professors Nadeždin and Pavlov. In the year 1832, having in the previous year written a drama, Dmitri Kalinin, submitted in manuscript to the university censorship, he was compelled to leave the university. The drama, a fierce protest against serfdom, was declared immoral and a scandal to the university, but his rustication was ostensibly attributed to incapacity and weak health. Thenceforward Bělinskii spent his days in the circle of literary and philosophic friends to which we have previously alluded (Stankevič, Herzen), remaining always the omnivorous reader he had been since childhood. He secured a scanty livelihood by private tuition, translations (translating for example, works of Paul de Kock), and minor literary labours. His first important literary work, and the first to attract attention, appeared in Nadeždin's review (1839) and was entitled Literary Fantasies, A Prose Elegy. German philosophy in its chronological and logical development, and notably Schelling (1832–1836), Fichte (1837), and Hegel (1837), exercised decisive influence upon Bělinskii. Among German poets to affect his mental development should be mentioned Goethe, Schiller, and Hoffmann. The celebrated essay on the battle of Borodino was written in St. Petersburg, whither Bělinskii had removed in October 1839 to make a living as collaborator on the liberal newspaper "Otečestvennyja Zapiski." In St. Petersburg Bělinskii moved onward from the Hegelian position to that of the Hegelian left (Feuerbach), and in 1842 to that of French socialism. His most comprehensive work was his analysis of Puškin (1844). He kept up close literary and philosophical associations with Bakunin, Herzen, Nekrasov, Turgenev, Kavelin, Annenkov. etc. He was on intimate terms with Gončarov, Grigorovič, and Dostoevskii. Botkin was his friend and helper from the time when they first met in Moscow. Bělinskii married in 1843, and, characteristically, took a very serious view of marriage. In 1845 illness compelled him to begin a long stay in the south, and in 1841 he visited Salzbrunn spa, whence he fulminated his fierce protest against Gogol. He died on May 18, 1848.
* ↑ For example, in 1839, Bělinskii produced an appreciative judgment of his teacher and literary patron Nadeždin, both in respect of authorship and of personal character. But a year later he condemned Nadeždin's character in strong terms.
* ↑ The article appeared in December 1839 as a review of Sketches of the Battle of Borodino by Theodor Glinka. It was the literary continuation of discussions Bělinskii had had with his friends in Moscow, discussions in which Bělinskii had been advocate for the defence of autocracy. Theodor Glinka was a writer on military topics, and had for a time been member of a political secret society; in 1826, therefore, after the suppression of the decabrist rising, he was cashiered from the army and banished from the capital. His brother, Sergěi Glinka, was editor of the "Russkii Věstnik" which from 1808 to 1824 was chauvinistic champion of the patriotism of the day, antifrench and antinapoleonic in its manifestations.
* ↑ A more extended account of Bělinskii's reasoning concerning this important matter may be given in his own words. "Quâ personality man is individual and a chance product, but quâ spirit (that spirit of which his personality is the expression) he is universal and necessary. Hence the cleavage between his situation and his endeavour; hence the struggle between his ego and all that lies without the ego, all that comprises the non-ego. In relation to his personality, the non-ego, the objective world, is hostile; in relation to his spirit, the expression of the infinite and the universal, this objective world is to him essentially akin. That he may become more real, that he may cease to be the mere semblance of a man, his personality must become the individual expression of the universal, the restricted manifestation of the infinite. Man must therefore free himself from his subjective personality, recognising it to be an illusion and a falsehood; he must reconcile himself with the universal, with the world-all, by coming to understand that here alone are truth and reality to be found. And since this world-all or universal exists, not in the subject but in the object, he must become akin in essence thereto, must coalesce into a unity therewith. Thereafter he will again become a subjective personality, but this subjective personality will now be real, for it will no longer give expression to the chance-given individual, but to the universal, to the world-all—in a word there will be spirit in the ﬂesh."
* ↑ In 1837 he had written: "Civic freedom must be the fruit of the inner freedom of all the individuals composing the nation, but inner freedom is attained through sell-consciousness. Such is the splendid way in which we shall gain freedom for our Russia. All will be secured without conspiracies or revolts, and will therefore be better organised and more enduring."
* ↑ In 1843 Bělinskii said that art was one of the absolute spheres of "cognition." In similar fashion he had ere this spoken of poetry as philosophy and thought, in so far as it was the task of poetry to present the idea as viewed concretely.