Complete Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky

by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

  attention save a blow of his fist or a kick with his patent-leather boot. All Russia was to him represented only by his superiors; outside them everything was almost unworthy to exist. How eould sueh an one understand the people or their soul? Though he was a Russian, he was a ‘ European ‘ Russian, who had begun to be European, not for enlightenment, but for debauchery, as many, very many, began. Yes, debauchery of this kind has more than once been held with us to be the surest way of remaking Russians into Europeans. The son of sueh a King’s Messenger will perhaps be a professor, that is a European by letters patent.

  So do not talk of those Gogol types understanding the essence of the people. A Pushkin, a Khomia-kov, a Samarin, an Aksakov were needed before one eould begin to speak of the real essenee of the people. (It had been discussed before them, indeed, but in a classical and theatrical way.) And when they began to speak of ‘ the national truth,’ every one looked upon them as epileptics and idiots, whose ideal was ‘ to eat radishes and write secret informations.’ Yes, informations! Their appearance and their opinions so much astonished everybody at first that the Liberals began even to suspect, ‘ Surely they want to lay informations against us?’ And tell me, please, how far modern Liberals have advanced beyond this silly conception of the Slavophiles.

  But to get to business. You assert that Aleko ran to the Gipsies to get away from a Derzhimorda. Let us suppose that it is true. But the worst of all, M. Gradovsky, is that you yourself quite convincingly admit Aleko’s right to all his aversion. ‘ He could not help running away to the Gipsies, for a Derzhimorda was too disgusting.’ And I assert that Aleko and Onyegin were also Derzhimordas in their way, and in certain respects even worse. The only difference is that I do not in the least blame them for it, for I know perfectly well the tragedy of their fate, while you praise them for running away. ‘ Could such great and interesting men really live with those monsters? ‘ You are profoundly mistaken. You conclude that Aleko and Onj^egin did not tear themselves away from the soil at all, and did not at all deny ‘ the national truth.’ Moreover, ‘ They were not proud at all’ — you go so far as to assert that. But pride is here the direct, logical and inevitable outcome of their abstraction and detachment from the soil. You cannot deny that they did not know the soil; they grew and were brought up like children in a convent school; they got to know Russia in their office in Petersburg; their relations with the people were those of a landlord with a serf. And suppose even that they had lived in the country with the peasants. My King’s Messenger had mixed with post-boys all his life long, and he found in them only stuff for his clenched fist. Aleko and Onyegin were haughty and impatient with Russia, like all who live in a separate coterie apart from the people, with all found, who live, that is, on the labour of the peasants and on European enlightenment whieh they also got for nothing. Indeed, the fact that all our intellectuals for almost the whole of two centuries of our history, as the result of a certain stage in their evolution, became merely idlers, explains their abstraction and detachment from their native soil. Aleko perished not because of Derzhimorda, but because of his inability to understand Derzhimorda and his genesis. For that he was too proud. Since he was unable to understand, he found it impossible to work in his native field. And he considered those who did believe in that possibility, as fools or as Derzhimordas also. And not only with Derzhimorda was our wanderer proud, but with Russia as well, since his final conclusion was that Russia contained only serfs and Derzhimordas. If there were any nobler element in her, then it was they, the Alekos and Onyegins, and no one besides. After that, pride comes of itself: living in abstraction they naturally began to be amazed by their own nobility and their superiority over the disgusting Derzhimordas, in whom they could understand nothing at all. Had they not been proud, they would have seen that they also were Derzhimordas, and seeing this they might perhaps have found in that very vision a way of reconciliation. Towards the people they felt not pride so much as utter loathing.

  You will not believe all this. On the contrary, when you say that certain traits of the Alekos and Onyegins are uncomely, you presumptuously begin to reprove me for the narrowness of my outlook, because ‘ it is hardly reasonable to cure the symptoms and neglect the cause of the disease.’ You assert that when I say ‘ Humble thyself, proud man,’ I am accusing Aleko for his personal qualities merely, and am leaving out of account the root of the matter, ‘ as if the whole point in question were the personal qualities of those who are proud and do not desire to humble themselves.” The question is not settled,’ you say, ‘ on what the wanderers did pride themselves; and the other question is also unanswered — before what should they humble themselves?’

  This is all very presumptuous. I thought that I concluded in so many words that the ‘ wanderers ‘ are a product of the historical evolution of our society. Therefore I do not throw all the blame on them alone personally and on their personal qualities. You have read it; it is written and printed. Why then do you misrepresent me? You quote the passage ‘ Humble thyself,’ and write:

  ‘ In these words M. Dostoyevsky expressed the holy of holies among his convictions, that which is at once the strength and weakness of the author of The Brothers Karamazov. In these words is contained a great religious ideal, a mighty charge to personal morality, but there is not even an allusion to social ideals.’

  After these words you instantly begin to criticise the ideal of ‘ personal perfection in the spirit of Christian love.’ I will deal with your opinion of ‘ personal perfection ‘ presently, but I will first turn inside out before your eyes all the lining of your soul which you apparently would like to hide. And that is: you are angry with me not merely because I accuse the ‘ wanderer,’ but because I do not acknowledge him as the ideal of personal perfection, as a healthy Russian, which he alone could, and ought to, be! You admit that there are uncomely traits in Aleko and Onyegin, but you are only dodging. In your inner belief, which for some reason you do not wish to reveal fully, the ‘ wanderers ‘ are normal and excellent, excellent by this alone that they ran away from the Dcrzhimordas. You look indig-

  nant if any one ventures to detect even the slightest fault in them. You say immediately: ‘ It would be absurd to assert that they were destroyed by their pride, and they did not want to humble themselves before the national truth.’ And finally you hotly assert and insist that it was they who liberated the serfs. You write:

  ‘ I will say more: if in the soul of the best of these wanderers some great idea was preserved, then it was the care for the people; their most burning hatred was directed against serfdom, which lay heavy on the people. Grant that they loved the people and hated serfdom in their own way, grant that it was a European way. But who else than they prepared our society for the abolition of serfdom? In what they could they too served “the native field,” first as the apostles of liberation and then as arbiters of peace.’

  The point is that ‘ the wanderers ‘ hated serfdom in their own way, in ‘ the European way.’ The whole value of the argument is there. It is that they hated serfdom not for the sake of the Russian peasant, who worked for them, and fed them, and was therefore oppressed by them no less than others. If their social sorrow had indeed so strong a hold on them that they had to run away to the Gipsies or the barricades in Paris, what prevented, what hindered them from purely and simply liberating their own peasants and giving them their land, and thus removing the soeial sorrow, in so far at least as they were themselves responsible? But one heard too little of sueh liberations, and too much of social rhetoric. ‘ Their environment ruined them; moreover, why should they lose their eapital? ‘ But why should they not lose it if they had come to such a pitch-that from sorrow for the peasants they had to run away to the barricades? And that is the root of the matter. In the cosy corners of Paris a man still needs money, even though he stands sentry on a barricade, and the serfs had to forward their poll-taxes. Or ‘ the wanderers ‘ took a still simpler course: they mortgaged, sold or exchanged — isn�
��t it all the same? — their peasants, and when they had realised them, they went off to Paris to help in publishing French radical papers, and reviews for the salvation of all mankind, not merely of the Russian moujik. You assure me that they were devoured by sorrow for the serf? Not by sorrow for the serf, but by an abstract sorrow for slavery in mankind: it must not be, it is uncivilised. Liberie, Egalite, FraterniU. And as for the Russian peasant personally, perhaps sorrow for him did by no means inflict such terrible torments upon those great hearts. I know and remember many of the intimate opinions of very, very ‘ enlightened ‘ men of the good old days. * Undoubtedly slavery is a terrible evil,’ they used to whisper intimately among themselves, ‘ but if you take it all in all, is our people really — a people? Well, is it like the people of Paris in ‘03? It has grown accustomed to slavery; it has the face and figure of a slave. Of course a eat-o’-nine-tails is an abominable thing, speaking generally, but for a Russian, by Jove, the cat’s still a necessity.’ . . . ‘ You must flog a Russian peasant. A Russian peasant would pine away if he wasn’t flogged — that’s the kind of nation it is.’ That is what I have heard, I swear, in my time even from very enlightened men. That is ‘ the sober truth.’ Perhaps Onyegin did not flog his domestics, though it’s really hard to say, but Aleko — well, I’m sure that Aleko used to give them a flogging, not from cruelty of heart, but almost out of compassion, almost for a good purpose. ‘ He must have it. He can’t live without a dose of flogging. He comes himself and asks:

  Give me a flogging, sir; make a man of me. I ‘ve been spoiled!” Pray tell me what can be done with such a character. Well, I’ll satisf}^ him, and give him a flogging!’

  I repeat, their feeling towards the peasant at times reached nausea. And what a mass of contemptuous anecdotes about the Russian peasant circulated among them, contemptuous and obscene anecdotes about his slavish soul, his ‘ idolatry,’ his priest, his wife — all these were retailed light-heartedly, sometimes by men whose private life was fit for a brothel — oh, of course, not always because of an evil soul, but sometimes really only from excessive ardour to adopt the latest European ideas (d la Lucretia Floriana, for instance) which were understood and assimilated in our own way, with true Russian impetuosity. Russians had a hand in anything! Russian sorrowing’ wanderers ‘ were at times great rogues, M. Gradovsky, and those same little anecdotes about the Russian peasant, and their contemptuous obiter dicta about him, nearly always assuaged the poignancy of their hearts’ social sorrow for serfdom, by giving to it an abstract and universal character. And with the abstract and universal kind of sorrow a man can easily live in comfort, feeding spiritually upon the contemplation of his own moral beauty and the elevation of his social thought, and physically —

  well, still feeding, and feeding richly, on the rent from these same peasants!

  Quite lately an old eye-witness who had observed those days told an anecdote in a review about a certain meeting of the foremost men of liberal and universal minds of that time with a peasant woman. Here we have gathered wanderers par excellence, wanderers by letters patent, as it were, who had proved their title in the matter of history. In the summer of 18-45 a crowd of guests arrived at an admirable country house near Moscow, where, in the words of an eye-witness, ‘ colossal dinners’ were given. The guests comprised the most humanitarian professors, the most amazing amateurs and connoisseurs of the fine arts and other things as well, the most renowned democrats, and finally famous political workers of world-wide importance, critics, writers, highly educated women. Suddenly the whole company, probably after a champagne dinner, with fish-pies and pigeon’s milk — there must have been some reason why these dinners were called ‘ colossal’ — set out for a walk in the fields. In a remote corner of the corn they meet a woman harvester. Heavy summer work in the fields during harvest-time: the peasants and their women-folk get up at four o’cloek to get in the corn and work until night. It’s very hard to bend and reap for twelve solid hours; the sun is burning. When a harvest woman gets into the corn she generally cannot be seen. And now, here in the corn, our company finds a harvest woman — imagine it, in ‘ a primitive costume ‘ (in her shirt!). It is terrible. The universal feelings of humaneness arc offended; an indignant voice is instantly heard. ‘ Only the Russian woman among all women has no sense of shame.’ Of course, the inference is inevitable. ‘ Only before a Russian woman is one ashamed of nothing.’ A discussion began. Advocates of the Russian woman also appeared, but what advocates! and with what objections they had to contend. And all kinds of opinions and conclusions could be heard among the crowd of wanderers — landlords who slaked their thirst with champagne, swallowed oysters — and who paid? The woman with her labour! It is for you, you universal sufferers, that she is working; her labour paid for your feast. And because, while she was in the corn where she could not be seen, tormented by sun and sweat, she took off her skirt and worked in her shirt alone, she is shameless and has offended your sense of modesty—’ she is of all women most shameless ‘ — oh, you chaste gentlemen! What about your ‘ cosy corners in Paris ‘ and your pranks in ‘ the gay little city,’ and those pleasant little cancans at the Bal Mabile, only to tell of which makes a Russian leap for joy, and that fascinating little chanson,

  Ma commere, quand je danse Comment va mon cotillon?

  with the charming upward flick of the skirt, and the twitch of the rump — this does not in the least offend our chaste Russian gentlemen; on the contrary it delights them! ‘ By Jove, it’s so graceful, the cancan, the fascinating twitch — it’s the most exquisite article de Paris of its kind: but there you have a hag, a Russian hag, a block, a log!’ And now it’s not even the conviction of the foulness of our peasant and our people any more, but it is a personal feeling of aversion to the peasant — oh, of course, an involuntary, almost unconscious aversion, which they themselves hardly even notice. But I confess I can by no means agree with your very fundamental proposition, M. Gradovsky: ‘ Who else but they prepared our society for the abolition of serfdom? ‘ Perhaps they served the cause only with their abstract trivialities, while they shed their social sorrow according to all the rules. Oh, naturally, it made part of the general economy and had its use. But the liberation of the peasants was furthered, and those who laboured for that liberation were helped, rather by men who followed Samarin’s trend of ideas than by your wanderers. Men of the type, like Samarin,1 a type perfectly unlike the wanderers, appeared for the great work of that time: they were by no means few, M. Gradovsky, but of them, of course, you say not a single word. The wanderers, according to all the evidence, were very soon bored by the work of emancipation, and commenced to turn up their noses again. They would not have been wanderers had they acted otherwise. Upon the receipt of the compensation — the Government paid the landlords when it freed the serfs — they began to sell the rest of their lands and forests to merchants and speculators to be cut down and destroyed; they emigrated, and introduced absenteeism. ... Of course, you won’t agree with my opinion, Herr Professor, but what can I do? I cannot possibly agree to accept the picture of your darling, the superior and liberal-minded Russian, as the ideal of the real and normal Russian, as he was, is now, and ever shall be. Little good 1 Samavin vras a famous Slavophile leader.

  work have these men done during the last decades in the national field. And there is more truth in my statement than in your dithyrambs in honour of these gentlemen of the good old times.

  §3

  two. halvesNow I come to your views on ‘ personal perfection in the spirit of Christian love ‘ and to what you call its insufficiency in comparison with ‘ social ideals,’ and above all in comparison with ‘ political institutions.’ You yourself begin with the assertion that this is the most important point of disagreement between us. You write:

  ‘ Now we have reached the most important point in our disagreement with M. Dostoyevsky. While he demands humiliation before the national truth and the national ideals, he assumes that that truth and those ide
als are something ready prepared, unshakable and eternal. We will allow ourselves to assure him of the contrary. The social ideals of our people are still in process of formation and development. The people has still much work to do upon itself, that it may be worthy of the name of a great people.’

  I have already partly replied to you concerning ‘ the truth’ and national ideals at the beginning of this article, in the first section. You find that truth and those ideals quite insufficient for the development of Russia’s political ideals, as though you were to have said that religion is one thing and political work another. With your scientific knife you cut a whole, living organism into two separate halves and assert that these halves must be quite independent of each other. Let us look more closely, let us examine each of these two halves separately, and perhaps we shall come to some conclusion. Let us first investigate the half concerning ‘ personal perfection in the spirit of Christian love.’ You write:

  ‘ M. Dostoyevsky calls to men to work upon themselves and to humble themselves. Personal self-perfeetion in the spirit of Christian love is, of course, the first premiss of any activity, great or small! But it does not follow that men who are personally perfected in the Christian sense will infallibly form a perfect society. I shall allow myself to put forward an instance.