causes and crusades which swept through Russia during the eventful reign of Alexander II. All of these movements-Jacobinism, populism, Pan-Slavism, and variants thereof-elude the usual categories of social and political analysis and can be seen as parts of an implausible yet heroic effort to realize in life that which had been anticipated in prophecy but could not be realized in art: the final act of Pecherin's play, the Paradise of Gogol's Poema, the new icons for Ivanov's temple.
One of the powerful if invisible forces driving Russian aristocrats to the "cursed questions" was the oppressive, inescapable boredom of Russian life. To Francophile or Germanophile aristocrats, Russia appeared as the immense and final province of Europe. Life was an unrelieved series of petty incidents in one of those indeterminate towns "in N province," in which the stories of Gogol generally take place. Pent-up hysteria Was released in prophetic utterance. Even in their travels Russians complained with Belinsky: "Boredom is my inseparable companion."153 They were impelled onward to question the value of life itself by the feeling expressed in the world-weary last lines of Gogol's tragicomic "How the Two Ivans Quarreled": "Life is boring on this earth, gentlemen."
When a revolutionary social transformation finally came to Russia in the twentieth century, Stalin's "new Soviet intelligentsia" sought to ridicule Hamlet as a symbol of the brooding and indecisive old intelligentsia. A production of Hamlet during the period of the first five-year plan portrayed the Danish prince as a fat and decadent coward who recites "To be or not to be" half-drunk in a bar.154 A critic of that period went so far as to claim that the real hero of the play was Fortinbras. He alone had a positive goal; and the fact that he came from victory in battle to pronounce the final words of the play symbolized rational, militant modernity triumphing over the "feudal morality" of pointless bloodletting that had dominated the last act prior to his arrival.155
Modernization under Stalin was to be far from a rational process, however; and the Russian stage was not to be dominated entirely by faceless Fortinbras figures. The aristocratic century left a legacy of unresolved anguish and unanswered questions that continued to agitate the more complex culture that emerged in the following century of economic growth and social upheaval.
~P ? *
ON TO NEW SHORES
The Second Half of the Nineteenth Century
¦
The search for new forms of art and life in the midst of social dislocation, industrial development, and urbanization during the second half of the nineteenth century. The symbol of a ship at sea in search of another shore. The gradual turn to social thought during the late years of Nicholas I's reign; the influence of moralistic French socialism; the Petrashevsky circle of the 1840's; the transfer of hopes to Russia by Alexander Herzen (1812-70) and Michael Bakunin (1814-76) after the failure of the revolutions of 1848 in the West. Railroads as a bearer of change and symbol of apocalypse in the countryside.
The ironic growth of revolutionary radicalism during the relatively liberal reign of Alexander II (1855-81). The spread of iconoclastic materialism among the younger generation, or "new men," during the early 1860's-the very period in which Alexander liberated the serfs and instituted trial by fury and a measure of provincial self-government. The turn toward prophetic extremism in the 1870's: the rise in Moscow of reactionary Pan-Slavism based on Darwinistic ideas of struggle for survival; and in St. Petersburg the rise of revolutionary populism based on a Proudhonist idealization of "the people" and a Comtian religion of humanity.
The peculiar genius of art in the age of Alexander II, seeking both the remorseless realism of the materialistic sixties and the idealization of the Russian people of the visionary seventies. The painting of "the wanderers," the short stories of Vsevolod Garshin (1855-88); the music of the Russian national school, particularly the great historical operas of Modest Musorg-sky (1839-81); and the psychological novels of Fedor Dostoevsky (1821-81) with their dramatic penetration "from the real to the more real" and their ideological efforts to overcome the schisms in Russian life and consciousness.
Chekhovian despair of the period of "small deeds" during the reign of Alexander III (1881-94). The inability of either the reactionary Orthodoxy of Alexander's tutor, Constantine Pobedonostsev (1827-1907), or of the unorthodox anarchism of Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) to provide effective leadership in late imperial Russia. The emergence amidst the accelerating tempo of life in the 1890's of three new perspectives that broke with
the prevailing atmosphere of subjectivism and despondency as well as with the parochialism of previous ideologies. Constitutional liberalism at last took root in Russia, producing an articulate spokesman in Paul Miliukov (1859-1943) and a Constitutional Democratic Party. Dialectical materialism commanded attention through the writings of George Plekhanov (1856-1918), the increased intellectual interest in problems of economic development, and the formation of a Marxist, Social Democratic Party. Mystical idealism received from Vladimir Solov'ev (1853-1900) a brilliant new apologia, which provided the basis for a revival of Russian poetry and a long-delayed development of formal philosophical study within Russia.
With the death of Nicholas I, defeat in the Crimean War, and the preparations for peasant emancipation, the realization rapidly grew in the late 1850's that Russia was heading for profound changes. The English and French ships which brought troops to Russian soil during the Crimean War did not disrupt Russian culture nearly so much as the new techniques and ideas that streamed in peacefully after the Treaty of Paris. For the reign of Alexander II saw not just another case of cautious contact with "guile from beyond the seas" but the beginnings of a massive, irreversible process of ^modernization. WithJheJEreeing of the serfs, the new jncentives for foreign ihV5sfinent, and the beginnings of industrialization, Alexander II cut Russia off forever from its static, agrarian past. But neither he nor anyone else was able to determine exactly what form of society and culture the modernizing empire would adopt.
The dividing line that falls across Russian history in the mid-nineteenth century is a3sfflTcTlrofa~aiTthe many others which set off periods of insularity from "those of 'Westernization iii Russian history. For the innovations that began seriously in Alexander's reign involved the entire nation and not merely selected regions and groups. Industrialization and urbanization -however fitful and uneven in development-altered the physical sur-roundings"~and social relations of the Russian people in a profoundly disturbing manner. Up until this, the last century of Russian history, all developments in thought and culture were concentrated in a small minority. The peasant masses had suffered on in silence and been heard from only in military campaigns, peasant insurrections, and sectarian movements.
The final conquest and colonization of all of southern Russia in the late eighteenth arM"tfie earlyTiineteenth century had swollen the ranks of the peasant population; and the image of the steppe began to replace the more northerly image of the forest in the Russian imagination. There were
~4*£
two major forms that life took on the steppe; and both forms were reflected in the brutalized earthbound life of the average peasant. There was vegetable life, free from striving, passively accepting whatever nature sends. There was also the life of the predators-the insects, rodents, ponies from Mongolia, and grain collectors from the cities. Passive, vegetable existence was in many ways the peasant ideal; but many of the Russian peasants transformed themselves into predators through one of those metamorphoses in which peasant folklore abounds. Nothing was more brutal than the peasant who had become a landowner or state official. For he was a new and particularly hungry predator who knew the secrets of the vegetable kingdom: where the deep roots of the plants were kept, and how the silent vegetables managed to survive endless attacks from avaricious nomads. Many peasants secretly aspired to join the ranks of the predators; and when authority weakened or a prophet appeared, many seemingly happy vegetables suddenly turned into rabid animals. Many peasants went through the more peaceful form of metamorphosis which changed him in
to a wealthy peasant who came to be designated by the Russian word for "fist," kulak. The century since emancipation has seen this long-silent class slowly and reluctantly stream into the cities, and be transformed by modern culture. Behind this seething human drama looms, however, a nagging question which can again be expressed in terms of the older peasant folklore. Have the masses been lifted up from their previous animal and vegetable state? Or have these lower forms of life simply come to prevail over a higher, human culture that was, or might have been?
As more and more Russians became infected with the aristocratic spirit of inquiry, they turned to the question of how Russia might lift itself from the animal and vegetable life of the steppe to some loftier type of reality. In their anguished discussion, Russians of all persuasions tended to turn their metaphorical imagination to the image of a ship at sea. Just as the very coldness of the north had created a fascination with heat and fire; so the vastness and monotony of their land created a certain fascination with the water and those who voyage upon it.
Unlike Gogol's enigmatic image of Russia as a flying troika, the popu-image of Russia as a ship had clear roots in early Christian symbolism. The overwhelming majority of Russians in the mid-nineteenth century still felt secure in the "second ark" of the Russian Church, which reminded them that
just as a boat under the guidance of a pilot leads man across the stormy sea to the safe harbor, so does the Church guided by Christ save man from drowning in the depths of sin, and leads him to the heavenly kingdom.1
The book of law and direction for the Church was known as the "Pilot Book"; and most major monasteries were located on islands or peninsulas, like Athos, best reached by boat. Most pilgrimages ended with sailor-priests piloting the faithful across bodies of water separating them from their shrine. The journey was sometimes dangerous-particularly the increasingly popular route on the pilot ships Faith and Hope across the stormy and ice-clogged White Sea to Solovetsk. In the years after the Crimean War, pilots on these ships were fond of telling pilgrims how the English warships had been unable to harm the monastery with artillery fire because God had miraculously sent flocks of seagulls into the path of their shells.2 Old Believers derived new hope from Russian explorations across the northern Pacific, contending that a surviving remnant of Christ's uncorrupted Church might be found on some island beyond the reach of Antichrist in the Pacific.3 Just as Awakum's first religious calling came to him in a youthful dream that God offered him a ship to pilot,4 so the flagellant sectarians spoke of their itinerant prophetic groups as "boats" led by "pilots" in search of converts whose robes of initiation were known as "white sails."
Secular images of shipsas^yjnbols of hope blended with, and sometimes feplaced7"tBe*reTigious image of ??^??????^?^?^?????? In the Russian north, legends arose about the mythical origins and special personalities of ships, which were often launched with songs of invocation:
Water-maiden All-providing river! … Here is thy gift: A white-sailed bark!5
In the south, ships along the Volga were associated with the free life of the Cossacks; and the favorite form of popular variety show was known as lodka, or the bark. Many of its songs and traditions were absorbed into popular folklore about the Volga, and the popular productions of the naval theater.6
For the troubled aristocracy the image of Russia as a ship had long cejtsgdjtoj)eji comforting QngJMagnitsky UkenedlmT^ns^^r^lexinore7 I to "a ship without a rudder, moved about by every gust of wind";7 and Alexander's former tutor, La Harpe, darkly warned that "we are passengers in the boat of revolution. We must either reach the shore or sink."8 Not long before committing suicide, Radishchev likened the old order to "a ship hurled on the reef," and helped turn the aristocratic imagination away from the image of the ship to that of the sea itself. History, he declared, is moving into "a wild watery abyss . . . into an ocean where neither boundaries nor banks can be seen."9 Lunin later likened his thoughts to "storms at
sea";10 and Turgenev compared the romantic flight abroad under Nicholas to the original search of the Eastern Slavs "for leaders among the Varangians from across the seas." Alienated from Russian soil, "I flung myself head first into the 'German sea' which was destined to cleanse and renew me."11
WitLthejwolution of 1848, the "German sea" became a "maddening tumult of waves"To7I[ii^oHTmtc¥wpwhose haunted counter-revqlulBol-F ary wriu'ngsMeneTkussiOo^a^aln^ranite cliff" providing Europe wT3T~ its last 'solitary roc¥W7e"fug?T^pm¥7ngulirnenT by revolutionT^ATtfre otheFera^TthTpoTitTc^"s^ectrum, HerzenTooKid not back to this rock but on to "the other shore" that lay beyond the tides of 1848. His famous post-mortem on the events of that year, "From the Other Shore," began with a plea to his son not to remain "on this shore":
Modern man, that melancholy Pontifex Maximus, only builds a bridge-it will be for the unknown man of the future to pass over it.13
Herzen hoped with his friend Proudhon that a new world might be found in which all past suffering would "appear like a magic bridge cast in the river of forgetfulness";14 but he was haunted by the fear that any bridge to the future could only be built-like those of St. Petersburg itself-out of human suffering.
Only in the next student generation after Herzen's, among the "new men" of the early years of Alexander II's reign, were Russians willing to cut themselves loose from traditional moorings and familiar landmarks. Modest Musorgsky, the greatest musician of the age, sounded the call:
To unknown shores, must be our cry, fearless through the storms, on, past all the shallows. … On to new shores, there is no turning back.15
Populist revolutionaries journeyed "down by mother Volga" hoping to sum-mon up the insurrectionary tradition of Razin with such chants as ?
r^'Our bark has run aground. ???? Tsar, our white helmsman, is drunk. jHe has led us straight upon the shoals. ) • • • Let us speed it on its way, / And throw the masters into the water.16
At its surest, fhp, niipst nf mung Russia was that of Dante, who had
used the same metaphor at the beginning of his Purgatorio: '
The frail bark of my ingenuity lifts its sail In order to course over better waters And leave behind so cruel a sea.17
The Russians plunged on oblivious of the prophetic warning that Dante placeTaTtEe beginning of his Paradiso:
? you, who sit within a frail bark . ..
Turn back to gaze upon your native shores:
Do not set out upon the deep:
Lest, in losing me, you should be altogether lost.
The waters that I take were never sailed before.18
stthe image of plunging out into the deep was only a Sad at last DecomeTrTtheearh^ineteennT century a thoroughly" sea-conscious empire. The Pacific Ocean and the BlacFSea offered a host of new outlets for ocearuc^radTlgjraveTfre^^ steai5mTirservice~was openeaTruirSr^ershiirylrTtli^^ charov's famnlTs'ji^niint nf n-roi vnyngp tn T^n in the 1850's, Frigate Pallada^jQfexusd "p a nnw £"""* "f "pa adventures to the Russian reader.19
Uncertain of where they were gpJBg, anxious to find out_whp thex really wereTthe increasinely uprooted intellectuals of the late imperial period came to discoveTlrran^TevelS-qf meaning irTthTsea. It was? for joaje' a__ symbol_of purity and renewal: Keats' "moving waters at their priest-like task'of]we~liblution rourio^earth's human shores." For others, the ocean was the symbol of romantic liberation: Byron's "glad waters of the dark blue sea" in which thoughts were "boundless" and souls were "free."20
An increasingly important, symbolic meaning for the sea in late-nineteenth-century Russia was that ????? "sileilt stranger," tne faceless peasant masses: the narod. The relatively privileged mtellectuals looked"
wideTTread noveL.o£H86i:-and wpoiuthemsekeaJn_thP. way ???? had described the Winter Palace, as
a ship floating on the surface of the ocean [having] no real connection with the inhabitants of the deep, beyond that of eating them.21
The populist movement represented a self-denying, penitential effort to establish some other connection. Aristocratic leaders of the movement
cried forth their desire to reject "the Divine Raphael" and "immerse themselves in the ocean of real life,"22 "to drown in that grey, rough mass of the people, to dissolve irrevocably. . . ."23 Young activists went almost eagerly to prison or death for the futile populist cause, less in the manner olmodem revolutionary technHanjlSian of jbroo3mg romantic heroes.
*Ttnp^rceptibly the imageof the sea became that of self-annihilation: the dveath"wish fgFthe'Hjem^ ner's Tristan; the beckoning abyss of Novalis' Hymns to the Night~in which
"Memory dissolves in the cool shadow-waves."24 This romantic longing for self^mnMatio£j££ij£^^
of Nirvana by theannihilation of will, by losing oneself like a drop in the ocean. Schopenhauer, the most profound apostle of the futility of striving and the wisdom of suicide, drew inspiration from the Orient, as did Tolstoy, one of his many Russian admirers. Russia's other novelists of the Alex-andriajijgriod also give many literary rejections of Schopenhauer's gloomy" teaching. There is the death-wish figure of Svidrigailov in DostoeyiTcy's" Crime ~??????????, the heroic, ideological suicide of Kirillov in The Possessed. Then: IS IfiF'suTcTdaT^ouble drowning which ends Leskov's pow-erfuLnojyehaot 1^65:Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District. Turgenev's~~ works abound m suicides;26 and the influence of Schopenhauer is woven in with~ffieTmaw6f the sea in such passages as the darkly prophetic dream of his revolutionary heroine, Elena, just before the hero dies in On the Eve. This novel, which was finished in the same year as Wagner's Tristan and its strange, symbolic Liebestod, begins with Elena imagining herself drifting across a lake
The Icon and the Axe Page 54