Dostoevsky

by Frank, Joseph

  Dr. Yanovsky, whom Dostoevsky had refused even to take to Petrashevsky’s, became aware of a notable change in the character of his friend between the end of 1848 and the time of his arrest three months later. “He became somewhat melancholy, more irritable, more touchy, ready to quarrel over the merest trifle, and very often complained of giddiness.”14 Yanovsky reassured his patient that there was no organic cause for these symptoms, and predicted that his gloomy state of mind would probably soon pass away. To which Dostoevsky replied, “ ‘No, it will not, and it will torture me for a long time. For I have taken money from Speshnev’ (he named a sum of about five hundred rubles) ‘and now I am with him and his. I’ll never be able to pay back such a sum, yes, and he wouldn’t take the money back; that’s the kind of man he is.’ ” And Dostoevsky repeated several times, so that the sentence engraved itself in Yanovsky’s memory: “Do you understand, from now on I have a Mephistopheles of my own!”15

  Long before his nightime conversation with Maikov, Dostoevsky had been continually anxious over the perils of his Petrashevsky involvement; and he became increasingly perturbed about the unknowns who crowded into Petrashevsky’s flat week after week. Haunted by the possibility of betrayal and arrest even for assisting at these relatively innocent Petrashevsky gatherings tolerated by the authorities, how much more would he have been agitated, how much more a prey to extreme fluctuations of emotion, because of his relations with the Speshnev group! He later told his second wife that, if not for the providential accident of his arrest, he would certainly have gone mad.16

  The sudden increase in the size of the Petrashevsky Fridays led to the formation of several satellite groups organized to take account of differing interests. Beginning in March 1848, some members decided to hold regular meetings, usually on Saturday, in the spacious apartment shared by Alexander Palm and Sergey Durov. The first was a lieutenant of the Life Guards, who also contributed to literary journals; the second was a freelance writer and translator. After his arrest, Dostoevsky told the authorities, with seeming ingenuousness, that the Palm-Durov Circle arose out of a plan to publish a literary almanac, which required all the literati to meet often for discussion.17

  Much of what went on in the Palm-Durov Circle is still obscure. Some facts, however, are indisputable. The circle included all the members of Speshnev’s secret society (there is some doubt about Milyutin). The Speshnevites, as will appear, tried to mobilize the circle for the purposes of reproducing and distributing revolutionary propaganda (the plan outlined by Dostoevsky during his midnight visit to Maikov), but they never succeeded in doing so. Sometime toward the end of March, Pavel Filippov, a Speshnevite, suggested that it was time for the members of the circle to share their social-political ideas with others. He proposed that “they undertake, as a united effort, the composition of articles in a spirit of liberalism [i.e., “revolutionary”].” It was necessary, Filippov explained, to strip bare “all the injustice of the laws . . . [and] all the corruption and deficiencies in the organization of our administration.”18 The articles on juridical and administrative issues could be reproduced on a home lithograph and distributed.

  This proposal, enthusiastically supported by Grigoryev, Mombelli, and Speshnev, seems to have been accepted. Topics were taken by each of the members of the circle. None of the promised articles were forthcoming, but several manuscripts did appear that seemed suitable for propaganda purposes, and the question of the lithograph was debated in connection with their reproduction and distribution. The first manuscript of this kind to surface was written by Grigoryev, a lieutenant in the horse grenadiers and a member of the Speshnev secret society. Called “A Soldier’s Conversation,” this sketch concerns a peasant shipped off to the army as punishment for attacking a landowner who had abused his sister. A soldier in 1812, he speaks wonderingly of what he had seen in France, where the people had thrown out a king and “now they do not want tsars and run things for themselves, just like we do in the villages.”19 An early example of agit-prop literature, the sketch is full of pseudo-naïve social protest, couched in terms that peasants would presumably understand and calculated to appeal to their mentality and values. Mikhail Dostoevsky advised Grigoryev to destroy it, but others urged him to make it even more forceful. The only copy of the work unearthed by the investigating commission was found among Speshnev’s papers, and by Grigoryev’s account, Speshnev had asked his permission to read “A Soldier’s Conversation” “practically in the public street.”20

  A manuscript by Filippov is of the same character: a new, revolutionary version of the Ten Commandments, written in a combination of Church Slavonic and modern Russian. Each commandment is interpreted in a manner to persuade the reader that a revolt against oppression and social injustice is in conformity with the will of God. The authorities were particularly disturbed by Filippov’s comments on the sixth commandment, which “said that if peasants kill their master, they are obeying the will of God; that whoever goes to war is sinful, and the tsar in particular sins when he leads his people to commit murder.”21 Such material could only have been intended for circulation among the peasantry, and particularly, perhaps, the raskolniki. Dostoevsky was surely aware of its existence and may well have taken a hand in its composition.

  There is still another work that the members of the Palm-Durov Circle spoke about reproducing and distributing. Pleshcheev told a group of students at the University of Moscow that “it is necessary to stir up self-consciousness in the people, and that the best means to do this would be to translate foreign works into Russian, adapting them to the speech-style of the simple people and distributing them in manuscript. And who knows, maybe some way will be found to print them. A society in Petersburg had been formed for this purpose, and . . . if we [the students] wished to cooperate with it we could begin with Lamennais’s Paroles d’un croyant.”22 Lamennais’s work is a powerful “new Christian” attack on social injustice, and Milyukov had promised to send a copy of his translation to Moscow. Milyukov used a stately Church Slavonic for his rendering and gave it a homespun Russian title—The New Revelations of the Metropolitan Antonio. The work that Harold Laski once called “a lyrical version of the Communist Manifesto”23 was felt to be well suited to stir up the latent dissatisfactions of the Russian peasant by its appeal to the egalitarian roots of primitive Christianity. Milyukov’s translation was read at a meeting of the Palm-Durov Circle in early April.

  Over the course of several weeks of discussions, however, the initial excitement over the articles gave way to second thoughts. Opposition came to the fore and was voiced most vigorously by Mikhail Dostoevsky. It is remarkable that, under arrest during the long months of investigation, Dostoevsky never states anywhere that he personally disapproved of Filippov’s idea to print and distribute revolutionary propaganda. Instead, he reports on the disapproval of others—particularly his brother—and then associates himself with this disapproval so that the entire Palm-Durov circle should not break up entirely: “my brother told me that he would no longer go to Durov’s if Filippov did not withdraw his proposal. . . . I noticed . . . that many would act in the same way as my brother. . . . Finally, when we met the next time, I asked for the floor and talked them all out of it, assuming a tone of light mockery and sparing as much as possible everyone’s susceptibilities.”24

  If we assume that the plan for the lithograph sprang from the attempt of the Speshnev secret society to manipulate the Palm-Durov Circle, whose literary-musical character it was using as a screen for its activities, then Dostoevsky’s testimony and behavior take on a distinct meaning. When the Speshnevites became aware that the Palm-Durov Circle might dissolve entirely, Dostoevsky was assigned (or took on himself) the job of smoothing matters over so that the circle could continue to be used as a cover. The investigating commission distinguished sharply between the two brothers. Mikhail was freed two months after the investigation began, and was indemnified for his loss of income (though other radicals were indignant at the miserliness of the
sum awarded).25

  Despite Dostoevsky’s effort to calm the agitation, the Filippov proposal marked a turning point in the history of the Palm-Durov Circle. Both hosts became increasingly uneasy about continuing the gatherings, and when Durov asked impatiently if they could not be held elsewhere, Mombelli, probably from an impulse to keep the circle together at all costs, suggested Speshnev’s. For the Palm-Durov Circle to have met at Speshnev’s, however, would have negated its usefulness to his secret society, and Speshnev refused. Two or three further meetings were held at the Palm-Durov apartment, but both men were anxious to terminate them. Just before the roundup of the Petrashevtsy on April 22, 1849, Palm wrote to all members canceling the next date, and Durov made sure not to be home that evening.

  It was after the plan for a lithograph was defeated that, we may infer, the Speshnevites decided to act alone. Filippov, with funds provided by Speshnev, began to order the parts for a handpress in various establishments in Petersburg. The authorities learned about the handpress from both Filippov and Speshnev, each of whom tried to shield the other by taking the blame for the idea. Dostoevsky adroitly evaded the issue. “The question speaks of a home printing press. I never heard from anybody at Durov’s about printing; yes, or anywhere else. . . . Filippov suggested a lithograph.”26 Not finding any trace of the handpress, and unable to establish that others were involved in attempting to set it up, the commission made no further effort to pursue this line of inquiry. The existence of the Speshnev secret society was never discovered; and Dostoevsky later told Orest Miller that “many circumstances [of the case] completely slipped from view; an entire conspiracy vanished.”27

  Petrashevsky had perhaps gotten wind of the plan for propaganda being discussed among the Palm-Durov Circle. This may explain why, at the April 1 meeting of the Petrashevsky Circle, he launched a full-scale attack against the hotheads dreaming of a putsch. Outlining three problems as being of paramount social-political importance—the abolition of censorship, the reform of the judicial system, and the liberation of the serfs—Petrashevsky argued that the reform of the judicial system should be ranked as the first and most pressing goal. A reform of the courts so as to ensure public hearings and trial by jury would have a happy effect on the destinies of sixty million people, and it stood the best chance of being implemented.

  The fiery twenty-year-old Golovinsky, whom Dostoevsky had brought along that evening for a first visit to Petrashevsky’s, bounded to his feet and launched into a passionate refutation. Even the police spy Antonelli was impressed: “Golovinsky spoke with heat, with conviction, with genuine eloquence, and it was evident that his words came straight from the heart.” He said that “it was sinful and a shame against humanity to look on indifferently at the sufferings of twelve million unhappy souls. . . . they . . . were striving for freedom themselves in every way.”28 It was impossible for the government to liberate the serfs, Golovinsky maintained, without stirring up opposition in one or another class, and without thus acting against its own political stability. The liberation of the serfs could only come “from below.”

  Profiting from Golovinsky’s tirade, Petrashevsky took the floor to argue that the liberation of the serfs would probably lead to a class conflict that might result in a military or a clerical despotism. “To bring about the improvement of the judicial system,” Petrashevsky concluded, “was much less dangerous and more realizable.”29 Golovinsky, replying to Petrashevsky’s remark about class war, observed that a dictatorship would probably be necessary during the period of transition. Outraged at talk of dictatorship, and a declared admirer of the republican institutions of the United States, Petrashevsky retorted that he would be the first to raise his hand against any dictator.

  This heated exchange brought into the open the conflict between the activists around Speshnev and the Fourierists or moderates for whom Petrashevsky spoke. In general, the activities of Dostoevsky and his friends (whether or not known to be members of the Speshnev society) were dedicated to radicalizing the sluggish Petrashevsky meetings and stirring their members to address themselves to the immediate revolutionary issue: the liberation of the serfs. The exchange also uncovers some of the agitated atmosphere and extreme political conclusions being drawn in Dostoevsky’s immediate circle. Political democracy was a secondary consideration in their ideology, and they contemplated the idea of a revolutionary dictatorship—no doubt exercised by a body similar to Speshnev’s secret central committee—without repugnance. Where Dostoevsky stood is perfectly clear: Antonelli records that he intervened to support Golovinsky.

  Two weeks later, the same argument was resumed during the famous session of the Petrashevsky Circle at which Dostoevsky read Belinsky’s Letter to Gogol, which he had already read twice at the Palm-Durov apartment. Dostoevsky could not have found a more propitious moment to introduce the weight of Belinsky’s Letter in the controversy already raging over tactics. Belinsky’s epistle, written in the summer of 1847 as an answer to Gogol’s Selected Passages (more accurately, as an answer to a letter of Gogol’s about Belinsky’s unfavorable reaction to the book), is the most powerful indictment against serfdom ever penned in Russian, and Dostoevsky and his friends used it effectively to reinforce their argument that serfdom was too morally intolerable to be endured a moment longer.

  Dostoevsky read two of Gogol’s letters, as well as Belinsky’s text, and the effect of his rendition, as described by Antonelli, was sensational. “This letter [of Belinsky] produced a general uproar of approval. Yastrzhemsky shouted, at all the passages that struck him: ‘That’s it! That’s it!’ Balosoglo went into hysterics, and in a word, the whole group was electrified.”30 Dostoevsky then took the copies back and asked Filippov “to keep [the matter] a secret.”31 Dostoevsky also passed the text to Mombelli, who, with incredible rashness, gave it to his regimental scribe and asked him to make several more copies. This evidence that Dostoevsky was actively circulating and propagandizing Belinsky’s Letter weighed heavily against him.

  Gogol’s Selected Passages is a curious book that continues to baffle and irritate admirers of his work. Here the erstwhile pitiless satirist of Russian life displays his conversion to a religious pietism that, if it remains aware of social injustice, nonetheless sees the only remedy in the inner striving of each Christian soul for moral self-improvement and self-perfection. The work was an abrupt slap in the face for all those who believed (as did many Slavophils, not to mention the progressive Westernizers) that serfdom was incompatible with genuine Christianity. Belinsky was outraged by the book, not only because of its possible social repercussions but also as a personal insult—a betrayal of everything he had fought for under the banner of Gogol’s name. He could not, of course, attack the book too violently in public print; but when he received a private letter from Gogol expressing surprise at his unfavorable reaction, his anger burst forth in a raging flood of invective. Herzen called this white-hot torrent of words Belinsky’s last “testament,” and even Lenin, in the late nineteenth century, admired the fiery ardor of its indignation.32

  Despite its reputation as a revolutionary manifesto, however, Belinsky’s Letter to Gogol is relatively moderate in its concrete demands. Moreover, Belinsky responds to Gogol in the accents of a Utopian Socialist new Christian, even though he had presumably by this time abandoned the “sentimental” values of this credo for a more “rational” ideology. “That you [Gogol] base your teaching on the Orthodox Church,” Belinsky writes, “I can understand: it has always served as the prop of the knout and the servant of despotism; but why have you mixed Christ up in this? What in common have you found between Him and any church, least of all the Orthodox Church? He was the first to bring the people the teaching of freedom, equality, and brotherhood and set the seal of truth to that teaching by Martyrdom.”33 Belinsky flatly contradicts Gogol’s assertion that “the Russian people are the most religious in the world” and calls them, on the contrary, “profoundly atheistic,” but he means only that their religion is one of supersti
tion and ritual rather than of true inward faith. “Superstition” (the purely external and mechanical performance of religious ritual) is barbarous and backward, but Belinsky makes clear that genuine “religiousness” can well go hand-in-hand with progress and enlightenment.34

  Nor is Belinsky’s Letter revolutionary in any Socialist sense at all; there is nothing in it calling for a fundamental transformation of society on new principles. It is a fervent democratic protest against despotism and serfdom that does not go beyond political liberalism in its demands. What Russia needs, Belinsky tells Gogol, “is not sermons (she has had enough of them!), or prayers (she has repeated them too often!), but the awakening in the people of a sense of their human dignity lost for so many centuries amid the dirt and the refuse; she needs rights and laws conforming not with the preaching of the Church but with common sense and justice. Instead of which she presents the dire spectacle of a country where men traffic in men, without even having the excuse so insidiously exploited by the American plantation owners who claim that the Negro is not a man.” Hence, for Belinsky, “the most vital national problems in Russia today are the abolition of serfdom and corporal punishment, and the strictest possible observance of at least those laws that already exist.”35 This is the “minimal program” that Belinsky advocated in the very last year of his life.

  Even though placed at a disadvantage by the wave of excitement caused by Dostoevsky’s reading, Petrashevsky valiantly took the floor and tried to counter its heady effects. He argued once more that a change in the judicial system should take preeminence over all other issues. Antonelli summed up his reasoning: “a reform of the judicial system could be achieved in the most legal fashion, by demanding from the government those things it could not refuse, being aware that they were just.”36 Golovinsky, taking a conciliatory line, pointed out that the liberation of the serfs might perhaps be obtained through the courts, particularly in the Western provinces; and he asked permission to pursue this topic at the next two meetings. “In general,” writes Antonelli with a flourish, “the meeting of the 15th, as the foreign newspapers express it, was très orageuse.”37