“Dostoevsky was seeking for a belief, and, when he described profoundly sceptical characters, he described his own unbelief.”
Of Dostoevsky’s attitude to “Liberalism” Tolstoi observed:
“Dostoevsky, who suffered in person from the Government, was revolted by the banality of Liberalism.”
Tolstoi said:
“During the sixty years of my conscious life a great change has come over us in Russia—I am speaking of the so-called educated society—with regard to religious questions: religious convictions were differentiated; it is a bad word, but I don’t know how to express it differently. In my youth there were three, or rather four, categories into which society in this respect could be divided. The first was a very small group of very religious people, who had been freemasons previously, or sometimes monks. The second, about 70 per cent of the whole, consisted of people who from habit observed church rituals, but in their souls were perfectly indifferent to religious problems. The third group consisted of unbelievers who observed the conventions in cases of necessity; and, finally, there were the Voltairians, unbelievers who openly and courageously expressed their unbelief. The latter were few in number—about 2 or 3 per cent. Now one has no idea whom one is going to meet. One finds the most contrary convictions existing side by side. Recently there have appeared the latest decadents of orthodoxy, the orthodox churchmen like Merezhkovsky and Rosanov.
“Many people were attracted to orthodoxy through Khomyakov’s definition of the Orthodox Church, as a congregation of people united by love. What could be better than that? But the point is that it is merely the arbitrary substitution of one conception for another. Why is the Orthodox Church such a congregation of love-united people? It is the contrary rather.”