Dostoievski further adds: “No! The Russian people must not be judged by what they are, but by what they aspire to be. The strong and sacred ideals, which have been their salvation from the age of suffering, are deeply rooted in the Russian soul from the very beginning, and these ideals have endowed this soul for all time with simplicity and honesty, with sincerity, and a broad, receptive good sense,—all in perfect harmony.”
Concerning the part the Russian people are destined to play in the world, Dostoievski wrote the following:
“The Russian people is a strange phenomenon in the history of mankind. Their character is so different from that of the other peoples of Europe that to this day Europeans have failed to understand it, and misconstrue it at every turn. All Europeans move towards the same goal. But they differ in their fundamental interests, which involve them in collisions and antagonisms, whereby they are driven to go different ways. The ideal of a universal humanity is steadily fading from among them. The Russian people possess a notable advantage over the other European nations,—a remarkable peculiarity. The Russians possess the synthetic faculty in a high degree—the gift of feeling at one with the universe and a universal humanity. The Russian has none of the European angularity, he possesses the gift of discernment and of generosity of soul. He can adapt himself to anything and he can understand. He has a feeling for all that is human, regardless of race, nationality or fundamental ideas. He finds and readily admits reasonableness in all that contains even a vestige of true human instinct. By this instinct he can trace the human element in other nationalities even in exceptional cases. He accepts them at once, seeks to approximate them to his own ideas, ‘places’ them in his own mind, and often succeeds in finding a starting-point for reconciling the conflicting ideas of two different European nations.”[4]
This characteristic is so general and so true, that all other opinions on the character of a great people must take second place. It finds room for the Cossack with his nagaika and for Tolstoi with his gospel. It embraces every aspect of the human soul. Dostoievski himself possessed the synthetic faculty, the wonderful gift of universal understanding. He could make it clear that a crime may be a holy deed, and holiness mere prostitution, even as he succeeded in fusing Russian Christianity with the Tatar “Karat”[5] in one soul. Whence came all these paradoxes in the one man? On one occasion he wrote: “I am struggling with my petty creditors as Laokoon wrestled with the serpents. I urgently require fifteen roubles. Only fifteen. These fifteen roubles will give me relief, and I shall be better able to work.” Here lies the secret of the Russian synthesis in Dostoievski. Mental work is restricted by hard external circumstances. The inherent tendency to despond when in trouble is one of the greatest dangers to the Russian. He would fain lead the contemplative life, and hesitates “to take up arms against a sea of troubles.” To combat this he has had to lash himself into a state of hard practical efficiency. The Russian must grow strong against himself before he can again take up his ideal of an aggressive inner life. It is once more a case of Laokoon and the serpents. For this very reason Tolstoi’s teaching did not appeal to Dostoievski. When he had read a few sentences of this doctrine he clutched his head and cried: “No, not that, anything but that!” A few days later he was dead, and the world will never know what was gathering in his mind against the great heretic. But Dostoievski’s works are really in themselves a most vehement refutation of the Nazarene doctrine—it is as if he had prophetically discerned Tolstoi. Dostoievski solves the contrast between European culture and Christianity in accordance with both the Church and culture. He bows before the miracle, the mystery, and authority, and thus creates the union between material culture and Christian culture. He accepts the world as a whole, even as the Russian people take it.
Tolstoi denies the divinity of Christ and the entire synthesis of Russian philosophy. But even Tolstoi could only have been born in Russia. Personally he liked being accepted by the Russian peasants as one of themselves. The figure of the “Muzhik” is inseparable from Tolstoi’s doctrine, because Tolstoi’s doctrine is inseparable from the Russian people. It lives in the Great Submerged, who are as far removed from Western culture in fact as Tolstoi himself is in theory. Russian law courts have to deal every day with people who refuse to pay taxes, to serve in the army, or to acknowledge the “pravoslav” clerical authority. The Church calls these people “Shkoptzi,” “Molokami,” or “Hlisti.” There are about twenty million of them. They style themselves “White doves,” “The New Israel,” “Doukhobortzi.” In principle they are “pure Christians” like Tolstoi. Both have the same “tone” of soul. Dostoievski says of Tolstoi that he was one of those who fix their eyes on one point, and cannot see what happens to the right or to the left of that; and if they do wish to see it they have to turn with their whole body, as they invariably move their whole soul also in one direction only. This correctly observed obstinacy is the very opposite to the synthetic gift and generosity of soul mentioned before, and this peculiarity of the Russian mind has often been called “Maximalism,” to denote the rigid criterion, which loves no happy mean, but always goes to the utter extreme.
Many Western writers, among them the British author Bering, have asserted that the Slavs have no strength of will. This view is erroneous and harmonizes neither with Tolstoi’s tendency to extremes, nor with Dostoievski’s universal charity. It applies only to such phenomena in Slav life as are accessible to the European tourist, as, for instance, technical undertakings and colonial enterprise; for in this matter the Slav is naturally not so well qualified as the Englishman.
The Russian soul, and consequently the character of the Russian people, is many-sided and paradoxical in its obstinacy and its generosity. It is the historical outcome of such extremes as are represented by yellow positivist Mongolism, and gentle altruistic Christianity. But the soul of the Russian people has not yet clearly found itself, like the souls of the Western nations; first, because the head has not yet acquired control over the body; secondly, because the work of enlightenment and emancipation is only being completed by the present war. Hitherto it has laboured in its birth-throes. It has been a Laokoon wrestling with serpents.