In the empire of the czar thought is almost a crime and every means is employed to keep it within the boundaries prescribed by the governing power. To overstep these boundaries, to develop itself freely, and I might say naturally, is to declare war against authority, to revolt. The history of evolution of thought in Russia is therefore almost identical with the revolutionary movement. If whilst working on the construction of the temple with the right hand, the left has to wield the sword against a sudden attack of the enemy, the edifice can rise only very slowly. Renan says (in his Future of Science) that the great creations of thought appear in troublous times and that neither material ease nor even liberty contributes much to the originality and the energy of intellectual development. On the contrary the work of mind would only be seriously threatened if humanity came to be too much at its ease. Thank God! exclaims the Breton philosopher, that day is still far distant. The customary state of Athens, he continues, was one of terror; the security of the individual was threatened at every moment, to-day an exile, to-morrow he was sold as a slave. And yet in such a state Phidias produced the Propylæa statues, Plato his dialogues and Aristophanes his satires. Dante would never have composed his cantos in an atmosphere of studious ease. The sacking of Rome did not disturb the brush of Michael Angelo. In a word, the most beautiful things are born amid tears and it is in the midst of struggle, in the atmosphere of sorrow and suffering that humanity develops itself, that the human mind displays the most energy and activity in all directions. Renan was an individualist, and aristocratic in his teachings, and seems only to have in view the individual, nay the genius. Suffering and oppression, physical, intellectual and moral, are schools where the strong gather more strength and come forth triumphant, but where the weaker are destroyed. What is true for the élite, for the very limited number of the chosen few, does not hold good for humanity at large, which is not strong enough to think when it is hungry, to fight against opposing forces and to hurl down the barriers erected against the advance of thought. Few indeed are those who can carry on the struggle to a successful issue. The Russian government, with its Mongolian traditions of autocracy, threw the great nation, which remained behind Peter’s forward march, back into complete indifference and apathy, into a state of submissive contentment, where, like a child, it kisses the rod that punishes it, sometimes cries like a child, and is lulled to sleep by the whisperings of mystic superstition and the vapours of vodki.
Has not the populace a terrifying example in the martyrs of Russian thought? A terrible destiny awaits him who dares to step beyond the line traced by the hand of the government, who ventures to look over the wall erected by imperial ukase. “The history of Russian thinkers,” says Alexander Herzen (Russland’s Sociale Zustände, page 136), “is a long list of martyrs and a register of convicts.” Those whom the hand of the imperial government has spared died in the prime of youth, before they had time to develop, like blossoms hurrying to quit life before they could bear fruit. A Pushkin and a Lermontov fell in the prime of youth, one thirty-eight and the other twenty-seven years old, victims of the unnatural state of society. Russia’s Beaumarchais, Griboiedov, found a premature end in Persia in his thirty-fifth year; Kolzov, the Russian Burns, Bielinski, the Russian Lessing, died in misery, the latter at the age of thirty-eight. Czerncevski was torn from his literary activity and sent to Siberia. Dobrolubov sang his swan-song in his twenty-fifth year. Chaadaev, the friend of Schelling, was declared mad by order of the government. If such measures have kept the people in a state of ignorance and still lowered the already low level of civilisation, the autocratic rule has further, as it was unable to crush it, caused the intelligentia to turn its thoughts into a certain direction.
If we follow the development of the Russian intelligentia we notice at once that all the currents of its intellectual life are, at the present time at least, converging into one centre, swelling the stream, that is already running high, to a vast and mighty ocean, which is sending its waters, through many channels, all over Europe. This centre is literature. Since the foundation of the Academy of Science by Peter the Great Russian achievements in the domains of science, technical education, art, sculpture, music, painting, history and philosophy have been very small.
In science and art the Russians have produced nothing of importance, nothing original. Mendeleev, Lobatshevski, Pirogov, Botkin, Soloviev are a few scientific names of some eminence but they are few as compared with Europe and America. Many others, who are known to the western world as Russians, are in reality Germans or Armenians. The great historian, Karamzin, was of Tatar extraction. In the domain of art Vereshchagin is a Russian but Ainasowski is an Armenian, Brulov a Prussian and Antokolski a Jew (cf. Brüggen, Das heutige Russland, p. 182).
Russia has had no Spinoza and no Kant, no Newton and no Spencer. Since the foundation of the University of Moscow in 1755, some semblance of Russian philosophy has appeared but a Soloviev and a Grote, a Troitski and a Preobrajenski have only introduced the philosophy of Germany, France, and England into Russia, but not worked out their own philosophical systems. Thus, whilst Russian scientists, technicians, artists and even musicians have to go abroad to complete their education, Russian philosophers borrow from Hegel or Descartes, from Locke or Comte. This is, however, not the case with Russian literature. Russia has quickened her development in the realm of literature. Her decades were centuries. Rapidly she has lived through phases of growth and evolution, of achievement and reflection which have filled long periods in other people’s lives. The peaks of Russian creative power in this domain, the productions of Pushkin and Turgeniev, of Lermontov, Dostoievski and Tolstoi proudly face the heights of literary western Europe.
Whilst, however, the Russian genius of the intelligentia centred its force in literature, this literature bears the unmistakable trait, that distinguishes it from European literature, of having a tendency to teach and of taking a moral aspect. Russian literature on the whole has not entered the sphere of artistic interest, it has always been a pulpit whence the word of instruction came forth. With very few exceptions, like Merejkovski and Andreiev, the Russian author is not practising art for art’s sake (l’art pour l’art) but is pursuing a goal, is accomplishing a task.
The Russian literature is a long cry of revolt, a continuous sigh or an admonition. Taine says, somewhere, when speaking of Stendhal and Balzac: “They love art more than men—they are not writing out of sympathy for the poor, but out of love for the beautiful.” This is just what the Russian modern author is not doing. The intellectual and instructive moments predominate over the emotional and artistic.
This state of the intellectual development is explained by what has been stated above. It is due to the sudden introduction of western ceremonies and superficial civilisation, followed by a powerful foreign influence on the one hand, and the general social and political state of the country. When Peter had suddenly launched Russia—which was floating like some big hulk between Asia and Europe—towards the west, the few who helped him in this endeavour came under the complete influence of western thought and manners. St. Petersburg soon became a Versailles in miniature. Voltaire, Diderot, and the encyclopædists governed and shaped Russian thought and Russian society. But not only France—Germany too, and England, Byron and his individualism, had gained great sway in Russia. The independence of Russian thought and its intellectual development only dates from about 1840. When it awoke at that time, when it became conscious of itself, it felt that it had a great work, a great mission to fulfil. Surrounded on one side by a people that was ignorant, ready to sink lower and lower; opposed, on the other, by a government that did its best to check individualism and independence in every possible way—the Russian intelligentia felt its great responsibility.
Surrounded by a population whose mental development was on a very low level, the atmosphere was and still is not propitious for the cultivation of art or science, whilst the Russian author had no time simply to admire the beautiful in nature but was compelled to look round and try what good he could do. Thus Russian genius concentrated itself in literature as the best vehicle to expose the state of Russian society. The Russian writer became an apostle. He is not anxious to be artistic, to shape his style and to be fascinating, but to give as true a picture of Russian life as he possibly can, to show the evil and to suggest the remedy.
Such, in broad lines, is the present state which the few, whom we termed the Russian intelligentia, have reached in their intellectual development. In a moment of strength the Russian genius has attained itself, with self-asserting individuality. Its task is great, its obstacles are manifold, but it fights valiantly and moves on steadily. This only applies to the few. When the day of political freedom will dawn for Russia, then and then only the great evolution and the intellectual development of Russia itself, of the Russian people as a whole, will begin. On the day when civil and religious despotism, that everywhere crushes individuality, will cease, then the genius of the Russian people will spread its pinions, and the masses will awake from their inertia to new life, like the gradual unfolding of spring into summer.