You cannot deny that they did not know the soil; they grew and were brought up like children in a convent school; they got to know Russia in their office in Petersburg; their relations with the people were those of a landlord with a serf. And suppose even that they had lived in the country with the peasants. My King’s Messenger had mixed with post-boys all his life long, and he found in them only stuff for his clenched fist. Aleko and Onyegin were haughty and impatient with Russia, like all who live in a separate coterie apart from the people, with all found, who live, that is, on the labour of the peasants and on European enlightenment whieh they also got for nothing.
Indeed, the fact that all our intellectuals for almost the whole of two centuries of our history, as the result of a certain stage in their evolution, became merely idlers, explains their abstraction and detachment from their native soil. Aleko perished not because of Derzhimorda, but because of his inability to understand Derzhimorda and his genesis. For that he was too proud. Since he was unable to understand, he found it impossible to work in his native field.
And he considered those who did believe in that possibility, as fools or as Derzhimordas also. And not only with Derzhimorda was our wanderer proud, but with Russia as well, since his final conclusion was that Russia contained only serfs and Derzhimordas.
If there were any nobler element in her, then it was they, the Alekos and Onyegins, and no one besides. After that, pride comes of itself: living in abstraction they naturally began to be amazed by their own nobility and their superiority over the disgusting Derzhimordas, in whom they could understand nothing at all. Had they not been proud, they would have seen that they also were Derzhimordas, and seeing this they might perhaps have found in that very vision a way of reconciliation. Towards the people they felt not pride so much as utter loathing.
You will not believe all this. On the contrary, when you say that certain traits of the Alekos and Onyegins are uncomely, you presumptuously begin to reprove me for the narrowness of my outlook, because ‘it is hardly reasonable to cure the symptoms and neglect the cause of the disease.’ You assert that when I say ‘Humble thyself, proud man,’ I am accusing Aleko for his personal qualities merely, and am leaving out of account the root of the matter, ‘as if the whole point in question were the personal qualities of those who are proud and do not desire to humble themselves.” The question is not settled,’ you say, ‘on what the wanderers did pride themselves; and the other question is also unanswered — before what should they humble themselves?’
This is all very presumptuous. I thought that I concluded in so many words that the ‘wanderers ‘are a product of the historical evolution of our society. Therefore I do not throw all the blame on them alone personally and on their personal qualities. You have read it; it is written and printed. Why then do you misrepresent me? You quote the passage ‘Humble thyself,’ and write:
‘In these words M. Dostoyevsky expressed the holy of holies among his convictions, that which is at once the strength and weakness of the author of The Brothers Karamazov. In these words is contained a great religious ideal, a mighty charge to personal morality, but there is not even an allusion to social ideals.’
After these words you instantly begin to criticise the ideal of ‘personal perfection in the spirit of Christian love.’ I will deal with your opinion of ‘personal perfection ‘presently, but I will first turn inside out before your eyes all the lining of your soul which you apparently would like to hide.
And that is: you are angry with me not merely because I accuse the ‘wanderer,’ but because I do not acknowledge him as the ideal of personal perfection, as a healthy Russian, which he alone could, and ought to, be! You admit that there are uncomely traits in Aleko and Onyegin, but you are only dodging. In your inner belief, which for some reason you do not wish to reveal fully, the ‘wanderers ‘are normal and excellent, excellent by this alone that they ran away from the Dcrzhimordas. You look indignant if any one ventures to detect even the slightest fault in them.
You say immediately: ‘It would be absurd to assert that they were destroyed by their pride, and they did not want to humble themselves before the national truth.’ And finally you hotly assert and insist that it was they who liberated the serfs. You write:
‘I will say more: if in the soul of the best of these wanderers some great idea was preserved, then it was the care for the people; their most burning hatred was directed against serfdom, which lay heavy on the people. Grant that they loved the people and hated serfdom in their own way, grant that it was a European way. But who else than they prepared our society for the abolition of serfdom? In what they could they too served “the native field,” first as the apostles of liberation and then as arbiters of peace.’
The point is that ‘the wanderers ‘hated serfdom in their own way, in ‘the European way.’ The whole value of the argument is there. It is that they hated serfdom not for the sake of the Russian peasant, who worked for them, and fed them, and was therefore oppressed by them no less than others.
If their social sorrow had indeed so strong a hold on them that they had to run away to the Gipsies or the barricades in Paris, what prevented, what hindered them from purely and simply liberating their own peasants and giving them their land, and thus removing the soeial sorrow, in so far at least as they were themselves responsible? But one heard too little of sueh liberations, and too much of social rhetoric. ‘Their environment ruined them; moreover, why should they lose their eapital?
‘But why should they not lose it if they had come to such a pitch-that from sorrow for the peasants they had to run away to the barricades? And that is the root of the matter. In the cosy corners of Paris a man still needs money, even though he stands sentry on a barricade, and the serfs had to forward their poll-taxes. Or ‘the wanderers ‘took a still simpler course: they mortgaged, sold or exchanged — isn’t it all the same? — their peasants, and when they had realised them, they went off to Paris to help in publishing French radical papers, and reviews for the salvation of all mankind, not merely of the Russian moujik. You assure me that they were devoured by sorrow for the serf?
Not by sorrow for the serf, but by an abstract sorrow for slavery in mankind: it must not be, it is uncivilised. Liberie, Egalite, FraterniU. And as for the Russian peasant personally, perhaps sorrow for him did by no means inflict such terrible torments upon those great hearts. I know and remember many of the intimate opinions of very, very ‘enlightened ‘men of the good old days. * Undoubtedly slavery is a terrible evil,’ they used to whisper intimately among themselves, ‘but if you take it all in all, is our people really — a people? Well, is it like the people of Paris in ‘03? It has grown accustomed to slavery; it has the face and figure of a slave.
Of course a eat-o’-nine-tails is an abominable thing, speaking generally, but for a Russian, by Jove, the cat’s still a necessity.’ . . . ‘You must flog a Russian peasant. A Russian peasant would pine away if he wasn’t flogged — that’s the kind of nation it is.’ That is what I have heard, I swear, in my time even from very enlightened men. That is ‘the sober truth.’ Perhaps Onyegin did not flog his domestics, though it’s really hard to say, but Aleko — well, I’m sure that Aleko used to give them a flogging, not from cruelty of heart, but almost out of compassion, almost for a good purpose. ‘He must have it. He can’t live without a dose of flogging. He comes himself and asks:
Give me a flogging, sir; make a man of me. I ‘ve been spoiled!” Pray tell me what can be done with such a character. Well, I’ll satisfy him, and give him a flogging!’
I repeat, their feeling towards the peasant at times reached nausea. And what a mass of contemptuous anecdotes about the Russian peasant circulated among them, contemptuous and obscene anecdotes about his slavish soul, his ‘idolatry,’ his priest, his wife — all these were retailed light-heartedly, sometimes by men whose private life was fit for a brothel — oh, of course, not always because of an evil soul, but sometimes really only from excessive ardour to adopt the latest European ideas (d la Lucretia Floriana, for instance) which were understood and assimilated in our own way, with true Russian impetuosity.
Russians had a hand in anything! Russian sorrowing’ wanderers ‘were
