Quite lately an old eye-witness who had observed those days told an anecdote in a review about a certain meeting of the foremost men of liberal and universal minds of that time with a peasant woman. Here we have gathered wanderers par excellence, wanderers by letters patent, as it were, who had proved their title in the matter of history. In the summer of 18-45 a crowd of guests arrived at an admirable country house near Moscow, where, in the words of an eye-witness, ‘colossal dinners’ were given. The guests comprised the most humanitarian professors, the most amazing amateurs and connoisseurs of the fine arts and other things as well, the most renowned democrats, and finally famous political workers of world-wide importance, critics, writers, highly educated women. Suddenly the whole company, probably after a champagne dinner, with fish-pies and pigeon’s milk — there must have been some reason why these dinners were called ‘colossal’ — set out for a walk in the fields.
In a remote corner of the corn they meet a woman harvester. Heavy summer work in the fields during harvest-time: the peasants and their women-folk get up at four o’cloek to get in the corn and work until night. It’s very hard to bend and reap for twelve solid hours; the sun is burning. When a harvest woman gets into the corn she generally cannot be seen. And now, here in the corn, our company finds a harvest woman — imagine it, in ‘a primitive costume ‘(in her shirt!). It is terrible. The universal feelings of humaneness arc offended; an indignant voice is instantly heard. ‘Only the Russian woman among all women has no sense of shame.’ Of course, the inference is inevitable. ‘Only before a Russian woman is one ashamed of nothing.’ A discussion began.
Advocates of the Russian woman also appeared, but what advocates! and with what objections they had to contend. And all kinds of opinions and conclusions could be heard among the crowd of wanderers — landlords who slaked their thirst with champagne, swallowed oysters — and who paid? The woman with her labour! It is for you, you universal sufferers, that she is working; her labour paid for your feast.
And because, while she was in the corn where she could not be seen, tormented by sun and sweat, she took off her skirt and worked in her shirt alone, she is shameless and has offended your sense of modesty—’ she is of all women most shameless ‘— oh, you chaste gentlemen! What about your ‘cosy corners in Paris ‘and your pranks in ‘the gay little city,’ and those pleasant little cancans at the Bal Mabile, only to tell of which makes a Russian leap for joy, and that fascinating little chanson,
Ma commere, quand je danse Comment va mon cotillon?
with the charming upward flick of the skirt, and the twitch of the rump — this does not in the least offend our chaste Russian gentlemen; on the contrary it delights them! ‘By Jove, it’s so graceful, the cancan, the fascinating twitch — it’s the most exquisite article de Paris of its kind: but there you have a hag, a Russian hag, a block, a log!’
And now it’s not even the conviction of the foulness of our peasant and our people any more, but it is a personal feeling of aversion to the peasant — oh, of course, an involuntary, almost unconscious aversion, which they themselves hardly even notice. But I confess I can by no means agree with your very fundamental proposition, M. Gradovsky: ‘Who else but they prepared our society for the abolition of serfdom? ‘Perhaps they served the cause only with their abstract trivialities, while they shed their social sorrow according to all the rules.
Oh, naturally, it made part of the general economy and had its use. But the liberation of the peasants was furthered, and those who laboured for that liberation were helped, rather by men who followed Samarin’s trend of ideas than by your wanderers. Men of the type, like Samarin,1 a type perfectly unlike the wanderers, appeared for the great work of that time: they were by no means few, M. Gradovsky, but of them, of course, you say not a single word.
The wanderers, according to all the evidence, were very soon bored by the work of emancipation, and commenced to turn up their noses again. They would not have been wanderers had they acted otherwise. Upon the receipt of the compensation — the Government paid the landlords when it freed the serfs — they began to sell the rest of their lands and forests to merchants and speculators to be cut down and destroyed; they emigrated, and introduced absenteeism. … Of course, you won’t agree with my opinion, Herr Professor, but what can I do? I cannot possibly agree to accept the picture of your darling, the superior and liberal-minded Russian, as the ideal of the real and normal Russian, as he was, is now, and ever shall be. Little good 1 Samavin vras a famous Slavophile leader.
work have these men done during the last decades in the national field. And there is more truth in my statement than in your dithyrambs in honour of these gentlemen of the good old times.
§3
two. halvesNow I come to your views on ‘personal perfection in the spirit of Christian love ‘and to what you call its insufficiency in comparison with ‘social ideals,’ and above all in comparison with ‘political institutions.’ You yourself begin with the assertion that this is the most important point of disagreement between us. You write:
‘Now we have reached the most important point in our disagreement with M. Dostoyevsky.
While he demands humiliation before the national truth and the national ideals, he assumes that that truth and those ideals are something ready prepared, unshakable and eternal. We will allow ourselves to assure him of the contrary. The social ideals of our people are still in process of formation and development. The people has still much work to do upon itself, that it may be worthy of the name of a great people.’
I have already partly replied to you concerning ‘the truth’ and national ideals at the beginning of this article, in the first section. You find that truth and those ideals quite insufficient for the development of Russia’s political ideals, as though you were to have said that religion is one thing and political work another. With your scientific knife you cut a whole, living organism into two separate halves and assert that these halves must be quite independent of each other.
Let us look more closely, let us examine each of these two halves separately, and perhaps we shall come to some conclusion. Let us first investigate the half concerning ‘personal perfection in the spirit of Christian love.’ You write:
‘M. Dostoyevsky calls to men to work upon themselves and to humble themselves. Personal self-perfeetion in the spirit of Christian love is, of course, the first premiss of any activity, great or small! But it does not follow that men who are personally perfected in the Christian sense will infallibly form a perfect society.
I shall allow myself to put forward an instance.
4 Paul the Apostle instructs slaves and masters concerning their mutual relations. Slaves and masters alike could hearken, and usually did hearken to the word of the apostle. Personally they were good Christians; but slavery was not sanctified thereby. It remained an immoral institution. In the same way, M. Dostoyevsky, like all of us, has known splendid Christians, landlords and peasants alike. But serfdom remained an abomination in the sight of God, and the Tsar Liberator appeared as the spokesman of the demands not merely of personal but of social morality as well, of whieh social morality there was no right conception in the olden time, although perhaps there were then as many good people as there are now.
‘Personal and social morality are not one and the same. Whence it follows that no social perfection can be attained solely through the improvement of the personal qualities of those who form the society.
Let us take another example. Suppose that, beginning from the year 1800, a whole series of preachers of Christian love and humility had begun to improve the morality of the Korobochkas and the Sobakieviches. Can it be supposed that they would have achieved the abolition of serfdom, so that the word of authority would not have been necessary for the removal of that phenomenon? On the contrary, a Korobochka would have begun to demonstrate that she was a true Christian and a genuine “mother” of her peasants, and she would have remained in this conviction in spite of all the arguments of the preachers.
‘The improvement of the people in the social sense cannot be effected by work “upon oneself” alone and by “ humbling oneself.” To work upon oneself and to subdue one’s own passions — this can be done even in the wilderness or upon a desert island.
But as social beings, people develop and improve by work beside one another, for one another and with one another.
