Finally, if it is indeed required, in order to love mankind and preserve within ourselves a soul for universal unity; in order to have within ourselves the capacity not to hate foreign nations because they are not like us; in order to have the desire not to let our national feeling grow so strong that we should aim at getting everything and the other nations be only so many lemons to be squeezed — there are nations of this spirit in Europe! — if to obtain all this, it is necessary, I repeat, that we should first become a rich nation and adapt the European social order to ourselves, then must we still slavishly imitate that European order which may crumble to pieces in Europe to-morrow?
Will the Russian organism even now not be suffered to develop nationally by its own organic strength, but must it necessarily lose its individuality in a servile imitation of Europe? What is then to be done with the Russian organism? Do these gentlemen understand what an organism is? And they still talk of natural sciences. ‘The people will not suffer that,’ said a friend of mine on an occasion two years ago to a vehement Westernist. ‘Then the people should be destroyed!’ was the quiet and majestic answer. And he was not a person of no importance, but one of the leaders of our intellectuals. The story is true.
In these four aspects I showed Pushkin’s significance for us, and my ‘Speech ‘made an impression. It did not make an impression by its merits — I emphasise this — nor by any talent in its exposition (wherein I agree with all my opponents, and do not boast), but by its sincerity, and I will even say by some irresistible power in the facts displayed, notwithstanding its brevity and incompleteness.
But wherein lay ‘the event,’ as Ivan Sergueyevieh Aksakov put it? In that the Slavophiles, or the Russian party so-called — we have a Russian party! — made an immense, and perhaps final step towards reconciliation with the Westernists, for the Slavophiles fully recognised the validity of the Westernist aspiration after Europe, the validity even of their most extreme enthusiasms and conclusions, and explained this validity by our purely Russian and national aspiration, which coincides with the national spirit itself.
They explained the enthusiasms by historical necessity, by historical destiny, so that in the whole sum-total (if that sum-total is ever reckoned) it will appear that the Westernists have served the Russian land and spirit as much as all those purely Russian men who have sincerely loved their native land and hitherto perhaps too jealously guarded her from all the infatuations of ‘Russian foreigners.’ It was finally declared that all the friction between the two parties and all their unpleasant quarrels had been due to a misunderstanding. This perhaps might have been an event, for the representatives of the Slavophiles present fully agreed with the conclusions of my speech when it was ended.
And I declare now — as I declared in my ‘Speech ‘also — that the honour of this new step (for even a sincere desire for reconciliation is an honour), that the merit of this new word, if you will, belongs not to me alone, but to the whole Slavophile movement, to the whole spirit and tendency of our ‘party,’ that this was always clear to those who impartially examined the movement, and that the idea which I expressed had more than once been, if not expressed, at least indicated by the Slavophiles.
My part was only to seize the opportune moment. Now this is the conclusion: if the Western is to accept our reasoning and agree with it, then of course all the misunderstandings between both parties will be removed, and the Westernists and the Slavophiles will have nothing to quarrel about, since, as Ivan Sergueyevich put it, ‘from this day forward everything has been cleared up.’ Naturally, from this point of view my ‘Speech ‘would have been an event. But, alas! the word ‘event’ was uttered in a moment of sincere enthusiasm by one side, but whether it will be accepted by the other side and not remain merely an ideal — that is another question.
Together with the Slavophiles who embraced me and shook me by the hand on the platform as soon as I had finished my speech, there came up to me Westernists also, the leading representatives of the movement who oecupy the principal r61es in it, above all at the present time. They pressed my hand with the same sincere and fervent enthusiasm as the Slavophiles, spoke of my speech as the work of genius, and repeated the word over and over again.
But I am afraid, genuinely afraid, that this word was pronounced in the first rush of enthusiasm. Oh, I am not afraid that they will recant their opinion that my speech was the work of genius. I myself know that it was not, I was not at all deceived by the praise, so that from my whole heart I shall forgive them their disappointment in my genius. But it may happen that the Westernists, upon reflection, will say — mark well that I am not writing of those who pressed my hand, but of the Westernists in general—’ Ah,’
they will perhaps say (you hear; no more ‘perhaps ‘)—’ Ah, you ‘ve agreed at last, after so much dispute and discussion, that our aspiration after Europe was justified and normal, you have acknowledged that there was truth on our side as well, and you have lowered your flag.
Well, we accept your acknowledgment good-heartedly, and hasten to assure you that it is not at all bad on your part. At least it shows a certain intelligence in you, which indeed we never denied, with the exception perhaps of our stupidest members, for whom we have neither the will nor the power to be responsible, but . . .’ Here you see another ‘but’ appears, and it must be explained immediately. ‘The point is that your thesis and conclusion that in our enthusiasms we, as it were, coincided with the national spirit and were mysteriously guided by it — that proposition is still more than doubtful to us, and so an agreement between us once more becomes impossible.
Please understand that we were guided by Europe, by her science, and by Peter’s reforms, but not by the spirit of the people at all, for we neither met nor scented this spirit on our way; on the contrary, we left it behind and ran away from it as soon as we could. From the very outset we went our way independently, and did not in the least follow some instinct or other which is leading the Russian people to universal sympathy and the unification of mankind — to all that you have just talked so much about.
In the Russian people, for the time has come to speak perfectly frankly, we see, as before, only an inert mass, from which we have nothing to learn, which, on the contrary, hinders Russia’s development towards something better, and must be wholly recreated and remade — if it is impossible organically, then mechanically at least — by simply making them obey us once for all.
And to obtain this obedience we must adopt the social order just as it is in European countries, which we were discussing just now. Strictly speaking, our nation is poor and untidy, as it always has been, and can have neither individuality nor ideal. The whole history of our people is absurd, from which you have deduced the devil knows what, while we alone have looked at it soberty. It is necessary that a people like ours should have no history, and that what it has in the shape of a history should be utterly forgotten by it in disgust. Only an intellectual society must have a history, and this society the people must serve, and only serve, with its labour and powers.
‘Don’t worry and don’t shout! We don’t want to enslave our people when we talk of making it obey, of course not. Please don’t rush to such conclusions. We are humane, we are Europeans, you know that as well as we. On the contrary, we intend to develop our people gradually, in due order, and to crown our edifice by raising up the people to ourselves and by remaking its nationality into something different which will appear when its development is complete. We will lay the foundations of education and begin whence we ourselves started, with the renunciation of all the past, and with the damnation’to which the people must itself deliver up its past.
The moment we have taught one of the people to read and write, we shall immediately make him scent the delights of Europe, we will seduce him with Europe, by the refinement of European life, of European,customs, clothes, drinks,.dances — in a word, we will make him ashamed of his bast shoes and his kvass, ashamed of his old songs, and though there are many excellent, musical songs among them, we will make him sing vaudeville, no matter how furious you may be. In brief, for the good purpose, by any and every means, we will first work on
