Who can rise up against him with visions of the ancient Muscovy of the tsars? This is not the point at all, and this is not why I began my discussion; the point is that, no matter how many fine and useful things we saw through Peter’s window, there still were so many bad and harmful things there that always troubled the Russian instinct. That instinct never ceased to protest (although it lost its way so badly that in most cases it did not realize what it was doing), and it protested not because of its Tatar essence but, perhaps, precisely because it had preserved something within itself that was higher and better than anything it saw through the window (Well, of course it didn’t protest against everything: we received a great many fine things from Europe and we don’t want to be ungrateful; still, our instinct was right in protesting against at least half of the things.)
I repeat that all this happened in a most original fashion: it was precisely our most ardent Westernisers, precisely those who struggled for reform, who at the same time were rejecting Europe and joining the ranks of the extreme left . . . And the result: in so doing they defined themselves as the most fervent Russians of all, the champions of old Russia and the Russian spirit. And, of course, if anyone had tried to point that out to them at the time, they would either have burst out laughing or been struck with horror.
There is no doubt that they were unaware of any higher purpose to their protest. On the contrary, all the while, for two whole centuries, they denied their own high-mindedness, and not merely their high-mindedness but their very self-respect (there were, after all, some such ardent souls!), and to a degree that amazed even Europe; yet it turns out that they were the very ones who proved to be genuine Russians. It is this theory of mine that I call my paradox.
Take Belinsky, for example. A passionate enthusiast by nature, he was almost the first Russian to take sides directly with the European socialists who had already rejected the whole order of European civilisation; meanwhile, at home, in Russian literature, he waged a war to the end against the Slavophiles, apparently for quite the opposite cause. How astonished he would have been had those same Slavophiles told him that he was the most ardent defender of the Russian truth, the distinctly Russian individual, the Russian principle, and the champion of all those things which he specifically rejected in Russia for the sake of Europe, things he considered only a fantasy.
Moreover, what if they had proved to him that in a certain sense he was the one who was the real conservative, precisely because in Europe he was a socialist and a revolutionary? And in fact that is almost the way it was. There was one huge mistake made here by both sides, and it was made first and foremost in that all the Westernisers of that time confused Russia with Europe.
They took Russia for Europe, and by rejecting Europe and her order they thought to apply that same rejection to Russia. But Russia was not Europe at all; she may have worn a European coat, but beneath that coat was a different creature altogether. It was the Slavophiles who tried to make people see that Russia was not Europe but a different creature altogether when they pointed out that the Westernisers were equating things that were dissimilar and incompatible and when they argued that something true for Europe was entirely inapplicable to Russia, in part because all the things the Westernisers wanted in Europe had already long existed in Russia, in embryo or potentiality at least.
Such things even comprise Russia’s essence, not in any revolutionary sense but in the sense in which the notions of universal human renewal should appear: in the sense of divine Truth, the Truth of Christ, which, God grant, will someday be realized on earth and which is preserved in its entirety in Orthodoxy. The Slavophiles urged people to study Russia first and then draw conclusions. But it was not possible to study Russia then and, in truth, the means to do so were not available.
In any case, at that time who could know anything about Russia? The Slavophiles, of course, knew a hundred times more than the Westernisers (and that was a minimum), but even they almost had to feel their way, engaging in abstract speculation and relying mainly on their remarkable instincts. Learning something became possible only in the last twenty years: but who, even now, knows anything about Russia? At most, the basis for study has been set down, but as soon as an important question arises we at once hear a clamour of discordant voices. Here we have the Eastern Question coming up again: well, admit it, are there many among us – and who are they? – who can agree on this question and agree on its solution? And this in such an important, momentous, and fateful national question!
But never mind the Eastern Question! Why take up such big questions? Just look at the hundreds, the thousands of our internal and everyday, current questions: how uncertain everyone is; how poorly our views are established; how little accustomed we are to work! Here we see Russia’s forests being destroyed; both landowners and peasants are cutting down trees in a kind of frenzy. One can state positively that timber is being sold for a tenth of its value: can the supply last for long? Before our children grow up there will be only a tenth of today’s timber on the market. What will happen then? Ruination, perhaps.
And meanwhile, try to say a word about curtailing the right to destroy our forests and what do you hear? On the one hand, that it is a state and a national necessity, and, on the other, that it is a violation of the rights of private property – two opposite notions. Two camps will at once form, and one still doesn’t know where liberal opinion, which resolves everything, will side. Indeed, will there be only two camps? The matter will drag on for a long time. Someone made a witty remark in the current liberal spirit to the effect that there is no cloud without a silver lining, since cutting down all the Russian forests would at least have the positive value of eliminating corporal punishment: the district courts would have no switches to beat errant peasants. This is some consolation, of course, yet somehow it is hard to believe: even if the forests should disappear altogether, there would always be something to flog people with; they’d start importing it, I suppose.
Now the Yids are becoming landowners, and people shout and write everywhere that they are destroying the soil of Russia. A Yid, they say, having spent capital to buy an estate, at once exhausts all the fertility of the land he has purchased in order to restore his capital with interest. But just try and say anything against this and the hue and cry will be at once raised: you are violating the principles of economic freedom and equal rights for all citizens. But what sort of equal rights are there here if it is a case of a clear and Talmudic status in statu above all and in the first place?
What if it is a case not only of exhausting the soil but also of the future exhaustion of our peasant who, having been freed from the landowner will, with his whole commune, undoubtedly and very quickly now fall into a far worse form of slavery under far worse landowners – those same new landowners who have already sucked the juices from the peasants of western Russia, those same landowners who are now buying up not only estates and peasants but who have also begun to buy up liberal opinion and continue doing so with great success?
Why do we have all these things? Why is there such indecisiveness and discord over each and every decision we make? (And please note that: it is true, is it not?) In my opinion, it is not because of our lack of talent and not because of our incapacity for work; it is because of our continuing ignorance of Russia, of its essence and its individuality, its meaning and its spirit, despite the fact that, compared with the time of Belinsky and the Slavophiles, we have had twenty years of schooling. Even more: in these twenty years of schooling the study of Russia has in fact been greatly advanced, while Russian instinct has, it seems, declined in comparison with the past. What is the reason for this?
But if their Russian instinct saved the Slavophiles at that time, then that same instinct was present in Belinsky as well, and sufficiently present so that the Slavophiles might have considered him their best friend. I repeat, there was an enormous misunderstanding on both sides here. Not in vain did Apollon Grigorev, who also sometimes had rather acute insights, say that ‘had Belinsky lived longer he would certainly have joined the Slavophiles’. He had a real idea there.
7 Derived from ‘kvass,’ a traditional Russian fermented drink, and ‘zipun,’ a peasant coat of rough homespun material.
The Boy Celebrating His
