CHAPTER NINE
SLAVOPHILISM.THE MESSIANISM OF ORTHODOX THEOCRACY.SLAVOPHILISM AND PANSLAVISM
I
§ 52.
WITH the aid of German philosophy the "fanatic Slavs," as Čaadaev termed them, transformed Uvarov's theocratic program into a philosophical system. In his religious westernism Čaadaev remained isolated but continued to exercise an influence upon friend and foe, for the slavophil movement culminated in the establishment of a school.
Slavophil philosophy was first formulated in the literary circles of Moscow being directly connected with the system of Schelling, whereas to the westernisers, the opponents of slavophilism, Hegel's system served as foundation. At the outset the two tendencies were not precisely differentiated, but by about 1845 a clear division of principle was recognised, and therewith the adherents of the respective views entered opposite camps. Owing, however, to the severity of censorship under Nicholas, the literary and journalistic formulation of the conceptions in question did not ensue until some years later, at the beginning of the fifties and in the opening years of the reign of Alexander II.
Certain historians of literature refer to nationalist predecessors of the slavophils, telling us that Šiškov, Karamzin, or Küchelbecker was the first slavophil. The only sense in which this is true is that the slavophils developed yet further the strong nationalist tendency which had become manifest during the reign of Alexander I and that they defended and treasured Russian civilisation. In this sense, predecessors of slavophilism are likewise to be found among the first advocates of Russianism during the eighteenth century and even earlier. But I consider it necessary to insist that in its primary form and as advocated by its founders slavophilism was not nationalistic but an essentially religious movement, and that equally with westernisrn its philosophic sources were to be found in the west.
The original meaning of the term slavophil was a love for Slav literature, not for Slavism. The word was first used to denote the nationalism of Šiškov. This writer declared that church Slavonic was the root and foundation of the Russian vernacular; with the church tongue came the church Slavonic alphabet, and of course the church spirit as well. The word, "slavophil" was ironically employed by Šiškov's opponents, and was subsequently transferred to the new trend. Kirěevskii spoke of his own views as Orthodox Slavonic, others referred to "the Slavs"; Gogol used the expression "Slovenists and Europeists."[1]
Čaadaev's friend Ivan Kirěevskii was the founder of slavophilism. Homjakov is frequently spoken of as the founder, and it is contended that Homjakov influenced Kirěevskii, and practically effected the latter's conversion to slavophilism. The statement is inaccurate. Kirěevskii, as we are about to learn, was at the outset of his development a supporter of western culture, but he was likewise an opponent of contemporary liberalism in so far as this was indifferent or hostile to religion. Subsequently he became more conservative and his ecclesiastical and religious feelings strengthened. Only for this intensification of his ecclesiastical leanings can Homjakov, P. Kirěevskii (the brother of Ivan) and others be regarded as responsible. Even in this direction the influence of Kirěevskii's wife and of her clerically minded acquaintances may perhaps have been more important than that of Homjakov. To Kirěevskii we owe the most profound and the most general formulation of slavophilism as a philosophic doctrine, and Homjakov was more influenced by Kirěevskii than Kirěevskii by Homjakov. As a matter of mere chronology, Kirěevskii was the philosophic founder of slavophilism.[2]
Kirěevskii, like Čaadaev and his other friends and acquaintances, was brought up on German philosophy and literature, Schelling having above all influenced him. At an early age Kirěevskii was introduced to the ideas of Schelling by his stepfather and tutor Elagin, who translated into Russian Schelling' s Philosophical Letters Concerning Dogmatism and Criticism. In this work are to be found the leading epistemological positions that were subsequently expounded in Kirěevskii's own writings. The influence of Schelling may likewise be traced in the essay entitled The Nineteenth Century, and in the program of Kirěevskii's review "The European." In a word, the Europeanisation of Russia was Kirěevskii's program immediately after his return from Europe.
Čaadaev might well take delight in Kirěevskii's writings of the year 1832! Kirěevskii unreservedly accepted European culture as it had developed from the middle of the eighteenth century onwards. With Schelling, he considered this culture to be the highest stage of intellectual development, regarding it as the phase of artistic creative energy which completed the practical and theoretical phases. At the same time, this culture was the harmonious solution of the oppositions which had found transitory expression as revolution and counter-revolution, as Voltairism and romanticist mysticism. Kirěevskii considered that the French revolution had exercised a wholesome influence upon Europe. He hailed the return to religion and the religious spirit, for like Čaadaev he looked upon this as a social energy tending to unify mankind. In his view, religion was not merely ceremonial and inward conviction, but was also a spiritual unanimity of the entire nation. As such it must be displayed in all manifestations of social life. Religion must permeate the entire historical development of the nation.
To Kirěevskii the culture of the new Europe was the natural sequel and perfectionment of classical culture as fructified by Christianity. Russian civilisation before the days of Peter was in his eyes defective because Russian Christianity, the Russian church, though purer and holier than Catholicism and, the Roman church, had been incompetent to diffuse their energy throughout Russian life as a whole, to permeate state, civilisation, art. the economic organism, society at large. For the Russians the classical factor was lacking, and there was consequently also lacking the renaissance influence which in the west was so peculiarly associated with Christianity. The Russians remained uncultured. In Novgorod and Pskov alone did there exist offshoots from the general culture of Europe.
Kirěevskii praised Peter and Catherine for having articulated Russia to Europe, and he condemned the national chauvinists who desired for Russia a purely national and independent culture. He inveighed against those who wished to separate Russia from Europe by building a Chinese wall. True civilisation was to be found, not in national peculiarities, but in participation in the general life of the civilised world. The Russians should not direct their gaze backward towards Old Russia; they must and could undertake the direct adoption of the newer European civilisation. They must become Europeanised, for to strive after a separate nationalism was tantamount to aiming at uncivilisation.
There are numerous lacunæ inKirěevskii's philosophy of history, and in especial we have to note the lack of analysis of that Russian Christianity which was "purer and holier." Moreover, if religion was to permeate the entirety of social life, how was the new western culture, modern Europeanism, to be directly associated with the Russian church and religion? In this association, what was to be Russia's rôle?
The work is too sketchy. The individual phases of historical development are not adequately described. For example, the reformation receives no more than passing mention; we are not told why.the new culture has outstripped the older, Christian, culture; and so on. Further, the leading concepts, state, nation, humanity, civilisation, religion, etc., are not defined with sufficient precision. Nor did Kirěevskii attain to clear views regarding the true significance of his Europeanism. The Nicolaitan government, however, had no doubts about the matter, and gave Kirěevskii's "European" short shrift. Culture implies freedom; the activity of the reason signifies revolution; the "adroitly chosen middle course" leads to a constitution. Such was the minister for education's interpretation of the essay, and no one can say that he was wholly wrong.
§ 53.
AFTER this literary mishap Kirěevskii remained in the background, publishing no more than a few literary studies, anonymously. When he married he became acquainted with Father Filaret, an ascetic monk of the Novospassian monastery in Moscow, Mme. Kirěevskii's confessor. This acquaintanceship contributed much to the clarification of Kirěevskii's religious views, and strengthened the influence exercised by his brother Petr and his friend Homjakov. Kirěevskii had hoped to bring his wife, a woman of education, over to his side; but within two years of marriage, as his friend Košelev reports, he shared the opinions of his wife. From his estate at Dolbino in the administrative district of Tula he paid frequent visits to the hermitage of Optina, entering into close relationships with some of its older occupants. After the death of Filaret in 1842, Kirěevskii's confessor, Father Makarii, influenced him greatly. His Orthodox bias was further strengthened by the study of the Greek fathers of the church, and it was in the frame of mind thus induced that he wrote the two essays of 1852 and 1856.
The leading ideas of these works and of other fragmentary articles and thoughts may be briefly expounded as follows.
In its intimate nature Russia differs from Europe. The contrast between the two civilisations is determined by religious and ecclesiastical differences. It is the contrast between faith, and knowledge inimical to faith; between tradition and criticism; between eastern Orthodoxy, on the one hand and Roman Catholicism and predominantly German Protestantism, on the other. Orthodoxy is for Russia the buckler of revealed religion; the Orthodox creed is the mystical expression of absolute and divinely revealed religious truth. European Catholicism, and above all Protestantism, made an unfortunate attempt to show that divine revelation was in conformity with reason, the net result of this rationalism being to destroy the faith of the western church and to divide the human spirit against itself. Culture, too, as based upon the faith and upon the church, differs in Russia and in Europe. The dominant philosophy of Russia is that of the Greek fathers of the church, but in Europe scholasticism and the essentially Protestant philosophy which sprung from scholasticism have been the mainsprings of culture. For this reason Russian art has its peculiar characteristics, for to it beauty and truth are one, whereas in Europe the conception of abstract beauty leads to visionary untruths.
The Russian state has grown organically out of the commune, the mir; the European state originated through armed occupations and the subjugation of foreign peoples. Moreover, modern parliamentarism with its majority rule is merely the continuation of the materialist principle of government. Kirěevskii took the same view of Louis Philippe as did Nicholas I.
Russian law, too, has developed organically out of the convictions of the people, whereas European law, imposed by the Roman-conquerors, finds its climax in outward legalism and in the formalism of the letter.
Above all, therefore, the relationship of state to church differs in Russia and in Europe. The Russian state is entirely distinct from the church, the former having none but secular tasks to fulfil. The European state is merged into the church; the church usurps power over temporal affairs and neglects spiritual affairs. "Holy Russia" does not signify what the politically Holy Roman Empire had signified; Holy Russia is a treasure house for relics.
In Russia property is communal (the mir), for the individual has a value as such; in Europe the individual is valueless, for the meaning of European private property is that the human being is adscript to the soil—it is the soil which has value, not the individual.
In Russia, consequently, the family has an entirely different constitution from that which obtains in Europe. The Russian family is patriarchal; by the ties of blood its members are associated to form a moral unity from which have originated by organic growth the commune and ultimately the state with its patriarchal ruler. The European family is individualistic and therefore egoistic; it leads to the emancipation of women and children.
Russian life is simple, but Europe seeks luxury and comfort. Political economy is the science of the life of material enjoyments.
The Russian finds genuine civilisation, Old Russian, Slavic, prepetrine civilisation, upon the land; its sustainer is the peasant, the mužik, the community at large. The European has his modern civilisation, whose focus is in the town, and whose sustainer is the bourgeois. Bourgeois industrialism dominates social life; bourgeois philanthropy is essentially the outcome of egoistic calculation.
The fruits of these differing outlooks and activities are likewise fundamentally diverse. The Russian is spiritually unified; though he never fails to be aware of his imperfections, his conscience gives him repose and satisfaction. The European has a conviction that he is perfect, and yet has no feeling of happiness or satisfaction, for his spiritual nature is utterly disunited and he is plunged into scepticism and unbelief, but without faith it is impossible to live.
Kirěevskii, having been led to formulate this dualism by an analysis of contemporary Russia and Europe, next endeavours to explain it on philosophic and historical grounds. In his view the contrast between two civilisations and two worlds existed already in antiquity in the contrast between Rome and Athens (later replaced by Constantinople). Christianity mitigated national peculiarities. Within the unified worldwide church, local and national qualities were pushed outward to the frontier. In course of time, however, Latin peculiarities gained the upper hand, and this resulted in schism, in great historical dualism of east and west.
The Latin half of the world was unable to withstand its ancient juristic and formal fondness for the syllogism, for logic; it modified its dogma ("filioque"), and it evolved scholasticism, which was to make Christian teaching comprehensible to the reason. Yet precisely by this logical route did scholasticism and the Roman church become hostile to reason, and despite their rationalism they submitted blindly to the authority of the hierarchy and of the pope.
Not merely the church but culture as a whole came to the west in an exclusively Latin form. In all its elements, therefore, this culture has a juristic and formal, outwardly logical character. In the moral sphere, the western character manifested in the Roman pride which constitutes the essence of patriotism, the greatest of the Roman virtues. The Greek loved his home, but the patriotism of the Roman was the pride of one who, in loving his fatherland, loved in truth his party and his own egoistic interest. In a word, the acceptance of the Roman system gave its peculiar stamp to the whole of western culture—and that culture was confined to externals.
To a degree the reformation saved religion for the west. In the main, however, Roman rationalistic scholasticism continued in force, Protestantism engendering modern Teutonic philosophy. Through the work of Hume, Kant, Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel, western thought, essentially Roman, western syllogistic rationalism, was brought to its term. The old unity of Catholicism was disintegrated through the triumph of individualism and subjectivism, whereby too, the west was socially atomised. Just as in the middle ages every knight in his castle was a state within the state, so now in the modern age we have the cult of unrestricted individual authority, the proclamation of personal conviction; revolution, as typified in the French revolution, has become the precondition of progress.
Very different was the development of eastern Christianity. Kirěevskii fails to give us as precise a demonstration of the essence of Greek and Byzantine civilisation and culture as he has given us of the development of the west. He contents himself with explaining the Greek conception of religion, which, in contrast with the outwardly logical rationalism of the west is characterised by an intensity of mystical contemplation.
The great schism weakened Byzantium from the cultural outlook, but did not lead to any decay of religion. From Byzantium Russia received true Christianity and therewith the foundations of true civilisation. Unlike the nations which accepted Roman Christianity, the Russians had no civilisation prior to their conversion, and were therefore able to adopt Christianity more readily and to maintain it in greater purity. They cherished, not only Christian doctrine, but also Christian morals and the genuinely Christian character. The Russian is typically contrasted with the Latin; the Russian's Christian humility is the very opposite of the Latin's ostentatious pride. Kirěevskii is, indeed, forced to admit that in latter days the man of the people, the mužik, has alone preserved true Christianity; and he further concedes that Russia also took a false step in her development, mistaking the form for the substance. The substance of Christianity, the meaning of Christian doctrine, finds expression in outward form, in ritual. Deceived by the intimate association between substance and form, the Russian has mistaken the form for the substance, and thus Old Russian culture and Russian social life became encumbered with formalism. In this domain of form there actually resulted a kind of schism, the sixteenth-century raskol.
Kirěevskii was even inclined to explain the reforms of Peter as an offshoot of Russian formalism. Russia, in her devotion to form, adopted the formalistic system of the Romanised west. Yet Kirěevskii, rejecting Peter's reforms and rejecting the civilisation of the west, himself reproduces Peter's error; he even commits the original sin of Rome, and endeavours to provide a philosophical foundation for the true religion of the Orthodox cast. "What sort of a religion would the religion be which was incompatible with reason?" This is the question he addresses to those men of the west who jettison philosophy in order to save religion.
Thus in the end Kirěevskii comes to the view that German philosophy may constitute a transitional stage on the way to an independent Russian philosophy. Western philosophy, he considers, has attained its climax, has found its definitive form, in German idealism, and is incapable of further development. The understanding must recognize this, and must resolve upon a change of outlook; the cold analysis of the critical understanding, which since Roman days has been the leading power in the west, must be replaced by a return to reason; from logic, syllogistics, dialectics, we must return to mystical contemplation. The critical understanding has isolated the individual psychical faculties, has attempted to make them independent one of another, has led to an inner division in the human spirit. Rescue from this state can be secured in one way only, by a return to faith, to contemplation to intuition, in a word to that reason wherein all the spiritual energies, acting as a perfect unity, constitute a living whole. This unity of the spirit was, he says, most perfectly attained among the Greek fathers of the church; but Kirěevskii recognises that it has become impossible for mankind to regain their standpoint. Philosophy is at once the outcome and the foundation of the sciences and the leader in the path we have to take between the sciences and faith. The new knowledge demands a new philosophy. Hence Kirěevskii based himself upon Schelling, who after his return to mysticism could lead the new knowledge and the new civilisation back to the true faith. At any rate, the saving Russian philosophy could be established upon the foundation of Schelling's teachings; the Greek fathers would serve this philosophy as signposts, would offer it the principles requisite for the guidance of life.
It is manifest that Kirěevskii is endeavouring with the aid of Schelling, and especially with the aid of Schelling in his later developments, Schelling entangled in theosophy and mythology, to confute Kant and Hegel. To put the matter in psychological and epistemological terms, Kirěevskii accepts the datum of Kantian criticism that the highest religious truths are not cognisable by the understanding. With the establishment of this proposition Kant deprived European rationalist civilisation of its roots, but he failed to take the further step that was necessary. Schelling was the first to turn away from rationalism to intuition, to intellectual contemplation. And yet Kant desired by means of his criticism to find a way back to faith. "Consequently the leading characteristic of believing thought is found in the endeavour to fuse all the individual parts of the soul into a single energy, to discover that inner concentration of being wherein the reason, the will, and the emotions, but also the conscience, the beautiful, the true, the wonderful, the object of desire justice, compassion, the totality of reason, flow together to form a living whole, so that the essence of personality becomes re-established in its primitive indivisibility." To Kirěevskii the chief peculiarity of "Orthodox thinking" lies in this, that "it does not endeavour to transform individual concepts in order to bring them into harmony with the demands of faith, but aims at elevating the understanding to a level higher than that which this faculty commonly occupies; it endeavours to secure that the very source of apprehension, the very mode of thought, shall be sympathetically attuned to faith"[3]
§ 54.
HAVING endeavoured to make a brief sketch of Kirěevskii's slavophil philosophy of history and of religion. I will now venture a short critical discussion of that philosophy.
It is easy to grasp the distinction between Kirěevskii's earlier views and those which he subsequently formulated. We see that there had occurred a real change of tendency, and not a mere change of outlook upon certain points (as, for example, in his attitude towards the French revolution). It is true that in his first work Kirěevskii recognised religion to be the most important among social forces. As early as 1827 he condemned the "stupid liberalism" which had no respect for religion. In his second phase, however, religion, which was first conceived by him in the sense of Schelling, was considered in the historical form given to it by the Byzantine Russian church. Whereas Schelling desired to see the opposition between catholicism (Petrus) and Protestantism (Paulus) done away with in the Johannine church of the future, Kirěevskii found his ideal in the Russian church—though it must be admitted that Kirěevskii constructed an ideal Russian church for himself.
We can learn Kirěevskii's mentality and outlook from an enumeration of the philosophers by whom, in addition to the Greek teachers of the church, he was chiefly attracted. Besides Schelling and such men as the Schellingian Steffens,[4] we have Vinet, Pascal, and similar writers. He considered Schleiermacher. to whom he had listened in Berlin, too rationalistic. Of Hegel's work he would accept only the introduction to the philosophico-historical dialectic. As has already been explained, he rejected the Kantian criticism in toto.
Rejecting modern philosophy, he is likewise opposed to scholasticism, which he regards as the mother of modern philosophy. Consistently enough he condemns Byzantine scholasticism as well as the scholasticism of the west, and in general has much that is critical to say of Byzantinism.
Kirěevskii wishes religion and revelation to be kept perfectly pure, and therefore, in common with Schelling,he advocates a peculiar mystical receptivity, a mood of immediate contemplation. Catholicism and Protestantism are for him no religion at all because they aim to make faith comprehensible dogma is in Kirěevskii's eyes revealed truth, and he therefore considers that theism, in its revealed form of the trinitarian doctrine, is the essential Christian doctrine. (The essay of 1856 was designed as the introduction to a treatise on the doctrine of the trinity.)
Of course mystical contemplation does not suffice Kirěevskii. Nolens volens he requires a theory of religion, and he therefore decides in favour of Joannes Damascenus (Chrysorrhoas) and Schelling. Kirěevskii conceives mysticism as a species of gnosis; he is akin to those medieval scholastics who were simultaneously mystics; it was by this trend that he was led towards Schelling, a Protestant thinker, under whose influence he remained to the end.
Kirěevskii did not experience any such mystical crisis as had been passed through by Čaadaev. He had a great affection for the Greek fathers of the church and helped his monastic friends in the publication of their works, but he knew that the contents of these works could not suffice for modern times. Himself no mystic, he endeavoured to immerse his mind in Old Byzantine mysticism and to explain that mysticism psychologically, but as far as his personal attitude was concerned he got no further than a revival of the spirit of antique faith and the acceptance of ecclesiastical fomts of piety. Though he sought strength and aid in intercourse with monks and believers, he was never able to rid himself completely of the sting of doubt.
Doubtless Kirěevskii experienced a change of views, becoming more conservative, but he exhibited no intolerance towards those who held opinions he had discarded, and he maintained freedom of judgment vis-à-vis his slavophil associates.[5]
Above all Kirěevskii demanded that there should be unity, not only in philosophical views, but likewise in personal and social life. Upon the foundation of a defective philosophy of cognition borrowed from German idealism he established a psychological, epistemological, and historical, dualism which was to give expression to the contrast between Russia and Europe. His consistent application of this dualism to historical evolution is a quite creditable performance, but his history and philosophy of history constitute rather a deductive artifact than an empirical demonstration of actual occurrences.
In his analysis of European dualism Kirěevskii laid bare the errors and the defects that had characterised the dichotomisation of Russian development since the days of Peter; but the errors and defects which he perceived in Europe had in fact forced themselves on his attention in regard to Russia and in regard to himself. It cannot be denied that this dichotomisation exists in Russia and in Europe, but Kirěevskii erred when he objectivised his own life ideals, when he transferred them to the philosophico-historical plane and to Old Russia. His mistake was the one made by all European romanticists since the days of Rousseau, when they sought the ideal for the future in the past, some among the ancient Teutons and Gauls, others among the ancient Slavs, and yet others in the age of the apostles. Kirěevskii transferred Schelling's church of the future to the third Rome or discovered it in the Russian mužik. He strongly idealised the third Rome, and this idealisation of Old Russia and of Orthodoxy was in reality a severe criticism of extant Russia. The literary henchmen of Tsar Nicholas were well aware of this, condemning as "quite peculiarly mischievous "the panegyric of Old Russia published by Kirěevskii in the year 1852. To Kirěevskii, faith was no mere belief in a conviction imposed from without, but was a genuine devotion of the inner life bringing the individual into direct communion with a higher world. The official state church, with its authoritarian creed, could not tolerate such a view. Obviously, moreover, it was mere self-deception for Kirěevskii to restrict to Catholicism and Protestantism his demonstration of the religious inadequacy of the churches.
In the gross and in detail Kirěevskii's philosophy of history is imperfect. His concepts are unduly abstract, and he does not analyse historical facts with sufficient precision. But the same criticism applies to Kirěevskii's German teachers, and Kirěevskii's work was important notwithstanding all its defects. For Russian ecclesiastical historians, the imposing institution of theocracy constitutes the true content of history. By Kirěevskii, in the spirit of these historians, the disastrous dichotomisation of the church and of mankind is regarded as a new Fall (schism), reproduced. with trifling alterations, in Russia (the Russia of Peter).
In his exposition such concepts as church, state, nation, and people are unduly abstract, whilst historical facts are distorted, often in the most ingenuous manner. To Kirěevskii, Plato and Aristotle seem typical representatives of two distinct outlooks on the universe, Plato being a mystic, Aristotle a syllogist and rationalist. Kirěevskii utterly fails to remember that these two thinkers were Greeks and contemporaries, and that between Hellenism and Romanism there was no such simple contrast as that which he assumes to have existed; the difficulty is not overcome by assigning Aristotle to the west. Kirěevskii fails to recognise that his Greeks systematised theology and scholasticism. He does not endeavour to ascertain how and when classical Hellenism developed into Byzantinism. We are not told how in respect of national character the Russians and the Slavs are more closely akin to the Greeks than are the Teutons and the Romans. It need hardly be said that the concepts west and east are very loosely formulated. But there are even graver difficulties in Kirěevskii's philosophy of history. Above all, we have to ask ourselves how the true and unitary church universal could have been defeated so disastrously by Roman pride, the divine overthrown by the human. Kirěevskii himself moots the question why Russian civilisation, in view of its advantages, failed to develop more fully than European civilisation. Why, he enquires, did not Russia outstrip Europe? Why did not Russia become the leader of civilisation? Why has Russia had to borrow her civilisation from Europe? We have further to ask how the uncultured Russians could possibly preserve the treasure of divine truth intact and pure for humanity? Kirěevskii, the believer, solved this historical enigma in a spirit quite opposed to that of the parable of the buried talent.
In contrast with Schelling and with the devotees of romanticist hero-worship, Kirěevskii turned for help to the mužik, to the man of the common people. For him the mužik was the ideally religious man. He insisted that the thoughts which were to save Russia must be elaborated by the totality of the faithful, and he declared genius to be superfluous if not positively harmful. Here Kirěevskii's views were in striking contrast with those of Čaadaev.
Kirěevskii's religious agrarianism had likewise a social basis. He greatly admired the mir, and extolled it as the fundamental social unit of the Russian political system.
Quite consistently, Kirěevskii believed in Russia's messianic mission. Russia's true faith would bring salvation also to the west. But Kirěevskii remained modest and tolerant, conceiving that this salvation would take the form of a synthesis of Russian and of western civilisation, and that the saviour would receive many cultural acquirements from the saved. His slavophilism was less exclusively nationalistic than that of his successors, and for him the true motive force of Russian messianism was ever to be found in the advantages and the absolutism of the orthodox creed. Since, however, a faith cannot exist without believers, Kirěevskii was obliged to consider the national peculiarities of the Russians and of the other peoples of the world, was obliged to ponder the problem why the Russians were to undertake the salvation of mankind at one specific epoch. As early as 1829, in a report on Russian literature, Kirěevskii had advocated the articulation of Russia to Europe. The European nations, he wrote, had all completed their tasks; in respect of civilisation Europe was now a unity which had swallowed up the independence of the individual nations out of which it had been composed. Hence, for the continuance of its organic life as a unity, Europe required a centre. This centre must be found in a single nation, able to dominate the others both politically and intellectually, and Russia was predestined to fulfil the function. Russia would become the capital, as it were, the heart of the others, would in her turn occupy the position that had been successively filled by Italy, by Spain, by the Germany of the reformation, by England, and by France. In addition to Russia, Kirěevskii did indeed envisage the United States of America, a country no less young and vigorous than Russia, but it was too remote from Europe, and its preponderantly English civilisation was unduly one-sided. The foundations of Russian culture had been laid by all the nations. Russia was European in character, whilst her geographical situation would also lead her to exercise a notable influence upon Europe. In Kirěevskii's opinion, the flexibility and impressionability of the national character would tend, in conjunction with the political interests of the Russian state, to promote the same end. "The fate of every European state depends upon a union of all European states; the fate of Russia depends on Russia alone. But the fate of Russia rests upon Russias civilisation, which is the determinant and the source of all her advantages. As soon as we have turned these advantages to full account, we shall share them with Europe, thus paying back our debt at hundredfold."
As previously said, this messianism was still modest. Moreover, it was realistically based upon the youth and vigour of the Russian people, upon the political power and geographical situation of the country, and upon the national character.
Subsequently Kirěevskii's views underwent modification. In the essay of 1852 we read that racial peculiarities do not suffice for the foundation of future hopes. These peculiarities, like the soil upon which the seed falls, may accelerate or retard the growth of the seed, may supply satisfactory or unsatisfactory nutriment, may furnish free scope for development or may choke the desired growth with tares—but the character of the fruit depends on the character of the seed.
Even if we accept the simile of soil and seed, we ask for an adequate study of the soil. It is here that Kirěevskii's exposition is so imperfect. To the Russians (he speaks sometimes of "Russians," sometimes of "Slavs") he ascribes a peculiarly pacific tendency which is manifestly considered the offspring of the Christian's love for his neighbour. Having discovered a Russian state that had grown solely through the arts of peace, Kirěevskii asked himself whether the love of peace peculiar to the Russian was a congenital or an acquired characteristic. This critical problem and a number of similar ones are propounded, and some of them will require further consideration when we pass to the study of Kirěevskii's successors. It is evident that Kirěevskii had accepted the humanitarian ideal of the German enlightenment and had translated it into Russian.
Another observation may be permitted upon Kirěevskii's character as manifested in his literary fragments. For the very reason that we have no more than fragmentary works from his pen, we get a good picture of the man's literary isolation. The censorship and the repressive measures of the reign of Nicholas robbed him of the joys of creation and made him a literary hermit. Retiring into himself, Kirěevskii, in conformity with his own theory, devoted himself to contemplation, for he lacked inclination and courage for the struggle against oppression. In 1848, for example, when even Pogodin was urging that an address should be sent to the tsar wherein literary men should make a joint complaint against the censorship, Kirěevskii advised against this course, lest suspicion be aroused that he and his friends were not loyal supporters of the government. To preserve Russia from internal disorders and to obviate a war in which Russia might help the Germans against the Slavs, well-disposed persons should be willing to sacrifice literature for two or three years. In the social question, too, and above all in the great Russian problem concerning the liberation of the serfs, Kirěevskii's views were extremely conservative.
Kirěevskii's outlook tended towards quietism. He was here more strongly influenced by Russian conditions than by German philosophy. By Kant and Fichte, but also by Schelling, his attention had been directed to the consideration that the will has an importance side by side with the intelligence. In the treatise translated by Kirěevskii's stepfather Elagin, Schelling pointed to the will as the source of self-consciousness, whilst in the later and entirely mystical writings of the German philosopher, the will was spoken of as the real being (das Ursein). Kirěevskii, too, pondered the problem of the will, and it was characteristic of his mentality that this should lead him to quietism. In a letter to Homjakov he complained that the present differed from antiquity in its failure to understand how to strengthen the will. Strong individualities were doubtless to be found, like that of Napoleon, but these remained exceptional. The will was born in seclusion and was trained by silence. To Kirěevskii, Russian monks and the ancients were the true heroes, heroes of the will, and with them he decided in favour of seeking an asylum from the world. Despite all differences, we see here a certain conformity of teaching between Kirěevskii and Čaadaev.
§ 55.
IN close association with Kirěevskii, and yet independently, Homjakov and Konstantin Aksakov elaborately perfected the development of slavophil doctrine; Homjakov being mainly concerned with its theological and Aksakov with its political aspects.[6]
Homjakov was the polemist, the missionary, the agitator of the slavophils. His opponent Herzen speaks of him as having polemised throughout life. In writing and by word of mouth Homjakov presented counter-arguments to the westernisers and also to his own allies (Samarin and Kirěevskii). His dialectic method, above all in historical questions, consisted in an attempt to present the facts in another light. Speaking generally, Homjakov followed the method of theologians who endeavour to make their fixed theses palatable. I am thinking especially of those theologians and men of learning whose good faith is beyond dispute. To Homjakov slavophilism had the cogency of a creed. Let me give a single example. The westernisers drew the slavophils' attention to the fact that extremely harsh and inhuman corporal punishments were inflicted in Byzantium, the cradle of the pure faith. Homjakov replied that Byzantium was Roman before it became Christian, and might well therefore have acquired its severities from Rome. He failed to observe that if we accept this derivation of Byzantine cruelties we have to admit that in an important respect Christianity proved too weak; but he agrees that Byzantium was far from setting a good or beautiful example in social matters, and here he differs from his friend Kirěevskii; at the same time he endeavours to save the slavophil position by the contention that pure Christianity withdrew into the monasteries and hermitages.
Samarin spoke of Homjakov as "a teacher of the church," declaring that it had been his transcendent service to initiate a new era for Orthodoxy. Homjakov did in fact desire, with the help of philosophy, to secure for Russian theology an equal rank with Catholic and Protestant theology. With this end in view he carried on a species of philosophic polemic against Catholicism and Protestantism.
In philosophy and history Homjakov's opinions were derived from those of Kirěevskii. It was his endeavour to carry Kirěevskii's teaching a stage further in the fields alike of psychology and epistemology, but I cannot think that he was successful. There are many points of detail wherein Homjakov differs from Kirěevskii, but these differences are of no essential significance.
With Kirěevskii, Homjakov starts from the thesis that human life as a whole finds its true fulcrum in religion. He regards history as the history of religious development; and to him religion, or to speak more precisely faith, is the motive force of history. History is itself a continuous struggle between freedom and necessity. If religion be the true historic energy, it follows that there must be a struggle between two divergent religious outlooks, the religion of material necessity and the religion of spiritual freedom. This struggle ends with the establishment of the religion of the spirit and of freedom.
Homjakov did not systematically elaborate this fundanmentally Hegelian doctrine, but expounded it in numerous annotations for a universal history.
In the most primitive forms of fetichism, down to the philosophy of Buddhism with its apotheosis of non-existence, Homjakov discerns the cult of matter and of material necessity. The spirit striving for freedom must recognise matter as evil, must fight against matter, must liberate itself from matter—for the slave of matter yields to necessity. Homjakov considers that Buddhism effected a certain development of spirituality, but this spirituality is servile and not free, for the Buddhist finds his freedom solely in self-annihilation.
Homjakov further declares that all forms of anthropomorphism are a cult of matter, for the materialist is one who can comprehend divinity in no other form than his own. Judaism was more spiritual than were the various polytheistic religions, but the perfectly spiritual and free religion made its appearance with the coming of Christianity. Christianity, however, suffered a schism, for under the influence of materialist Rome and its juristic logic (likewise purely materialist) spirituality was confused with mere reasonableness.[7] Rome detached herself from the church universal, but the eastern church remained faithful to the true doctrine. The orthodox creed is notably distinguished from that of the west, and this is sufficiently shown by terminology. The west has "religio," obligation, that is to say unfreedom; but the Russian, the member of the orthodox church "believes" voluntarily, from free inward conviction, and without any outward obligation, for his faith is a primary matter of the heart.
By an inner necessity Roman Catholic rationalism gives birth to the yet more rationalistic Protestantism. Within its limits, Catholicism aimed at unity, and secured unity, but at the cost of freedom, whereas Protestantism sacrificed unity to freedom. Catholicism begat Protestantism, and Protestantism begat German philosophy. Kant was the continuation of Luther, and Feuerbach the continuation of Zwingli and Carlstadt. In Feuerbach and Stirner, postkantian German philosophy reached its nadir, individualism and subjectivism manifesting their true essence—egoism. Protestantism is rationalism in an idealist form, whilst Catholicism is rationalism in a materialist form. To Catholic rationalist materialism, Homjakov gives the name of "talismanism," holding that the Catholic prayer is a mere conjuration, whereas the Orthodox Christian maintains a genuine spiritualism in ritual and in prayer.
Just as there is only one God and only one truth, the truth of God, so is there but one church. This is not the visible society, the community of the faithful; it is the spirit and the grace of God living in this community. The church is holy and universal (catholic), its unity is absolute. The living, the dead, the heavenly spirits (the angels), and the generations yet to come, are all united in the one church. The church has therefore existed since the creation of the world and will endure till the end of all things.
In the forties Homjakov wrote a catechetic exposition of church doctrine, and it was characteristic that he should stress the all-embracing unity of the church. This signified that Homjakov, like Kirěevskii and Čaadaev, rejected religious individualism and subjectivism. The individual as a religious being was by him subordinated to the religious whole, for he considered such subordination to be the necessary consequence of the existence of the one God who has revealed truth to man. Homjakov thus attained to a civitas Dei wherein was abolished the distinction between this world and the next, the individual becoming already in this world a dweller in the city of God.
Subsequently, during the fifties, Homjakov wrote certain polemics against Catholics and Protestants. In these works he insisted upon the absolute character of revelation, and in one place he positively identified dogma with the church. He attained to Rousseau's formula of the universal will. For Homjakov, as for Rousseau, universality (catholicity) did not consist in the totality or in the majority of the members of society (the church). "The church," he wrote, "does not comprise more or fewer of the faithful; it is not composed of the majority of the faithful; it is not even constituted by the visible union of the faithful. The church is the spiritual bond which unites them." God, Christ, is the head of the church.
In view of these and similar formulations it has been contended that despite Homjakov's hostility to Protestantism his own idea of the church is Protestant, and above all it has been maintained that he reproduces the Protestant doctrine of the church invisible. There is considerable force in the objection, but we must remember that the doctrine of the church invisible has been very variously conceived, and that it exists in both the Catholic churches, the Roman and the Orthodox, side by side with the doctrine of the church visible.
Homjakov found it difficult to establish a precise distinction between the material and the spiritual, between the realm of necessity and the realm of freedom. He conceived the unity of the church as the spiritual unity of divine truth, losing sight in this conception of the individual members of the church. But since he was unable to ignore these individual members completely, he helped himself out with the concept of a living body or organism. The church, since it had to be spiritual, was not in Homjakov's view authoritative in character, seeing that every authority is something imposed from without. To him the church was truth itself, the grace of God, living in all. By this route Homjakov attained to a species of pantheism. The individual understanding could grasp divine truth in no other way than through "a moral harmony with the all-existing understanding." Christ is head of the church; but the bodily, the visible Christ, says Homjakov, would be an imposed truth, whereas truth must be free, must be voluntarily accepted.
Thus the problem of individualism involved Homjakov in great difficulties. He vacillated between the Catholic and the Protestant outlook, and was unable on the epistemological plane to formulate clearly the relationship between the individual and the church as a whole.
The concept of faith, so important a part of Homjakov's doctrine, is involved in like obscurity. In this case he was unable to master the epistemological relationship between subject and object. If truth be objectively given as divine revelation, how does the individual become aware of this truth? In the letter to Bunsen, Homjakov terms the Bible the written church and speaks of the church as the living Bible.
In the letter to Samarin, written in 1859 and 1860, Homjakov attempted an epistemological exposition of the idea of faith in the form of a critique of philosophy from Kant to Hegel. It is important for our understanding of Homjakov that we should recognise how incapable he was of dealing with the real problems of the theory of cognition and how he attempted to formulate his own outlook quite illogically by derivation from certain positions of the German philosophers. Homjakov set out from Kirěevskii's assumption that faith is the central and unitary cognitive energy of the mind, and he assumed, like Kirěevskii, that there is an opposition between faith and analytical understanding. Kirěevskii made no attempt at a more precise psychological study of this outlook, but Homjakov endeavoured to provide it with psychological foundations in the Kantian criticism and in the philosophy of the post-kantians. His starting-point was that reason (razum) and will were identical. He spoke of a "willing understanding," thus insisting upon the spontaneity, the creative energy, of reason. Thus Homjakov, in defiance of his fundamental view, accepted that which he had contested elsewhere, the individualism and subjectivism which secured epistemological and even metaphysical expression in the work of Kant and his successors. Homjakov, like Kirěevskii, was directly influenced by Schelling, referring to Schelling's view concerning the nature and significance of the will. Doubtless, too, Homjakov had learned from Hegel that the essence of self-determining freedom is to be found in the unity of will and thought.
I do not know whether Homjakov had any intimate knowledge of Schopenhauer's doctrine of the will.[8] However this may be, upon a foundation of German idealism, reason and will are conceived as one, but Homjakov subdivides will into belief and understanding (razsudok). Belief is defined as that capacity of the reason which becomes aware of realities and transmits them to the understanding for analysis and cognition. Belief, we are told further, is the inner and living awareness of things; it is the immediate grasp of things as a whole; belief renders immediate and evident what is objective and what is subjective, requiring neither proof nor reasons for this. Belief is "pure thought," is rational contemplation, is intuition, of which in its completeness man is not capable on earth, but whose power he will enjoy to the full in the other world.
It is obvious that Homjakov has not advanced beyond Schelling, or beyond German idealism and subjectivism; but we see that he has been influenced by his friend Kirěevskii, and has thus been led to formulate a pedagogy of the will. In contrast with Kirěevskii, Homjakov was energetic, enterprising, and active, and in this respect his doctrine of the will is expressive of his personality. We must not fail to note that in certain passages Homjakov conceives the process of cognition in a thoroughly voluntaristic sense. He speaks in plain terms of "the will to understand," conceiving the process of understanding as an energy, and thus emphasising the activity of the understanding in the sense of Kant and his successors. But in Homjakov's case this voluntarism is altogether futile. The essence of Kant's active understanding lies in this, that the individual understanding begets or creates knowledge independently and subjectively; whereas Homjakov accepts the theological doctrine that the most important truths are revealed, and for him therefore knowledge is mainly a passive belief—the acceptance of the given truths with the belief which is posited as the central energy of cognition, and which (in accordance with the teaching of Schelling and Kirěevskii), is conceived as an inward cognition or contemplation. Homjakov rejects the idea of spontaneous cognition, of the active creation of knowledge; in his view the sole purpose of belief is to accept the objectively given and complete revelation. Consequently Homjakov is opposed not merely to sensualism and materialism, but also to empiricism and above all to rationalism, for he rejects individualism and subjectivism. Revelation furnishes objective knowledge, cognition, which the human being has simply to accept. This acceptance is effected by way of belief, regarded as a special faculty or part-faculty.
Thus Homjakov is in agreement, not with Kant or Fichte, but with Schlegel and the latter's "theocracy of consciousness" and "theocracy of science"; but Schlegel endeavoured to explain this theocracy psychologically, separating the believing soul from the cognising and rebellious spirit. Homjakov's analysis of reason into belief and (critical) understanding has much similarity with this doctrine. The stress that Homjakov lays on the will has as its ultimate significance that man knowingly and voluntarily subordinates his understanding to revelation. Homjakov could just as well have spoken of the "will to believe" as of the "will to understand."
It is thus plain that Homjakov, though perhaps somewhat more orthodox than Kirěevskii, was no mystic. In his theological polemic we perceive the scholastic rather than the mystic.
Homjakov entirely rejects German philosophy, though he endeavours to turn this philosophy to his own account. Kirěevskii recognises German philosophy, and in especial the philosophy of Schelling, as an instrument and even as a guide. Homjakov, in contradistinction to Kirěevskii, rejects even the last phase of Schelling. He concedes with Kirěevskii that Hegel in his Phenomenology rendered imperishable services; but in this very book "the last titan of the understanding" condemned rationalism. Rationalism must be absolutely abandoned; Hegel, rationalism incarnate, is himself forced to recognise and to admit this. In Stirner, Homjakov discovers a terrible but instructive proof of the aberrant tendencies of German Protestant rationalism. Rationalist individualism and subjectivism, terminate in the evangel of the crassest egoism. The history of the age, writes Homjakov (Concerning Humboldt, 1849), is a living commentary upon Max Stirner.
§ 56.
HOMJAKOV speaks of his system as "true conservatism," espousing the cause of the tories against the whigs, but what he preaches and extols is in reality theocratic absolutism.
He recognises that the state must necessarily exist side by side with the church, but does so with one great reservation. Christ is a citizen of the two distinct social orders, the perfect and heavenly order, the church, and the imperfect earthly order, the state. Life in the state, and in concreto the state law and administration, must conform wholly to the prescriptions of divine law, of religious doctrine.
In especial, Homjakov gives his approval to the Old Russian state, as he supposes it to have existed, assuming it to have originated by organic growth as a joint organisation of the communes and without the use of coercion. Wholly established upon an ethical and religious basis, this state is nothing other than the body of the church. The Russian state, contends Homjakov, organised the church and received its power from the hands of the people. In the west, on the other hand, the state is coercive in character, having originated by conquest. Of this character was the Roman state, and also the Roman Teutonic state which the Teutonic princes and their foreign retainers introduced into Russia, and which was subsequently strengthened by Peter. Thus Homjakov repudiates the western state just as he repudiates the western church, and repudiates therewith the state of Peter, insisting that Peter burrowed inorganic elements from the west and above all from Protestantism.
Homjakov censures Byzantium on the ground that the Byzantine state, corrupted by Rome, imposed restrictions upon the church. His grievance against the state of Peter is of like character, seeing that since the days of Peter the church has passed under the dominion of the state. Homjakov complains of Catholicism for having made the state completely subordinate to itself, whereby the church was secularised; and the church thus became a mere "believing state." Protestantism, conversely, in that the state subjugated the church, secularised the church yet more, and may almost be said to have abolished it. The true relationship between state and church can, he considers, be found only in the east, and he thinks here of a parallelism wherein state and church fulfil their respective duties without any mutual interference. Of course this parallelism must not be conceived in the sense of the modern theory of a free church within a free state. We must think rather of an organic, free, spiritual, reciprocal working of body and soul, and our general outlook must be that of spiritualist and anti-materialist theory.
Homjakov's conception of the Russian and westem churches was unduly abstract and lacked adequate historical foundation, and for this reason he failed to write clearly concerning the relationship between church and state. If we are to avoid discussing this relationship in a purely schematic manner, we must comprehend the actuality of religious and political organisation, must comprehend it in its historic entirety. In the analysis of the church, the nature and the power of the clergy are decisive. The celibate Catholic priest exercises a different power over the faithful from that exercised by the married Russian priest, and the social position of the two is entirely different; quite different again from either is the position of the Protestant pastor, who is no longer a priest. The political and social power of clergy and hierarchy varies accordingly. In this connection we must think above all of the power of the monasteries, and it is important to remember that the hierarchy of the Orthodox church is drawn from the world of monks.
When Homjakov finds fault with Protestant cæsaropapism, he forgets that the reformation did away with priesthood and the hierarchy, and that for this reason in the Protestant church and in Protestant society there no longer exist priests to form with their hierarchy a state within the state in that they constitute a peculiar religious and political aristocratic element.
Homjakov fails to understand that the reformation, by abolishing priestly intermediaries between the believer and God, transforming religion into religious individualism and subjectivism, made it more a true matter of the heart and of inward conviction. The church lost its significance as an objectively given external authority as soon as it ceased to be possible for this authority to derive spontaneously and by tacit consent from the living faith of persons holding like beliefs. The development of hundreds and hundreds of larger and smaller Protestant churches is a natural process of evolution in the modern religious world, for it was essential that religion should be de-ecclesiasticised. The church undergoes transformation into a comparatively free religious community, and a small free church suffices for religion and the genuinely religious life.
In contrast therefore with medieval theocracy, Protestantism tends towards emancipation from the church. Rothe, a theologian of the Hegelian school, has formulated the tendency by saying that the growth of the modern state as a comprehensive organisation of moral and religious life has rendered the church superfluous.
Homjakov was forced to admit this, or at least to recognise it, for such is the sense of his own formulas concerning the invisible church; but his belief in revelation, and the objective formulation of that belief, leading him to rank the Bible and the church side by side, impel Homjakov towards Catholic ecclesiastical imperialism, more especially since he whole-heartedly accepts the institution of the priesthood ("talismanism") and its hierarchy. Neither Christ nor the Bible, but the church, is for Homjakov the decisive religious authority, and in the concrete world of political life the hierarchy and its most notable leaders constitute the church.
It need hardly be said that I have been referring only to the principle of Protestantism and to its general evolutionary tendency. It is not to be denied that here and there intolerable forms of cæsaropapism have prevailed under Protestantism, as in England in earlier days, in Prussia, etc.
For Homjakov, who laid so much stress upon the unity of the church, it should have been a matter of importance to demonstrate these concrete historic differences between the churches. Had he done so, he would have grasped the difference between the monarchical centralised papacy, the federation of the orthodox and so-called autocephalic churches, and the temporarily unorganised free alliance of the Protestant churches; he would have understood the nature of the various theocracies. Such a comparison would have enabled him to understand why popery with its centralisation was impossible in the east, and why the Greek emperor acquired more influence over the church than the Roman emperor. Under similar conditions to those which prevailed in Byzantium, the Russian tsar as protector of the church became its master, until Peter, by abolishing the patriarchate completed the transformation of the church into a state institution. Homjakov might have detected the similarities and differences between the three leading churches, and it would have interested him greatly to note the marked resemblances between the Russian church as a priestly church and the Roman; he would have understood, for instance, why Gallicanism was possible, and why the French king gained so much power over the church. Moreover, after the reformation, despite the papacy those sovereigns who opposed the reformation became masters everywhere of their respective state churches. The counter-reformation was analogous in the political field to the defence of Orthodoxy against unorthodoxy at home and abroad by the Byzantine and Russian state. In like manner there are numerous resemblances between Protestant and Russian theocracy.
The most important point, however, is that Homjakov, like the Catholic theorists, conceives the relationship between state and church as a relationship between body and soul, and that, like these theorists, he refers to the body as a negligible quantity. From this in practice it is but a step towards the toleration and recognition of the existing state.
This step was taken by Homjakov. Although he could not bring himself wholly to recognise the Petrine state, in practice he recognised the state and the government of Nicholas. In the end he acted like Photius, who, as we have learned, made Christ a minister of state and church. Homjakov accepted the autocracy, and he condemned the decabrist revolt. He regarded a military revolt as an absurdity, seeing that the army is intended for the defence of the nation. Homjakov was but twenty years of age when he first naïvely put these views before Rylěev, but he continued to hold them in later life, as we learn from his polemic against the Jesuit Gagarin in the year 1858. In a pamphlet entitled La Russie sera-t-elle catholique? published in the year 1858, the editor of Čaadaev's writings attacked Uvarov's formula, and could see therein nothing beyond the revolutionary idea of the nineteenth century. In his view those who advocated this formula were light-heartedly sacrificing Orthodoxy and autocracy to nationalism and to radical, republican, and communistic doctrines. Homjakov contemptuously rejects the "religious Machiavellianism" of the Russian Jesuit, stigmatising it as quite unfounded. He might have reminded the Jesuit of the Jesuit advocates of tyrannicide. His withers would have been unwrung had Father Gagarin rejoined by speaking of Protestant apostles of tryannicide, for the Jesuit could not have mentioned any Orthodox Russian defenders of regicide. But under Nicholas it was inexpedient even to talk about regicide, and Homjakov therefore let the argument alone.
Like many theocrats, logically and upon the abstract plane Homjakov regarded the state when compared with the church as an imperfect and earthly institution, but none the less the concrete, historic state was to him "holy and sublime," for it protected against enemies from without and within. One who idolised the Orthodox church as did Homjakov, one who demanded faith and humility before tradition and authority as insistently as did he, was able to reconcile himself even with the Nicolaitan state, although he might at times express his dissatisfaction with certain state institutions and functions. Occasionally Homjakov expressed energetic condemnation of the censorship. There were times when "holy" Russia seemed to him no longer holy. For example, he thanked God for the reverses in Crimea, taking them as a sign that Russia must be converted. In the end, however, he invariably returned with satisfaction to his ideal of Orthodox Christianity, discoverable in pristine purity in some monastery or elsewhere. So cautious, however, was the Nicolaitan government that it considered the ideal of slavophil theocracy anything but flattering to the historically extant theocracy, and the slavophils were therefore placed upon the same index with the revolutionary westernisers.
Homjakov, with his "true conservatism" and his religious zeal for the faith of the church and the city of God, was unable to grasp this interconnection, although it had already become manifest to some of his opponents in the camp of the westernisers.
His personal energy notwithstanding, Homjakov was in fiine nothing more than a political and religious quietist, and a justificatory argument may be found for his quietism. He accepts autocracy, he tells us, because he feels and thinks unpolitically. The west accepts spiritual autocracy because the west detests political authority; but the Russian, the slavophil, favours civil autocracy because he will have nothing to do with autocracy in spiritual affairs.
When we read such arguments, we are seized with a doubt whether this sophistry must not have been plain to Homjakov himself. Manifestly in his polemic writings in the French tongue (translated into Russian at a later date by Samarin and others) the Orthodox church is presented to Protestants and Catholics in a better light than in the Russian essays. Homjakov, being anglophil, would gladly have induced that Anglican church to amalgamate with the Russian (it must be an amalgamation, not an alliance, for the church is one), and on this ground he was sparing in criticism.
As theologian Homjakov is a scholastic. Just as he accepts autocracy in the name of the church, so in truth does he favour the democratic principle of popular sovereignty, for he refers to the election of the Romanovs, and speaks of the sovereignty of the people in set terms. But he does not forget to insist with equal emphasis that his thought is antirepublican and anticonstitutionalist; he tells us that the obedience of the people is the outcome of its sovereignty!
§ 57.
KONSTANTIN AKSAKOV, son of the respected author Sergěi T. Aksakov, expounded the theocratic political doctrine of the slavophils in a number of historical sketches. in especial he defended on peculiar lines the theocratic view ithat the state is of comparatively little value, and even a practical impossibility.[9]
According to Konstantin Aksakov, in the political sphere Russia has a twofold organisation, as country and as state. By "country" he understands the organic fusion of all the individual communes into a single community—the country. The country is the complex of tilled land, the complex of the individual mirs, but the mir is a purely ethical community grounded upon the unanimity of all its members. Aksakov rejects the principle of majority rule as a coercive institution; in their deliberative assemblies the Slavs have ever been willing to take action solely, upon unanimous decisions. The Slavic organisation, pacific in character, based upon free conviction and upon the consciences of all the associated individuals, is termed by Aksakov the way of "inner truth"; contrasted therewith is the "outer truth" manifested in the organisation of the European state by coercive and conquering authority. Where "outer truth" is established there must be law, legal formulation, and written guarantees.
How can we explain the origin of the extant Russian state side by side with the "country"? To this question Aksakov replies that the state is a necessary concession to human frailty. If all men were holy, the state would be superfluous. Aksakov consoles himself with the reflection that while the Russian state did not originate from the people, but was imported and organised from without, this took place because the state was needed as a protection against external enemies and also as a means for allaying internal disorders. Aksakov thus explains the genesis of the foreign Variag state as a necessary evil. Per se the Slavs, and above all the Russians, are "people without a state."
Thus in the course of history Russia was organised by two great social forces, that of the country and that of the state, and the history of Russia is the history of the relationship between these two forces. In the Kievic epoch the state element was still weak. The princes stood at the head of the free communes; the communes had their deliberative assemblies (věče); the relations between commune and prince were peaceful, and peaceful also were the relations between the separate communes; the deliberations of the princes constituted the foundation of the subsequent zemskii sobor.
The state element was strengthened by the Tatar inroads and by the internal dissensions of the princes. Moreover, it was to the interest of the communes to liberate themselves from the princes, since these were adopting feudal methods of organisation. There thus came into existence the unified state of Muscovy, whereby the country, too, was fused into a single whole through the amalgamations of the communes. Aksakov does not fail to admit that the example of the khan of Tatary suggested absolutism to the grand prince of Moscow; but in this absolutism he contemplates the single state and the single country of Russia as a whole, the individual věčes being replaced by the zemskii sobor, the territorial assembly.
Aksakov was reconciled to the state of Muscovy, and he gives full recognition to the election of the Romanovs. In 1612 Russia was in a condition similar to that which obtained in 862. Once again there was no state, and once again the country elected a ruler, not from without this time, but from within.
The state of Peter and his successors was repudiated by Aksakov as an imitation of the European state.[10] He consoled himself with the hope that the existence of this state would prove no more than a transient episode in the history of Russia. He considered that the year 1812 and the liberating deed of Moscow proved that Russia (country and people) was still the true Russia and that Moscow was its capital; he held that the state of Muscovy still existed.
Most energetically did Aksakov contest the westernisers view as to the tribal origin of the state. In the first beginnings the Russian community was a tribe, but the next and subsequent stages did not take the form of tribal patriarchalism but of the democratic family and of the mir with its assembly (věče) developing therefrom. Aksakov opposes his own theory of the primitive mir and the věče to the patriarchal tribal theory.
Aksakov repudiates Europe and the European state in the strongest terms, going so far as to see nothing in Europe but slavery, whereas he discerns true freedom in Russia. He considers that the United States is wanting in freedom; and the constitutionalist European state with its constitutional guarantees is for him merely a proof that in Europe peoples and rulers lack mutual trust. Europe, devoid of intemal freedom, lapsed from absolutism into revolution; Russia, being endowed with internal freedom, need not bow the knee before the new European idol of revolution—it is plain that Aksakov has forgotten the decabrists. But perhaps the oversight was intentional, for he too was harassed by the Nicolaitan censorship. When Alexander II ascended the throne Aksakov composed one of the customary memorials, those memorials which, besides advocating well-meaning constitutionalist utopias, demanded freedom of speech and the summoning of a deliberative zemskii sobor.
The official title "Holy Russia" was taken literally and in all earnestness by Aksakov. He regarded prepetrine Russia and the Russia of the mužik as sacred. There were doubtless sins in this Russia, but no vices, and he was inclined to make a distinction in this respect between Moscow and St. Petersburg. Whilst Homjakov spoke of Moscow as the laboratory of Russian thought, Aksakov saw in Moscow the ideal ethical capital of the holy land of Russia, whereas to him St. Petersburg was merely the residence of Peter and his European bureaucracy.
It is needless for me to expose the utopianism of this teaching. It must be obvious to every reader that Aksakov imaginatively creates for himself in and behind the Russian state a "country" that has never existed. In actual fact Aksakov had to satisfy his appetite with his own words. We have to postulate Aksakov's "country" side by side with the state, his “ethical capital" side by side with the actual political capital where the ruler dwells, and so on.
His utopianism contains a large tincture of anarchism. We have seen that Aksakov declared the Slavic nations and above all the Russians to be pro-eminently a people "without a state."
This anarchism is derived by Aksakov from his false view concerning the nature of the church and of religion; religious mysticism leads him to flee from the state and from the world. He turns history to the service of his orthodox mysticism. In good earnest he ascribed a mystical element to science, in so far as he assigned to science a part in the foundation of life, itself a mystery. In sum, to him life was and remained mysterious. Restricted within the narrow limits of his slavophil circle, he projected his own moral relationship to his friends into the history of Russia.
§ 58.
TO the state Homjakov opposed not only the church but also the nation. In his system the nation occupied intermediate sphere of activity between that of private persons and that of the state. Nation and society were here identical concepts; all qualities of soil and people had their place in social activity, and this social activity filled the "chasm" between the activities of private persons and those of the state. To Homjakov the state was no more than the outward expression of the living national activity, and indeed he regarded the state as nothing more than an instrument of coercion, which must be called upon in case of need to protect the community at large against the evil passions of individuals—for society, that is to say the community at large, is founded exclusively upon points-of-view, peace, and voluntary agreement
Spiritual energies, he wrote on one occasion (1839), originate in the people and in the church; "the function of government (a narrower concept than the concept of the state) is solely to awaken or to modify the play of these energies by a more or less harsh use of its authoritative powers." To Homjakov, K. Aksakov, and the slavophils in general, the state is nothing more than a variant of the well-known liberal nightwatchman. Homjakov is opposed to the westernisers and to their leader Hegel, decisively repudiating the idolisation of the state and the rationalist doctrine of the folk-spirit.
In this opposition to Hegel, Homjakov takes the side of most of the romanticists and above all that of Schelling and of the advocates of the historical doctrine of law. Since the days of Herder, German philosophy had discovered in the nation and in the folk-spirit the source of all social manifestations and organisations. Poetry, art and literature, language, morals, in the last resort law (and therefore also the state) and religion, were regarded as such manifestations of the "folk-spirit." They were, it is true, unconscious manifestations. It is impossible here to enter into details and to analyse this view. In different thinkers differences in formulation and in groundwork will naturally be discoverable. It must suffice to refer to the basic conception of romanticism and to its preference for the so-called folk-spirit as the creator of all social activity. We may add that the nation or the folk (the terminology and the concept were then and still are vague) were imagined to be an organic portion or an organ of mankind; the idea of nationality and the humanitarian doctrine were brought into intimate association, nationality being based upon the humanitarian ideal extensively and intensively, politically and morally, socially and historically.
The humanitarian ideal of the eighteenth century led up to the ideal of nationality. Herder (vida supra, § 43) was unquestionably one of the first to regard the nation as a natural organ of mankind, and it was in this sense that he wrote his history of philosophy. Herder likewise opposed the state, as an artificial product, to the natural products of folk-life.
Hegel protested against this romanticist view, and the Hegelian left and Young Germany joined energetically in the protest. It is true that Hegel recognised the significance of the folk-spirit, and even emphasised its importance, but he considered that the folk, the nation, became a unity through the instrumentality of the state. Hegel regarded the government as "the simple soul or the self of the folk-spirit," and he looked upon the state as a self-conscious and willing divinity, as the divine will. In a further logical development Hegel came to consider that only the monarchical state and the monarch were genuine manifestations of the divine will; he looked forward to a general organisation of mankind, which was not to result from a fusion of the nations, but from a fusion of the states to form a world state. For a time he regarded Napoleon as the world soul and as the future rightful lord of the world, saying, "The lord of the world is the colossal self-consciousness, knowing itself to be the true God." Thus Hegel's pantheism and panlogism manifested itself as a monarchical universal absolutism "The state is the divine will as a contemporary spirit evolving itself in a real form and as the organisation of a world."
Homjakov, as an adversary of the religious enlightenment; was an opponent of the political enlightenment and of rationalism. He opposed Hegel's theory of the state, and accepted the views of Schlegel, those of Savigny's romanticist successors, and their historical theory of law. Upon the same outlook was based his opposition to Roman law and its logic, and his preference for customary law in accordance with the doctrines of the historical school of law.[11] The historical school of law conceived the folk-spirit mythically and mystically, quite in the sense of the romanticists and without any precise analysis of the concept. It was all the more natural that this should please the romanticist slavophils, since Puchta, the leader of the Germanist jurists, found in God the ultimate source of law. Homjakov regarded the state, to use an expression of his own, as a living and organic protective mantle for society (that is to say for the folk). Such was the normal state, but there exist also abnormal and morbid states, those whose activities develop inorganically, without the aid of the folk and in opposition to the folk. The living protection then becomes a dry crust, a fistula in history, filled with the dust of corrupted nations. . . . It is obvious that here Homjakov is thinking of the state of Peter and his successors, and of the Russian bureaucracy.
Just as little as he analysed the concepts church and state, did Homjakov analyse the concepts of nation and folk-spirit. In opposition to the German historical school of law and in opposition to those romanticists who were radical in politics, he assigned to the nation but two spheres of activity, art and science. These two activities alone, he said, are national in the strict sense of the term, these alone are expressions of the folk-spirit. The German romanticists did not thus emphasise the national aspect of science. They regarded art, and above all literature, language, morals, law, and in some cases also philosophy, as national. Herder likewise considered religion a product of the national character.
In this matter Homjakov follows the logical development of the Orthodox theocrat. If religion and dogma, and if in conjunction with religion the principles of law, morals, and politics are revealed, little sphere is left for folk-activity. It is true that Homjakov did not think the matter out sufficiently. From the religious standpoint Čaadaev dispensed with nationality, leaving place only for the "Christian folk," for the church. Homjakov left scope for nationality, but within narrow limits, and he failed to define the precise significance of nationality in the spheres of morals and of law. He considered that the Russian state originated through church and nation, and from this outlook it could be conceded that folk-character somehow found expression in the state and in its laws.
Strictly speaking, Homjakov leaves nothing but art for the domain of the folk-spirit, and here he involves himself in difficulties as far as church art is concerned, especially in the matter of Byzantine and Russian iconography. The relationship of the individual artist to the community at large is specified by Homjakov by saying that the artist does not create out of his own energy, but that the spiritual energy of the folk is the motive force which drives the artist.
Science, says Homjakov, inasmuch as it is truth, is universally the same; but in the positive sciences and in history, the way in which a truth finds expression, the way in which we attain to truth, is subject to conditions of time and space. Twice two is four, universally, so that there can be no "Russian arithmetic" or "Russian astronomy." The sciences which formulate simple external laws are not national. Those sciences alone are national which are concerned with the moral and spiritual endeavours of human beings.
Such problems of art and science need far more thorough investigation. Homjakov frequently devoted his attention to such matters.
Kirěevskii here diverges from Homjakov, whilst K. Aksakov diverges yet more conspicuously. Both Kirěevskii and Aksakov discover in the Russian or Slavic national character a notable source of anti-european views of life; whilst Kirěevskii contends that the Romans, the Latin nations, and the Teutons have led western civilisation into devious paths. A more detailed critical investigation would have involved the asking of numerous questions concerning the relationship between national character and religion; above all it would have been desirable to examine to what extent the adoption and maintenance of true religion was due to national character, or what had caused the peculiar Russian competence in these respects. The founders of slavophilism would have done well, too, to formulate the problem of nationality in far more precise terms.
§ 59.
SINCE from the philosophers and publicists with whom we have now to deal we shall bear a great deal more about the problem of "nation" and "nationality," it seems wise at this stage to discuss the most important problems of a critical philosophy of nationality, so that I may expound the grounds for my judgment of the various views.
Even in scientific works, the definitions given of the vaguely used terms "nation" and "nationality" have hitherto been far from precise. When further, the concept of nation and nationality is used in conjunction with the equally vague concepts of state, church, and humanity, an absolute chaos of disconnected thoughts is apt to be presented.
Great care is needed in the use of these terms. If when we speak of "nation" we refer to the great collectivity itself, by "nationality" we shall understand the essence of the qualities of the nation, although the word "nationality" is sometimes used as a synonym for "nation." The terms "idea of nationality," "sentiment of nationality," and "principle of nationality," are sufficiently comprehensible. The use of the words "nation" and "folk" involves difficulties. "Nation" signifies rather the political whole organised as a state. "Folk" is used in a more democratic sense, denoting the nation intensively considered as a mass engaged in collective action. We speak of folk-songs, folk-art, and the folk-spirit; less often of national songs and the national spirit, and when we use the latter terms it is in a somewhat different sense.[12]
Nationality, the national character or "spirit," is displayed not only in language, but also in manifold manners and customs (clothing, etc.), in the methods of settlement and habitation (arrangement of houses, villages and towns), work and domestic economy, law and the state, morals, religion, science and philosophy, culture and art—any and all of these may be regarded as expressions of national character. Thus the idea of nationality is extremely intricate.
If we enquire what is the character of a nation, what is the essence of nationality, we may be told that it is to be discovered in one or in several of the before-mentioned departments, or in the complex of them all. Of late, people have become aware of racial differences, and therewith arises the problem, wherein "race" consists; whether we are to conceive it in a physiological sense only or psychically as well.
Moreover, when we are determining a national character, we must not confine our attention to single elements, but must consider the synthesis of all these elements into an organic whole. For this synthesis to be possible it must be presupposed that the various elements have been fully grasped and appropriately valued in their mutual dependence. We must then select the most important, most characteristic central element, and appraise its relationship to the others.
Obviously, too, each individual element must be subjected to further, detailed analysis. Think, for example, how rich in content is the idea of language, and how in practice language is apt to be chosen as the favourite index and characteristic of nationality.[13]
Attention must be drawn to another extremely important problem of the philosophy of nationality. We accept the idea of development and progress in all departments of social life. National character too, thererore, must develop, and what are the causes of this evolution? How extensive is the change? Is the modern Russian the same in essence and character with the Russian who lived under John the Terrible and the Russian who lived under Vladimir of Kiev? Manifestly we are not concerned here solely with changes in opinion, for we have to think whether nations and races change anthropologically and ethnically. Does the structure of the skeleton become modified; do the shape and size of the skull vary; if so, what causes the changes? Are they brought about by modifications of diet, by changed methods of work, by modifications in climate or place of residence, etc? Are nations subject in addition to psychical changes? Does the mode of feeling vary? Is the outward, the physiognomical aspect of peoples subject to change?
These are extremely complicated problems, which must be approached methodically and with great caution. Above all, in this connection, we must give due weight to the special problem of racial and national minglings. Using the popular catchword, we have to ask ourselves whether such a thing as a "pure race" really exists, or whether all races and nationalities are not in truth of mixed blood. As far as Russia is concerned, the doubt is of extreme significance, for during the Kievic period we know that as a historic fact a continuous mingling of races and peoples was in progress. In my biographical note on K. Aksakov, the reference to his Turkish grandmother was deliberate. We often hear of the African ancestors of Puškin, of the Tatar ancestors of Ivan Turgenev. Does the essence of the Russian character persist despite such racial minglings; to what extent does it persist; above all if it persists, how is its persistence secured?
What are we to say about denationalisation? When a nation abandons its language to adopt another, or when an individual or a number of individuals belonging to any nation experience such a change, what modification occurs in the national essence? Ševyrev, to whom we shall have to refer again shortly, said of the Russians of his day that they thought as Germans, and expressed themselves as Frenchmen. Were these still genuine Russians?
Such critical enquiries involve numerous and thorny problems, and they are problems to which as yet scant scientific attention has been paid.
Subjectively we have to think of the sentiment of nationality, of the fact that men love their nation, their nationality, their folk, more than they love foreigners.
We love also our country (love of fatherland, patriotism), and in the concrete we love the particular place where we were born or grew up. This love, this sentiment, may be intensified to the point of disease, manifesting itself as the malady of home-sickness.
The object of the sentiment of nationality (country, nation, folk) is one extremely rich in content, and every man who contemplates the idea of nationality and concerns himself about the sentiment of nationality will tend after his own kind to concentrate his attention upon one or more special elements of that content. The idea and the sentiment are determined by men's social, economic, and cultural level. The aristocrat, the bureaucrat, the soldier, the man of culture, the peasant, the townsman, the manual worker, the proletarian—each of these will have his own idea of nation or folk, and the sentiments of each will be peculiarly tinged.
The sentiment of nationality may be blind, instinctive, and elemental. As with love in general, so with love of folk and home, the question arises in each case how far the sentiment is conscious, deliberately motived, based upon clear ideas and judgments.
Nor must we forget that variations in the sentiment are qualitative as well as quantitative. Besides being more or less intense, it may be different; it may be noble and elevated, or it may be comparatively crude.
It is equally obvious that the idea of the nation, and therewith the national sentiment. undergoes modification and development. At different times, in divers epochs, the love of home and the love of folk vary. Without going too far back in history, it will suffiice to point out that the love for one's folk among the eighteenth-century rationalists must have been different in character from that which prevailed among the nineteenth-century romanticists, or from that which prevailed at a later date among the naturalists and realists.
Of great importance to the determination of the sentiment and of the idea of nationality is the state of thought and feeling towards other nations, towards foreigners in general, and more particularly towards neighbour nations. We have to ask to what extent strangers are known, for in the foreign nation the same wealth of qualities has to be considered as in our own; the knowledge of foreigners and the quality of feeling towards foreigners are just as variable and manifold as the knowledge of one's own folk and the feelings associated with that knowledge.
A great many people really care very little for their own compatriots, but they hate anything foreign. Yet it is possible to learn to love a foreign language, foreign ways, ideas, and modes of feeling; it is even possible to come to prefer the foreign to the native, and this happens often enough in every department of life.
To a certain extent it may be said that our own national essence is first made clear to us by comparison with the foreign essence. For this reason the sentiment of nationality in a multilingual state is more self-conscious and more critical than in a state where "state" coincides with "nation." This is especially true of Russia, of Austria-Hungary, and of the Balkan lands. The force of contrast is yet more powerful when multiformity of language is associated with the dominance, partial or complete, of a single language and a single folk. Once more we think of Russia, of Austria and Hungary, of the Balkans, and to some extent also of Germany. The dominance may be political, economic, linguistic, cultural, or ecclesiastico-religious. It may be such a predominance as was exercised by the French in eighteenth-century Russia and also in eighteenth- century Germany; it may be the predominance of Russian as an official language; and so on.
The course of historical evolution displays to us a continuous severance and differentiation of individual nations, whilst simultaneously interactions occur in the political, economic, and cultural fields. There have been multilingual states, and at times these have been organised to form world-wide realms (Alexander, the Roman empire, the Frankish realm, the medieval emperordom, the Napoleonic empire, modern imperialism); there exist also world-wide churches, world-wide economic unions, etc. The organisation of great areas of the world, of entire continents, and ultimately of humanity as a whole, makes continuous progress.
Between the incessant struggles and suitable combinations of the petty stocks and tubes in a primitive stage, on the one hand, and the struggles and alliances of the great states and nations of modern times on the other, we can discern numerous transitional forms of this simultaneous differentiation and assimilation. Nearly every one of us to-day is member and instrument of some superstate, superchurch, or other world-wide organisation.
The modern sentiment of nationality and the modern idea of nationality originated in the west with the reformation and the renaissance. At this epoch men became more conscious of their nationality, more aware of peculiarities of language and other specifically national characteristics; they came to realise nationality as an entity side by side with the organisation of state and of church. The medieval theocracy was based upon religion and determined by religion. The reformation as a folk-movement led to the replacement of Latin by the folk-speech for religious uses; the vernacular likewise became the tongue of literature and the tongue of culture; the whole development was one leading towards the individualisation of the separate nations. To Herder, therefore, nationality seemed "natural" in contrast with the "artificial" state; similarly the church could be regarded as "artificial."
In the eighteenth century, literature, language, religion, all the vital activities, came to be considered manifestations of national character. People spoke of the national spirit or folk-spirit, thinking of it as analogous to the individual spirit. The folk or nation was conceived as an individual, as a person, .as an organism. Such was Herder's view, and such at a later date were the views held by the advocates of the historical school of law and by the romanticists.
Yet during this same century, cosmopolitanism appeared as a characteristic trend in almost every nation, whether large or small. It was especially easy for the French to become cosmopolitans since their language and literature were universally known. The Germans, the English, and the Italians, were inspired by cosmopolitan sentiments and used cosmopolitan phraseology. Above all was this true of the Russians, who adopted the French language and French civilisation. The humanitarian ideal became universally diffused, being intensively and extensively conceived as the organisation of humanity and as a general process of humanisation, above all in the sphere of sentiment.
The period of reaction against the revolution and against Napoleon, the restoration period, was characterised everywhere by a strengthening of nationalism. Simultaneously, however, humanitarian ideals became more powerful. This may be discerned in the foundation of the socialist international, and in the continuous growth of international organisations and the increasing frequency of international congresses. These developments were nowise inferior in significance to the councils held by the theocracy.
The increase in bilinguality and multilinguality, attempts at the construction of an artificial language, the organisation of the literature of translation, interest in the affairs of the entire world (an interest gratified by the daily press)—all these things afford proof of the increasing unification of the differentiated and still differentiating nations.
The discovery and utilisation of the steam engine and its application to facilitate communication, served during the nineteenth century, not merely to promote freedom of movement within individual countries (after the peasantry previously chained to the soil had everywhere been freed), but they rendered it possible to effect national migrations which in respect of their extent and the importance of their consequences were nowise interior to the so-called national migrations which marked the closing days of the Roman empire. This matter is of importance, not in relation to America alone, but equally so in relation to Russia and to the colonisation of her home territories and of Siberia.
The eighteenth century, as the century of the enlightenment and of humanitarianism, solemnly proclaimed the rights of man, and in the ensuing epoch an advance was made towards the codification of the language and nationality. Beyond question this development was associated with increasing democratisation. In multilingual states the idea of nationality took a democratic form in contrast with the unifying and denationalising centralist tendencies of aristocratic and theocratic absolutism.
State and nation have never as yet been coterminous ideas. No national state has hitherto existed in Europe. I mean that if we except such political curios as Liechtenstein there is no instance in which all the members of a state belong to a single nation. Even little Montenegro is multilingual. Italy and Serbia respectively contain people who are not Italians and Serbs. Still, the idea of nationality becomes more and more vigorously state-constructive.
As a rule the extant multilingual states of Europe consist to a preponderant extent of a single stock. In Russia, however, the percentage of nonrussians is very large, and some of the nonrussian peoples of Russia are highly civilised, standing in respect of culture upon a loftier plane than the Russians proper. In Hungary the Magyars, though in a minority, are politically dominant, Switzerland has its own peculiar characteristics as a multilingual state. It is obvious that the relationship between state and nationality and the bearing of extant political methods upon the principle of nationality require closer examination. Special problems are constituted by the nationality of the dynasties and of the aristocracies. In Poland and in Russia, for instance, we find social and economic differences between peoples of one and the same state.
Knowledge of nationality becomes more and more definitely organised in specific disciplines, and above all in anthropology and ethnography. The domain of what is termed folk-psychology is somewhat vague but this department belongs to the sphere of sociological research. History and linguistic science have, of course, important bearings upon the philosophy of race and nationality.
After Herder's preliminary essays in this field, the further development of the philosophy of nationality was first undertaken by Fichte. It was quite in accordance with the spirit of his age that he should incline to ignore the political state whilst attaching much importance to the nation, and that he should advocate a national system of education for the Germans. Contemporary with Fichte and subsequent to him came the romanticist philosophers of nationality, and above all certain representatives of the historical school of law; but in this connection we must think also of Hegel, of Schopenhauer and his pupil Hartmann, of Lagarde, Richard Wagner, and Gobineau, and in quite recent times of Houston Chamberlain, and others.
When the philosophy of nationality has been more precisely formulated it will doubtless become possible to speak of a science of nationality analogous to the science of religion or to the science of language.
When we thus endeavour to attain to clear ideas concerning the functions of a scientific philosophy of nationality, it becomes plain that the slavophils were unequal to the task. By this I do not mean to imply that the German philosophers, the teachers of the slavophils, did not effect a good deal in the new field of research. But the earlier German writers were comparatively sterile, and especially striking to the critical observer is the naïve way in which Hegel makes use of the "national spirit" as a historical and social category without troubling to subject the concept to precise analysis. In general terms we may say that it is the great fault of Hegel that he fails to subject to critical analysis the most important of his historical and social ideas. Hence the defects in all that he has to say concerning the relationships between state and nation, between nation and church, and so on. In Hegel’s writings (and it is equally true of the writings of Schelling and of those of their predecessors), the philosophy of history is still uncritical.
The same defect is characteristic of the slavophil philosophy of history. All the slavophil writers employ the words state, nation, folk, society, church, and humanity, as if they were dealing with terms to which clearly defined notions were attached, whereas in truth, though the concepts in question are in general use, their interpretation is anything but cler and unambiguous.
§ 59a.
HOMJAKOV was more nationalist than Kirěevskii. In the year 1847 he accepted the interpretation of the name slavophil in a nationalist sense, admitting that he loved the Slavs. To the Russians the other Slavs were the "most immediate neighbours," and this was especially true of the Orthodox southern Slavs. The domestic life and the simple habits of the Slavs gave him a homelike feeling, and he often boasted of the Slavs that their manners and customs had come down unchanged out of the primeval age. Homjakov classified nations as agriculturists and conquerors respectively, thinking here rather of natural qualities than of economic institutions. The Slavs, he said, had ever been and still were agriculturists by taste and were consequently peaceful, whereas the Teutons and the Romans were conquerors. It was their inborn love of peace which had enabled the Slavs to make true Christianity so speedily their own, and to preserve for themselves this Christianity of love and humility, whereas western Christianity, after the schism at any rate, became a religion of conquest and subjugation.
Homjakov visited the Slav countries; in Prague he made the acquaintance of Hanka; and at first hand he studied the Poles, the Bulgars, and the Serbs. But his views contained numerous hazy and uncritical elements. In his nationalist enthusiasm he adopted the national dress without troubling himself about the question whether this costume was not more or less Tatar in origin. In general terms it may be said that Homjakov and his colleagues were little concerned about the critical question whether Slav manners and customs were, after all, as primitive as the slavophils were in the habit of assuming. In any case, what does the acceptance of this aristocratic genealogical tree prove as to the excellency of Slav customs? The national character may evolve, may change, may improve or deteriorate; but the slavophils were impervious to such considerations.
A further question arises how far the individual Slavic peoples are essentially identical in character and in other respects, for it must not be taken as a matter of course that the Slavs are as homogeneous as Homjakov assumes. The assumption requires critical examination. ln point of civilisation the existence of marked differences is indisputable. Homjakov himself separates the Poles from the other Slavs. The Poles, having adopted Catholicism and other institutions from the conquering nations of the west took the side of the Germans against the Slavs. Homjakov does not discuss the question of Czech and Croat Catholicism. Kirěevskii approved the Czechs and Hussitism in that he considered them to have preserved reminiscences of Orthodoxy. To the Moravian brethren he even ascribed the Orthodox doctrine of the trinity.
More precise acquaintanceship with ecclesiastical history could not fail to destroy this illusion, although the later slavophils endeavoured to associate the Czech reformation far more directly with the eastern church. They had little success here, although the Slav apostles Cyril and Methodius had diffused Byzantine doctrines throughout Moravia. Homjakov when he speaks of Slavs thinks chiefly of Orthodox Slavs, holding that the Slavs (including the Russians) possessed the qualities rendering possible their conversion to Christianity and the maintenance of true Christianity. It is difficult to understand how Kirěevskii, Homjakov, and their successors could fail to take into account that in addition to the Slavs, the Byzantines and other eastern peoples adopted Orthodox Christianity. Are the Greeks (Byzantines) more akin in essence to the Slavs than the Romans, the Latin peoples, or the Germans? Do the Armenians resemble the Russians (Slavs) more closely in character than the Germans or, say, the Abyssinians, a people concerning whose Christianity Čaadaev had more accurate ideas than have the latest founders of the Abyssinio-Russian religious community?
Doubtless in ecclesiastical and religious matters the various Orthodox nations are closely associated. Community of custom has in many respects been diffused owing to ecclesiastical community, just as we find that among the peoples of the west their ecclesiastical community is responsible for many similarities. But the slavophils would have done well to analyse these differences and resemblances with more precision, for they would thus have secured clearer and more definite ideas concerning both east and west.
It may be briefly pointed out that there is no historical or sociological warrant, for Homjakov's contrast between agriculturists and conquerors. The history of all the Slavs, above all the history of the Russians, affords striking proof that the idyll of the "dovelike nature" of the ancient and of the modern Slavs must be completely discredited. It was time in Homjakov's day for this idyll to be decently buried.
I cannot but call to mind Hegel's characterisation of the Germans and their national talent for the reformation, which to Hegel seemed to embody true Christianity just as to the slavophils Orthodoxy seemed to embody it. Hegel declared that the other nations were aiming at secular dominion, at conquests and at discoveries. Luther, the simple German monk, sought and found perfection in the realm of the spirit. In Hegel's view pure Christianity as a folk-religion made its first appearance among the Teutons. The Greeks and the Romans could neither adopt nor realise the pure teaching of Christ; the Teutons were the first to be capable of true Christian piety, and in them (in Hegel's view) was first manifest the most beautiful and the most heartfelt devotion. Medieval Catholicism was of value only in so far as it was established by the mingled Romance and Teutonic people, but solely through the reformation did the German essence and pure Christianity first attain full development.
In medieval Catholicism and among the Latins its founders, Hegel discovered a cleavage such as the slavophils discovered between Catholics and Protestants, hut in Hegel's view this was due to the mingling of Romance and Teutonic national elements.
Hegel, I may add, likewise considers that the Slavs were primarily agriculturists, but his deduction is that among the Slavs, therefore, the institution of slavery was retained by the landowning aristocracy. Hegel, just like Čaadaev, attributes to the forces of nature a great influence upon the destiny of the Slavs, considering that they have but little spontaneity and subjective activity.
Hegel was germanophil precisely as Homjakov and Kirěevskii were slavophil, and the German's views require to be criticised just as severely as those of the Russians. It is really amusing to read the slavophil condemnation of German philosophy and German rationalism, and then to note how these Moscow writers utilise Berlinese rationalism and at times turn it topsy turvy. I could give additional instances, but will content myself with a significant parallel. Hegel finds in the Catholic middle ages, as a peculiar contradiction, that the Germans (Germans or Teutons, for he uses the terms interchangeably, just as the slavophils wrote promiscuously of Slavs and Russians), despite their beautiful and heartfelt piety, were uncultured and superstitious barbarians. In the same way, to Homjakov, the Old Russians were barbarians, but they preserved true Christianity and exhibited the most beautiful and heartfelt piety. Hegel refers barbarism to the spheres of intelligence and will, whilst piety springs from the heart. The thought of Homjakov and Kirěevskii was essentially similar, except that in their view imitativeness, the state, and the geographical situation, were to a certain extent responsible for the barbarism of the Old Russians.
§ 60.
WE have dealt with the two founders of slavophilism, but it is necessary to refer in addition to a few other writers if we are to become thoroughly acquainted with slavophilism as a school.
The place of next importance is occupied by Jurii Samarin (1819–1876). In philosophy he was a follower of Homjakov. In his essay (1844) concerning Stefan Javorskii and Theophan Prokopovič he endeavoured to show apropos of these two contemporaries of Peter (vide supra, § 9) the one-sidedness and the defects of Catholic unity and of the Protestant principle of individual freedom. It is important to note that Samarin was more strongly opposed to Catholicism than to Protestantism. He held with Homjakov that Protestantism was merely the negation of Catholicism, and that Catholicism therefore, being the positive enemy, must be more positively resisted. Samarin made an exhaustive study of Catholic dogmaties, being especilly concerned with the work of Möhler, and he borrowed likewise from Baader. Baader interested him as defender of Catholicism against the papacy, and, as a Catholic, one who (to quote his own expression) preferred the aristocratic organisation of the Orthodox church to the despotism of the Catholic and to the democracy of the Protestant church. In the epistemological field also, Baader exercised an influence on Samarin, and perhaps on Homjakov and Kirěevskii as well.[14]
After the writing of his essay Samarin traversed a crisis. He desired with the aid of Hegel to prove the correctness of the Orthodox position, thus doing the very thing which he had previously condemned. Samarin's earlier view had been that belief neither can nor should be rationally demonstrated, and to this view he returned after the crisis in question. At this period Gagarin, who subsequently became a Jesuit, influenced him as well as Hegel. His hostility to Catholicism was shown later in his polemic against the Jesuits and above all agains the Russian Jesuit Martynov. Samarin energetically attacked the ethical system of Jesuitism (Busenbaum's moral teaching).
Samarin's anticatholicism acquired a political trend through the Polish rising of 1863, Catholicism taking a concrete form for the Russians in Polish nationalist propaganda and in Jesuitism. Samarin considered that the Poles presented a living verification of the slavophil philosophy of religion and phiIosophy of history. Upon the basis of Catholicism, the oles had become untrue to their country and to themselves, and had therefore entered the path of destruction. The Polish question was insoluble without a rebirth of the Poles. Samarin referred to the Czechs, saying that a nation with such memories as those of the Hussite movement could never die out. During the revolt of 1863 Samarin was willing to concede linguistic and administrative autonomy to the Poles, and he declared that the complete surrender of the kingdom of Poland was not "per se" impossible, and would not absoIutely conflict with Russian interests.
Samarin was likewise alive to the political importance of the Baltic provinces. Warmly, too warmly, did he commend to the Russians the Esthonian and Lettish rural population as natural allies against the dominant German aristocracy.
Despite his ardent slavophil convictions, Samarin remained an advocate of western culture, and he was on terms of intimate friendship with Kavelin the westerniser. He worked conscientiously in favour of the liberation of the peasantry, and after the liberation he continued to labour in the same spirit. Like K. Aksakov he esteemed the mir constitution of the communes very highly, regarding, it as a primitive Russian institution.
§ 61.
THE younger Aksakov (1823–1886) likewise belonged to the earlier generation of slavophils.
At first Ivan Aksakov was extremely critical towards historically extant Russia. We have undeniable proof of this in his letters to his friend Herzen (down to the year 1861). Subsequently he took more conservative views, but continued to make a difference between official Russia and the Russia which, as he contended, developed out of healthy popular energies. Not until 1881 did he draw closer to the reaction, but even then this reactionary trend was not persistent. His was a thoroughly virile character, as we see from his frank answers to the third section. He was examined before this department for the letters he had written to his father during the arrest of his friend Samarin.
To Aksakov, as to so many in Europe as well as in Russia, the year 1848 brought proof that European civilisation was decadent, and he considered that the day of nonrevolutionary Russia had now arrived. All that he desired was that Russia should maintain her spiritual independence and should not become involved in western affairs. But Russia, Orthodox Russia, once more moved her armies westward to stamp out the revolution in Hungary and to support Austria, a land for which the nationalist slavophils had no liking. In the year 1850 we read: "Russia will soon separate into two halves; Orthodoxy will take the side of the state, the government, the infidel nobility, and those of the clergy whose faith is lukewarm, whilst all others will turn towards the raskol." In 1856 he wrote: "For God's sake be careful in the use of the words nationality and Orthodoxy"; and he declared that it was impossible to have any sympathy "with prepetrine Russia, with official Orthodoxy or with the monks." Aksakov delighted in frequent visits to Europe.
Ivan Aksakov was the journalist of slavophilism. More especially after the death of Kirěevskii and Homjakov did he maintain the slavophil tradition in his periodicals, formulating the doctrine in relation to the questions of the day.
He held firmly to the teaching of Homjakov, regarding ideal Orthodoxy as the guardian of nationality, but in practice he did not invariably succeed in distinguishing this Orthodoxy from the state church.
Homjakov's religious outlook, logically adopted, could not fail to induce a repulsion from the errors of the state church and from ecclesiastical religion, but the quietism of the slavophils was apt to induce them to tolerate the official church. Aksakov displayed his own religious sentiments as an official in his anything but conciliatory attitude towards the raskolniki, and subsequentlyi n his approval of Gogol's religious conversion.
Aksakov thought that the church could be strengthened against the state by the revival of the patriarchate, which had been abolished by Peter. The priesthood was to be invigorated by the introduction of district councils and provincial councils. He referred to the paragraphs of the legal code, more than a thousand in number, by which the relations between state and church were regulated, saying that these proved that the church lacked freedom. He also demanded freedom of conscience in the church's own interest, but this demand remained purely academic Moreover Aksakov associated Orthodoxy so inseparably with Russianism, saying that while Orthodoxy might exist outside of Russia, Russia could not exist without Orthodoxy, that he was compelled willy nilly to make concessions to the official police church.
Russia contains a notable percentage of nonrussian inhabitants, whose Russification had long been part of the official program, but this Russification was carried on quite mechanically by the administration and the army. In the eastern frontier lands there were differences of religion as well as differences of nationality, and here the slavophil theory supported Orthodoxy as the national religion against Catholicism and Protestantism.
Aksakov did not withstand the temptation, and he approved the official Russification of the Eastern frontier lands.
But he did not desire the Russification of the Poles. "It is impossible," he wrote, "to sympathise with the movement of the Ruthenians against the Austrians in Galicia, a region whose possession is legally (or rather illegally) profitable to the Austrians as the possession of the kingdom of Poland is profitable to us, whilst simultaneously regarding as without justification the endeavours of the Poles to free themselves from their dependence towards us." These words were penned a year after the revolt. In 1863 he had proposed that the purely Polish areas, those which had not belonged to Russia prior to the partition, be granted entire liberty should the Polish people decide by referendum in favour of internal autonomy under Russian suzerainty. In 1848 Homjakov had recommended a similar solution of the Polish problem.
At the time of the rising in Bosnia-Herzegovina, and during the Russo-Turkish war, Aksakov once more subordinated slavophil ideals to official policy. In the interim, after the death of Pogodin, he had become chairman of the Slav Welfare Committee. But the issue of the war and the upshot of the congress of Berlin having been described by him as a "colossal absurdity," he was banished from Moscow. In Bulgaria, however, some of the electors nominated him as candidate for the Bulgarian throne.
The increasing activity of the opposition after the Russo-Turkish war and the growth of revolutionary sentiment at this epoch impelled Aksakov more and more towards the right, and after the assassination of Alexander he became fiercely embittered against Europe. To Aksakov the deed of March 13th was a bloody confirmation of slavophil doctrine, for the terrorist atrocity was in his view an inevitable outcome of the idea of the Roman coercive state which Peter had transplanted from Europe into Russia.
It would be inaccurate to regard this declaration of Aksakov as nothing more than a complaint against the Petrine state and the bureaucracy. The complete argument here involved contains the fundamental conception of slavophilism and must therefore be briefly capitulated.
It is found in the speech which Aksakov delivered on April 10, 1881, before the St. Petersburg Slavic Society after a solemn requiem for Alexander II. He accused the intelligentsia of treason to their own nationality, describing the assassination of the tsar as a crime against the primitive Russian idea and primitive Russian institutions. By these, he said, the tsar was intimately associated with the people, being their father leader, and sole representative. He condemned nihilism, which had now taken the form of terrorism, censoring it not merely as anarchism, for he included in a general condemnation all the liberal political endeavours of the west. Aksakov's formula ran as follows: "Nihilism = anarchism = revolution = socialism = constitutionalism = liberalism = westernism."
The Roman state founded upon force (the "outer" truth of Konstantin Aksakov) is the very opposite of Christianity, being not simply unchristian but positively atheistic, devoid of spiritual leadership and without belief. The western nations adopted and continued the Roman state, and Peter likewise adopted it. But Christ cannot simply cease to be Christ; he will carry on the struggle against the god who has been enthroned in his place; he will do this both inwardly and in social life; he will rebel against the Christian principle which permeates all historically extant societies; hence the lot of every Christian society which severs itself from Christ must inevitably be rebellion and revolution. A society which has thus made revolution a principle of development stumbles from revolution to revolution, arrives at anarchy, and ultimately achieves complete self-negation and self-slaughter. The man of the present denies God and erects his own reason as an idol. Not content with half measures, with inexorable logic his negation proceeds to the destruction of this idol as well; he casts away his soul and idolises the flesh to become slave of the flesh; the man without God becomes Nebuchadnezzar, becomes a beast.
Whilst Samarin endeavoured to verify the slavophil philosophy of history by applying it to the Catholic Poles, Aksakov extended the thesis to the entire west and to the Petrine state, declaring the revolution to be a falling away from God, from Christ, and therefore from Russian Orthodoxy, from true Christianity. Unquestionably in making this declaration Aksakov had before his eyes the analysis in which Dostoevskii deduced the reign of terror from atheism. The germs of this idea are indeed to be found in the works of the early slavophils, for Kirěevskii represented the cleavage in the souls of European and Russian men as despairing pessimism, whilst Homjakov deduced negation from materialism.
During the first days of the reaction under Alexander Ill, Aksakov moved towards the position of Katkov and Pobědonoscev, but he soon moved away from the reactionaries when he perceived that the reforms of 1861 were to be sacrificed.
§ 62.
IVAN AKSAKOV'S explanation of the revolution finds its practical culmination in the glorification of Uvarov's absolutism, and N. Danilevskii moved forward to the stage of extolling Uvarov's nationalism. Danilevskii, like Dostoevskii, was implicated in the so-called Petraševscy conspiracy, but was punished merely by banishment from St. Petersburg. Devoting himself to the study of natural science, he had the advantage of working under von Baer for some years. As student of natural science Danilevskii acquired reputation by the books he published in opposition to Darwinism. In 1871 appeared his work on Russia and Europe, which became the handbook of slavophilism in its later phase.[15]
In this work Danilevskii aims at demonstrating that historical development exhibits to us ten types of civilisation embodied in as many national or racial types: (1) Egyptian; (2) Chinese; (3) Assyrio-Babylonic-Phœnician, Chaldean, or Old Semitic; (4) Indian; (5) Iranian; (6) Hebrew; (7) Greek; (8) Roman ; (9) New Semitic or Arabian ; (10) Teutono-Romance or European. (No more than passing allusion is made to the Mexican and Peruvian civilisations.)
In the natural course of development, the Slavic type is destined to separate from the Teutono-Romance or European type, and it will elaborate in a comprehensive synthesis the cultural elements that have undergone partial development at the hands of the other types. The extant types have secured a ripe development for religion alone (the Jews), for culture alone (the Greeks), or for the art of government alone (the Romans). The Teutono-Romance stocks were successful both in the political and in the cultural fields, but their civilisation has a one-sidedly scientific and industrial character, and among them the state is based on coercion. It is for this reason that Europe has lapsed into anarchy. In religion this anarchy takes the form of Protestantism; in philosophy it takes the form of materialism; and in the socio-political field it takes the form of the struggle between political democracy and economic feudalism. The Russians will be the first to effect an organic union of the four chief elements of civilisation (religion, culture in the narrower sense, political development, and socio-political organisation), and they will display their originality by furnishing the correct solution of the socio-economic problem.
Politically the task of Russia will be to organise a Slav federation, led by Russia herself. She must win Constantinople as capital of this federation, and in the struggle with Europe she will work out a solution of the Slav problem and therewith of the European problem and the problem of humanity at large. It is true that the Slavs are pacific by nature (Danilevskii is an opponent of Darwinism!), but the struggle with Europe is nevertheless essential and will be none the less salutary.
The concept of the types of civilisation is sufficiently clarified by Danilevskii. His ideas contain a somewhat mechanical association between the zoological notion of race and the historical notion of nationality. This enables him to identity race with church and religion, and in the process he annexes for the Slavic type, not only the Orthodox Rumanians and Greeks, but also the Protestant and Catholic Magyars.[16] Hostility towards Europe and fondness for Old Russia led Danilevskii to the view which was not uncommon among the later slavophils, that Turkish rule was better for the Slavs than the rule of European states. The Turks, he considered, had preserved the Slavs from contact with European civilisation and had not denationalised them. It is true that in his synthesis Danilevskii proposes to accept European civilisation, thus in a sense continuing the work of Peter—for clearness and definiteness are not conspicuous qualities in this writer, nor in the slavophils in general. But in any case Danilevskii instilled a few valuable drops of zoology and of biologically based nationalism into the slavophil philosophy of religion and philosophy of history. From biological nationalism it is but a step to biological patriotism, to which many of the later slavophils succumbed. On the theoretical plane Danilevskii's explanation of historical development was extremely hasty; his judgments concerning the spread and transmission of civilisation, concerning the decay of civilisations and nations, and the like, were prematurely formulated; and it is obvious that his valuation of individual historical forces was altogether one-sided. The anthropological content of his view (definition of race, racial classification, racial mingling, the relationship between race and nationality) was inadequate; and he had very little that was noteworthy to adduce concerning the relationship between physiological and mental characters. But I must not be unjust, and it is necessary to concede that in Danilevskii's day European science had little that was more valuable to offer upon these topics.
II.
§ 63.
THE complete understanding of slavophilism will be facilitated by a brief comparison with the contemporary development of the national idea among the other Slav peoples, for these and Russia influenced one another mutually.
In the first place, slavophilism was related to the peculiar historical manifestation known as the Slav renaissance.
The eighteenth century, the century of the humanitarian movement, of the enlightenment, and of the great revolution, induced a political and national awakening, not in the west alone, but likewise in the east and south-east of Europe. Ideas of liberty could not fail to exercise a potent influence among the oppressed and dependent peoples under the absolutist rule of Austria, Turkey, and Russia; and it was inevitable that the national contrasts within these multilingual states should strengthen nationalist sentiment. At the opening of the nineteenth century the universal effect of the Napoleonic wars was to favour the growth of national consciousness. In the ensuing epoch of absolutist restoration and reaction, the liberal and democratic efforts of the revolutions of 1830 and 1848 favoured an extension of equal rights to nations and languages hitherto oppressed, while subsequently the socialist movement, its internationalism notwithstanding, promoted the growth of independent nationalist sentiments. Not in multilingual Austria alone, but likewise in Germany, nationally unified though politically disintegrated, the growth of national consciousness was resisted by absolutist governments, for nationalist sentiment was everywhere directed against the absolute state, and adopted everywhere a comparatively democratic and liberal program.
In Austria it was the Czechs and the Magyars above all who underwent a national awakening during the reigns of Maria Theresa and Joseph II, and in the year 1848 the awakening took a political form. The other peoples under Austrian and Turkish rule likewise experienced national and political awakening. In the Balkans one people after another secured freedom—Serbs, Greeks, Rumans, and finally Bulgars. The evolutionary process is not yet completed.
From the outset the national renaissance of the Slav peoples was guided by a more or less openly declared panslavist program. The similarity of the Slav tongues and of Slav manners and customs, ties of proximity and of political community (in Austria and in Turkey), and the example of the analogous movements known as pangermanism, panromanism, and panscandinavianism, furthered the progress of the idea of Slav union. In the lesser Slav states a consciousness of politic and cultural weakness and pettiness made union with the greater Slav states, nations, and civilisations seem desirable. In the program for unification it was natural that a peculiarly important role should be assigned to Russia, in view of the increasing political and cultural prestige of Russia in the European world. Apart from Montenegro, Russia was the only independent Slav state; five Slav nations (or six if the Serbs of Lusatia be included) were under German or Turkish rule, and the territories they inhabited were subdivided into almost five times as many administrative areas.
The formulation of the Slav program of unification was extremely vague, at least in the early days of the Slav renaissance.
The general idea was of a nonpolitical mutuality which was to facilitate the reciprocal study of the Slav tongues by a sort of cultural exchange. The union was conceived as ideal merely, as confined to the realm of the spirit. Many ingenuous persons went so far as to contemplate the artificial construction of a universal Slav tongue.
The political program of Slav union was geographically defined by extant political frontiers. Its advocates referred especially to Austro-Slavism or to Illyrism. There was little thought of the political union of all the Slavs; but even under absolutism a few persons were bold enough to think of a republican or monarchical federation, and whether republican or monarchical the Russians or else the Poles or the Czechs were to play the leading role.
At first, therefore, and in its subsequent developments, panslavism was purely academic, the creation mainly of learned Slavists and historians. Owing to the lack of cultural and economic associations there was but little practical mutuality between the various Slav nations. The unifying antagonism towards the dominant foreign languages and civilisations was enormously outweighed by the positive fact that the individual Slav peoples were in truth independent nations and not mere tribes, as were the Germans, whose disintegration was purely political, not linguistic or cultural. The Slav peoples had distinct political and cultural histories, and a strengthening of any one of these peoples could be effected solely by the deliberate cultivation of its own language and its own civilisation. Among the various Slav nations and sections it was necessary that leading minds should consider ways and means of realising this more practical program.
Panslavism notwithstanding, the number of Slav nations and tongues was increased by the universal nationalist movements which followed the eighteenth century, and which resulted in a separation between the written tongues of the Hungarian Slovaks and of the Czechs, and which led also to a nationalist movement among the Ruthenians, who detached themselves from the Great Russians. A like process of national and linguistic differentiation was manifested also among the Slovenes who, had political conditions been different, might without much difficulty have undergone linguistic assimilation with the Croats. A similar differentiation is manifest in the evolution of the Croats and the Serbs, but here one and the same nation has undergone differentiation owing to religious and political dissimilarities, and owing to the varying influences of diverse cultural and geographical conditions.
The nature and evolution of the national renaissance of the Slav peoples was theoretically formulated in a number of programs wherein the matter was considered from the outlook of the philosophy of history and from that of the philosophy of nationality. It was natural that in drafting these programs people should be influenced by the historico-philosophical movement that originated in the eighteenth century and was stimulated by the great revolution. Just as in Russia at this date a philosophy of history and a philosophy of nationality came into existence, so do we find that at the same epoch there were attempts to found such philosophies among the other Slav peoples.
Side by side with the growth of the philosophies of history and of nationality there originated a Slavistic movement for the historical study of the Russian and other Slav tongues and civilisations; this movement was analogous with the Romance and Teutonist movements, and was partly influenced by the last-named (by the works of Grimm and similar writers).
§ 64.
AFTER these general observations, passing now to the individual programs of the Slav nations in the matter of the philosophy of history and of the philosophy of nationality, we must begin with the Czechs. The Czechs were the first theorists of the national renaissance of their own and of other Slav peoples. In their peculiar position as a threatened nationality, from the outset dependence upon the other Slavs was an important element in the idea of the national renaissance. Dobrovský (ob. 1829), the great founder of the Slavistic movement, had doubts about the vital efficiency of his own nationality, but he was the first russophil to bring forward reasoned grounds on behalf of his ideas and sympathies. He paid a visit to Russia in the year 1792. In Bohemia he had several predecessors, most of whom wrote in German. Dobrovský himself, the most vigorous reawakener of his nation, like Dobner, Voigt, Pelzel, etc., wrote only in German and in Latin. There were likewise German Slavists (Alter of Vienna, etc.), and there were German historians (Anton, etc.) who occupied themselves with the history of the Slav nations. In Russia at this epoch historical interest was limited to the Russian past.
To Dobrovský the most notable element common to the Slavs was the linguistic, but he considered they displayed likewise a community of manners and customs, and he believed that it was possible to detect a Slav national psychology.
Upon the foundation established by Dobrovský, Kollár developed Herder's historico-philosophical and slavophil ideas into the notion of the literary mutuality of the Slavs. Kollár's studies at the university of Jena and his experiences of the German nationalist movement (at the Wartburg festival etc.) exercised no small influence on his mind. The aggressive nationalism of the Magyars also affected him very powerfully—he was born in Hungary, and in Pesth he became Protestant preacher to the Slovako-German congregation. The Slavs, he contended, must create for themselves a Slav universal culture, for it was their mission to take over the historic leadership of the world from the decayed Teutons and Latins. In point of program Kollár's Slav ideal was quite unpolitical; he wholly accepted Herder's humanitarian ideal, and he dreamed of a nonpolitical fraternity of the nations under the leadership of Slav civilisation. The study of Slav tongues was to subserve this end, and the extent to which they were to be mastered was graded in accordance with the learner's degree of culture. An ordinary well-educated man was to be able to speak the four main living languages, Russian, "Illyrian," Polish, and Czecho-Slovak; the more learned Slav should know also the dialects, Little Russian, Croatian, Wendic, and Bulgarian; finally the man of learning, the Slavist and historian, must be familiar with the living and dead languages and dialects.[17] In the spirit of Kollár worked Šafařík with his study of Slav archaeology, and Jungmann. Especially active in this field was Hanka, the most diligent forger of Old Czech literary works and documents (the Königinhof manuscript and the Grünberg manuscript).
The Slavist labours of the Czechs had a certain practical result in the Slav congress held in Prague in the year 1848, as imitation and rival of the Frankfort parliament.
Kollár's successors, and notably Palacký and Havliček, the political leaders of 1848, effected considerable modifications in Kollár's abstract ideal. Panslavism as a vague cosmopolitanism was replaced by a fully conscious Czechism; instead of "great" panslavism there came into existence "lesser" panslavism, or Austroslavism. Palacký and Havliček entered protests against the Russian universal monarchy. Palacký wrote for the Czechs the first philosophically conceived history wherein the reformation effected by Huss and above all by the Moravian brethren was presented as the climax of Czech and European development. Palacký, too, elaborated the first political program. Upon the foundation of Herder's humanitarian ideal and by a process of natural law, a democratic federation of all the peoples of Austria in their several ethnographical boundaries was to come into existence. This program was journalistically defended and democratically equipped by Havliček with unrivalled mastery.
Havliček was one of the first if not the first of the Czechs to acquire an intimate knowledge of Russia. In the years 1843 and 1844 he was tutor in the house of Ševyrev. He would have nothing to do with official Nicolaitan Russia, but he was equally averse to the doctrines of the slavophils, adhering consistently to the philosophy of the enlightenment and to the democratic system of universal suffrage. His was the proposition "Secular absolutism is pillowed upon religious absolutism." He considered, however, that a closer union of the Austrian Slavs was a practical aim.
Not until after the political experiences of the reaction that followed 1848 and not until after the creation of Austro-Hungarian dualism did Palacký tend towards panslavism and Russism. He took part in the panslavist congress held at Moscow in 1867.
Towards 1848 certain Slovak philosophico-historical writers modified Kollár's ideal. Overestimating the importance of the sometime Great Moravian realm and of its reputed Orthodox church founded by the Slav apostles, they proposed with the help of Russia and the Orthodox church to incorporate the Slovaks in a kind of panslavist federation.[18]
§ 65.
AMONG the southern Slavs also, the program of national renaissance goes back to Herder and the German philosophy of enlightenment. One of the earliest humanitarian philosophers was the Serb Obradovič (1739–1811), a monk who worked indefatigably at self-culture, one to whom a book was clearer than the sound of monastery or church bells. He was succeeded by the Slavist Vuk Karadšič; and subsequently, in the thirties and forties, by Gai, who under Kollár's influence was the founder of Illyrism. In the year 1848 Illyrism acquired a strong political trend through its antagonism to the Magyars, which was fostered by Vienna, and through the fate of the Serbs under Turkish rule.
The national unification of the Serbo-Croats was long hindered by the religious differences between the Catholic Croats and the Orthodox Serbs. Križanič, indeed, the Croat priest to whom we have previously referred, preached panslavism; but not until quite recently did Croats and Serbs make the first attempt to subordinate their religious differences to the joint national interest, encountering thereupon vigorous nationalist and ecclesiastical opponents in Buda-Pesth and in Vienna (the Serbo-Austrian conflict).
Peculiarly difficult is the position of the smallest Slav nation, the Slovene. Oppressed by two great civilised peoples the Italians and the Germans, and administratively divided into a number of crown lands, it has been extremely difficult for the Slovenes to preserve their consciousness of national independence; or at least, traditions of the past have failed to keep memories of this independence alive as in the case of the other Slav peoples. The Bohemians, Poles, Serbs, Croats, and Bulgars, have been politically independent and have effected noteworthy performances in the fields of statecraft and civilisation. It is owing to the small-scale character of Slovene development that the intelligentsia of this people tends in cultural matters to lean upon the Croats and the Czechs.
In this connection reference may also be made to the segments of nongerman nationalities in Germany, the Wends and the Kassubs, some of whom deliberately endeavour to foster a separatist national sentiment, seeking cultural associations with the Slav peoples respectively nearest to them linguistically and geographically, the Wends turning to the Czechs and the Kassubs to the Poles.
Whereas the Russians are an extremely numerous people, the other Slav nations are comparatively small; a similar numerical disproportion is displayed between the lesser Slav peoples on the one hand and the Germans and other great nationalities on the other; hence arise difficult problems for sociologists and statesmen, both as regards the little nations and the great ones.
In an epoch of association and of political alliances and ententes, the notable national similarities between the Slav peoples, their geographical proximity, and the political dependence of many of them have close associations with the panslavist question.
In the Turkey of earlier days there long existed religious relationships between the Serbs and the Bulgars on the one hand and the Russians on the other, and these tended indirectly and directly to assume a political complexion. At an early date official Russia formulated her antagonism to Turkey in a program of liberating the Christian nations of the Balkans.
The relationships between Russia and Austria-Hungary were determined by like considerations.
The Bulgars partly owed their political enfranchisement to their relationship to Russia, but their idea of national renaissance dates from the eighteenth century, and may be considered to have originated with the appearance in the year 1762 of a History of the Bulgarian People written by a monk named Paisii. Among Paisii's successors may be mentioned Venelin (1762–1839), a Ruthenian medical man, educated in Russia, who collected folk-songs and manuscripts in the south, his historical, archaeological. and ethnographical studies stimulating the growth of national consciousness. Religious relationships with the Greeks were important to the Bulgars. During the fifties the religious question powerfully promoted nationalist sentiment, the Bulgars demanding Bulgarian bishops, and this demand securing sympathetic understanding in Russia. In 1870 the Bulgarian exarchate was founded, Ilarion. the first exarch, being a warm advocate of national liberation.
The example of Serbia, too, exercised a certain influence upon Bulgaria. It was under Serbian influence that Paisii was led to write his history, and Serb struggles for political freedom invigorated the similar Bulgarian endeavours. Before long, however, there ensued violent struggles between these two neighbour nations, especially over Macedonia. But this very antagonism served on both sides to promote the progress of nationalisation, and ultimately, for the purposes of the war of liberation against Turkey, there originated that Serbo-Bulgarian understanding which was the real foundation of the Balkan federation.
Bulgaria, having acquired independence, found it necessary like the other Balkan nations to devote herself to making up for lost time in the way of cultural development, which had been hindered under Turkish rule. The Bulgars, too have to solve the ethnographical and religious problems of their multilingual state. The southern Slav problem is peculiarly complicated owing to the religious disintegration of these Slavs into Catholics, members of the Orthodox church, and Mohammedans.
§ 66.
OF a quite peculiar character is the Little Russian problem. Some of its difficulty is already indicated by the lack of any generally accepted name for this people. They are sometimes termed Little Russians; in Austria they are commonly spoken of as Ruthenians; and they are also denominated Ukrainians. Independent Poland oppressed the Little Russians alike nationally, economically, and in the religious field. It was hostility to Poland which induced the Little Russians to become part of the Muscovite realm, but after their incorporation into Russia antagonism began to make itself manifest between the Great Russians and the Little Russians; and this antagonism was not solely nationalist and linguistic, but extended likewise into the administrative and economic spheres. Through the partition of Poland and the acquisition of Bukowina a considerable proportion of Little Russian territory accrued to Austria. In Galicia, Austria inclines to protect the Little Russians in so far as this suits the aims of her policy towards Russia and the Pole. In Hungary the Little Russian tongue is proscribed.[19]
The linguistic and economic differences between north and south induced a nationalist movement among the Little Russians, a movement known as Ukrainism. At the outset the demand was for the cultivation of the folk-speech in the schools and in literature and for its use for official purposes, without political separation. Even Russian pedagogues, Ušinskii, Vodovozov, and others, laid due weight upon the linguistic differences, insisting on educational grounds that Little Russian should be used in elementary schools; for the same reason the St. Petersburg academy recently recommended that Little Russian should be employed as the medium of instruction. The use of repressive measures has led in course of time to the growth of a political separatist movement, social differences contributing also to this development.
The first ukrainophil program went so far as to demand that Ruthenians should be guaranteed autonomy and linguistic independence in a panslavist federation (republic) after the American model. The Great Russian language was to be no more than a general means of communication. This plan was based upon the theories of those historians who considered that the essence of the Russian state was not to be found in Muscovite tsarism but in the republic of Novgorod and in the South Russian Cossack state. In addition to Kostomarov, the historians P. V. Pavlov and Ščapov advocated this theory. In the year 1845, upon the basis of these historical ideals, Kostomarov founded in Kiev the Cyrillo-Methodian secret society which may be regarded as a continuation of the society of the United Slavs. The poet Ševčenko expanded Kostomarov's ideas to constitute a more profoundly conceived cultural panslavism. Kostomarov's society was suppressed in 1847. Kostomarov, Ševčenko, and several other members, were banished from Little Russia and punished in other ways, Ševčenko being forced into the army and treated by Nicholas as previously described. Henceforward the use of Little Russian was regarded with increasing disfavour. On the other hand, under Austrian rule, Lemberg tended more and more to become the literary centre of the Little Russians.
Both in Russia and in Galicia the Little Russian problem was increasingly complicated by the growth of socialism and the development of political propaganda. The Little Russians became involved in relationships, not merely with the Russian administrative machine and with Russian tendencies towards economic centralisation, but also with the Poles and the Jews. There are now in Ukraine more than five million Jews whose civilisation is divergent from that of the Russians, so that they constitute an ethnographical and cultural whole. Whilst Kostomarov regarded the problem from the nationalist outlook and was influenced by the national panslavist movement, Dragomanov, who had been dismissed from the university in 1876, in his political writings of the eighties interpreted the essential ideas of Kostomarov's federation in the sense of autonomy and self-government, endeavouring to effect an organic union between these ideas and the demands of moderate socialism and democratic constitutionalism. This was done without prejudice to the scientific question whether the Little Russians really constitute a peculiar nationality. Dragomanov did not favour the idea of political separatism, and in a literary feud with Lamanskii he actually opposed the separatist movement.
I am here concerned solely with the facts of historical development, and shall not enter into a detailed discussion of the question whether extant linguistic and other differences suffice to constitute a distinct literature and a distinct nationality. History teaches that languages and peoples differentiate owing to the co-operation of numerous factors, and that, among these, political factors play a notable part. When the inhabitants of a particular area feel themselves to be a distinct nation and organise a national literature for themselves, it is their will to this end that is decisive, and the sentiment of unity is not the issue of questions of grammar or linguistic research[20]
The revolution (1905) brought the Little Russians certain freedoms in the matter of the public use of their tongue, the publication of Little Russian newspapers being permitted, and so on. The program formulated in 1863 by Minister Valuev on the ground that a Little Russian nationality "never has existed, does not exist, and cannot exist," has at least been modified by the government.
The religious question plays a certain part in the matter. The Little Russians of Austria are Uniats whilst those of Russia are Orthodox. Some of the Little Russians in Poland are Uniats.
Among the White Russians the idea of differentiation has originated only in very recent days.[21]
§ 67.
THE Poles lost their political independence much later than the other northern and southern Slavs, and for this reason the national sentiment of the Poles is peculiarly political and is directed towards the re-establishment of the Polish state. This is manifested by the two revolutions against Russia, the country under whose sway the majority of the Poles are now living.[22]
Polish philosophy developed under the influence of the German postkantian philosophy of history, being based in especial upon the doctrines of Schelling and Hegel, but it exercised little influence upon Russian philosophy of history. The Polish problem was formulated in a number of notable historico-philosophical and literary works, and it would be of great interest to undertake a comparative study of these in relation to the other historico-philosophical systems of the Slavs. After the revolution of 1830 the messianism founded previously by Wronski (1778–1853) acquired a definitely political trend in the hands of Mickiewicz, who at a later date contended that upon a Catholic basis and with the help of Napoleon III, Poland would bring salvation to humanity and to herself. His program was at first political, and deliberately militarist, but subsequently assumed a more distinctively social form. Krasinskii recommended inward and spiritual reforms to his fellow-countrymen who had been dispersed by emigration. Whilst Mickiewicz had summarised his revolutionary program in the words, "The slave's only weapon is treason," Krasinskii endeavoured to supersede revolutionism by religious development. In contrast with Russian Orthodoxy and German Protestantism, Catholicism was idealised by the Polish messianists, who conceived it just as mystically as the Russian messianists conceived the idealised Orthodoxy of their own land. This mysticism was reduced to a system by Towianski (1799-1878), a writer who exercised much influence upon Mickiewicz and others.
Among the Poles, too, at the opening of the nineteenth century, the Slavistic movement called a learned panslavism into life. In 1816, in the kingdom of Poland, the Polish government ordered that lectures upon the kindred Slav tongues should be delivered at the Polish universities of Warsaw and Vilna, the aim being to promote the progress of the Polish cause.
Among the Poles panslavism has always taken a more abstract form than among the Czechs, the southern Slavs, and the Ruthenians. Only among the Poles and the Russians did the messianist idea gain ground—only among the two greatest Slav nations, the latter of which had always been independent whilst in the case of the former memories of independence were still fresh. There was, however, a notable distinction between Russian and Polish messianism. The Poles desired to secure the salvation of mankind with the aid and practically under the leadership of the French, who were not Slavs, whereas the Russians felt strong enough to undertake the task for themselves. The Czechs (and the Slovaks), aware of the smallness of their own powers, whilst conceiving the idea of a universal and mighty Slavdom, were inclined always to rely upon the help of humanity at large and of civilisation in general. Themselves restricted to Austro-Hungarian territory, their tendency was to concentrate upon the Slavs distributed among other states. Though Kollár was a theologian, he had abandoned the theocratic ideal. As a nation the Czechs had experienced the reformation, but they had afterwards been forcibly reconverted to Catholicism by Rome and Austria, and they had therefore remained inwardly estranged from the victorious church. The Russians, the Poles, and the southern Slavs relied upon the church but the Czechs relied upon culture. Mickiewicz condemned the humanitarian cultural ideal of the Czechs in the name of sentiment and inspiration. The generation following that of Mickiewicz, enlightened by the issue of the revolution of 1863 and by the decline in European sympathy for the Polish cause, entered the path of culture and social reforms. Many Poles believed that the most effective support could be secured from Austria and from the antirussian policy of that country but Mickiewicz, in his Improvisation, recommended a different policy:—
The Austrian gives him vinegar to drink,
The Prussian gives him gall to drink,
And at the foot of the cross stands
Mother Freedom, weeping.
But look! The Muscovite warrior
Springs forward with the lance,
Thrusts it into the innocent side—
Blood gushes forth! What hast thou done,
Most stupid and most fierce of all the executioner's servants?
He alone repents, he alone,
And him God will pardon!
The revolution of 1905 and the granting of a constitution have made it possible for Poles and Russians to come into closer and more direct contact in the duma. In this way there may arise an understanding of their joint national interests, and each side may come to realise the other's needs.
§ 68.
AS we have seen, Russian national sentiment was an independent development of the peculiar historical and geographical problems which Russia had to solve in internal and external relationships; consideration for the Slavs played a very small part. Certain relationships of religious intimacy existed only in the case of the Orthodox Bulgars and Serbs. Križanič, it is true, preached panslavism to the Russians, but had to dream out his political dreams in Siberia. Only with the development of political activities among the Serbs and the Greeks did there arise a certain political interest, inconsiderable at best, on behalf of the Slavs, for the attitude of the Russian government and of the tsar towards the revolting Slavs and Greeks remained legitimist.
The panslavist movement took root to some extent among the freemasons. There existed a lodge of United Slavs, secret of course; after 1825 there was also a political secret society aiming at a federation of Slav republics, and this society was broken up during the trial of the decabrists. Several of the decabrists cherished panslavist ideals, as for example M. A. Fonvizin, but Fonvizin conceived his panslavist program at a later date than the decabrist rising, in the forties, during exile in Siberia.
In the reign of Nicholas, literary panslavism was encouraged by the Slavistic movement, whose beginnings in Russia can be traced back into the eighteenth century. In this matter Schlötzer, the German historian, directed Russian attention towards the Slavs by the chapter on the Slav apostles in his translation of Nestor.
The influence of the Czech Slavists played a part, above all that of Dobrovský, one of whose Russian acquaintances was Šiškov (1813). Dobrovský's successors in Prague were likewise concerned in the movement, and in special Kollár, who did not sufficiently separate the provinces of poetry, archaeology, and philology. Czecho-Russian mutuality was to a certain extent favoured by the Russian campaigns in Europe, when the Russian armies marched across Bohemian territories. Youthful Russian historians and philologists visited Prague, but during the fifties these literary efforts cooled. The labours of Dobrovský and Šafařík left little scope in Prague for Russian Slavists.[23] Hanka entered into close relationship with various Russians, and among them Count Uvarov, whose Orthodox clericalism he flattered with the suggestion that Bohemia received Christianity from Constantinople and in Orthodox form. But these panslavist whimsies could not maintain their ground in face of the political movement which now, under western influence, was beginning in Austria and Bohemia. Kollár and Hanka were replaced by Palacký and Havliček, and panslavism was driven out by democracy and liberalism.
Official Russia was too conservative and too Orthodox to think of panslavism. Šiškov, for example, was infuriated by the very idea of writing Russian in the Latin script, and said that any Russian who did such a thing ought to be beheaded. Magnickii denounced Köppen for his article upon Cyril and Methodius. Köppen's plan to invite the three Czech Slavists, Šafařík, Čelakovský, and Hanka, to Russia was frustrated by the fears and the indifference of the government and the academy of sciences. Nicholas, as legitimist, was the declared enemy of panslavism.
In 1849 Ivan Aksakov was examined by the police, and was compelled to give written answers to various questions, especially as concerned the nature of slavophilism. Tsar Nicholas wrote interesting marginal notes upon these answers, expressing his emphatic disapproval of the panslavist movement, and saying that the union of all the Slavs "would lead to the destruction of Russia." To the tsar, panslavism seemed a revolutionary program, seeing that a union of the Slavs could only be effected by revolts against God-given monarchs. In 1847 Kostomarov's Cyrillo-Methodian Union was prosecuted. A writing issued at this date by the ministry for education and expounding the true Russian program opposes this program to "the purely imaginary Slavdom" imported into Russia from Bohemia.
Most of the Russian Slavists gave expression to these or to similar tendencies. As political representatives of the movement I may mention the historian Pogodin (1800–1875) and the historian of literature Ševyrev (1806–1864).
In youth Pogodin had at times been dominated by romanticist notions of liberty, but in due time he became conservative and reactionary in accordance with the program of Uvarov's official nationalism. In 1835 Uvarov appointed him professor of history at Moscow, to defend "historical Orthodoxy."
Ševyrev was professor of the history of literature at Moscow university. He was a hard worker, but a pedant and a poor thinker, one well fitted to bring Schelling's philosophy and the teaching of the German romanticists into harmony with Uvarov's program. He advised Gogol to devote his literary talents to descriptions of the upper classes; whilst Pogodin as an editor treated his collaborators as the Russian great landowner treated his peasants. To Ševyrev we owe the oft-quoted formula, "The west is putrescent!" To him western civilisation was poisonous, and the west was a predestined corpse whose deathlike odour already tainted the air.
If such men as these had panslavist inclinations, their panslavism was properly speaking panrussism. As a rule they thought only of a union of the Orthodox Slavs, whilst the Catholic Slavs were left to the west. Pogodin visited Prague in 1835, and made the acquaintance of Palacký, Šafařík, and Hanka, but these relationships were restricted to the scientific field.
Even if Pogodin and Ševyrev termed themselves slavophils, and if after their manner they rough-hewed the doctrine of Kirěevskii and Homjakov, these reactionary chauvinists must be distinguished all the more sharply from the first slavophils precisely because the two doctrines are so often labelled with the same name. This name, as I have shown, properly attaches to the early slavophils, the founders of the doctrine, for its subsequent exponents strayed into the paths of Pogodin.
The slavophils were far too much inclined to base Russia's civilisation upon religion for it to be possible for them to be nationalist and political panslavists. "Without Orthodoxy our nationality becomes fudge," said Košelev, and this expression, rough though it be, sums up exceedingly well the fundamental outlook of the slavophils. The difference between slavophilism and political panslavism is well shown in Samarin's polemic (1875) against the reactionary political views of General Faděev, writer on military topics, friend of Černaev of disastrous memory.
The attitude of the slavophils towards the Slavs was determined by their theocratic outlook. During his European journey Homjakov visited Prague and became acquainted with Hanka. The Slavs were dear to him, but dear above all were the Orthodox southern Slavs. Similar were the feelings of the later Slavophils. lvan Aksakov, for example, took an extremely critical view of the pilgrimage of the Czechs to Moscow, and laid stress upon religious differences.[24]
Lamanskii subsequently suggested the possibility of partitioning the Bohemian territories. Bohemia with the liberal Czechs was to go to Germany, whilst southern Moravia and the Slovaks were to become Russian. But just as Bismarck from his Protestant standpoint rejected the idea of a union with Catholic German-Austria, so were the Russian slavophils and panslavists horrified at the thought of annexing the Liberal and Catholic Slavs.
Certain Russian slavophils and panslavists attempted, however, to show that the Czech Slavs have a right to stand on the same footing as the Russian Slavs, attributing to them adhesion to Orthodoxy, on the ground that the Czech reformation had been due to the influence and existence of Orthodoxy in Bohemia since the days of the Slav apostles. Kirěevskii was the first to formulate this historical doctrine, which is manifestly false; subsequently it was expounded in fuller detail by Hilferding (Huss, his Relationship to the Orthodox Church, 1871); and it is held even to-day, notwithstanding the overwhelming proof to the contrary (Palmov, The Moravian Brethren, 1904).
Vis-à-vis the Orthodox southern Slavs, both slavophils and panslavists adopted a different standpoint, for here the tie of a common faith existed, and there were old associations. Moreover, official Russia was the antagonist of Turkey and appeared as liberator of the southem Slavs—the conquest of Constantinople and the erection of the three-barred cross on the dome of St. Sophia becoming a national ideal. Catherine II had regarded Constantinople as capital of the Russo-Greek realm.
Towards the Poles the attitude both of slavophils and of panslavists was always peculiar. Russism as Orthodoxy contrasted with Sarmatianism as Catholicism, and further, the political factor was decisive rather than the national. Poland was the old political enemy, the country which, after having been an adversary for centuries, had been incorporated into the Russian realm as a semi-independent land. Owing, too, to the tripartition of the Polish nation the Polish question was predominantly political, and this matter of the partition dictated the political relationship to Austria and to Germany. As early as the end of the eighteenth century the political agitation against Russia was conducted in Poland by secret societies, and abroad by Polish refugees; the first secret society in Warsaw appears to date from the year 1796. After 1815, when by the congress of Vienna the major part of Poland was reallotted to Russia, the agitation of these societies became accentuated, and at this time Poland had her own constitution and was freer than Russia. The Polish secret societies consequently acquired influence over liberal elements in Russia; the Russian secret societies, and above all the decabrists, being in communication with the Polish societies. We have previously made acquaintance with Pestel's sarmatiophil program, but we have also learned that not all Russians, nor even all decabrists, shared Pestel's views upon the Polish question.
Liberals continued to display sympathy for Poland. Advanced Russian authors like Polevoi drew attention to the writings of Mickiewicz, and advocated a reciprocal drawing together of the two countries, whilst Mickiewicz received a cordial welcome in Moscow. On the other hand a few Poles were unfortunately found to take service as Russian writers on behalf of the official reaction of the twenties and thirties. I may mention Bulgarin and Senkovskii (Baron Brambeus). Not merely was the latter opposed to liberalism and western philosophy, but he used extremely opprobrious language about his fellow-countrymen.
Poles and Russians were mutually estranged by the revolution of 1830, and the widespread confiscations nourished the feeling of bitterness.[25] The economic differences between Russia and Poland had and still have great importance in relation to the Polish problem. Poland was economically more advanced and Russian manufacturing industry, that of Moscow above all attempted to defend itself against Polish competition by various repressive measures, dealing with communications, tariffs etc.[26]
In the fifties and sixties when the slavophils and the westernisers were formulating their respective views, the Polish question was vigorously discussed by both parties. The opinions of the slavophils (Samarin and Ivan Aksakov) have already been expounded. Among the westernisers reference may be made to Čičerin, who in 1859 advocated the old Polish policy of Alexander I, and declared that the Polish fatherland ought to be restored to the Poles. At a later date, long subsequent to the rising of 1863, Čičerin returned to the matter (this was in 1901 in an answer to Rennenkampf's writing of 1898, Letters Concerning the Jewish and Polish Question). It was Čičerin's hope that a satisfactory solution of the Polish problem would increase Russia's influence in the Slav world.
The rising of 1863 induced an unfavourable mood among Russian liberals, who dreaded the consequences of the antirevolutionary reaction upon Russia herself. Herzen had to suffer at this time for his sarmatiophil tendencies. Conservatives and reactionarics pointed to the Polish rising as justification for general reaction. At this time Katkov was the chief spokesman of Russian nationalism. But in 1863 all that Katkov demanded was the Russification of the eastern parts of Poland, those which had of old belonged to Russia. As far as the kingdom of Poland was concerned he asked only for joint administration of army and finance, considering that this area might well remain independent nationally and linguistically. In Katkov's view the difficulty of the Polish question was solely conditioned by the utopian demand of the ultras that Poland should be restored, with the frontier of 1772. He was men willing to allow Polish priests to engage in propaganda, provided this was undertaken from sincere conviction.
The official Russification of the Poles in educational and administratixe affairs was not effected immediately after the revolt, but took place step by step from 1865 onwards. The steps, it is true, followed in rapid succession, and by 1870 the system may be said to have been in complete working order. This system, for whose defects the Russians too had to pay, developed in such evil fashion that the best officials and administrators refused to serve in Poland.[27]
In the complex of questions which make up the Russian problem, the Polish question is one of the most important, and it has therefore always been a matter of profound concern, not merely to politicians and partisans, but also to the philosophers of history. The Polish question is itself a complex of difficult problems. Should historical Poland or ethnographical Poland be granted independence within the Russian empire, and if so in what form and to what extent? The interests and aims of Russians and Poles, of Little Russians, Lithuanians, White Russians, and Jews, conflict in this matter. Socially and economically the relationship of Polish manufacturing industry to Russian manufacturing industry and to aristocratic landlordism is a burning question, especially in nonpolish areas. Culturally Catholicism is opposed to Orthodoxy, whilst the Uniats constitute a peculiar problem. Alike in Russia and in Poland the Jewish question is extremely thorny. Last of all there has to be considered the relationship of Russian Poland to Austrian and Prussian Poland, the panpolish problem in general.
It is upon the Polish question that Russian panslavism has been shipwrecked.
The reaction under Alexander II and still more under Alexander III endeavoured with increasing energy to realise the official nationalist program of Uvarov in accordance with which all the nonrussian peoples of Russia, Germans, Finns, Lithuanians, Letts, etc., as well as the rebellious Poles, were to be Russified. Administrative centralism, hitherto easygoing and intellectually sluggish, was transformed into a state-privileged linguistic aristocracy of the dominant nation, the language question becoming continually more acute, above all in the civilised frontier lands adjacent to Europe.
In Europe, the importance of Russian panslavism is greatly overestimated, especially by the German-Austrian, Polish, and Magyar press It is necessary to remember that the inhabitants of Russia (European and Asiatic) comprise at least forty-eight distinct nationalities. Many of the inhabitants are not even of Indo-European origin, but have sprung from Finnish, Turkish, Mongolian, and other nonaryan stocks. Some of these peoples are very numerous, the Finns, for instance, the Tatars, the Kirghiz, and above all the Jews. If we leave out of account fragmentary Bulgarian colonies, the only non-russian Slav people under Russian rule are the Poles, and the relationship of the Russians to the Poles is sui generis. The Little Russians are not yet recognised as a separate folk, and consequently as far as Russia herself is concerned there is no ground for panslavism. The Russians have religious ties of old standing with some of the southern Slavs, but the Russian boundary does not march with that of the southern Slavs. Speaking generally we may say that the frontier between Russia proper and the Slav dependency of Russia, the frontier between Poland and Little Russia, does not possess the political significance of the other Russian lines of demarcation, those which separate European Russia from the Germans, the Swedes, and the Rumanians, and those which separate Russia in Asia from the Chinese, the Japanese, the Turks, and the Persians. If, under Nicholas II panasiatism has been officially proclaimed as the program of Russia, we cannot but recognise that this program is more in conformity with actual relationships than is the panslavist program.
A panslavist program does indeed exist, but is taken seriously by no more than a few Russians. This is proved by the fiasco of the so-called neoslavism, the name coined within the last few years for a réchauffé of panslavist slavophilism—a dish that has speedily cooled.[28] The danger to Europe or to Germany and Austria-Hungary does not arise from the panslavist movement, but from the fact that European and Asiatic Russia contain 170,000,000 inhabitants, who may, should circumstances favour this development, become a gigantic military and economic force. During the last half century the population of Russia, which in 1859 was 74,000,000, has more than doubled. What will the numerical relationships be in 1950, and what will they be at the close of the twentieth century?
According to one estimate, the populations of A.D. 2000 will number as follows, in millions: Hungary, 30; Austria, 54; Italy, 58; France, 64; British Isles, 145; Germany, 165; European Russia, 400; Russia including Russia in Asia, 500; the United States, 1,195.
Will the triple alliance still exist at that date? However this may be, the relationships of population between the countries of the triple alliance on the one hand and the countries of the triple entente on the other will be far less favourable to the former group than those which now obtain. Persons who regard physical force as decisive in national life may, as their standpoint varies, console themselves or alarm themselves with the contemplation of these calculations: they will do well not to forget the growth of Japan, China, India, etc.; and they should bear in mind the awakening of an Asiatic consciousness.
In truth the question of numbers must be taken into serious account. In 1789 the population of France exceeded that of any other European state, and in part at least the power of the France of that day is explicable upon this ground. In millions the actual populations were: France, 26; Turkey, 23; Austria, 19; British Isles, 15; Prussia, 6; Poland, 9; European Russia, 20; Russia in Asia, 5.
The growth of population in Russia has been exceedingly rapid. At the time of Peter's death the populations under Russian rule numbered barely 15,000,000; at the opening of the nineteenth century they were 38,000,000; in 1900 they were 135,000,000; to-day they are 170,000,000.
Through the natural growth of population changes occur in the relative greatness of states and nations. France, formerly a great power, threatens to drop into the second rank, whilst other powers, whose inhabitants multiply, grow stronger. The philosophical statistician must turn his attention to the problem of the greater and the lesser nations and to their political and national destiny.[29]
§ 69.
SLAVOPHIL messianism is not identical with national chauvinism and national panslavism.
If we are to understand the messianist movement thoroughly and to explain its literary origins, we must look back into the time when in their Moscow circle the slavophils were developing their views in conflict with the westernisers. This was during the second half of the reign of Alexander I and during the reign of Nicholas I. In Europe and in Russia it was the epoch of restoration and of reaction after the revolution, the epoch of deliberate reversion to prerevolutionary social institutions and whenever possible to those of the middle ages. The most momentous and thorough expression of the tendency is found in romanticist Catholisation, as witnessed by the fact that not governments alone, but poets, philosophers, and statesmen, above all that many Protestants in Germany and England, adopted Catholicism. It was not only de Maistre and the other French conservative philosophers who sang the praises of Catholicism, but the same sentiments were voiced by Protestants and converts, by such men as Stolberg, Schlegel, Novalis (who was never actually received into the church though he accepted its tenets), Gentz, Haller, Müller, and Overbeck the painter. In England the number of converts was very large. From the Roman side there were already being made energetic efforts in favour of union, directed mainly towards the Orthodox churches.
Rousseau had attempted to prove that civilisation was decadent. Even in Rousseau's own day, the Rousseauist movement, the longing for more primitive, elemental, nay barbaric energies had already secured wide support, whilst after the revolution its spread was yet more extensive. The horrors of the French revolution were regarded as confirmation of the theory, many persons considering the revolution to be the outcome of philosophy and of its secondary eftects. The reader may recall in this connection the Indian children of nature depicted by Chateaubriand, and the numerous successors of these in the different national literatures; he may recall Faust and the renunciation of the wisdom of the schools; he may recall Byron's revolt against society; and he may recall Musset's analysis of the malady of the century.
The historians and the philosophers of history continued Rousseau's thesis. Evolution appeared to them as a succession of leading nations and states: One folk thrust another from the pre-eminent position; one nation after another attained to the leadership, only in its turn to decay. Antiquity presented a succession of declining peoples and perishing civilisations, conquered and swept away by fresh and uncorrupted barbarians. Passing.to the later middle ages, the fall of Byzantium was an example of the same process. Such were the ideas of Herder and of many of his successors; such, in especial, were the ideas of the romanticists.
The socialist movement, which was soon to undertake the organisation of the great masses of the workers, was guided by the same notion of the decay of all hitherto extant civilisations; the working class was to take the leadership in society and in the development of philosophy.
Characteristic of the period was a historical preference for the study of the very earliest times (archæology in all its departments). The middle ages were rehabilitated.
Associated with this flight into the grey past were the idea and the conviction that new foundations must be discovered for society and for philosophy; widespread was the belief that in these respects a thorough change was essential. Associated therewith was the conflicting conviction that an entirely new era was beginning, and that progress would issue from the endeavours of this reactionary historical movement, which fled from the present into the primal age.
Philosophy, led by Hume and Kant, proved that a new philosophy and a new outlook on the world were indispensable. Widespread was the assurance that change, that thoroughgoing reform, was needful, though some desired reforms in the direction of progress whilst others thought that reforms would best be secured by a return to the past.
The new philosophy of history endeavoured to take stock of the needs of the postrevolutionary epoch and to influence future developments.
In Russia the intelligentsia participated in all these European endeavours, the slavophils, and the westernisers no less, taking the side of those who demanded a return to the past. From Rousseau, Herder, and many of the philosophers of history, above all from those of socialistic views, they learned that civilisation, that Europe, that the west, was falling into decay. Russia was without civilisation, and Kirěevskii's deduction was that this was advantageous to Russia, for the Russians were the chosen people, fresh and uncorrupted, competent with undiminished energies to carry on the task of civilisation. Ščerbatov and Boltin had already adduced proofs that in the moral sphere the Russians were more efficient than the French. The trifle of civilisation with which Peter had inoculated the Russians would do no harm. Even Čaadaev, Europe's great admirer, ultimately came over to this view.
Pu3kin's analysis of European Russia must be interpreted as a confirmation of the essential rightness of Rousseau's and Byron's views; the simple country girl, the Cossack's daughter, are the pillars of society; the good old times must be rehabilitated. Gogol, too, points to the futility of his contemporaries, and teaches a return to the past. Still more modern writers, led by Turgenev, extolled the mužik and village life.
Philosophers and historians had shown that a nation with unimpaired energies must assume the leadership. We, said the Russians, are such a nation. It was true that Hegel and others did not believe that the Teutons were decadent, and it was to the Teutons that they looked for the desired salvation, while the Latin races, and the French in particular, were jettisoned by Hegel. Had not Herder, the great German philosopher of history, prophesied the most splendid future for the Russians? Had not Voltaire, the oracle of cultured Europe, done the same?
It was, indeed, difficult to believe that the Russians were entitled to drive the coach of history merely because they were barbarians. Doubt might arise, moreover, whether the Russians were really as young and fresh as was suggested; it was long since the days of St. Vladimir, and the analogy with the German barbarians and the decadent Romans was not altogether easy to apply. Still, Hegel had suggested a way out of this difficulty. If the reformation was to furnish the Germans with enduring capacity for the leadership of civilisation, surely the Russians were still more competent, for they had a purer form of Christianity, whilst philosophers, poets, artists, and politicians were abandoning Protestantism. Such men, indeed, were turning towards Catholicism; even Alexander I was inclined to look to the pope for help; and Čaadaev sang the pope's praises. Puškin and Gogol defended Orthodox Old Russia, and Uvarov was a tower of strength.
Had not Russia conquered Napoleon and the decadent Frenchmen, thus affording proof of her energy? Was not Russia respected and admired throughout Europe? Why, Napoleon himself had prophesied that Europe would be Cossack in fifty years. The Russian mužik was the Messiah longed for by Rousseau. During the eighteenth century European men of letters had discovered Teutonic folk-poesy and folk-art, but at the same epoch the Old Russian folk-songs had been collected, whilst new epics, admired by all Europe, were coming to light (The Lay of Igor's Raid).
French and German socialists had shown that the masses must effect social reform, but Haxthausen, a German, expressly declared that in the mir the Russians had long possessed the basis for the essentials of social reform, and even Marx had recognised the truth of this statement.
For the Russians, therefore, the only practical question remaining to be solved was whether they should trouble themselves with degenerate Europe. Should they trample Europe under foot, or should they save it? "We will save it," they said, "for we are the true Christians, and love our enemies; besides, a tincture of Europe can do us no harm, and we will even make the externals of European Civilisation and European culture our own. Among other elements in declining Europe, the humanitarian philosophy is something really worth having. . . ."
Kirěevskii preached the humanitarian ideal, and so did Homjakov, though far more of a nationalist. One inspired by nationalist sentiment, said Homjakov, is opposed to what is individually alien, but has no objection to what is universally human; the Russian is peculiarly fitted by his inborn characteristics to make what is universally human his own; because he is Russian, he is a man; it is his gift to understand the peculiarities of other nations. Homjakov admitted that the Germans had discovered Shakespeare, but they were rendered capable of doing so because they had first learned from other nations. The Russians, under Peter's leadership, had likewise learned from others; they had adopted foreign elements, to make these entirely their own; as soon as they were ready to return to themselves, even more then than the Germans would they be able to understand both themselves and others. Slavophilism would furnish the possibility of making this return most speedily. Should any one take exception to the slavophil campaign against all that was foreign, it would suffice, said Homjakov, to remind the objector how Klopstock, Fichte, and Schiller had railed against all that was foreign. (He made no mention of Lessing.) The Russians were thoroughly competent to become leaders and saviours of mankind; the nations of Europe could follow Russia willingly; their needs would be fully understood by the Russians. In Dostoevskii's interpretation of Slavophil messianism, Russian comprehensive humanity is to be something very different from a Babylonian welter of the nations. The one and only Russian people would be representative, leader, and saviour of mankind—and would naturally be master as well, for Europe must not forget that Russia is the sixth continent; and (as the calculations recently quoted show) before so very long she will dispose of 500,000,000 men, destined in due course to become 1,000,000,000.
III.
§ 70.
WE are now sufficiently prepared to form a definitive judgment concerning the nature and development of slavophilism, and in doing so it will be possible to adduce certain details in amplification of our view.
Slavophilism is a school, and something more than a school, namely a tendency, represented by a group of thinkers, who differ, however, upon numerous points of considerable importance.
The strongest of the slavophil thinkers is Kirěevskii; his is the most philosophical mind, although it must be admitted that in respect of the philosophy of religion and the philosophy of history the characteristic teaching of the slavophils was somewhat fragmentary.
As expounded by Kirěevskii, slavophilism is a system of the philosophy of religion and philosophy of history deriving "wholly from the postrevolutionary mood of the restoration, and its leading thought is that theocracy must overcome and replace the threatening revolution. In this matter Kirěevskii agrees with Čaadaev, the slavophil with the westerniser, both being here intimately associated with the thought of the European world, and Kirěevskii being in this respect just as much a westerniser as Čaadaev.
I. Aksakov considered that the central idea of the tendency was to be found in nationality, and this view was reiterated by V. Solov'ev, who said that the "national element" was the most important item of slavophils thought, an element to which everything else, including religion, was subordinate. But it is necessary to point out that true Russism, the principal element of the Russian national idea, was constituted according to the slavophils by the one and only genuine Orthodoxy.
It is further of importance (and this is what Aksakov really wished to say), that the slavophils have not only to explain Russian civilisation, but to justify and defend it; the slavophils are russophils, Russian patriots. It may be conceded that this patriotism was justified in face of the negation of Čaadaev and the radical westernisers. In this sense even Herzen recognised that slavophilism was the reaction of "outraged national sentiment" against exclusively foreign influences—though slavophilism was not so wholly instinctive as Herzen opined. Moreover, what has been said is valid only as regards the philosophic founders of slavophilism, and strictly speaking it is valid only for Kirěevskii. The other slavophils proclaimed as historical reality what to Kirěevskii was no more than ideal, and in their hands philosophic and religious messianism became political imperialism and nationalist chauvinism. To him applies the denotation moskvoběsie (Moscow frenzy) which became current after the Polish rising.
The first slavophils recognised and admitted Russia's errors. In a poem circulated in manuscript throughout Russia (for the censor had refused his imprimatur) Homjakov apostrophised Russia, the chosen of God:
Persist in thy endeavour. To be God's instrument
Is hard for earthly beings;
Sharp are His judgments with His servants,
And, alas, how many fearsome
Sins hast thou harboured.
Black is thy fate through black falseness,
And heavy upon thee presses the yoke of slavery;
Filled art thou with godless and devastating lies,
With dead and inhmous sloth,
And every kind of baseness!
Kirěevskii's criticisms, and still more those of Homjakov, were directed against prepetrine Russia as well as against contemporary Russia, the fruit of Peter's reforms. To Samarin the two crowning errors, the two most disastrous maladies of Russia, were usury and formalism.
Peter's reforms were not rejected in their entirety by all the slavophils. Kirěevskii's judgment of Peter's work was comparatively mild. K. Aksakov, on the other hand, was utterly opposed to Peter's work, whilst his brother Ivan considered that the assassination of Alexander II was a direct issue of Peter's reforms. Whilst Homjakov was inclined simply to value Moscow from the literator's outlook and to prize it as a laboratory of western thought, I. Aksakov's sentiments towards the capital that had been founded by Peter were already quite nationalistic. Well-known is his letter to Strahov (1863), in which he declares that no truly popular journal can be published in St. Petersburg, for the first prerequisite of a free national sentiment is to hate St. Petersburg wholeheartedly and in every thought. To Ivan Aksakov the northern capital and the west in its entirety were incorporations of Satan. But some of the slavophils continued to approve Petrine reforms, and some, like Lamanskii, regarded them as an organic continuation of Muscovite evolution. If we find it necessary to demur strongly to Ivan Aksakov’s nationalism, the nationalism of the later slavophils must be still more decisively condemned. In these subsequent developments the philosophy of history becomes more and more conspicuously replaced by a superficial interest in current politics; the philosophy of religion is overshadowed by official clericalism; and endeavours towards religious development are overcast by the Russifying ecclesiastical policy of the holy synod. Inasmuch as the slavophils considered that the foundations of civilisation were established upon religion and the church, the nationalist basis was not with them a matter of principle. Danilevskii diverges here from the first slavophils, for in his outlook the idea of nationality assumes far greater importance and independence. Kirěevskii and Homjakov conceive the church in a universal sense, but both of them, and especially the latter, incline to identify the Orthodox universal church with the Russian national and state church. When they speak of the importance of ritual to the Russians, some,Šiškov for example, put a mystically high value upon church Slavonic, whilst others, and above all K. Aksakov, lapse into a mystical adoration of the Russian language, speaking of it as the most beaptiful and most independent of all tongues. In like manner, in the theoretical and philosophical field, Kirěevskii's broad religious and historical program narrows into the program of Uvarov; and after 1863, subsequent to the Polish rising, the victory of Uvarov over Kirěevskii is decisive.
In their struggle for religion the founders of slavophilism turn away from the new philosophy, but even here we cannot speak of the absolute negation of western thought. The rejection of the western religions, of Catholicism and Protestantism and of the philosophy that has issued from these creeds, is made with certain reserves. It is only in so far as they are considered one-sided that Catholicism and Protestantism are condemned, and some of the systems of German philosophy (notably that of Schelling) find acceptance. Orthodoxy inidealised form is presented as the measure of thought and action. Within Orthodoxy, orientalist and Russian mysticism are made supreme, and rationalism is rejected. Kirěevskii distrusts reason, and Homjakov and Samarin feel this mistrust still more strongly. Samarin considers rationalism analogous to absolutism. For the rationalist, he says, everything is subject to rules and regulations; tradition and personal inspiration go by the board; a general lassitude results from the autocracy of the understanding. From time to time, however, doubts arise as to the accuracy of this logic. Homjakov once wrote to Samarin saying that while Granovskii did not walk hand in hand with the slavophils, Zagoskin was perfectly willing to do so, and that this was proof that acceptance of slavophilism was a matter not of understanding but of instinct.
By a logical sequence, the passive Christian virtues were esteemed; even suffering was a good thing; conciliatory, patient, pious humility and lowliness (smirenie) was posited as the chief Christian virtue of Orthodox Russians.
Quite in the sense and after the model of the restoration in the west, a secure foundation for antirevolutionary absolutism was sought in the doctrine of revelation and tradition. Religious irrationalism was deliberately opposed to philosophic rationalism. It was for this reason that the slavophils turned away from the phiIosophy of Hegel, the philosophy cultivated by the westernisers, and based their position upon Schelling, Baader, and the French philosophers of the restoration. Homjakov armed himself against historical relativism, and attacked Hegel's dictum of the reality of the rational and the rationality of the real.
Slavophil conceptions of history were inspired by the romanticist flight from the present into the past.
In the sphere of practice the slavophils aimed at theocracy. The state was subordinate to the church precisely as the natural and the human were subordinate to the divine.
Primitive slavophilism was non-political. The slavophils themselves (Homjakov) expressly declared it, whilst the westernisers (Kavelin) pointed it out as a slavophilist principle.
It was natural that from their theocratic outlook the slavophils should despise the state, or should at least tend to thrust it into the background. They endeavoured to justify their nonpolitical program with reference to the inborn qualities of the Russian people. It was the natural gift of the Russian people to be nonpolitical; Russians had no desire to rule, and preferred to leave the exercise of the powers of state to a foreign European government. Konstantin Aksakov elaborated an entire political system of this character.
The opponents of the slavophils are apt to say that there was a tincture of anarchism in the views of these writers, but the assertion amounts to very little.
The Russian absolutism of the time misled many people to this unpolitical standpoint; the theocratic ideal of the slavophils was a refuge from the theocratic reality. To be unpolitical often signifies the possession of strong political views, conservative views, and this was true in high degree of most of the slavophils who, as respected aristocrats and members of the wealthy landowning class, were ultraconservative in politics. Accepting tsarism as the given form of autocracy, they were content to idealise it, and it was from above not from below that they hoped for the coming of the reforms they desiderated. For themselves, for their own class, they wished a number of radical reforms, and in especial freedom of the press and the establishment of a territorial assembly (in which they would of course play the leading role). The territorial assembly, modelled upon the design of the zemskii sobor of old days, was not to be a legislative parliament, for K. Aksakov and Samarin, in full agreement here with Kirěevskii's teaching, protested against constitutionalism. In this respect the slavophils were more logical and more conservative than the Catholic liberals of that day, Tocqueville and Montalembert. Samarin, at any rate, disapproved their policy, and in his attitude towards constitutionalism agreed rather with Nicholas I, who, as is well known, "could understand" republicanism and absolute monarchy, but "could not understand" constitutional monarchy. He looked upon this form of government as infamous. In the sphere of politics the slavophils did not advance beyond the standpoint of absolutist patriarchalism, and from this standpoint of agrarian patriarchalism and patrimonialism the slavophils, like the aristocrats in general, were opponents of the bureaucracy.
The church and ecclesiastical tradition being recognised as the supreme authority, and much emphasis being aid upon catholicity, it was logical that in every department individualism should be bluntly rejected. European liberalism fell with individualism, and European constitutionalism fell with liberalism. It is true that the slavophils recognised the need for reforms, but these were to be "inner" reforms only. Hence they were declared opponents of political revolution. To them, as to so many monarchists and legitimists, it seemed that Russia was on principle opponent of the revtilution, and not opponent merely, but, as a historic datum, the positive contradiction of every possible revolution. Tjutčev, the most notable of the slavophil poets, in some verses published in the year 1848 entitled Russia and the Revolution, contrasted Russia, as a truly Christian land and indeed the only Christian land, with the revolution, with antichrist. l. Aksakov loathed the revolution, not merely in its nihilist manifestations, but when it presented itself as liberalism and constitutionalism.
Tsar Nicholas and his government had no love for the slavophils, despite their hostility to the revolution and their unpolitical program. Kirěevskii's journal was suppressed. Homjakov, in 1854, on account of his poem To Russia, was forbidden to have his works printed, and in recent years his writings and studies concerning the Russian church have been posthumously prohibited. Both the Aksakovs had trouble with the censorship and with other authorities. To the official mind it seemed that the early slavophils belonged to the same political school with the westernisers. Not until the reign of Alexander II was comparative freedom granted to the slavophils. In 1855 K. Aksakov demanded from the tsar the freedom of the press and the summoning of the zemskii sobor.
Against the disastrous individualism and subjectivism which Stirner had introduced into Europe, Homjakov was not content merely to appeal to religious catholicity. In an extremely characteristic manner he supported his religio-philosophical reasoning with an argument drawn from the agrarian field. Agriculture, he said, offered a protection against individualism. It was the guardian of "true conservatism" and democracy, and the Teutonic warrior and the conquering state were contrasted by him with the Russian state of peasants and great landowners. The Russian landowner was likewise an aristocrat, but of a very different species from the aristocrat of the west; the Russian aristocracy was democratic, and was associated with the peasantry upon terms of Christian love. Samarin went yet further, pointing to Europe, where conservatism found its main foundations in the aristocracy, whereas in Russia conservatism was at home in "the darksome room of the peasant."
Their theocratic standpoint made it impossible for the slavophils to appraise the various social forces in a sufficiently concrete manner. Preferring to deal with the abstract concept of folk or nation, they failed to secure clear understanding of Russia's economic and social position.
It is true that the slavophils were keenly interested in the peasant and his liberation. Interest in the question was so acute and so widespread that the slavophil messianists could not fail to give it their attention. Most of the slavophils favoured the liberation of the "peasantry, but very few of them conceived this liberation in a genuinely liberal sense. Kirěevskii did not discuss liberation in any of his public utterances, but referred to the matter in his letters. Homjakov wrote about it on one occasion. Shortly after the Crimean war, Samarin, advocating the abolition of serfdom, wrote, "We succumbed through our own feebleness, and not owing to the objective force of the league of western powers." When public discussion of the question became possible after the accession of Alexander II, the slavophil organ "Russkaja Besěda," a periodical issued during the years 1856 to 1860, published in 1885 and 1859 a supplement edited by Košilev and entitled "Selskojo Blagoustroistvo" (rural wellbeing).
Slavophilism and its religious quietism, the idea of the political social order and fraternity of Old Russian social institutions, prevented the philosophical founders of the doctrine from realising the social significance of the liberation of the peasantry. Homjakov and Ivan Aksakov, no less than Kirěevskii, would not hear a word of English political economy. Aksakov, desiring to keep alive the genuinely Russian sense of benevolence, desired also and for this end to maintain the existence of the poor. In his view, the western system of poor relief was a politico-economical device and was not moral at all; it you asked for an example of a practical man and a good political economist, he would mention Judas.[30]
The reactionary party among the nobility, agitating against the liberation of the peasantry, took occasion in their periodical "Věst'" to denounce the slavophils as Russian Saint-Simonians. This was gross exaggeration, for the slavophils vigorously opposed socialism as unrussian. Homjakov and his friends counterposed socialism with the Russian mir and the Russian artel, but these institutions were conceived ethically and religiously, not economically and socially. In the mir they saw a means for averting the proletarianisation of the masses, and thus based upon the mir as against French socialism their agrarian hopes for the undisturbed development of Russia. For the slavophils the Russian mir was a foundation established by Christian love, was the foundation of the social organisation of the entire Russian people, which thus became a great family under the patriarchal leadership of the tsar. But we must not on this account speak of the slavophils as "Christian socialists."
In this idealisation of the mir, the slavophils were supported by Haxthausen, who was then studying Russian agrarian conditions on the spot.[31]
Speaking generally, the slavophils continued to cherish Rousseauist agrarianism. Kirěevskii contemned towns and urban civilisation, sharply contrasting with European civilisation the Old Russian Orthodox and religious civilisation, speaking of the latter as characteristically rural. Kirěevskii, too, was hostile to the growth of manufacturing industry, which was fostered by the state, and his followers remained faithful to this view. The industrialisation of Moscow, the slavophil centre, was advancing with vigorous strides during the epoch under consideration. Haxthausen, the German slavophil, recognised that the nobles' town had already become a manufacturing town, and he did not fail to perceive and to point out that the process of industrialisation had been furthered by the nobles themselves.[32]
With considerable justice, Pisemskii and others reproached the slavophils on the ground that the latter had no real knowledge of the folk, of the peasantry, and that their disquisitions did not rise above the level of "religio-linguistic sentimentalism."
The slavophils had already drawn attention to the class organisation of society, and might have learned much concerning the class struggled from French historians and socialists. They were, however, unable to realise the existence of classes and class contrasts in Russia, contenting themselves with a vaguely homogeneous conception of "country." Their failure here was in part a failure in the scientific field, for they were affected by the tendency to undue simplification that has always characterised the beginnings of sociological research.
Slavophilism, as a general trend based on the philosophy of history, had close relationships with the general literary movement. Kirěevskii was a historian of literature, whilst his brother acquired a deserved reputation as collector of folk-songs. Others among the slavophils did much to encourage the profounder study of folk-poesy, but Turgenev considers that as artists and thinkers the slavophils never created anything truly vital, for they did not face reality with a sufficiently untrammelled spirit. The criticism is just.
During the Napoleonic wars a patriotic tendency found expression in verse, and the writers of this school immersed themselves in the Russian past, the work of Sergěi Aksakov being a notable example. These trends fortified the slavophil movement (Sergěi's sons being among the founders of slavophilism), but they cannot be regarded as distinctively slavophil.
In youth Sergěi Aksakov had read much anent the ideals of Novikov, and he endeavoured to combine them in harmonious unison with those of Šiškov. The appearance in "The European" of Kirěevskii's essay The Nineteenth Century cost Aksakov his office as censor. He was not blinded by his friendship with Gogol, and would not accept without qualification the fallacies of Gogol's religious mysticism. His sons were less unprejudiced in their relationship to Gogol. Konstantin compared Gogol with Homer, and ascribed to him a position above all the writers of Europe. Bělinskii, champion of Gogol as literary artist, found it necessary to dissent from this view, and at length in 1880, at the Puškin festival, Ivan Aksakov hailed Puškin the greatest of the truly Russian poets. Prior to this the slavophils had given that place to Gogol.
But Gogol was no slavophil, nor was Ostrovskii. The relationships of both to the Moscow slavophils were those of personal friendship rather than of doctrine. Tjutčev, on the other hand, may be counted among the slavophils, and so may Jasykov. Homjakov and the two younger Aksakovs expounded their views in philosophic poems and dramas rather than directly. Apollon Maikov had strong classical leanings; the Greek and Latin elements in his work are too numerous for us to classify him as a slavophil poet. Nevertheless, he was seduced by the slavophil Byzantine-Russian outlook, with its essential contradictions (see his lyrical tragedy, Two Worlds; or the Two Romes), into the strange aberration of writing an apotheosis of John the Terrible. Kohanovskaja (1825–1884) had likewise close literary relationships with the slavophils (Konstantin Aksakov), and exemplified slavophil ideas in her novels.
Dostoevskii, last of all, had imbibed the ideas of Kirěevskii and the other slavophils, and may himself be termed slavophil if religious messianism and the philosophico-historical outlook be admitted as principles of slavophilism. But Dostoevskii developed his views towards religion and the church independently, following a different route from that taken by the slavophils. To put the matter paradoxically, Dostoevskii is too slavophil to be reckoned among the slavophils—there is nothing in him of the Old Slavic sentiment which Homjakov and Ivan Aksakov combined with the religious philosophy of Kirěevskii.
Early slavopliilism was a modification of the Russist or Old Russist tendency that had been previously displayed by Boltin, Ščerbatov, and Šiškov. Philosophically the slavophils had advanced a stage, had arrived at a profounder conception of the problem of Russia in relation to Europe, being helped here by German philosophy, and indeed by European thought in its entirety, influenced as that thought was by the sanguinary experiences of the revolution and the counter-revolution and faced as it was with the need for choosing between the old regime and the new. Russia was so far Europeanised and since the days of Peter had been so closely involved in the European system of states, that after the end of the eighteenth century European influence became extremely potent in Russia, and all the more potent because Russia, through her internal development, had to encounter the same difficulties and to solve the same problems as Europe.
From the outlook of the history of literature, slavophilism is a parallel phenomenon with the romanticist restoration in Europe, as manifested in art and above all poesy, in philosophy and theology, in history, in jurisprudence, and in politics. Though slavophilism was an outgrowth of Russian conditions, the movement was none the less in high degree European, and it developed under European influences just as much as did the opposed movement of westernism. Western philosophy furnished the slavophils with arms against westernism. If Hegel, Feuerbach, Stirner, Fourier, and Saint-Simon were Europeans, so also were Schelling, Baader, de Maistre, de Bonald, and Görres.
Slavophilism was the philosophic attempt to renovate theocracy. Philosophically considered, slavophilism was the first deliberately conceived philosophy of religion and philosophy of history.
The scientific weakness of slavophilism depends upon the inadequacy of its foundations, upon the inadequacy of its epistemological criticism. It was impossible to attain to the philosophic goal with the aid of the protean philosophy of Schelling, Hegel, the Hegelian left, and materialism, could not be effectively resisted, and certainly could not be put to rout, by the forces of Schelling and Baader. Still less could this end be secured with the aid of Joannes Damascenus.
The historical and economic foundations and aims of slavophilism are likewise inadequate, though this may in part be condoned by the insufficiencies of Russian historical research in that epoch. It was owing to these insufficiencies that past and present appeared under false illumination, and like considerations explain why in the philosophy of history the constructions of the slavophils were so arbitrary.
The inadequacy of slavophil philosophy of history is well shown by the inferences the slavophils made from the reputedly peaceful invitation issued to the Varangians. Though the alleged invitation lacks adequate historical confirmation, inferences were drawn as to the nature of the Old Russian state, and it was supposed to furnish a demonstration as to the characteristics of the Old Russians in general.[33]
The poverty of historical research at that date is partly accountable, too, for the political errors of the slavophils, and explains their fondness for tsarist absolutism. Karamzin had decorated Muscovite tsarism with a halo, and had taught the first slavophils what they knew of Russian history.
Slavophil ideas developed in association with-theological doctrine and theological church history. It would be interesting to compare slavophil philosophy of history with that of Janssen, the Catholic historian. Here, from a theological doctrine closely resembling that of the slavophils, the development of Christian society is deduced in a strikingly similar manner. Lagarde's religious nationalism may likewise be compared with the views of the early slavophils. Tönnies, a German writer, in his book Community Life and Society (1887), a treatise on communism and socialism as empirical forms of civilisation, has arrived at views resembling those of the slavophils.
These historico-philosophical theories give the slavophil system a scholastic stamp, for the slavophils should at least have endeavoured to prove their main propositions. The scholastic trend is unpleasing even in Homjakov, and in the case of the later slavophils it becomes positively repulsive, owing to the way in which it is carried out altogether regardless of the truths that have been established since the doctrine was first formulated. Gor'kii was not wholly wrong in his contention that the slavophils (the narodniki and Dostoevskii) displayed a union talent with triuly-oriental unscrupulousness and Tatar cunning.
Theoretically considered, this philosophy of religion and its epistemological basis are quite untenable.
The weaknesses of the system facilitated the subsequent transformation of slavophilism to become a nationalist political system which was not conservative merely but positively reactionary. The slavophil philosophy of history was replaced by political Slavism, the slavophil philosophy of religion by the ecclesiastical policy of the synod. For the inadequate but noteworthy philosophical essays of a Kirěevskii and a Homjakov were substituted political tracts and unmethodical disquisitions voicing an academic Slavisticism pursued for political ends, a doctrine which continues to drag out a pitiful existence even to-day.
Some of the slavophil professors have doubtless written important historical and Slavistic works, but no philosophical successor to Kirěevskii has ever appeared.[34]
The influence of slavophil teaching was great and persistent, affecting not merely the prevalent philosophic view of Russian civilisation and history and the intellectual valuation of these, but inducing likewise a mood of enthusiasm, which is attributable to the personal influence exercised by the founders of slavophilism—for Kirěevskii, Konstantin Aksakov, and Homjakov were estimable and amiable men. In multifold transformations, the general thesis and certain individual slavophil doctrines are held by many to-day, whilst slavophilism continues to work also by contraries, through the opposition it arouses. In Miljukov's view the development of slavophilism has been a decadence rather than a simple transformation, for he considers that the philosophical and nationalist elements of the doctrine, those which were united into an integral whole by the founders of the system, have become segregated to undergo independent development. This independent and one-sided development is seen according to Miljukov in Leont'ev the ultranationalist and Solov'ev the philosopher, but it was, he says, already manifest in Danilevskii and Grigor'ev. This formulation is tenable. But the important point is that the slavophil trend and slavophil attempts towards a philosophical view and valuation of Russia and Europe continue to influence thought to-day, and that the vitality of the doctrine is due to the persistence of the conditions under which slavophilism took its rise.
During the forties and the two following decades the westernisers were under slavophil influence. We have seen how Čaadaev in later years drew nearer to the slavophils. Bělinskii and Herzen, Bakunin and the earlier Russian socialists such as Černyševskii, derived their faith in Russia and her social mission from and in conjunction with the slavophils. The radical westernisers, like the slavophils, extolled the mir and the artel as Russian and Slav institutions. Bakunin derived from the slavophil criticism of the state more than one suggestion for his anarchist theories. The narodničestvo is also partly deducible from slavophilism, though more indirectly (by way of Herzen); whilst Russian Marxism was in its inception influenced by the narodničestvo.
But when we are considering the relationships between the westernisers and the slavophils, we must not think only of agreement in certain doctrinal details, however important. Yet more noteworthy, perhaps, is the mutual stimulus which each doctrine exercised on the other during the polemic about their respective philosophical fundamentals. In Bělinskii and still more in Herzen and Ivan Turgenev, we see how slavophilism spurred on the westernisers to opposition.
From the outlook of metaphysical materialism it is comprehensible that Černyševskii should have regarded Kirěevskii as a dreamer merely and not a philosopher, and should have looked upon Pisarev as a Don Quixote, but the judgments are one-sided. Plehanov, in like manner, from his Marxist standpoint, declares that sympathy with the slavophil theory is necessarily treason to the cause of progress, even if the treason be unintentional and unconscious, and he attempts to class the early slavophils with Pogodin. But this is unfair; the opinions and the general mode of thought of Kirěevskii and Homjakov have foundations utterly different from those upon which are established the views of Pogodin.
Though Leont'ev, again, builds upon the slavophils, we must not hold them entirely accountable for Leont'ev's views.
Dostoevskii took much from the slavophils, and especially from Kirěevskii. After his manner, Dostoevskii may be said to have positively provided a new foundation for slavophilism, through the intermediation of the počveniki (Grigor'ev).
Philosophically Solov'ev, despite his subsequent opposition to the doctrine, may be considered to have carried a stage further the religious philosophy of slavophilism.
Among the most recent philosophers of religion, the influence of Dostoevskii and Solov'ev can be plainly traced side by side with that of Homjakov and Kirěevskii. These two founders of the doctrine are again and again referred to (Geršenzon, Berdjaev, etc.), and we are told that the slavophils did good service in that they duly esteemed the importance of religion, even though their position inclined too much towards the right.
Exponents of official theology were but little inclined to think well of Kirěevskii or Homjakov, their disapproval having other and obvious causes besides Homjakov's strong censures upon official theology (for example, upon Makarii's book). None the less a few theologians were early found to regard slavophil teaching with respect. Of late a more progressive tendency has been noteworthy in theology, led by Antonii in Volhynia and by his pupil Sergii in Finland. In this development the influence of slavophilism, together with that of Dostoevskii, is well marked.
- ↑ Slavophils spoke at first of themselves as "slavenofils," and subsequently the forms "slavjanofil" and "slavofil" came into use.
- ↑ Ivan Vasilievič Kirěevskii was born in Moscow on March 22, 1806, belonged to an old and well-to-do family. His education was influenced by Žukovskii the romanticist, a great uncle on the maternal side. Žukovskii had exercised considerable influence upon his niece, Kirěevskii's mother, interesting her and her son in the study of German romanticist literature. Kirěevskii's father died in 1812. In 1817 his mother married Elagin, and from 1821 onwards she played a leading part in Moscow society, at first in the literary circle which gathered round Polevoi (Vjazemskii, Küchelbecker, Ševyrev. Pogodin, and others, including Puškin); and subsequently in the circle of the lyric poet Venevitinov (Puškin, Vjazemskii, Barjatynskii, etc.). In 1324 Kirěevskii became an employee in the Moscow record office, the largest Russian collection of historical documents; among his fellow employees were Petr Kirěevskii, Prince Odoevskii, the poet Venevitinov and his brother, and Ševyrev. In 1830 Kirěevskii went to Berlin, attending lectures on philosophy, theology, and history (Carl Ritter, Stuhr, Raumer, and Schleiermacher). Already well acquainted with Hegel's works, in Berlin Kirěevskii made the philosopher's personal acquaintance. He also met Gans and Michelet. After two months in Berlin he went to Munich, asociating there with Schelling and Oken. He remained less than a year in Germany, and returned home without having attained the desired philosophical satisfaction. In 1832 he founded the review "Evropeec" (The European) to which Puškin, Žukovskii, Barjatynskii, and Jasykov were to contribute, but Kirěenskii's essay The Nineteenth Century and a critical sketch of Griboedov proved the ruin of the review, and S. T. Aksakov, the censor who had passed the contributions, fell into disfavour. "The European" was suppressed after the second number. Kirěevskii married in 1834. During the forties, literary and philosophic Moscow assembled in Mme. Elagin's salon. Hither came Gogol and Jasykov, K. Aksakov, Samarin, Homjakov, D. A. Valuev, Granovskii, Herzen, Čaadaev, and many others.Kirěevskii had hoped to be appointed professor of philosophy, but failed to obtain this post. In 1843 he was entrusted by Pogodin with the editorship of "Moskvitjanin" (The Muscovite), but abandoned the position after the issue of three numbers. In 1852, in conjunction with others of the like way of thinking, he launched the "Moskovskii Sbornik" (Moscow Magazine), but his essay On the Character of European Civilisation and its Relationship to Russian Civilisation proved fatal to this literary undertaking. In the year 1856, after the author's death, in "Russkaja Besěda" (a slavophil periodical published from 1856 to 1860) appeared a sketch entitled The Need for and the Possibility at new Foundations for Philosophy. This posthumous work was a fragment, for it was uncompleted when Kirěevskii died of cholera on June 11, 1856. Petr Kiriěevskii (born February 11, 1808, and died October 25, 1856) was known as a collector of folk songs.
- ↑ Kirěevskii's terminology is based upon Kant and Schelling. He employs the Kantian distinction between "understanding" (razsudok) and "reason" (razum, or um). The mystical contemplation of the reason (zrěnie uma) is what Schelling terms contemplation (Anschauung or intellectuelle Anschauung). In Russian the common interpretation of this term "zrenie uma" (literally "mind sight") is what we understand by "intuition," not necessarily employed with any mystical meaning but rather with the sense of "a priori." Homjakov attempts a fuller analysis of this theory of the spiritual energies.
- ↑ Characteristic of Kirěevskii is the epitome he gives of the autobiography of Steffens, who was converted from Protestantism to Catholicism, but ultimately became an Old Lutheran. Steffens was opposed to the (Prussian) ecclesiastical union. Kirěevskii considered that much was to be learned from Steffens' religious experiences.
- ↑ A characteristic utterance was one to Granovskii: "I am closely akin to you in healing, but I am far from sharing all your intellectual convictions; in faith I am with our friends, but differ from them greatly in other respects." To Homjakov he wrote in 1844: "You perhaps regard me as an arch-slavophil. Let me tell you that only in part do I share the slavophil's outlook, and that from the remainder of their opinions I am as remote as from the most eccentric of the views of Granovskii."
- ↑ Aleksěi Stepanovič Homjakov was born in Moscow on May 1, 1804. His mother, née Kirěevskaja, provided for him from early childhood a strictly religious education. Homjakov's father had a taste for literature, but a passion for cards, and gambled away more than a million roubles. Homjakov promised his mother to remain chaste until marriage, and kept his word. His chief interests were mathematics, literature, history, theology, and philosophy; he also painted, and wrote poems and dramas, but neither Puškin nor Bělinskii admired him as a poet. In 1822 he entered the army. While in St. Petersburg he associated with the decabrists, and especially with Rylěev, but dissented from their views. He spent 1825 and 1826 in Europe. In 1818 he rejoined the army to fight against the Turks, and distinguished himself in various skirmishes. During the thirties and the forties he developed his views in intercourse with triends and opponents (among the former being the brothers Kirěevskii, K. Aksakov, Samarin, Košelev, Valuev, and among the latter Herzen and Granovskii). In 1836 he married a sister of the poet Jasykov. He numbered Gogol among his acquaintances. In 1847 he again visited Europe (Prague, England, Germany). On September 23, 1860, he died of cholera.
- ↑ Hornjakov speaks of the contrast between material and spiritual religion as the contrast between Kushitism and Iranism. He divides Kushitism into Sivaism and Buddhism, whilst lranism comprises judaism and Christianity.
- ↑ Zavitnevič, the Russian expounder of Homjakov's theological system, compares Homjakov's view of the will with the doctrine of Maine de Biran. I am not aware whether Homjakov was acquainted with the works of the French philosopher, but the Russian's theory of cognition was exclusively derived from German philosophy. Besides, Maine de Biran passed through several phases of development, and in the last of these phases his earlier doctrine of the will was modified. In any case, the French philosopher's theory of the will is likewise individualistic and subjectivistic.
- ↑ Konstantin Aksakov grew up in the Moscow circles in which the views of Homjakov and Kirěevskii were formed. His opinions ripened during years spent amid the same circumstances and influences, and his agreement with his friends is explained by intimate spiritual association and by devotion to like ideals. Aksakov was born in 1817. In the year 1832 he was entered at the university of Moscow, and received his leading impressions in the circle of Stankevič and subsequently in that of the slavophils. He visited Europe in 1838, but this journey had no notable influence on his mind. At first Aksakov was an enthusiastic disciple of Hegel. He subsequently became an ardent champion of slavophil ideals, wearing the national costume as an outward index of his devotion to this propaganda. In the year 1848, however, the police interfered to this extent, that he was forbidden to wear a beard, which was regarded as a revolutionary symbol. Aksakov wrote a number of historical essays, and was much occupied in grammatical and etymological studies. He was likewise a literary critic, and made attempts in the poetic field (dramas and philosophical poems). He died in 1860. It may be mentioned that the Aksakovs derive their descent from a Variag chieftain and that Konstantin's grandmother was a Turkish woman.
- ↑ In his dissertation of the year 1846 for the degree of master of arts Aksakov gave due recognition to the Petrine state.
- ↑ In 1850 Kirěevskii, too, attended Savigny's lectures in Berlin, and thus became acquainted with the German jurist's system.
- ↑ In relation to the development of these ideas in Russian, etymology has some significance. "Narod" is used in the sense both of nation and folk. Since properly speaking the term denotes the so-called common people only, the foreign word "nacija" is used to help out the meaning. "Narod" is connected with "rodit'," to beget (just as the Latin "natio" is connected with "nasci"); from the same root come "rod" (race, kind), and "rodina" (birth-place, and in some of the Slav tongue,s family).
- ↑ We have to think at the concepts of mother tongue, dialect, and written language; of speech as a means of communication (the language of daily intercourse) , of the parallelism between speech and thought, between feeling and willing; of language as an object of art. Writing, too, as a means for giving a fixed and permanent form to what is spoken, is of significance here, and we think of the different methods of writing.
- ↑ The dependence of the slavophils upon German philosophy thus becomes plainer than ever. Baader had intimate relationships with Russia for a lengthy period. In a memorial composed in the year 1814 he elaborated for Tsar Alexander I, for the emperor of Austria, and for the king of Prussia, the fundamental lines of the holy alliance, and probably contributed to the establishment of that alliance. This memorial, entitled, Concerning the Need Resulting from the French Revolution to Establish a New and more Intimate Connection between Religion and Politics, was dedicated to Prince Golicyn, friend of Alexander I, and at that time minister for spiritual affairs. From 1818 onwards Baader sent the prince regular reports, receiving for a long period a considerable salary on this account (140 roubles a month). In 1815 Alexander I commissioned Baader to write a religious work for the Russian clergy. Baader wished to found in St. Petersburg an archæological academy which was to favour an intimate association between religion, science, and art, and was in addition to promote the reconciliation of the three churches. In 1822 he set out for Russia, but had to turn back just before he reached Riga, for Baron Yxkull, his enthusiastic patron and travelling companion, had visited Benjamin Constant and had consequently fallen into distavour. This incautious proceeding cost Baader his Russian salary. Another of Baader's works was, Eastern and Western Catholicism considered Rather in Respect of its chief Internal Relationships than in Respect of its Outward Relationships, 1818. One chapter of this work consists of a letter written in French by Ševyrev to Baader under date February 22,1810. The essay, Concerning the Practicability or Impracticability of Emancipating Catholicism from the Roman Dictatorship in the Matter of the Science of Religion, 1839, is dedicated to the author Elim Meščerskii. The essays, Sur l'Eucharistie and Sur la Notion du Temps may be parts of the work intended for the Russian clergy. (I have been able to find nothing noteworthy about Baader in Russian literature.)
- ↑ Russia and Europe first appeared in serial form in 1869. Danilevekii was born in 1822 and died in 1885.
- ↑ The philosopher Solov'ev considers that Danilevskii's types are taken trom H. Rückert's Universal History (1857); the Russian writer of a history of literature deduces them from Pogodin. I may point out that Homjakov in his sketches of universal history classified the human species according to races, states, and religions, basing his conception of historical development upon these three principles. I have not myself followed up the precise affiliation of the idea, thinking it sufficient to point out its lack of clearness.
- ↑ Consult the writing, Concerning Literary Mutuality Between the Various Stocks and Linguistic Families of the Slav Nations, published in German in 1837 (2nd edition, 1844). The fundamental idea had previously been given to the world in Czech in an essay and in several other works, and among these in the annotations to the epic poem, Slávy Dcera (The Daughter of the Sláva) which appeared in 1821. Russian translations were published in 1838 and 1842, and a Serb translation in 1845.
- ↑ Štúr was one of the most notable of this group. His writing, Slavdom and the World of the Future, a Message to the Slavs from the Banks of the Danube, existed in manuscript only till 1867, when Lamanskii translated it into Russian and published it in that tongue.
- ↑ The numbers of the Little Russians are given as follows: in Russia, twenty-two to twenty-six millions; in Austria (Galicia and Bukowina), more than four millions; in Hungary, half a million.
- ↑ Beyond question the Slovaks have no language that is peculiarly their own, and nevertheless political conditions had led to the segregation of the Slovak dialect as a literary tongue. In Germany certain dialects are quite as distinct from the literary speech as Little Russian is from Great Russian. In Germany no obstacles are imposed upon the literary cultivation of the dialects, whilst the teachers in the schools and the officials in the discharge of their duties help themselves out with dialect in case of need. It is doubtless difficult to create a literary speech and a literature in rivalry with a literary tongue already extant and accessible, but it is questionable whether the linguistic development of the Russians will follow the laws of linguistic centralisation in Germany, France, England, etc. As has been said, the question is not a literary one merely, for its solution depends primarily upon political considerations. A Great Russian monthly review has recently been founded in the Little Russian interest.
- ↑ The White Russians number about six millions.
- ↑ The Austrian Poles number three and a half millions. the German Poles three and a quarter millions, and the Russian Poles eleven millions; of these last there are eight millions in the kingdom of Poland and about three millions in Lithuania, West Russia, and South Russia.
- ↑ The first Russian Slavist who made his way to visit the Slav countries was Köppen, son of a Prussian immigrant from Brandenburg to Russia. Köppen came to Prague in 1823. In 1837 and subsequent years other noted Slavists to visit Prague were Bodjanskii, Srezněvskii, and Preis. The plan to transfer Šafařík and Čelakovský to Russia came to nothing. The first chair of Slavistics was established at Moscow in 1811, being held by the historian Kačenovskii. In 1826 Šiškov, who had become minister for education, inaugurated at the universities and at the newly founded pedagogic institute, chairs in Slavistics to which the before-mentioned Russian Slavists were subsequently appointed.
- ↑ Aksakov condemned Rieger's political aims as ultramontane half-measures.
- ↑ During the years 1832 to 1835 persons to the number of 2,338 had their property confiscated, and during the years 1835 to 1856 persons to the additional number of 551 were affected; the value of the confiscated lands was reckoned at 141,000,000 francs.
- ↑ Haxthausen informs us that he learned in Moscow in the year 1843 that a Moscow deputation made representations to the government against the complete incorporation of Poland, protesting against this measure upon industrial grounds.
- ↑ In 1867 the following special privileges were granted to the bureaucracy in Poland. One year of service was to count as four, a bonus of 15% was added to all salaries, and the right to a pension was acquired after five years' service.
- ↑ In the west people continue to talk of the Slav Welfare Association, although less is now heard of it than during and after the Russo-Turkish war. Founded in Moscow by Pogodin in 1858, called at first the Slav Welfare Committee, in 1877 its name was changed to Slav Welfare Association. Branches were formed in St. Petersburg, Kiev, and Odessa, in 1868, 1869, and 1870, respectively. Pogodin's chief object in launching the committee was to use it as a weapon against Roman Catholic propaganda in the Balkans. According to the published accounts for the years 1868 to 1893 the receipts of the association during this period amounted to 2,629,247 roubles. Of this sum, 2,403,379 roubles were spent in the Slav lands of the Balkans for the maintenance of the churches; 25,395 roubles went to the schools; the remainder was devoted to literary and other purposes. Historically the association was analogous to the Gustavus Adolphus Association, and this also was stigmatized by the Catholic clericalists as a body constituted solely for purposes of political agitation. (Between 1832, the year of its foundation, and 1884, the Gustavus Adolphus Association disbursed 19,686,532 marks.) During recent years the Slav Welfare Association has ceased to have any practical importance. Suggestions in the European press that the spoutings oi its orators possess political significance are utterly erroneous. Apart from the fact that the membership of the association is numerically insignificant, pensioned generals like Kirěev are without influence in Russia. There is no lack in Russia of pensioned generals and officers of lesser rank, and these sometimes beguile the weary hours with excursions into what they dignify by the name of Slav politics. The aforesaid Kirěev, in a speech delivered in 1893, declared that slavophilism would prove the salvation of the world, would deliver Europe from anarchism, parliamentarism, unbelief, and dynamite. But it is necessary to distinguish between slavophilism of this type and the slavophilism of Kirěevskii. The first slavophils associated their doctrine with the country and the folk, whereas Kirěev and other slavophils of late date look towards the autocracy. After Pogodin's death Ivan Aksakov became chairman of the Moscow branch of the association, and Aksakov was doubtless a publicist of note. The choice fell upon him in preference to the prince of Bulgaria, but he was not strictly speaking a panslavist. At the present date General Čerep-Spiridovič is chairman of the Moscow branch, and as far as I can learn no one but the Paris Cri d'Alarme takes his political views seriously. A few years ago certain so-called neoslavist associations were founded as a counterblast to the reactionary associations. Their aims were distinctively nonpolitical, their interest being in Slav culture. Little, however, is heard of them to-day.
- ↑ It will be interesting in this connection, in view of Haxthausen's relationships with the slavophils, to recall that writer's contributions to Slav philosophy of history. The Czechs, he said, were too petty a folk to play a notable political rôle Their place and task among the Slavs was that of intermediators. The Poles he considered could not form an independent state, but they might preserve their national peculiarities (It was all to the good that the Germans too, did not compose a homogeneous state. As for the Russians, their mission in the world, said Haxthausen, was to intermediate between Asia and Europe. He considered panslavism of value as an expression of reciprocal Slav sympathies.)
- ↑ Semevskii, the historian of the liberation ol the peasantry, reports that upon Homjakov's estates the condition of the peasantry, in conflict with their lord's theories, was worse than that which prevailed in the domains of neighbouring landowners. In 1851 Košelev reported that Homiakov had defended the purchase of serfs for purposes of colonisation (Košelev was personally opposed to purchase and sale). In 1861 Dostoevskii reproached l. Aksakov for having uncritically favoured the relationship of serf and lord in the interest of the lord. Košelev wrote as follows to Ivan Kirěevskii in 1852: "I cannot understand, my dear friend Kirěevskii, how you, a Christian, can fail to be horrified at keeping men in servitude to yourself." But Kirěevskii's quietist passivism made it quite easy for him to tolerate the institution of serfdom. In 1847, when his sister wished to liberate her peasants, he dissuaded her from the step. In a discussion with Košelev, he said that if the peasants must be given land, they ought not to have five desjatinas, but one only: "This will help the peasant along, but he will still have to seek other work; in default of so necessity all the landowner's fields would remain untilled."
- ↑ In his third volume Haxthausen refers to his relationships with the slavophils ("Young Russia"), expressing his agreement with their views. He is especially enthusiastic about Konstantin Aksakov, referring to him as "one of the most talented men with whom I became acquainted in Russia." He met also Kirěevskii, Homjakov, and Samarin, and in addition Čaadaev and representatives of the westernisers (Granovskii, for instance). According to Herzen it was from Konstantin Aksakov that Haxthausen derived his view as to the importance of the mir and the artel.
- ↑ Schulze-Gävernitz carries Haxthausen's idea a stage further when he shows how the slavophils actually promoted the industrialisation of Moscow and Russia by their romanticist glorification of agrarianism and by their campaign against economic individualism—by their insistence upon the independence of Russia vis-à-vis Europe, and so on.
- ↑ Attention has recently been directed to a parallel circumstance recorded by the chronicler Widukind, who informs us that the Teutonic Anglo-Saxons were invited to England by the British (likewise presumed to be Teutons).
- ↑ There is no occasion to name all the later slavophils, and it will suffice to allude to men of European reputation. Košelev, a vigorous and cultured publicist, has been mentioned. Běljaev is a meritorious historian whose writings deal with Russian law, the mir, and the peasantry. Hilferding was as Slavist and historian greatly influenced by Homjakov. Lamanskii, a Slavist, was regarded with much enmity in Austria, but this was unjust. for Lamanskii was not a supporter of the government as were so many of his slavophil contemporaries and pupils, and his character enforced the respect of liberal opponents. Budilovič, Slavist, defended panrussism (consult his The Literary Unity of the Slavs, 1879). K. Bestužev-Rjurnin, historian, was from 1878 to 1882 president of the St. Petersburg Slav Union. Kojalovič, historian of the Uniat churches of Russia, has written a work upon the spirit of Russia as displayed in historiography.