The Spirit of Russia/Volume 2/Chapter 16

by Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

 

THE THEORISTS OF THE OFFICIAL THEOCRACY: KATKOV; POBĚDONOSCEV; LEONT'EV.

 

I

 

§ 132.

 

WE have now to turn to the contemporary opponents of the progressive and radical politicians hitherto considered, and shall begin with Mihail Nikiforovič Katkov (1818–1887), the publicist defender of the government and the theocracy.

At Moscow during the forties Katkov was a member of Stankevič's circle, being on intimate terms with Bělinskii and Bakunin, and beginning his publicist activities under Bělinskii's auspices. When Bělinskii left Moscow for St. Petersburg, Katkov, with Ketter and Bakunin, accompanied him part of the way. Shortly afterwards a breach occurred between Katkov and Bakunin, and in Bělinskii's house on one occasion (1840) the two men actually came to blows. At the end of the thirties, Katkov was under Hegel's influence, which, however, was soon replaced by that of Schelling—the Schelling of the later phase. In 1840 and 1841, Katkov attended Schelling's lectures in Berlin. Already in 1840, when the leaven of Schelling had begun to work, Katkov adopted as his program the three high-sounding words of Uvarov, Orthodoxy, autocracy, and nationality. Nevertheless the aspiring young thinker found it possible to conceive Uvarov's program in the sense of Peter. He wrote in 1840: "Russia first originated through Peter." In 1841 he expressed himself as strongly averse to the Old Russism of Pogodin and Pogodin's associates, defending Europe, and maintaining that Europe was not falling into decay.

In 1845 he had become professor of philosophy, but in 1850 he lost this position during the reaction that followed 1848.

Taking up the work of publicist in 1851, he was appointed editor of the official periodical ‘"Moskovskija Vědomosti" (Moscow News), subsequently notorious, and held the post until 1855. In 1856 he founded the "Russkii Věstnik" (Russian Messenger), and under his editorship this review soon became the most noted organ of moderate liberalism. In the early days of his public career, Katkov was an enthusiastic admirer of England and English institutions; he paid a visit to England, and studied the English constitution, reading the works of Blackstone and Gneist. The "Moskoyskija Vědomosti" became the standard-bearer of constitutionalism. But his political anglomania was already of a perfectly innocent character, as is shown, for example, by his admiration for the English landed gentry. By now in essentials Katkov was a conservative, and therefore in his newspaper he had taken sides against the early slavophils. The slavophil theory of nationality; and slavophil burrowings into the foundations of Russian nationality, were uncongenial to him. The French, he said, are not so terribly concerned about their nationality, nor is such concern needful, for if nationality be healthy it will assert itself spontaneously. Homjakov, of course, held a different view, and could appeal to Klopstock, Fichte, and Schiller.

As late, nevertheless, as 1858, Katkov took part with Košelev in organising a demonstration and a collection of funds on behalf of Kruse, who had been deprived of his office of censor on account of liberal views, but after 1861 Katkov moved notably towards the right.

In his view, the liberation of the peasantry and the ensuing reforms gave undue scope to the forces of progress, and opened undesirable channels for these forces. He detested in the progressive and democratic movement its negation of the principles of monarchy, aristocracy, and centralism, which he regarded as essential to true progress. The problem was, he considered, to allot to these principles their proper position and to assign to them their due boundaries in the organism of the state as a whole. "Interest in freedom,"’ he wrote in 1862, "constitutes the soul of conservatism"—vague and indefinite phraseology was characteristic of Katkov's utterances. It is possible to quote passages from his essays wherein he accepts the new reforms and speaks of their splendid mission. Of the zemstvos, for example, adopting here slavophil ideas, he expects that they will discover the true relationship to the past, will re-establish the national life in its totality, and will awaken the creative energies of that life.

He was thinking not only of the English gentry (the English gentry of that day!), but also of the Russian nobles, whom he regarded as the born leaders of the common people. Mihailovskii tells us in his memoirs that in 1861 Katkov denounced Eliseev for desiring to protect the aristocracy of culture against the aristocracy of birth.

In June 1862, Katkov opened a campaign against Herzen and the "Kolokol"; after the Polish rising in 1863 he exploited national chauvinism for his own ends. During the revolt, Schédo-Ferroti (von Fircks) published a pamphlet entitled Que fera-t-on de la Pologne? in which he demanded that Poland, whilst remaining an integral part of Russia, should be granted local self-government. Katkov made this the text for a violent attack on the Poles, and while ostensibly aimed at Schédo-Ferroti, his onslaught was really directed at the liberal minister Golovnin.

Katkov was not slow to oppose Černyševskii and the realist movement. At first, indeed, he had collaborated with Černyševskii on the staff of the "Otečestvennyja Zapiski"; but in 1861, in his own review, Katkov published Jurkevič's anti-materialistic writing, and the "Russkii Věstnik" became the chief organ of the counternihilist movement. Turgenev's Fathers and Children was published by Katkov; Dostoevskii, despite his earlier polemic against Katkov, issued his antinihilist novels under Katkov's aegis; and Katkov was delighted to publish the novels of Kljušnikov, Krestovskii, and Markevič. To Katkov, literature was subservient to his political plans Not for the sake of literature had he founded his review, but because he had formed a sound estimate of the political power of literature; and in view of the literary conditions prevailing at the close of the Nicolaitan period it was not difficult for him, aided by his collaborators (the name of Ostrovskii may be added to those already mentioned), to acquire literary influence. In 1862, writing in Dostoevskii's review "Vremja" (Time), Grigor'ev rightly pointed out that literature was to Katkov of no consequence, a mere means to an end.^[1] Katkov's disposition is most unambiguously displayed in his censorial work as editor. Publishing Turgenev’'s Fathers and Children, he treated Bazarov most maliciously by simply suppressing all the mitigating traits of that hero's character.

The year 1863 and the Polish rising gave Katkov an authoritative position among the conservatives and nationalists. Resuming the editorship of the "Moskovskija Vědomosti," he thus acquired a widely circulated journal through which to push his designs. More and more the program of Orthodoxy, autocracy, and nationality came to be conceived by him in the sense of the government; and after 1866, when the first attempt was made on the tsar's life, he definitely took up a position opposed to the intelligentsia. In 1867 he formulated his credo in the following terms: "Russia needs a unified state and a strong Russian nationality. Let us create such a nationality upon the foundation of a language common to all the inhabitants, upon that of a common faith, and upon that of the Slavic mir. Let us overthrow everything which imposes obstacles in the way of these designs. In this program of rigid Russification, the only exception he was willing to make related to the Poles (see § 68).

Katkov was shrewd enough to turn his attention to the schools. Effecting a rapprochement to Pobědonoscev and Count D. A. Tolstoi, he favoured classicism in the gimnazija and he attacked the reorganisation of the universities effected in 1863. In 1878 the Moscow students accompanied the start of a convoy of exiles, and for this peaceable demonstration were savagely handled by the butchers. The next day Katkov's organ strongly commended this butcher patriotism.

With increasing energy, Katkov opposed the bureaucracy, which seemed Laodicean and too liberal. His prestige grew when in 1866 his paper was suspended for two months. Once again, in 1870, he received an official admonition. He was greatly dissatisfied with Russian diplomacy, while the Turkish war and its results were as little to his liking as to that of other politicians and partisans. His conduct of a campaign upon two fronts made Katkov highly respected in court circles, and it is reported that Alexander II, who beyond question was not wholly in accord with Katkov's ideas, protected Katkov by saying that that writer would be his own censor.

It was after Alexander's death that Katkov acquired his most extensive influence over the government and the court. Loris-Melikov's dictatorship was his idea, although the plan was not carried out precisely as he had wished. Denouncing the assassination as the work of the Poles and of the intelligentsia ("the intrigue"), he gave free rein to his reactionary ideas. He had by now conceived a hatred for the zemstvos, and in economic questions had become a rigid protectionist. His accusations were directed against the ministries and the other high institutions of state, and he was right to this extent, that the state servants had often no clear views of what they wanted to do, were inert, vacillating, and lukewarm. Katkov was in alliance with Pobědonoscev. Katkov's influence made itself felt in the administration of the schools and the universities. Orest Miller, a slavophil, but a liberal historian of literature, was suspended because he had given expression to his opinions upon Katkov. The reactionary university statutes of 1884 were mainly the work of Katkov.

The telegram of condolence which Alexander III sent to the widow of Katkov when that writer died, and the way in which his patriotism was extolled, showed how great was his prestige at court. The fact that Katkov was able to gain such a position for himself has been regarded as in a sense a victory of journalism over the closed circle of the Russian court.

Katkov frequently changed his opinions, for as politician he was far from being a man of firm and definite character, or one clearly conscious of his aims. Turgenev was doubtless tight in speaking of him as a poseur; and other publicists, such as Annenkov and Panaev, took the same view. Katkov was shrewd enough; he recognised the instability of the regime of Alexander II (though this, indeed, did not require much sagacity). But Katkov himself was hardly less unstable. He lacked a thoroughly elaborated conservative philosophy, but he served the headless and heartless reaction, and (as Solov'ev put it) he defended the Russian state with truly Mohammedan fanaticism. This explains the paradoxical advice which he gave the Bulgarians during the reign of Alexander of Battenberg, when he counselled them to establish a republic. Monarchy, he said, was the best form of government for great states, but was unsuited for petty states, since the sovereigns of these were too weak not to pass under the influence of one or other of the great states, and this led to disastrous conflicts between people and ruler. Katkov's opinion secured the approval of the renowned Colonel Komarov, but none the less it gives sufficient proof that Katkov's tsarism was affected by internal corrosion. The arguments Katkov used in favour of tsarism and autocracy were taken from de Maistre, but he lacked the political consistency of the man who glorified the executioner.^[2] Moreover, in youth Katkov had had dealings with Tocqueville and Macaulay; in France and in England these were accounted men of moderate views, but in Russia their opinions had a revolutionary influence. Not without significance was the fact that in youth Katkov had made translations from Shakespeare, Hoffmann, and even Heine.

His own indecisiveness enabled him to understand the indecisiveness of the government and the bureaucracy, and likewise enabled him to understand the shortsightedness of the censorship, which (in a petition to the government) he accused of undermining religion. Nor was he under any illusions concerning the weakness of the autocrat. In Katkov's devotion to the reaction there was a dash of anarchism.: If I mistake not, Herzen realised this when he pointed out with delight that Katkov had forced journalism upon tsarism.

We cannot discover in Katkov's writings any definite system of political views, nor did he exercise a guiding influence in matters of principle. Mihailovskii once aptly termed him the vii of the "Moscow News." The vii is a Little Russian mythical being who is unable to see in ordinary circumstances because his eyelids reach to the ground; but the vii can see perfectly well if his lids are held forcibly open with a pitchfork.

Katkov was continually vacillating. In the sixties, for example, he was opposed to the slavophils; in 1880, at the Puškin festival, he became reconciled with them (with Ivan Aksakov, at least, for Turgenev refused to clink glasses with him); but almost immediately after this reconciliation Katkov resumed his old attitude of hostility. During the Turkish war he was antigerman; in 1882 he was well pleased with Bismarck, because the chancellor was more Russian than was Russian diplomacy, which rested upon no national foundation; but from 1886 onwards he opposed Bismarck and the Bismarckians in the most violent terms. In like manner, he was, at first antifrench, and subsequently profrench. Having been a moderate free trader before the Turkish war, he became a protectionist when the war was over.

Katkov was the typical bourgeois stigmatised by Herzen and Mihailovskii, one of those parvenus who push themselves into the company of the great ones of earth, impose themselves by force of individuality, but at the same time render service. At the outset of his career he had written to Kraevskii: "The sum of my ambition is to be employed upon special service by a big gun, or at least by a gun of medium calibre."

I do not think I underrate Katkov or do him an injustice when I refrain from the attempt to construct a philosophy of history or a philosophy of religion out of his innumerable articles and reviews. (I may mention in passing that in 1852 he wrote a history of early Greek philosophy for a collective work produced by his friend P. M. Leont'ev.) In the early seventies, A. S. Suvorin, editor of the "Novoe Vremja," described Katkov, Leont'ev, etc., as busy exploiters of credulity and stupidity. Subsequently, Suvorin changed his mind in this as in other matters; nevertheless, in an obituary notice published in the "Novoe Vremja" of August 9, 1887, a week after Katkov's death, Suvorin wrote: "He occasionally endeavoured to formulate his views, and when he succeeded in such a formulation he could never avoid oratorical sophistry." It may be added that the "Novoe Vremja" was itself expert in journalism of this nature.

 

§ 133.

 

IN addition to the journalists of the theocracy, we have to consider Konstantin Petrovič Pobědonoscev (1827–1907), who defended theocracy as a sociologist.

"The bringer of victory," such is the significance of the name Pobědonoscev, the name of the man whose opinions were long dominant among the ruling class of Russia, of the man whose desperate attempt to suppress the progressive movement of the Russian youth and the Russian intelligentsia was largely responsible for the deplorable situation of the country. Such a name as "the bringer of victory" is a lucky and desirable one in a land of superstition and at a court where superstition is rife. It is true, however, there were many in Russia to point out that bědonoscev means "bringer of evil" and that donoscev signifies "informer." Whoever wishes to know what has been going on in Russia under Alexander III and Nicholas II must study the mental, scientific, and journalistic characteristics of Pobědonoscev. His activities were extensive, and were concerned with the questions of the day. In addition to learned collections of juristic data, he published legal textbooks (the most important of which was a manual of civil law), and a number of journalistic essays. In 1896 appeared a series of articles under the title of Moskovskii Sbornik (Moscow Collection), in which Pobědonoscev expounded his political and religious creed. The book ran through a number of editions.

The mere title "Moscow Collection" is enough to show anyone who possesses the necessary insight that the author, though he held office in St. Petersburg, felt himself to be a man of Moscow—for to Pobědonoscev, Moscow was the third Rome of true Christianity, the ideal capital of the genuine Russian. Born in Moscow, in Moscow he became professor of civil law and procedure, and as such was appointed juristic tutor to the imperial princes. In 1880, during the Loris-Melikov regime, the tutor of Alexander II was appointed chief procurator of the holy synod, and held this office until 1905.

His official position gave his opinions the great weight which they have possessed in Russia since the time when Alexander III ascended the throne. The liberal or semi-liberal system of Loris-Melikov was replaced by the clericalist system of Pobědonoscev, and notwithstanding 1905 and 1906 this system is still (1913) dominant in St. Petersburg.

Pobědonoscev was and desired to remain the man of Moscow. He sought his intellectual forbears among the Moscow slavophils, and above all among the slavophil Old Russians. It is undeniable that his fundamental philosophical principles remind us of those held by the leaders of the slavophil school, so that we think now of Kirěevskii, now of Konstantin Aksakov, and now again of Samarin and Homjakov; but the images of these notable thinkers pale before those of Pogodin and Katkov, which loom far more plainly behind the pages of the Moskovskii Sbornik. As far as Katkov is concerned, we do not see that writer in his youthful and liberal days, but we discern the counsellor of Alexander III. The assassination of Alexander  II brought Katkov and Pobědonoscev into power. In nihilism and revolutionary terrorism, Pobědonoscev found the precise antithesis, as a philosophy of history, to his own fundamental outlook, which was that Old Russian civilisation, as the precise opposite of western civilisation, could alone constitute the true basis for a genuinely Russian political system. The relationship between Russia and Europe resembled that between day and night, between light and darkness, between Ormuzd and Ahriman; Russia was social order, Europe was anarchy; Russia was life, Europe death, the death of the individual and of the nation as a whole, death at once moral and physical.

Finally, though with a gross distortion of the slavophil philosophy of history, Pobědonoscev considered that the essential malady of Europe and of liberalism (including Russian liberalism under Alexander II) was rationalism. The meaning he attached to this term varied. Sometimes he attacked logic and the syllogistic method; sometimes he censured logical formalism or animadverted upon the critical movement in literature. In contrast with these things he extolled life and its immediate needs, placing all his confidence in immediate sensation, in warm feeling, and in experience. Quite after the manner of so many ultra-moderns, did he thus display Rousseauist views. For Pobědonoscev, too, had studied in the school of Rousseau, and like so many of the romanticists he rejected science, philosophy, and civilisation. He did not, however, aim at the return to a state of nature, but at returning to the prepetrine third Rome with its Byzantine orthodoxy and its philosophy of the fathers of the church. This philosophy is mystical, and utterly without rationalism. Pobědonoscev accepted in its entirety the mystical psychology of the slavophils, but as a practical statesman and ecclesiastic he carried it out to its logical political consequences. Thus the mystical imitator of Christ (Pobědonoscev translated à Kempis) developed into the "grand inquisitor" of Dostoevskii.

According to the literal phrasing of this Orthodox Russian theory of cognition, only the blockhead can desire to think clearly about everything. The most valuable ideas, those most needful in life, remain in a mystical chiaroscuro in the remote recesses of the soul. The greatest thoughts are necessarily obscure. The mass of the population is under the sway of a natural vis inertiæ, but this inertia must not be confused with unculture and roughness, for it is a natural and healthy shrinking from logical thought, a natural tendency to shun the hustle of modern progress. The folk trusts tradition, which has not been thought out, but has been made by life itself; history, history alone, not the law of nature, is the desirable and needful authority for mankind. The believing spirit of the genuine Russian, being uncorrupted by logic, accepts this authority as a matter of course; the folk feels directly, feels in its soul, and perceives absolute truth, artist fashion, by way of faith. In folk-sagas this absolute truth has found artistic expression, for the saga is the history of the whole folk. History is the most trustworthy of all authorities. Absolute truth is religious truth; but it is the Russian church, not religion in the abstract, which embodies absolute truth. This truth is imparted to the uncultured masses by the church ceremonies, without any admixture of logic and philosophy. The Russian church possesses absolute truth, is absolute truth, and therefore the Russian folk possesses and is this truth. The various churches correspond to the needs of the various nations, and the Russians have a church of their own. The believer will never recognise a foreign doctrine, but on the contrary, "should need arise he will forcibly impose his own belief on others."

As we see, the mysticism of Joannes Damascenus (who was the slavophils' favourite father of the church) has degenerated into orthodox Jesuitism. If every nation has its own religion and nationality, why should Russia, with its millions of Poles, Germans, I'inns, Swedes, etc., have but one church and but one recognised nationality? "Europeans!" the answer runs—that is quite another affair: the Russian church, the Russian folk, has and is absolute truth, and that suffices!

From rationalism, the original sin of Europe, there arises by logical sequence a second original sin, belief in the excellence of the natural man. Pobědonoscev, however, teaches that man is by nature bad and full of malice, and he infers from this that democracy in all its forms is evil. Pobědonoscev attacks parliamentarism and the representative system of government with inexorable scorn and mockery, stigmatising Parliamentarism as "the great lie of our age." Liberty, equality, and fraternity are mere phrases and idols. No man of honour, no man with a sense of duty, can accept the modern electoral system with its universal suffrage. Pobědonoscev inveighs against the agitators, the modern sophists and logomachists, who keep the masses in leading strings, and he is no less opposed to the demagogy of trial by jury. He detests the newspaper press, and denies its claim to represent public opinion, for the press too is one of the most lying institutions of our time. Of course this remark was not to be taken as applying to Katkov's newspaper, but only to the organs of the nihilists, the socialists, and the liberals.

Pobědonoscev considered that the frequency of suicide in modern times afforded proof that modern life had become utterly unnatural, senseless, and false: The old and tried standards of social and family life had disappeared, and their place had been taken by egoism, the outcome of unbridled individualism and subjectivism,. The man who can find no supports outside his own ego, the man who possesses no moral standards independent of that ego to guide him through life, runs away from life and destroys himself. Even better men, men with high ideals, succumb to the falsity of their environment, becoming aware of the vanity of their ideals when these are not sustained by faith.

A strange hotchpotch this of truth and falsehood, a characteristic jumble of far-sightedness and short-sightedness. The newspaper press is evil, and yet Pobědonoscev is himself author and journalist; the masses of the people run after the agitators, and yet these same masses are absolute truth when, in their unculture and superstition, they prostrate themselves before the Orthodox altars! Vox populi vox dei, when populus acknowledges the Orthodox faith; but vox populi vox diaboli, when populus demands a parliament and the suffrage! Thus does the mysticism of the fathers of the church take vengeance on Pobědonoscev, upon his philosophy, and upon his politics. He is cultured enough to perceive how superstitious and uncultivated are the masses and the Russian clergy; he admits the facts; but his mysticism makes it impossible for him to see clearly, to distinguish between true religion and superstition, to banish superstition in the interest of true religion. Pobědonoscev, therefore, did not merely regard superstition as "a matter of no importance," but he even regarded the religious fervour of the folk as endowed with something sublimely mysterious. The sublimity of this mystery produced so strong an impression on his mind that he declared popular elementary education to be needless and injurious, for this would be rationalism, this would be logic, and logic is the work of the devil. "The diffusion of popular education is absolutely harmful."

This sophistry and partial application of logic was to be momentous for Russia! Man is by nature evil and malicious; therefore the masses must be guided under the tutelage of the holy synod in the service of the autocracy. Men are by nature evil and malicious; except for the chief procurator of the holy synod and all the greater and lesser aristocrats. Western civilisation is a disaster; but the modern breech-loading rifles, the new ordnance, the railways, telegraphs, and other practical acquirements of the "logic" and the logical sciences of Europe, must nevertheless serve the Russian Orthodox autocracy. Pobědonoscev, like all reactionaries, has himself been sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought, or at any rate is sufficiently inconsistent to accept the fruits of European civilisation without foreseeing that the inevitable result will be to make holes in his Old Russian philosophy and by degrees to destroy it. Such is the great lie of the Russian reaction, He who makes use of locomotives, cannon, telegraphs, and telephones, may forbid logic and philosophy as much as he pleases, but the prohibition will be of no avail, for he must perforce teach mathematics and natural science, and these will once more bring philosophy and logic into honour, if by a devious route. In all seriousness, Nicholas I forbade the study of philosophy at the universities, but the prohibition was futile, for Russian thought became all the more distinctively naturalistic and even materialistic in trend. The Russian autocracy needs an army of officials, and these must be educated men. Even if they were to take Pobědonoscev's manual as their only textbook of jurisprudence, they could not understand it unless they had had an extensive preliminary training. Pobědonoscev himself, though unwittingly, definitely espouses the doctrine of economic materialism when he teaches that law is nothing more than the formal fixation of the relationships created by life and by economic conditions. Moreover, the modern state cannot dispense with political economy. The bureaucracy of the modern absolutist monarchy cannot base its actions solely on the teachings of Joannes Damascenus and on the authority of the sagas. Katkov realised this when he directed his campaign, not only against the students, but also against the Russian bureaucracy.

It need hardly be said that we may find much to agree with in Pobědonoscev's condemnation of the errors of our civilisation and of our political institutions. Who, for example, would dissent from what the chief procurator wrote about demagogy? Who could be wholly content with parliamentarism, as it exists, say, in Austria? Was Carlyle, of whose works Pobědonoscev was a diligent student, satisfied with parliamentary government? Do not the anarchists, moreover, reject parliamentarism? A number of notable Europeans, alike men of the study and men of practical life, have held views which do not differ greatly from those held by Pobědonoscev. But the great distinction lies in this, that in Europe we already have some experience of parliamentary government and of emocracy, and hence it is not merely our right but our duty to criticise these institutions, for to do this is to fulfil democracy. But a Russsian who from western literature sharks up arguments against parliament, democracy, and the newspaper press, in order to incorporate these arguments into his absolutist system, is a man ever open to suspicion. Indisputably, demagogy (not parliamentarism per se) is one of the great lies of our epoch. But in this epoch of ours to defend autocratic absolutism, even for Russia; to endeavour to find historical, philosophical, and religious arguments on behalf of this regime, though its incapacity is manifest to all the world—what is it, when done by a man of culture but a literary crime? Pobědonoscev was the declared enemy of the west, and yet it was from the west that he derived his own culture and his own antiliberal and antidemocratic arguments.

For the representation of Pobědonoscev's views the question of the relationship between state and church has an important bearing, seeing that Pobědonoscev was in a position to speak, not only as teacher of public law, but also as chief procurator. He criticised the various attempts at a solution that had been made in Europe. In the Catholic system, he said, the church controlled the state. The more or less liberal systems which had developed from the eighteenth century onwards, granting equal rights to all religions, independence of the state from the church, and a free church in a free state, were vague half-measures, and could not be effectively carried out in practice. The church, in view of its educational function, could not possibly renounce the moral guidance of the citizens; a separation between church and state was de facto impossible; "a state without a creed is a purely utopian ideal, and one incapable of realisation, for unbelief is the direct negation of the state.^[3] Holding firmly as he does to the theory that there is a natural harmony between state and church, it goes without saying that for Russia, where there are many creeds, the Orthodox church is to be the state church. "The state recognises one creed among all as the true one; it supports and favours one church exclusively; all other churches and creeds being regarded as of lesser value."

Such was the spirit in which Pobědonoscev, as chief procurator of the holy synod, treated the old believers and the sectaries, being especially harsh to the stundists.

When the decree of toleration was issued in April 1905 and was followed by a manifesto in October of the same year, the clergy demanded the summoning of a council for the revision of the existing relationships between church and state. In response to this demand, Pobědonoscev sent the chiefs of the eparchies a questionnaire, wherein, however, no reference was made to the thorny problem of the relationship between church and state. Despite his slavophilism, Pobědonoscev suddenly became a defender of Petrine ecclesiastical reform and of the uncanonically founded synod.

In Pobědonoscev's view, perfect harmony between church and state was to be realised by unmitigated absolutism. He was ever the most determined opponent of political no less than of religious reform. During the regime of Svjatopolk-Mirskii, when the question of political reforms was under discussion, Pobědonoscev, speaking in the name of religion, denied the tsar's right to limit in any way whatever the powers bestowed on him by the deity. Similar had been the ideas of the ecclesiastical politicians in the days of old Moscow.

It is said that as early as 1906 Pobědonoscev had elaborated a design to recruit from the clergy against the duma a clerical governmental party, and certainly the elections to the fourth duma realised this plan.

Pobědonoscev was by no means original. His Moscow Collection was a mere compilation of well-known ideas from numerous European and Russian conservatives and reactionaries. Most of the notions in the book may be traced back to Le Play. Pobědonoscev wrote a cordial appreciation of this Catholic adviser of Napoleon III. But Le Play was no more than one among the many French adversaries of democracy and revolution to exercise an influence upon Russian politicians and theorists, the most influential of all, as we have seen, being de Maistre.

I have mentioned the Russian predecessors and teachers of Pobědonoscev, but another name must be added to the list, that of Leont'ev, about whom we are to learn in the next section. Nearly all Pobědonoscev's ideas may be found in the writings of Leont'ev no less than in those of Le Play, and it is possible that these two thinkers made the strongest impression upon Pobědonoscev's mind. But the chief procurator gave expression to Leont'ev's ideas in the Russian forensic style. Leont'ev's ideas led him to a monastery remote from the world; but Pobědonoscev, adopting these same ideas, could bask at the courts of Alexander III and Nicholas II. Leont'ev insisted upon the need for great deeds of deathdealing significance; whereas Pobědonoscev (as we learn from a London report concerning the tsar's decree of January 26, 1905) asked to be promoted to the second class of the official hierarchy, and was granted the privilege of wearing an extra stripe upon the trousers of his full-dress uniform, to show that he ranked as a minister.

In view of these facts it is not agreeable to have to institute a comparison between Pobědonoscev and Tolstoi, and yet the official and personal relationships between the chief procurator and Tolstoi impose such a comparison. Somewhat prematurely, in 1900, Pobědonoscev refused Tolstoi the right to a religious burial, whilst in 1901 he had Tolstoi excommunicated. These measures suggest hostile sentiments and yet it is impossible to avoid comparing Pobědonoscev with Tolstoi. Both men manifested the same aversion to civilisation, science, and philosophy; to both, religion seemed the alpha and omega of endeavour. Tolstoi's estimate of parliament, democracy, and many other institutions, was closely akin to that of Pobědonoscev. The great difference between the two men lay, however, in this, that Tolstoi wished for a rational religion, Pobědonoscev for a mystical and positively irrational religion. In this matter Tolstoi's opponent was in the centre of the great mystical movement which affected so large a part of the Russian intelligentsia in the closing decades of the nineteenth century, the movement whose greatest prophet was Dostoevskii. Pobědonoscev, too, had learned from Dostoevskii, having had personal relations with that author. A strange comparison this between Pobědonoscev and Tolstoi—Tolstoi to whom religion was a world problem and an intimately vital question; Pobědonoscev to whom religion was a means to political ends.

After the death of Alexander II, Tolstoi sent Pobědonoscev, for transmission to Alexander III, a heartfelt letter petitioning that the assassins should be pardoned. Pobědonoscev kept the letter to himself, and did not reply to Tolstoi until after the execution of the condemned. The defender of capital punishment then wrote as follows: "Our Christ is not your Christ. To me Christ is the man of energy and truth, who heals the weak; but it seems to me that your Christ shows lineaments of weakness, is himself in need of healing."

Other writers and artists besides Tolstoi were subjected to censorship by Pobědonoscev. I may recall the chief procurator's intention to forbid the exhibition of Polěnov's picture of Christ and the woman taken in adultery. The tsar, however, liked the picture and purchased it.

Some interest might attach to a discussion of Pobědonoscev's ideas concerning foreign policy. His feelings towards France, for example, were far less cordial than those of most chauvinists, advocates of the Franco-Russian alliance; he had little fondness for Austria; he was by no means an enthusiast for the Slavs, and the liberal Czechs were especially uncongenial to him. But he took pleasure in the description of travel written by Vratislav von Mitrovič, the Bohemian nobleman who visited Constantinople in 1591 as member of an embassy from Rudolf II. Pobědonoscev translated the book, and it is obvious that he took a sympathetic delight in the believing author's descriptions of the life and doings of the Turks.

Pobědonoscev, despite his hostility to negation, was himself after all merely negative; he negated the west. But his negation was weak and half-hearted; he cast out Satan with Satan's aid; the pillars of his theocratic orthodoxy were European authorities, whose works he turned to his own account; à Kempis, de Maistre, Emerson, Spencer, Carlyle, Goethe, etc., were utilised to lay the foundations of the crown jurist's scholastic edifice. Amid his incessant appeals for uniformity, he displayed a deplorable lack of uniformity. But this is characteristic of al! theological and theocratic apologetic literature, and is by no means peculiar to Russia. Two German translations of the Moscow Studies have been published, both under Protestant auspices, the translators being delighted with the Russian obscurantist.

Pobědonoscev has been extolled for his genial and winning manners. We remember that certain inquisitors used to weep when sentencing their victims to death, and we recall that the "winning" Pob&édonoscev was the firm ally of such men as Pleve, the grand dukes Vladimir and Alexis, and the leading spirits in the black hundred. In Aylmer Maude's biography of Tolstoi we are told that in 1901, when Tolstoi fell ill after his excommunication, Pobědonoscev commissioned a priest to visit Tolstoi and subsequently to announce that Tolstoi had confessed to him. I have not looked for confirmation of this story, but it is perfectly credible, for Pobědonoscev was a thoroughgoing Jesuit.

Characteristic were the announcements he made for Europe and in Europe (see various interviews, newspaper articles, etc.). In these it was his habit to pay compliments to Europe, to declare that complete freedom of conscience prevailed in Russia, that current accusations against the Russian government were absolutely false. Complete freedom of conscience! Why, then, did not Archbishop Antonii agree with Pobědonoscev's ecclesiastical policy? And Witte, no less than Antonii, turned against Pobědonoscev (see § 188).

 

§ 134.

 

KONSTANTIN NIKOLAEVIČ LEONT'EV (1831–1891) represents a very different type of defender of the theocracy.

Leont'ev acted as army surgeon in the Crimean war, and subsequently became a general practitioner in the country. After a time, entering the service of the foreign office, he passed the years 1863 to 1870 as consul in various towns of European Turkey. It was during this period that he became reconciled with Orthodoxy. Resigning his post he lived for a while on Mount Athos (1870–1871). He then returned to Russia, subsequently served on the staff of the official newspaper in Warsaw (1880), and then became censor in Moscow. In 1887, however, he finally retired from the world to reside in the monastery of Optina Pustyn', which Kirěevskii and likewise Dostoevskii had frequented in their day. He was secretly received as a monk, and in 1891 died in the Troicko-Sergievskaja monastery near Moscow.

Leont'ev made his literary debut as contributor of belletristic articles to liberal periodicals. After his conversion he renounced these activities, and condemned them even more severely than Tolstoi had done in his own case, for Leont'ev lamented that his early writings had been modelled upon the pagan, devilish, and utterly immoral works of George Sand, and that in point of style he had imitated Turgenev.

Nevertheless, after his conversion he wrote sketches of Christian life in Turkey (which were commended by Tolstoi among others), a number of short stories, a novel, and literary critiques.^[4]

Leont'ev unreservedly accepted ecclesiastical Orthodoxy and its doctrines. What he understood by Orthodoxy was Byzantinism, the primitive Greek ecclesiasticism which had given the law to the Russian church. Byzantinism was for him the peculiar Byzantine culture. Its system and its principle were characterised politically by autocracy conjoined with aristocracy; in the religious field, by true Christianity in contrast with the western church and the sects; and in the moral sphere, by refraining from putting the high value upon human individuality which was the dominant feature of Teutonic feudalism, so that in the Byzantine system earthly happiness and mundane life were renounced from the outlook of a rigorous Christian ideal, one contemning the world. Further, Byzantinism rejected the hope of general welfare for the people, its essential idea being sharply contrasted with the idea of universal humanitarianism, universal equality, universal freedom, universal perfectionment, and universal satisfaction. Artistically and aesthetically, Byzantinism had secured plain expression in its architecture and other works.

Such was the conception of Christianity formulated by Leont'ev in the year 1876. In his writings he continued to expound and defend the principles of the monkish religion to which he had come to adhere during his residence on Mount Athos, and to apply these principles to contemporary conditions, above all in opposition to the reforming and revolutionary trends of literature and politics.

Leont'ev's "true Christianity" is the Christianity of peasants, monks, and nuns, not rose-water Christianity with its chatter of love, and the rest of it. To Leont'ev, love for humanity was unchristian, was the idolisation of mankind. He considered fear the foundation of true religion, the fear of God, the fear of punishment here and hereafter. Man, the world, mundane life, are all essentially evil. The true life of the Christian is not found here but in heaven. The true (read Orthodox) Christian despises the flesh, and declares all nature, all natural inclinations and reason, to be evil; the true Christian renounces the world as the ascetics of the Orthodox church had renounced it. "Such were the views," wrote Leont'ev "which I learned from the Orthodox church and its monasteries—in these alone is truth to be found."

God had cursed the world; everything existing in the world must perish. Leont'ev's deductions were here identical with those of Mephistopheles. It was undeniable that the earth was beautiful, and the truth of mundane life was on the side of aesthetics; but Christianity ran counter to aesthetics, and the true Christian must sustain Christianity against the truth.

God and the world are opposites. "We must constrain ourselves to belief in God. . . . The recognition of God as a God of love is a falsehood." For Leont'ev, religion was far from being always consolatory. Often, he said, religion is a heavy yoke, but the true believer would not willingly be without this yoke.

The religion of fear, which represents God as the almighty Jehovah, the wielder of force, is logically and practically carried out on earth by the ruler, the anointed of Jehovah. This ruler must be a true image of the unloving God; he must be God on earth; the absolutist autocracy is the only true Christian state. Christian society is a theocracy; the autocrat is God's right hand; despotism was and remains necessary to the organisation of society; the human masses must be held together with the mailed fist.

The tsar is the highest and most sacred authority; what he does is good and legal; his actions must not be judged by results. One who fails to grasp this may be an excellent man, but is no Christian, no true Russian.

Leont'ev acclaimed the manifesto of Alexander III maintaining the principle of autocracy, for Leont'ev did not fear. the name of reactionary. Russia needed reaction, needed forcible measures. Constraint, rightly used, was a good thing; the Russian peasant loved to be vigorously ruled- The true Christian was lowly in spirit, and bowed humbly before the supreme will of the tsar.

Mysticism is the true knowledge of God; mysticism is true science. Mundane science is condemned by Leont'ev, since it seeks the useful, not God and eternal life. Leont'ev rails against utilitarianism and eudemonism. To be a true Christian, a man has no need of modern science, modern technique, modern institutions. The peasant who believes that the world is supported by three whales is not a dangerous character; illiteracy is Russia's good fortune; "we must strive with all our might against popular education." It is for the intelligentsia to learn from the peasant, not conversely. For this it is not necessary to love the folk; nor does it suffice to have a national or aesthetic sentiment for the folk, to love the folk-characteristics; but in matters ot principle we must be at one with the folk.

It is from this outlook of the rail of Athos that Leont'ev judges the world and its history, and judges in especial the relationship of Russia to Europe. Russia is of value only in so far as she has kept alive the principles of Byzantinism; Europe is going down to mental and physical destruction because she has betrayed these principles; in Russia, all traces of the European must be eradicated.

Leont'ev's philosophy of history is simple. Mankind and its individual parts (the nations) traverse three historical stages, childhood, manhood, and old age. In the first stage, primitive simplicity prevails; this is succeeded by the complicated organisation and differentiation of the prime; there succeeds in turn, the simplicity of levelling. In Europe, the Teutons in the days of the national migrations represent childhood and simplicity. During the middle ages, Europe attained her prime and exhibited the blossoming of all her energies. Since the eighteenth century enlightenment and the French revolution, Europe has been declining towards the tomb; in the name of democratic equality, liberalism (the new religion of the bourgeoisie) has been extinguishing all the natural differences by which the nations live. This law of evolution is conceived by Leont'ev biologically. He regards Kirěevskii's slavophil philosophy of history and the way in which Kirěevskii contrasted Russia and Europe as positively ridiculous. The decay of Europe, he says, is the natural decay of an organism.

But if this be so, surely we must regard the censured views of liberalism as the consequence and not as the cause of the decay? In any case, Leont'ev's theory implies that the natural law of evolution is something altogether different from the progress preached by European philosophers and their Russian imitators. However this may be, Leont'ev becomes somewhat alarmed when he contemplates the future of Russia, for he is seized with a doubt whether, in accordance with his evolutionary law, Russia, too, must not perish, despite her Byzantinism. He cannot console himself with the thought that Russia is still young, for his country is already in fact more than a thousand years old. Besides, Peter and his successors introduced a suspiciously large amount of the European enlightenment and of European institutions into Russia. How, then, can Russia be preserved? With pitiless consistency Leont'ev comes to the conclusion that Russia must, in contrast with Europe, undergo an arrest of development; Russia must be "frozen" that she may escape "living"—for everything that lives must die. Russia must therefore be protected from her arch enemy, European progress; Russia must not succumb to equalitarian liberalism. Leont'ev would rather accept socialism than liberalism, for socialism contains elements of discipline and organisation. Liberalism seems to him to embody negation as its principle; liberalism is decomposition, for it wishes to level and to suppress natural inequalities. Leont'ev believes that in civilized lands socialism will inevitably be realised, but that in Russia hereditary inequalities will persist. He deplores that in 1861 the "stone wall" of privileges was overthrown. The old aristocracy in conjunction with the tsar constituted aristocracy as by God established; their piety was exemplary; during the days of serfdom the peasant, too, kept the fasts of the church according to rule.

It is obvious that Leont'ev is disturbed by the undesired consequences of his evolutionary law. He would like to keep Russia in the second stage of development, and that is why the "mailed fist " of absolutism must be used against liberalism. The liberalism which in his belief was effecting the decomposition of Europe, was regarded with the utmost hostility by Leont'ev in all its forms and gradations; he considered every liberal to be half a nihilist; and he thought the most dangerous of all liberals were those who diffused their doctrines under the protection of the military uniform, the professorial chair, the judicial bench, or the editorial pen.

Leont'ev wished that the police were enabled to read men's inmost thoughts, so that they might prevent the liberals from doing any harm. He did not shrink from being termed a reactionary, and he approved the work of the informer. "It is time," he said, "that the word informer should cease to have a degrading significance. . . . Politics are not ethics."

It is obvious that Leont'ev is vacillating between a purely biological law of evolution and a social and historical law, according as he contemplates the problem from the outlook of historic determinism or from that of freedom. Whilst he laughs at the slavophils as children, he cannot entirely escape the influence of their ideas. Before his conversion, Leont'ev's thought had been based upon that of Danilevskii, and upon the latter's principles of Russian policy; the ideas of Russia and Europe continued to some extent to influence his mind, although he gave a new significance to the leading demand of Danilevskii and the older slavophils. He regarded it as the error of the slavophils that they had failed to effect an organic union of nationality with religion and ecclesiasticism. He was manifestly in agreement with Košelev's formula, "Without Orthodoxy our nationality becomes fudge." He therefore abandoned nationality, for he regarded it as essentially based upon liberal and cosmopolitan democracy and as an instrument for the promotion of universal revolution. The title of one of his essays runs National Policy as a Means to the World Revolution. He considers that the main weakness of Russian policy is to be found in its nationalism. It is true that he conceives the idea of nationality as political nationality or nationalist policy. For this reason Leont'ev puts his whole faith in religion. From his outlook, Slavism as a principle is a nonentity when contrasted with Byzantinism, or at most is a sphinx, an enigma. Slavism as an idea is obscure and inchoate. There doubtless exists Slavdom, the unorganised substratum of Slav nations. There are panslavist aspirations; but panslavism, precisely because it is nationalist, conflicts with Byzantinism, and therefore with true Russism. Panslavism is a "utilitarian and liberal" ideal, and must therefore be abandoned; Russian policy must aim at the protection of Austria, for Austria is "a sanitary cordon against the Czechs and the other excessively Europeanised Slavs." Byzantinism is the foundation, Byzantinism is the nervous system of Russia, and there is no need for either Catholic or Protestant Slavs. Leont'ev is disturbed because Byzantine Russia has annexed Catholic Poland, and the unrussian and unbyzantine frontier lands are a continual worry to him. Russia's mission, as suggested by the slavophils, the unification of the Slavs, seems to Leont'ev a momentous and difficult task.

We may recall what Tsar Nicholas thought of panslavism, and we may recall that Nicholas practised the Austrian policy of Leont'ev in the days before Leont'ev.

For the nonce, Russia, said Leont'ev, was to be guided by the old maxim "divide et impera," above all in her Balkan policy. The political fragmentation of the Balkans was an advantage, and Russia's only aim should be to secure religious unification; the parliaments of the Balkan states were disastrous. The southern Slav bourgeoisie had already been infected by European liberalism, and nothing but the Turkish suzerainty had saved the Balkan states from annihilation by European liberalism. The Russian, said Leont'ev, has little in common with the other Slavs; by nature he is more akin to Asiatics, to the Turks and to the Tatars, than to the southern and western Slavs; he is lazier, more fatalistic, more obedient to authority, more good-natured, more regardless of consequences, braver, more inconsistent, and much more inclined to religious mysticism, than are the Serbs, the Bulgars, the Czechs, and the Croats. In his stories of Balkan life, Leont'ev showed much sympathy with the Turkish character, and a profound understanding of its qualities both good and evil.

Leont'ev agrees with the narodniki and the slavophils in the view that Russia possesses in the mir an institution which is worthy to be incorporated into Byzantinism.

Leont'ev approves for Russia the annexation of Asiatic lands, as yet uncontaminated by Europeanism. He is unaffrighted by differences in race, language, and even religion, because, as we have learned, he considers that these maintain the life of society, are that life, and because at the same time they facilitate autocracy.

As regards the Balkan peninsula, Leont'ev desired above all, like the slavophils and Dostoevskii, to occupy Constantinople, not on nationalist grounds, but in order to revive the eastern empire of Rome. He was so consistent in his Byzantinism that in the religious dispute between the Bulgars and the Greeks he espoused the Greek cause. As an absolutist, he consistently advocated aristocracy and condemned liberal democracy, favouring not merely Magyar aristocracy but even Turkish aristocracy and the German aristocracy of the Baltic provinces. He held that a baron in the Baltic provinces was of more use to Russia than were the Letts and the Lithuanians. So logical was Leont'ev in the application of his principles, that in the American civil war his sympathies were with the southern slave-owning planters. Writing a good many years after the event, it was a regret to him that Russia should have supported the north against the south.

 

§ 135.

 

LEONT'EV'S thought and literary style recall Hamann and Carlyle in many respects, but also de Maistre and similar authors, whilst in the matter of doctrine we must refer back to Tertullian and his "credo quia absurdum." For Leont'ev will believe and can believe in nothing but the absurd.

For him religion exists only as mysticism, and he clings to theology and scholasticism. Though the declared enemy of the revolutionary realists and nihilists, he is himself obstinately realist and nihilist. Desiring a positively clear and definite religion, he holds fast to the letter as realised in practice at Athos and in the Russian monasteries. He puts his trust in ritual (terming it "ritual-mystic" religion), in monasteries, in monks, in the church visible with its doctrines and religious practices. "Before all, love the church;" do not love mankind, do not love your neighbour. Love for the church is the true Christian love. The church teaches us to know God, to know Christ; therefore we must obediently follow the church; "love is a secondary matter."

Thus the church is the most important thing, not God, In the church, moreover, the hierarchy is the essential. In addition, Leont'ev venerates the monk (not the white clergy, for the members of that body are married); and among the monks he venerates the starec (the elder), whom he recognises as the absolute leader in religion and morals. Leont'ev desires to have an entirely material religion. To him personally God and Jesus are nothing; he thinks only of the definitely prescribed teachings, dogmas, and practices of the church.

The world is naught, heaven is all, and he therefore seeks the monastery, the hermitage, so that in part, at least, he may share the life of heaven while still on earth.^[5]

Leont'ev tells us that we must constrain ourselves to believe. This means that he subjected himself to this constraint, sacrificing science, above all natural science, to revelation. The medical man, the zoologist, the materialist, doing violence to his intelligence, came to believe in miracle, so that he could even imagine that when attacked by cholera the sight of an icon from Athos cured him within two hours.

Butfor Leont'ev the church proves in the end too complicated, with its multiplicity of hierarchs and monks; he requires a single view, he wishes to be guided by a single and perfectly definite opinion, he asks for a single authority—the autocrat, the tsar. This aspiration for real uniformity and unity should logically lead the defender of Byzantinism to the Roman papal church, for he demands a strong church, a true theocracy. In his polemic against Dostoevskii he rejects the humane all-man and the theology of Zosimus, but accepts the grand inquisitor, saying: "The grand inquisitor incorporates the positive side of Christianity." Leont'ev, as we have said, is willing to make concessions even to socialism because socialism has discipline. He conceives that the Russian autocracy may enter into an alliance with socialism and with ardent mysticism. When this happens, things will be made hot for many persons; then the grand inquisitor will be able to arise from the tomb and hold out his tongs to seize Dostoevskii.

In the polemic against Dostoevskii we read further that it is quite comprehensible to love the church. But to love contemporary Europe which is so cruelly persecuting the Roman church, a church that is grand and apostolic despite its profound dogmatic errors, to love this Europe is simply sinful.

His approval of the papacy and its grand inquisitors leads Leont'ev to Russian caesaropapism. It was no chance matter that Leont'ev, in the before-mentioned definition of Byzantinism, should have assigned the first place to political absolutism. In his aspiration for religious realism, he finds that for the church, too, the tsar becomes a practical and tangible head; to obey the tsar unconditionally and blindly, this is true Christianity.

It logically follows that Leont'ev's religion and Leont'ev's church cannot lay any stress upon either morality or love. Religion is timor Dei, Christian practice is therefore ritual, and in the ethical sphere Christianity is the consistent fulfilment of God's will, of his revelations. Leont'ev tells us that he loathes "an independent morality, a morality independent of the fear of the Lord."

Leont'ev's religion conflicts with natural human morality. Just as Tolstoi takes his Karataev from among the sectaries, so does Leont'ev seek among the raskolniki for instances of the true faith. He tells us of Kurtin the raskolnik, who slew his own son to preserve the boy from the danger of eternal damnation in the event of his losing the true faith. To Leont'ev the force of Kurtin's faith seems terrible, but it is faith, "and without this faith whither can a man turn, one who detests with all his might the soulless aspects of contemporary European progress. Whither can he turn if not to Russia where, within the Orthodox fold, the existence of such great and holy priests as Filaret is still possible?" We have learned what Filaret was.

From his own outlook Leont'ev arrives at valuations which recall Nietzsche, though not Jesus. "Everything that is beautiful and strong, is good; all one whether it be holiness or dissipation, conservation or revolution. Men have not yet grasped this."

This amoralism and the aesthetic and artistic outlook on the world were strongly developed in Leont'ev. His absolutist aristocratic leanings and his hatred of the democratic bourgeois were dependent upon this outlook, and he had learned the hatred from his teacher—Herzen. "Would it not be terrible," he exclaims on one occasion, "would it not be humiliating to think that Moses should have ascended Mount Sinai, that the Greeks should have built their lovely citadels, that the Romans should have fought the Punic wars, that the handsome and brilliant Alexander in his plumed helmet should have crossed the Granicus and fought at Arbela, that the apostles should have preached, the martyrs suffered, the poets sung, the painters painted, and the knights pranked it in the lists—only that the French, German, or Russian bourgeois in his ugly and ridiculous attire should 'individually' and 'collectively' enjoy himself amid the ruins of all these lost splendours?" And Leont'ev asks: "Which is better, the bloody but spiritually brilliant epoch of the renaissance, or latter-day Denmark, Holland, or Switzerland, tranquil, well-to-do, and smug?" Leont'ev defends "the unlimited rights of the individual spirit, into whose depths the general regulations of the laws and the universal and customary opinions of mankind cannot penetrate." It is true that this amoralism was Leont'ev's standpoint before his conversion, but it was one which he was not able to transcend even after he had become a monk. Whereas before conversion he had contemplated history and human life aesthetically, as if he had been among the audience at a tragedy, after conversion he withdrew to his "moon" from which, with no less objectivity and equally as a spectator, he could express the opinion that for the development of great and strong characters it was essential that there should be social injustices, that there should be class oppression, despotism, dangers, mighty passions, prejudices, superstition, fanaticism—essential, in a word, that there should be everything against which the nineteenth century has fought. "Without forcible constraint no good thing happens."

In his literary studies as, for example, in the work on Tolstoi written shortly before his death, the artist of early days, the artistic observer of mankind and history, once more comes into his own.

It is Leont'ev's amoralism which misleads him into effecting a radical severance of religion from morality, and which induces in him the conviction that "politics has nothing to do with ethics." For the same reason he detests democracy, because democratic politics has in the last resort an ethical sanction (cf. Mihailovskii), Leont'ev's political thought has a religious trend, and for him the fear of the Lord is at the same time fear of the temporal ruler. Ivan Aksakov says of Leont'ev's philosophy of religion that it is "the voluptuous cult of the cane." Similarly de Maistre, long before the days of Darwin; left the weak to be the prey of the strong, and extolled the soldier and the executioner side by side with the pope.

Leont'ev's central thought is the necessity for theocracy. Augustine's city of God appears in Russian guise; God becomes tsar and tsar becomes God. Feuerbach and all those who conceive the essence of religion to consist in anthropomorphism and sociomorphism may well be content with Leont'ev. The historian of civilisation and the philosopher of history will see in his crude dottrines a reflex of the political conditions that prevailed during the reaction under Nicholas and his successors. Leont'ev did not evolve his theocratic ideal from his inner consciousness, but learned it from the study of reality. Leont'ev's theology is an involuntary criticism of the regime of Alexander II and Alexander III. To Leont'ev it seems that atheism is tantamount to treason to the tsar and to the state.

Leont'ev's nature was an extremely complex one; he himself describes it as "intolerably complex." He suffered from a spiritual disintegration; his body was inhabited by two souls; he had a Faust nature, or was as he put it "a spiritual Icarus." Artist and aristocrat by temperament; realist and materialist by scientific and medical training; pupil of Herzen, Černyševskii, Danilevskii and the Russian nihilists; admirer of Turgenev and the great Russian and European writers—he turned his back on his training and his natural gifts. Desiring to stifle doubt, he sought the gloomy monastic cell, he became a monk. Yet it took him long to make up his mind, and he became a monk in secret only, for he who has eaten of the tree of knowledge can never wholly forget. This explains the internal struggle, the cleavage, the disintegration, the unceasing self-torment, and the ever-renewed thirst for absolute satisfaction. But the torment grew to become a need, and thus Leont'ev conceived God as a punishing Jehovah, as a Russian tsar, whose unrestricted arbitrariness develops into metaphysical freedom. Homjakov saw in Christ the head of the church, but to Leont'ev the head was the tsar. Religion became politics; yet again and again the strong individuality of the man who wished to believe but could not believe rose in rebellion against the God-tsar. He would like to take courage, and to cast down the terrible god from his throne, but energy fails, and his tortured soul longs for eternal peace. The world, mundane life, vanishes before the image of eternity. Life seems so null, man seems so powerless, that Leont'ev has no need of morality; he needs merely religious practice, and for him religious practice is nothing but fear and ascetic inactivity. It is pessimistic renunciation of will, complete moral and political nihilism, directed, however, not against God but against God's victims—a believing and theistic terrorism!

Leont'ev hates democracy and hates socialism. Essentially he is the egoistic aristocrat, who requires the whole church, the whole of heaven, for himself alone. Leont'ev spoke of his own religion as "transcendental egoism," and it was, in fact, a crude religious individualism carried to the pitch of anarchism.

Compared with Leont'ev, Katkov and Pobědonoscev were mere bunglers, the hired condottieri of reaction. Leont'ev was the born reactionary, the predestined self-made reactionary. The Katkovs and Pobědonoscevs enjoyed his approval, but he regarded them as compromisers, and considered that they availed themselves of petty expedients. Nevertheless Leont'ev defended Katkov against Turgenev and other adversaries who at the Puškin festival had refused to be reconciled with the great Russian publicist. Katkov had defended the might of Orthodox Russia and of the tsar, and on this ground Leont'ev esteemed him highly. Leont'ev would have liked to see Katkov "politically canonised during his lifetime." If the Russians possessed only a spark of moral courage, they would erect a statue to Katkov in Moscow near the Puškin monument. "It is time we should learn how to make a reaction." The reactionaries should be as pitilessly logical as the nihilists.

In theological matters Leont'ev had an untrained mind, but was well read in philosophy and literature. Whilst he accepted official Russia, his penetrating understanding made clear to him the futility and distintegration of the reactionaries no less than of the liberals, and made him, in his longing for unity and integrality, wish for the restoration of prepetrine Old Moscow.

In his philosophy of religion, Leont'ev took the slavophils as his starting point. Kirěevskii, Homjakov, Konstantin Aksakov, Samarin, and Ivan Aksakov, facilitated for him the transition to orthodoxy, whilst the philologian T. I. Filippov fortified him in his Byzantinism. Danilevskii, he tells us, disclosed to him the true meaning of slavophilism. Katkov, finally, was for him the Puškin of civic activities. For Leont'ev, the development of slavophilism into Asiaticism was comparatively easy. In this matter, as in others, Leont'ev anticipated the actualities of tsarism. Prince Uhtomskii officially announced the panasiatist policy shortly after the death of Leont'ev (see § 33).

Critical theologians can hardly fail to recognize that Leont'ev was in essentials no Christian (cf. Aggeev's monograph on Leont'ev, 1909). Leont'ev's faith, even, is suspect to theologians, and with good reason, for the will to believe is not yet belief. In the later years of his life, Leont'ev was profoundly impressed by Solov'ev's philosophy of history and of religion, and Solov'ev's ideas shook Leont'ev's Byzantinism. Solov'ev considered that the future belonged to a union of the churches, that Byzantium and the third Rome must yield place to the first Rome. Leont'ev wished to constrain himself to believe but wished the impossible.

Leont'ev's philosophy of religion and philosophy of ecclesiasticism win more influence among theologians than among the more recent philosophers of religion. Weak-minded men, or those who have become weak-minded, cannot withstand absurdities and paradoxes.^[6]

 

II

 

§ 101.

 

I HAVE alluded to the most notable defenders of official theocracy. Let us now take a comparative survey of the two camps, that of the right and that of the left.

Alike quantitatively and qualitatively, the theocrats are inferior to the radicals and the revolutionaries. If we contrast Bělinskii, Herzen, Bakunin, Černyševski , Dobroljubov, Pisarev, Lavrov, and Mihailovskii, with Katkov and Pobědonoscev, the two latter are incomparably weaker both as men of letters and as philosophers; Leont'ev alone has claims on our respect, but his theocratic allies were themselves alarmed by his syllogistic straightforwardness.

The reaction, long drawn out, after the days of Alexander I, had little to show in the way of intellectual pre-eminence. Karamzin, Šiškov, Pogodin, and Ševyrev; such official publicists, now quite forgotten, as Glinka, Greč, Bulgarin, and Senkovskii (Brambeus); such periodicals as "Majak" and "Věst"—a lean inventory!

The theocracy was incapable of attracting and training vigorous thinkers. The state fundamental law, Count Uvarov's formula, and the administrative machine, occupied and continue to occupy the energies of the reaction, under the aegis of the church. These labours were quite mechanical, and intelligence was practically superfluous for their performance.

As Leont'ev declared, the theocrats were opposed to everything towards which the nineteenth century aspired. Their primary aim was to forbid thought and culture, and to render these impossible. Philosophy, the sciences, the universities and the elementary schools, journalism, in a word, all the instruments of culture, were restricted. The new democratic trends and aspirations were crushed; socialism and liberalism, endeavours to secure liberty, equality, and progress, were strenuously opposed.

The theocracy had one of its main pillars in the aristocracy, in the great landowners. In this connection, the reactionary agrarian program of Russia may be said, in a sense, to have more justification than it has, for example, in Prussia, where the population is not predominantly agricultural. But even within the ranks of the Russian nobility there has always existed a liberal minority. The same remark applies to the army, the second buttress of governments and dynasties. To a certain extent, too, bureaucracy is perforce liberal.

There remains, then, the clergy, the altar, which is the most essential pillar of the throne. Theology is the true state philosophy of Russia, the official conception of the universe. Bakunin, in his earlier conservative days, formulated this in lapidary style for subsequent state philosophers and court philosophers, writing, "Where there is no religion there can be no state," and "Religion is the substance, the essence, of the life of every state." Pobědonoscev did no more than repeat Bakunin's formula when he declared, "Unbelief is the direct negation of the state." Surely it almost transcends irony that the founder of anarchism should have anticipated Pobědonoscev.

In Europe too, doubtless, conservatives and reactionaries appealed in political matters to divine revelation as the ultimate source of authority, appealed to divine right; but the divine right of the tsar was on principle elevated to the rank of a categorical imperative of revelation.

The struggle between religious faith and philosophical unfaith is not waged solely in the fields of philosophy and theology; it is at the same time a political struggle, the struggle between absolute monarchy and democracy. The Russian radical philosophy of history and philosophy of religion bring the facts so clearly to light that democracy, no less than theocracy, has and must have a philosophical foundation.

Thus philosophy opposes theology in the political field, the philosophy which is above all associated with the ideas of Feuerbach, in whose name, from the middle forties onwards, the theoretical and practical resistance to tsarism was conducted ⁠ Without circumlocution, the nihilistic terrorists proclaimed atheism and materialism as the main pillars of their political program. Bělinskii, Herzen, Bakunin, Černyševskii, Dobroljubov, Pisarev, Lavrov, Mihailovskii, one and all (and it is no less true of Marx and the Marxists) start from Feuerbach. Now Feuerbach tells us bluntly that God is the anthropomorphic likeness and phantasmagoria of king, emperor, and tsar; he tells us, to quote Bakunin's harsh formula, that heaven is the dram-shop sub specie æternitatis.

"Feuerbach" on one side, "monk" on the other, are the slogans of the political opponents; in the eyes of the theocrats, atheism is treason to state and country.

Homjakov desired a true conservatism. The system of Uvarov and Leont'ev is not conservatism, but the blind acceptance of tsarism and tsarist administration. Bismarck distinguished between conservatism and governmentalism, but the Russian conservatives were far from having advanced to this point. The Russians aimed at absolute arrest, at the repristination of prepetrine Moscow. In Europe, conservatism admits of progress, but Russian conservatism absolutely negates progress; it was natural, therefore, that the reactionaries should find themselves opposed to Peter and his reforms. The practical meaning of this was that tsarism was in conflict with itself.

The theorists of theocracy vigorously opposed nihilism and nihilist negation, but they themselves were merely negative and repressive, were uncreative.

V. Rozanov, who studied for a time under Leont'ev, characterised Pobědonoscev as a sceptic. All that Rozanov meant was that the deceased procurator did not believe in mankind or in the present, but for my part I feel justified in adding that Pobědonoscev, Leont'ev, and Katkov all suffered from the canker of unbelief, and that this explains their scholastic warfare against unbelief. Medieval faith was half interred with the bones of scholasticism, and the same statement applies to modern scholasticism alike in Europe and in Russia. He who finds it necessary to furnish reasons to himself and others in defence of his traditional beliefs, is already a lost man.

Hence the theocratic apologia is mere Jesuitry. Even Leont'ev is under no illusions; he recognises that the reaction can find nothing but specious reasons for the defence of its unavowed aims, and that in the last resort it must necessarily have recourse to force.

Leont'ev felt that he was defending a lost post.

This is why the ex-revolutionary Tihomirov was dissatisfied, not only with Dostoevskii, Solov'ev, and Homjakov, but also with Leont'ev.

In the seventies Tihomirov had been a revolutionist and terrorist, and had been one of those to collaborate with Mihailovskii in composing the letter to Alexander III, Tihomirov drafting for that document the minimum demands for reform. As member of the executive committee of the Narodnaja Volja he took part in the before-mentioned negotiations with the "Holy Retinue." In the year 1888, in a writing entitled Why I am no longer a Revolutionary, he attempted to defend his change of view. Mihailovskii has written concerning the early activities of the convert in St. Petersburg. Tihomirov, collaborating on Katkov's paper and other reactionary journals, demanded absolute faith in religion and politics. He knew what scepticism was, since for a long time he had doubted the justification for revolution, but had none the less remained active for years in the refugee movement. In 1893 Tihomirov published a work upon Clergy and Society in the Contemporary Religious World, declaring here quite unambiguously that the believer must be absolutely devoted and perfectly submissive to the church. Religious faith, in his view, was exclusive of any kind of spontaneous religious activity on the part of the critical understanding; ecclesiastical authority rendered all search for religious truths superfluous; this search was pernicious. Just as the church was the highest spiritual authority, so were the autocracy and the government alone competent and alone entitled to regulate social order; Europe, no less than Russia, could be saved only by absolute monarchy. In Russia, "a skilled and vigorous police" would suffice to put an end to the various socialist fantasies.

In the first work written after his conversion, Tihomirov renounced revolution in favour of peaceful evolution, but when he had himself evolved in the reactionary direction he abandoned evolution as well. Nevertheless, in the name of the church and of the autocracy a few shamefaced protests were made against Tihomirov's demand for blind obedience.

It was characteristic of the theocracy that it should seek its condottieri among renegades from the other camp (Katkov, Tihomirov, etc).

De Maistre paved the way for the Russian theocrats with his executioner, his glorification of the soldier, and his defence of the inquisition. De Maistre, too, anticipated Feuerbach by representing the monarchy as a true image of divine governance on earth.

Thus the Russian theocrats appear to us as westernisers, one might almost say absolute westernisers. It is the European theocrats and reactionaries who furnish their Russian congeners with a meagre store of intellectual provender; in return the Tihomirovs promise the European reactionaries that tsarism will bring help and rescue.

 

1. Katkov could naturally pay better than could the progressive organs and even Turgenev was often short of money!
2. Shortly after Katkov's death de Maistre's theocratic policy was discussed in the Russkii Věstnik (1889), and was applied in its entirety to Russian affairs.
3. It is necessary to draw attention to the sophistical character of Pobědonoscev's argument ⁠ All that he has a right to say about European states is that they are "churchless"; but he makes use of the word "bezvěrnoe," which may mean "faithless" and "unbelieving" and goes on to use it unhesitatingly in the sense of "unbelief" (bezvěrie).
4. His essays composed during the years 1873–1883 were published in two volumes (1885 and 1856) as The East, Russia, and Slavdom. Noteworthy, in addition, is Father Clement Sederholm (1879), the biography of one of his friends, a monk from the Baltic provinces. Literary criticisms of Tolstoi and other writers may likewise be mentioned.
5. Leont'ev was married. I do not know if anything has hitherto been written concerning his relations with his wife. The only information I have on this subject is that his wife was long an invalid.
6. A brief reference only can be made to Leont'ev's epigrams, a few of which have been quoted in the text. They are often arresting and suggestive. For example, he speaks of his own system as "optimistic pessimism," for it is optimistic in respect of its transcendental egoism, but pessimistic in relation to this world. In many cases he does no more than remint well known phrases of his predecessors. Kirěevskii, for example, had referred to the artificial society which in Europe (as contrasted with Russia) was based upon the calculus of personal interests; for Leont'ev this becomes the "reciprocal honesty" of the European bourgeois.