Berlin - Russia and 1848

Russia and 1848 Author(s): Isaiah Berlin Reviewed work(s): Source: The Slavonic and East European Review,
Vol. 26, No. 67 (Apr., 1948), pp. 341-360 Published by: the Modern Humanities Research Association and University College London, School of Slavonic and East European Studies Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4203951 . Accessed: 30/11/2012 16:11
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RUSSIA The year
AND
1848
to be a landmark in Russian 1848 is not usually considered The of like revolutions that which Herzen seemed to history. year, " " a life-giving ona did storm not the Russian reach sultry day, The drastic changes of policy on the part of the imperial empire. the after of the Decembrist government suppression rising in 1825 seemed all too effective : literary storms like the Chaadayev affair in 1835, the loose student talk for which Herzen and his friends were punished, in the early forties in even minor peasant disorders remote were easily disposed of ; in 1848 itself districts, provincial not a ripple disturbed the peace t.of the vast and still expanding The gigantic of bureaucratic and military empire. strait-jacket if not devised, control was reinforced and pulled which, tighter Nicholas or cases of stupidity I, appeared despite frequent to be conspicuously successful. There was nowhere corruption any or action. sign of effective thought independent in the news from Paris had put earlier, 1830, Eighteen years new life into Russian French socialism radicals; wholly utopian by became the rebellion ; the Polish thought democrats as the much did rallying point everywhere, very in the Spanish civil war a century later. But the rebellion Republic was crushed, and all embers of the great conflagration, at any rate so far as open expression was concerned, were by 1848 virtually of stamped observers autocracy turning-point because of revolutionary Marx and out?in in seemed St. Petersburg no less than and western in the Europe, unshakable. sympathetic Nevertheless of Russia in Warsaw. hostile alike, To the transformed Russian
of because was destined to have upon Russian public opinion, and in particular movement. At the time, however, upon the Russian revolutionary this could scarcely have been foreseen : well might a sober political bility observer?a Granovsky of even moderate contemplate. It seems or Koshelev-?feel about gloomy reforms ; revolution seemed too
the year 1848 is a as of Europe, not only development the decisive part played in subsequent Russian history by heralded socialism, by the Manifesto composed by to celebrate its birth; but more immediately Engels the effect which the failure of the European revolution
the possi? remote to
that anyone in the 1840's, even among the unlikely bolder spirits, except perhaps Bakunin and one or two members of the Petrashevsky on counted the of immediate an circle, possibility 34i
342 revolution France, in Prussia
THE Russia.
SLAVONIC The revolutions
REVIEW. that broke out in Italy, or less organised more by These existing regimes.
and Austria
had been made
political parties, were composed
to the opposed openly or socialist with, radical of, or acted in coalition with identified democrats intellectuals, they were led by prominent and sects, and they found and social doctrines political recognised national or from frustrated the liberal bourgeoisie, among support and animated of development at Various movements by stages ideals. different They tended also to draw a good deal of strength was None of these elements workers and peasants. the situation or organised in Russia in any sense resembling articulate and western in the west. Parallels between Russian European but and to are liable be misleading, development superficial always from disaffected if a comparison offers a closer radicals is to be drawn The at all the 18th of opposition analogy. the Decembrist which, after the severe repressions following in the middle thirties rising, had grown bolder and more articulate conducted the warfare and early forties, resembled by the guerrilla German the in or the of France leaders Aufkiar ung by encyclopaedists far more than the mass against the Church and absolute monarchy, of the in western and popular movements Europe organisations The Russian liberals and radicals of the thirties and 19th century. or aesthetic to philosophical forties, whether they confined themselves in or engaged like the circle gathered round Stankevich, issues, remained and social problems, and Ogaryov, like Herzen political intellectual isolated self-conscious a small and highly illuminati, each other in the drawing; they met and argued and influenced but they had no and salons of Moscow or St. Petersburg, social framework no or extended popular support, political widely kind of unofficial in the either in the form of political or even parties elite rooms but widespread middle-class French Revolution. The period had from no middle the class " opposition, scattered to lean The which Russian upon, feel had preceded intellectuals could the need the great of this in Europe century and liberals Russian
nor
is desired who are quite powerless," to his friends wrote Belinsky townspeople in 1846.1 And this was echoed ten years later by Chernyshevsky " in in a characteristic : There is no European country hyperbole which indifferent the vast majority of the people is not absolutely to the rights which are the object of concern only to the liberals." While this was scarcely then or earlier, it true of western Europe, 1 Quoted by F. Dan, New York, 1946, pp. 36-38. Proiskhozhdeniye Bolshevizma,
help peasantry. people but none whatever of a constitution?that
they look for of potatoes, only by educated
RUSSIA the reflected the economic backward
AND
1848.
343
Until state of Russia enough. accurately industrial created Russian of the Empire development and with them a middle class and a proletariat and labour problems a dream : remained revolution of the Western type, the democratic as conditions such materialised, and when they did with finally the revolu? tempo in the last decades of the 19th century, " " in occurred Russian The behind. not lag far 1848 the in West class middle the time in 1905, by which that country reformist or even militantly ; and this was no longer revolutionary in factor of half a century was itself a powerful causing the time-lag in 1917, socialism liberal and authoritarian between final cleavage increasing tion did Russia and Europe which of paths between and the fatal divergence that was Dan F. late the followed. right in supposing J. Perhaps this was the parting of the ways which Herzen had in mind when, " You will go by way of in his letter to Edgar Quinet, he declared, to of socialism we by way towards the proletariat socialism; 2 The difference of political in the degree freedom." maturity described and the West at this period is vividly Russia between in the introduction in his composed Revolution " to Letters from France exile ten years Putney of 1848 in western Europe : later. and Italy which Herzen His topic is the
became in their those political The Liberals, Protestants, the altered behind fearful turn the most Conservatives; of the discover constitutions and charters spectre they for this is and grow pale with terror; nor Socialism surprising But to be afraid of. to lose, something they have something to Our attitude at all. are not in that position we [Russians] The Liberals all public affairs is much simpler and more naive. have none ; they are are afraid of losing their liberty?we in the industrial nervous of interference sphere by governments with everything interferes ?with us the government anyhow ; have yet rights?we they are afraid of losing their personal of our still dis? contradictions to acquire them. The extreme all our legal and in of ordered the lack existence, stability the one hand the on constitutional makes notions, possible and most unlimited serfdom settlements, military despotism, in which such revolutionary and on the other creates conditions II are less difficult. steps as those of Peter I and Alexander A man than who lives one who 2 Dan, in furnished has acquired op. cit., quoted from Kolokol, No. 210. finds it far easier to move is a house of his own. Europe rooms
344
THE
SLAVONIC
REVIEW. of its cargo?that infinity and perilous expeditions.
sinking because it cannot of treasures accumulated
rid itself in distant
In our case, all this is artificial ballast; out with it and over? then and full sail into the sea ! We are entering board, open the moment full of strength and energy at precisely history when all political are becoming faded anachronisms, parties and everyone is pointing, others with despair, some hopefully, And at the approaching revolution. thundercloud of economic so we, too, when we look at our neighbours, begin to feel of the coming storm, and, like them, think it best frightened to say nothing about this peril. But you have no need to fear these terrors ; calm yourselves, for- on our estate there is a lightning In other conductor?communal ownership of the land."
the
words, the total absence of elementary rights and liberties, dark years which followed far from inducing so 1848, thinker Russian or home more one to than despair brought apathy, and the his country the sense of complete antithesis between seven liberal institutions of Europe which, paradoxically enough, relatively From it was made the basis for subsequent Russian optimism. sprang the strongest hope of a uniquely happy and glorious future, for Russia alone. destined There was no Herzen's of the facts was quite correct. analysis and the to speak of : the journalist Polevoy bourgeoisie and friend of Belinsky and Turgenev, Botkin, literary tea merchant, conditions indeed Belinsky were notable exceptions?social himself, Yet for drastic liberal reforms, let alone revolution, did not exist. Russian like was so bitterly lamented by liberals very fact, which and even Belinsky, remarkable Ravelin its own compensa? brought In Europe had broken out and tion. an international revolution and socialists failed, and its failure created among idealistic democrats a bitter sense of disillusion and despair. In some cases it led to this either in a tendency to seek comfort or in or in the ranks of apathetic political resignation, religion, of 1905 in reaction ; very much as the failure of the Revolution Russia produced and spiritual values of the the call to repentance cynical detachment, or else In Russia, a conservative Katkov did become Vyekhi group. his Botkin turned turned to nationalist, orthodoxy, Dostoevsky " back upon radicalism, Bakunin confession"; signed a disingenuous but in general the very fact that Russia had suffered no revolution, led to a development and no corresponding degree of disenchantment, fact was The important very different from that of western Europe.
RUSSIA
AND
1848.
345
fervour and the belief that the passion for reform?the revolutionary in the feasibility of change by means of public pressure, agitation, On the con? not weaken. and, as some thought, conspiracy?did for a political revolution, But the argument trary, it grew stronger. became less when its failure in the West was so glaring, clearly peculiarities thirty years turned their of their own internal situation ; and then, from ready made solutions, from the West and capable only of being artificially grafted imported to on to the recalcitrant growth provided by their own countrymen, of action adapted carefully Russia alone. peculiar posed by problems They were pre? become the most devoted pared to learn and more than learn?to of the most and assiduous advanced thinkers of western disciples but the of and the German materialists, teachings Europe, Hegel of Mill, Spencer and Comte, were henceforth to be transformed to the creation to the in Turgenev's fit specifically Russian needs. Bazarov, for all his militant and materialism Children, positivism for the West, has far deeper roots in Russian soil?and a certain self-conscious genuinely cosmopolitan the supposed indeed his Fathers and and respect not without of new doctrines and modes convincing. of the next The discontented and rebellious Russian to the attention intellectuals
pride, than the men of the forties with their ideal: or than, e.g., the imaginary Rudin, of Rudin?Bakunin for all himself, original
and Germanophobia. pan-Slavism " The measures taken by the Government to prevent the revolu? " from infecting disease the Russian did no doubt tionary Empire, the possibility of revolutionary play a decisive part in preventing " outbreaks : but the important of this moral quaran? consequence " of western liberalism tine was to weaken the influence ; it forced in upon themselves, intellectuals made it more difficult than to escape from the painful issues before them into a kind of from the West. There followed a sharp vague search for panaceas of internal moral and accounts : as of receded settling political hope in with western the Russian liberalism, marching step progressive movement to become tended The increasingly uncompromising. most crucial and striking fact is that there was no inner collapse on the part of the progressives, and both revolutionary and reformist it more often took on a grimmer nationalist, opinion, though grew tone. It favoured harsh, anti-aesthetic, self-consciously exag? Russian before materialistic, geratedly be self-confident and to forms, and continued the later of optimistic, inspired by writing rather than Herzen. There is even at the lowest not, Belinsky " " the seven year long night after 1848, that flatness point?during crude, utilitarian
346 and these apathy,
THE which But
SLAVONIC
REVIEW. in France at the and Germany of a deep during schism and the
is so noticeable this was bought The new
from the divided by than any of of the West or of their own country, whether liberals, their predecessors. In the years of repression, lines of 1848-1856, demarcation frontiers between the Slavophils grew much more real; been easily crossed and re? and the Westerns, which had hitherto became walls ; the framework of friendship and dividing the two camps?" the Janus with two faces respect between but one heart "?which had made it possible for radicals like Belinsky crossed, mutual and Herzen in some Aksakov moderates sixties cases to argue furiously but in an atmosphere of deep with Katkov or Khomyakov even of affection, no longer existed. Kolokol and the St. The quarrel radicals regard, or the the in the
years. within the intelligentsia. are left-wing populists,
price
men, Chernyshevsky a much wider gap
Petersburg meeting with Herzen in London Chernyshevsky's was a stiff, awkward formal affair. and almost the con? Despite tinued existence of a common enemy?the Imperial police state? the old solidarity was fatally broken. The gulf between what became the leftand the right-wing oppositions grew steadily was bitter. ideals ; and this despite the fact that the left wing regarded western far more critically than before, and like the right looked for salvation to native institutions and a specifically Russian solution, wider compounded the West. out of liberal or
brothers, of the
between
remedies, losing faith in universal from socialist doctrines imported Thus had it came about social again of the Russian reasserted
that, when at last direct western itself in the form of the orthodox democrats of the
influence Marxism
the revolutionary nineties, was unbroken the of liberal intelligentsia by collapse hopes in Europe in 1849-1851. Its beliefs and principles were preserved from con? tamination of the the and remained free by very hostility regime, from the danger, prevalent their in old allies the of West, among soft blurred as a result of too and much successful com? growing with disillusion. mingled promise, Consequently, during the time of almost universal malaise among socialists, the Russian left-wing and its fighting spirit. It had broken and not out of despair. It had created and radical, tough-minded, agrarian and it was an army ready to march. Some of the factors tradition, for this trend?the of Russian responsible independent development radicalism as it was born in the storms of 1848-1849?may be worth retained with liberalism of strength its own nurtured out recalling. movement its ideals
RUSSIA Tsar Nicholas
AND
1848.
347
I remained all his life obsessed by the Decembrist the himself as ruler to rising. appointed by Providence save his people from the horrors of atheism, liberalism and revolu? in fact as well as in name, he tion ; and being an absolute autocrat made it the first aim of his government to eliminate every form of or even the severest Nevertheless, political heterodoxy opposition. He saw the sharpest censorship, political police, will tend to relax its atten? tion to some degree after twenty in this years of relative quiet; case the long peace had been disturbed the Polish rebellion, only by with no signs of serious internal and na conspiracy anywhere, the to than a few radical-minded greater dangers regime, university a few westernising and writers, with here and students, professors an odd defender of the Roman Church like Chaadayev, or an convert to Rome like the eccentric of Greek, the ex-professor Father Pecherin. As a result of this, in the middle Redemptorist forties the liberal such as Otechestvenniye or journals, Zapiski there, actual took courage and began to print, not indeed articles Sovremennik, in open opposition to the government?with the existing censorship and under the sharp eye of General Dubbelt of the political police, this was out of the question?but articles concerned ostensibly with conditions in an who in western apparently could read critical Europe or in the Ottoman written for those cealed dispassionate the between the manner; and Empire, but containing hints and con?
lines, vague The centre of existing regime. attraction to all progressive of the home course, Paris, spirits was, of all that was most advanced and freedom-loving in the world, the home of socialists and utopians, of Leroux and Cabet, of George Sand and Proudhon?the centre of a revolutionary art and literature, which in the course of time were bound to lead humanity towards freedom and happiness. allusions of the who belonged Saltykov-Shchedrin, forties, says in a famous passage " seals France, In and Russia, to a typical liberal of his memoirs : 3 circle of
addressee
seemed finished, sealed with five everything to the Post Office for delivery to an consigned whom it was beforehand decided not to find ; in
seemed to be beginning . . . our (French) everything became intense towards With sympathies particularly 1848. unconcealed excitement we watched all the peripeteias of the drama With provided by the last years of Louis Philippe's reign. enthusiasm we read The History of Ten Years^ passionate 3 Za Rubezhom, Vol. 8, p. 123 et foll.
348
THE by Louis Blanc and Thiers?these
SLAVONIC .... men Louis were
REVIEW. and Philippe almost personal L. V. Dubbelt.4 Guizot, Duchatel
enemies, perhaps than even Their successes dangerous their failures delighted to our liberal us; contributors depressed, about but the moral was France, might be writing journals intended for their own country; quite clearly they might the campaign discuss to liberate negro slaves?the analogy with Russian serfs was only too obvious, but difficult for the and therefore censors to admit, to punish." more had evidently not at this period reached its censorship at times inclined ; the censors were themselves severity liberalism a timid kind of right-wing towards ; in any case they were often no match for the infinite ingenuity and, above all, unend? " of the historians and journalists, and disloyal" ing persistence " let a certain of through they proportion inevitably dangerous The Russian maximum Those zealous of autocracy, the editors watchdogs who acted as of and the Gretsch, virtually agents Bulgarin political such oversights in private reports to their police, often denounced But the Minister of Education, Count Ouvarov, author employers. " of the celebrated watchword of auto? patriotic triple orthodoxy, the "?who could be and accused of undue people scarcely cracy nevertheless anxious not to acquire the reputa? liberal leanings?was and turned a blind tion of a bigoted reactionary, eye to the thought." of independent manifestations writing. By western the censorship was exceptionally efficient and severe ; for example, make to letters, quite plain the extent Belinsky's to mutilate his articles ; nevertheless, which the censors managed in St. Petersburg, to survive liberal journals contrived and that in the years immediately itself, to those who remembered following the of the an(i knew was remarkable 1825 temper Emperor, The limits of freedom were, of course, exceedingly narrow ; enough. less blatant standards, the from most the arresting Russian of the social document was emigres, writings his book, Selected Quotations denouncing and that remained Friends, unpublished until and 1917. savage the against no wonder, on the onslaught And existing period, apart letter to Gogol Belinsky's with from a Correspondence in Russia in its full version an exceptionally eloquent of this
for it was
regime, inveighing violently and the arbitrary Church, the social system authority of the Emperor and his officials, and accusing Gogol of traducing the cause of liberty and civilisation as well as the character and 4 The effective head of the political police.
RUSSIA the needs of his
AND
1848.
349
This celebrated enslaved and helpless country. far in in was circulated manuscript philippic, 1847, secretly was it the of confines Moscow or St. Indeed, beyond Petersburg. of dis? for reading this letter aloud at a private largely gathering so affected and that to death was condemned persons Dostoevsky French In subversive executed two later. 1843 nearly years in the capital: doctrines tells us, openly discussed were, so Annenkov written the police displayed official, in the Liprandi, found The forbidden year western when texts Herzen bookshops. Bakunin and 1847, openly and
Russian met other revolutionary emigres Turgenev in Paris, and sent enthusiastic, letters home if cautiously worded, about their new moral and political experiences (some echo of which found its way into the radical Russian marks the highest journals), The of relative on the part of the censorship. toleration point of 1848 put an end to all this for some years to come. Revolution The story is familiar and may be found in Schilder.5 Upon of the news of the abdication of Louis Philippe and the receipt declaration of a Republic in France, the Emperor Nicholas, feeling about the instability of European regimes forebodings action. to be fulfilled, to take immediate decided as he soon to Grimm's as account, According probably apocryphal heard the disastrous news from Paris, he drove to the palace of his were about son, the future Tsar Alexander in progress. into the Bursting an imperious a Republic horses, with II, where " an eve-of-Lent he the ball was ballroom, stopped saddle your Gentlemen, " in France ! and with a dancers that his worst
cried loudly, gesture, has been proclaimed
or not this out of the room. Whether group of courtiers swept it?it does not believe dramatic ever occurred?Schilder episode Prince Peter the conveys general accurately enough. atmosphere that the Tsar Volkonski told at about this time V. I. Panayev seemed bent on declaring a preventive war in Europe and was only were As it was, large reinforcements stopped by lack of money. " sent to guard the i.e. Poland. That unhappy western Provinces," of the Rebellion broken not only by the savage repression country, of 1831, but by the measures taken after the Galician peasant rising and in 1846, did not stir. But Polish liberty was being acclaimed, as a matter denounced, autocracy in Paris and elsewhere ; and, banquet no echo in Warsaw, then under the heel of treason everywhere. Indeed, one of suspected Russian liberal of course, at this every awoke although the Tsar Paskevich, reasons the principal
5 N. K. Schilder, Imperator Nikolai Pervy, Ego Zhizn i Tsarstvovaniye Primechaniya Prilozheniya ko vtoromu tomu. (Notes and Supplements to Vol. II). z
350
THE
SLAVONIC was that attached
REVIEW. to the touch capture with of Bakunin Polish was
why such importance the Tsar's belief that which in was true?and which
he was
in close
Bakunin was was false?although some utterances lent have extravagant public may Bakunin at the time of his imprison? colour to such a supposition. ment seems to have been entirely on the unaware of this obsession of what was part of the Tsar and therefore ignorant throughout of him. He failed to include the non-existent Polish expected and altogether too accommodating plot in his otherwise imaginative Bakunin's confession. a manifesto, chaos had the Russian Soon after the he not outbreak declared reached in which fortunately that in Berlin, the Tsar published the wave of mutiny and the impregnable of frontiers
they were plotting involved?which
a new
emigres? Polish mutiny
in his power Empire ; that he would do everything to stop this spreading of the political that he felt and plague, certain that all his loyal subjects at such a moment, would, rally to him in order to avert the danger to the throne and to the Church. The Chancellor, Count Nesselrode, caused an inspired commentary on the Tsar's manifesto to appear in the Journal de St. Petersbourg, to mitigate its bellicose on tone. the effect Whatever seeking in the Russia seems : to have no one deceived Europe, commentary it was own known and that had Nicholas read had drafted the manifesto with his in his it to Baron Korff with tears almost to tears6 and reduced apparently the draft, he had been commissioned which to prepare, as unworthy. when he The heir-apparent, Alexander, read it to a meeting of guards officers, was overcome emotion ; by Prince the head of the gendarmerie, was no less deeply Orlov, The document moved. stimulated a genuine surge of patriotic this does not to have lasted The although feeling, appear long. Tsar's policy to some of at corresponded degree popular feeling, rate the and official In classes. Russian any among upper 1849, hand, Korff too eyes. at once destroyed was armies, Hungary of the Revolution and and was in Prussia hatred to the commanded ; Russian ; which crushed the in Revolution by Paskevich, influence a in the major part played suppression in the other provinces of the Austrian Empire the power of Russia in Europe, and the terror it and every liberal their zenith. Russia of
constitutionalist
in the breast inspired its reached borders, beyond
democrats of this period very much what the fascist were in our own time : the arch-enemy of freedom and powers the reservoir of darkness, and oppression enlightenment, cruelty 1 Cp. Schilder, op. cit., on which the account of this episode is based.
RUSSIA the land most
AND
1848.
351
most violently denounced frequently, by its own exiled served sons, the sinister power, by innumerable spies and in every whose hidden hand was discovered informers, political of national unfavourable to the growth or individual development in Europe. This wave of liberal confirmed liberty indignation in his conviction Nicholas no less than by his that, by his example, he had saved Europe from moral and political ruin : his exertions, duty had at all times cally and ruthlessly, The effect of the immediate ticular been plain to him ; he carried it out methodi? unmoved or abuse. by either flattery Revolution on internal affairs in Russia was
and powerful. All plans for agrarian reform, and in par? all proposals for the alleviation of the condition of the serfs to speak of plans for their libera? both private and State-owned?not the Emperor had at one were consideration, abruptly dropped. and not in liberal circles commonplace, was an economic as well as a social Nicholas trusted and had invited to be held this view bureaucrats tion?to which time given much sympathetic For many years it had been a alone, that agricultural slavery evil. Count Kisselev, whom " " his Chief of Staff Agrarian the landowners and the reactionary
strongly, and even in the path of posi? who did their best to put difficulties tive reform had not, for some years, thought it profitable to question the evil of the system itself. the lead given by Gogol Now, however, in his unfortunate with Friends, was followed in Correspondence one the the or two than further government-approved the most extreme school textbooks which went
and began to represent Slavophils, institution of serfdom as divinely and resting on sanctioned, foundation as other patriarchal same unshakable Russian in? sacred in
its own way as the divine right of the reforms of local government were likewise Projected " The of revolution" was the hydra threatening in as so and internal often the of enemies, Russia, Empire, history were therefore to be handled with exemplary The first severity. stitutions?as Tsar himself. discontinued. taken was connected, with censorship. The steady stream of secret denunciation garim and Gretsch at last had its effect. step Menshikov almost which Baron issued Korff from and Bul?
Prince
it appears, memoranda simultaneously, compiled of of the the the laxity and giving instances censorship dangerous in the periodical liberal tone to be found The Emperor press. himself declared shocked and indignant that this had not been A committee detected earlier. under Menshikov was immediately set up with instructions to look into the activities of the censors and This committee summoned the tighten up existing regulations.
352 editors reproved of the
THE
SLAVONIC
REVIEW. and Zapiski The latter
Sovremennik
them for strongly in its tone, and its editor-publisher changed produced Krayevsky article denouncing western and all its Europe 1849 a bien pensant a degree of sycophantic adulation works, and offering the government at that time unknown even in Russia, and scarcely to be found in Pchela As for the Bulgarin's Severnaya Bee). (The Northern its most effective contributor whom nothing Sovremennik, Belinsky, or silence, could corrupt Herzen and had died early in 1848.7 Bakunin protest. his extraordinary and skill in dealing by displaying fight; agility with officials, and by lying low for a good many months, he managed to survive and even publish, and so formed the living link between the proscribed radicals of the forties and the new and more fanatical to were in Paris, Granovsky was too mild and too unhappy Nekrasov was left in Russia almost alone to continue the
and of Otechestvonniye " unsoundness." general
on which carried tried and hardened generation, by persecution, 'the struggle in the fifties and sixties. Committee The Menshikov was duly superseded was in by a secret committee (the Emperor the habit of submitting critical issues to secret committees, which in ignorance often worked at cross-purposes of each other's existence) headed by Buturlin, and later by Annenkov?commonly known as " the Second of April Committee." Its duty was not that of preto be performed by censors under the censorship (which continued of matter but the scrutiny of Education) direction of the Ministry " of unsound? trace to instructions with any report published, already " the to execute who undertook ness to the Emperor himself, necessary punitive measures. the This committee Dubbelt. was linked with the with ubiquitous political police through and institu? blind and relentless zeal, ignoring all other departments in an of excess at one and enthusiasm, tions, actually point, a satirical denounced By by the Tsar himself.8 poem approved in the none every word published going with a fine comb through in virtually too numerous stifling all press, it succeeded periodical but the of political and social criticism?indeed everything to the and of unlimited conventional loyalty autocracy expressions 7 There is a legend still to be found in the latest Soviet lives of the great critic his arrest, and it is true that at the time of his death a warrant had gone out for " that Dubbelt later said that he regretted his death as otherwise we should have let him rot inside a fortress ", but M. Lemke (Nikolaievskie Zhandarmy, St. Peters? burg, 1908) has conclusively shown that no such warrant had ever been signed and that the invitation to Belinsky to visit Dubbelt, which had largely inspired the story, was due mainly to a desire of the Third Department to get a specimen of his hand? writing in order to compare it with that of a subversive anonymous letter circulating at the time. 8 Schilder, op. cit. forms It worked
RUSSIA the orthodox Church. This
AND
1848.
353
too much even for Ouvaroff, proved and on the plea of ill-health, he resigned from the Ministry of Educa? tion. His successor was an obscure nobleman?Prince Shirinskywho had submitted a memorandum to the Tsar, Shikhmatov,9 out that one of the mainsprings of disaffection was un? pointing the freedom doubtedly the Russian universities. him to his appointed of philosophical in speculation permitted The Emperor this thesis and accepted instructions to reform post with express stricter observance of the precepts teaching by introducing university of the orthodox of philo? faith, and in particular by the elimination other This or mediaeval mandate was dangerous leanings. sophical " a of carried out in the spirit and the letter and led to a purge " " which exceeded education even the notorious of the purification of Kazan ten years earlier by Magnitzky. 1848 to 1856 University is the darkest hour in the night of Russian obscurantism in the 19th Even craven and torn the Gretsch, sycophantic by century. the to authorities after the most and, please Bulgarin, anxiety of all the creatures of the political zealous Gretsch, police?even from Paris in 1848 denounce whose the mildest liberal letters of the Second with a degree of scorn hardly measures Republic in his himself?even this poor creature equalled by Benckendorff 10 written in the fifties, with something complains autobiography bitterness about the stupidities of the and iniquities approaching new double censorship. the most Perhaps " " White Terror is the well-known literary writer Gleb Ouspensky.11 of the populist " One could vivid passage of this description in the memoirs
not move, one could not even dream ; it to the fact that give any sign of thought?of dangerous afraid on the were to were not ; required you contrary, you even when there was show that you were scared, trembling, is what those years have created no real ground for it?that is the root of in the Russian fear?that masses. Perpetual truth about life . . . panic was then in the air, and crushed was and robbed it of all desire or capacity the public consciousness ' You was full of terrors ; for thought . . . the atmosphere man and cried heaven and earth, air and water, are lost/ 9 " Shikhmatov is Shakhmat all education "was a popular (checkmate)?to pun in St. Petersburg. 10 N. I. Gretsch, Zapiski o moyei zhizni. 11 Gleb Ouspensky, Polnoye Sobraniye Sochineniy, St. Petersburg, 1889, T. I, pp. 175-76 ; partly quoted by A. A. Kizevetter, Istoricheskiye Ochezki, Moscow, 1912,
354 beast?and the first
THE
SLAVONIC
REVIEW. and fled from disaster into
shuddered everything rabbit hole/' available
account is borne out by other evidence, perhaps most Ouspensky's In 1848, this remarkable of Chaadayev. vividly by the behaviour " in Moscow. was still living certified lunatic/' man, no longer a his fame. He seemed of 1835 bad spread debacle The Teleskop and his His pride, his originality, unbroken by his misfortune. but above the charm and wit of his conversation, independence, in the cause of intellectual as a martyr all his reputation liberty, was and fascinated even attracted visited both Russian by testify that until the blow sympathies his and foreign fell in 1848, he continued with an uncompromising and astonishing political eminent opponents. His salon who visitors, to express his
pro-western the political
(considering The more degree of freedom. the poet extreme brotherhood, especially Slavophil and on one him from time to occasion attacked time, Yazykov,12 But his him to the denounced police. prestige virtually political were still so great that the Third Department did and popularity not touch him, and he continued to receive a variety of distinguished atmosphere) of the members himself strongly against Gogol's damned it as a symptom and in a letter to A. I. Turgenev Friends of megalomania on the part of that unhappy genius. Chaadayev : he was, if anything, was not a liberal, still less a revolutionary a of the Roman an admirer romantic Church and the conservative, western and an aristocratic of the Slavophil tradition, opponent obsession with eastern orthodoxy and Byzantium ; he was a figure of the right, not the left, but he was an avowed and fearless opponent of the regime. He was admired above all for his individualism, his unbreakable his incorruptible and strength of will, purity personalities he expressed both Russian and foreign in his weekly In 1847 with Correspondence salon.
and his proud refusal to bend to authority. In 1848, character, this paladin of western civilisation to wrote suddenly Khomyakov that Europe was in chaos, and in deep need of Russian help, and of the with much enthusiasm bold initiative in spoke Emperor's the Revolution. this While have been crushing Hungarian might put down to the horror of popular risings at this time, this is not the end of the a book abroad a published containing As soon as he heard of it, Chaadayev.13 felt by many intellectuals In 1853, Herzen story. passionate Chaadayev encomium wrote of to the
12 M. Lemke, Nikolaievskiy Zhandarmy, St. Petersburg, 1908, p. 451. 13 Du Developpement des I dees Re'volutionnaires en Russie.
RUSSIA head
AND
1848.
355
of the political police, saying that he had learnt with annoyance a miscreant, that he had been praised by so notorious and indignation to the of the most abject loyalty this with sentiments and followed of the divine will sent to restore order in the Tsar as an instrument observed he merely To a shocked world. that, after all, friend, " selfThis act of apparently one must save one's skin." cynical and most liberty-loving on the part of the proudest abasement man in Russia of his time is tragic evidence of the effect of protracted of aristocratic of the older generation repression upon those members Siberia or the gallows. had escaped rebels who, by some miracle, This case was was tried. in which the famous Petrashevsky atmosphere in the fact that it is the consists Its main interest of western ideas under the direct influence conspiracy the
only serious When Herzen heard the news, to be found in Russia at that time. " to Noah's which the dove brought like the olive branch, it was A good deal of hope after the flood.14 Ark "?the first glimmering in it?among involved about this case by those has been written in it. to for sent was Siberia who them Dostoevsky, complicity form of radicalism in later detested who every years Dostoevsky, in general) tried to secularism and socialism plainly (and indeed a caricature in celebrated his own part minimise it, and perpetrated Baron of his day in The Possessed. of the revolutionary conspiracy of enquiry into the case, later said that Korff, one of the committee as had been alleged? the plot was not as serious or as widespread " In the light of later a conspiracy of ideas." that it was mainly of the publication and in particular evidence, by the Soviet Govern? 15 this verdict of documents ment of two volumes may be doubted. There is, of course, a sense in which there was no formal conspiracy. of disaffected number was that a certain had happened in two or three intervals at men regular together gathered young It is also true that the possibility of reform. houses and discussed himself to the of Petrashevsky-Butashevich in spite of the devotion on is said to have built a small Phalanstery ideas of Fourier?he All that who his estate for his peasants, of the devil?these an invention clear body of principles further than the desire for the workers Yevropeus, set fire to it almost were all. aid groups accepted by them to create mutual not as immediately united by any Mombelli went no
much
or peasants
Akhshazumov,
not so institutions, like himself. as for the bourgeois, were Christian Socialists, Pleshcheyev
14 A. I. Herzen, Polnoye Sobraniye Sochineniy, ed. Lemke, Vol. XIII, p. 591. 15 Dyelo Petrashevtsev, lt. I and II, 1940-1941. The third volume has yet to appear.
356 A. P. Milioukov
THE
SLAVONIC Lamennais.
REVIEW.
was a kindly Balasoglo and impressionable man, oppressed young by the horrors of the more and no less than, for example, social order?no Russian Gogol on mildly desired reform and improvement himself?who populist to the ideas of the more romantic and lines similar Slavophils, as of such English writers not too unlike the nostalgia indeed translated Cobbett, dictionary scientific famous casual even or William which grammar. gatherings Belinsky. information, Morris. contained Indeed, Petrashevsky's " subversive" articles encyclopaedic as disguised so much as Cobbett's nothing from the these differed groups and as Panayev, Korsh, Nekrasov
resembles
Nevertheless, of such radicals
met for the Some, at any rate, of the participants a concrete of how to foment of ideas considering specific purpose the rebellion existing regime. against and may have con? These ideas may have been impracticable, in them much that was fantastic drawn from the French tained " was and other "unscientific but their purpose sources, Utopians of the regime, and the establish? the reform but the overthrow in of a revolutionary government. descriptions Dostoevsky's for A Writers and elsewhere make it clear that Speshnev, Diary revolu? was by temperament and intention, a genuine example, not ment as who believed in conspiracy, at least as seriously tionary agitator, Bakunin these discussion him) and attended groups (who disliked in of him as Stavrogin with a practical The portrait purpose. The Possessed stresses this and Durpv aspect. Similarly, strongly and one or two others certainly seem to have believed Revolution break out at while they might any moment; realised the impossibility of organising a mass movement, they put their faith, like Weitling and the groups of German communist and perhaps at this period, in the organisation workers, Blanqui, of small cells of trained a professional elite which revolutionaries, Grigoriev that the could act efficiently hour struck?when knock-kneed between the army Russian and ruthlessly and seize the leadership when the elements the oppressed would rise and crush the of courtiers and bureaucrats who alone stood doubt much of a revolutionary the intentions
No people and its freedom. this was idle talk, since nothing remotely resembling situation existed in Russia at this time. Nevertheless,
of these men were as concrete and as violent as those of Babeuf and his friends, and in the condition of a tightly controlled autocracy, the only possible means of practical was conspiracy. Speshnev a Communist, influenced not merely by Dezamy but quite definitely the anti-Proudhonist perhaps also by the early works of Marx?e.g.,
RUSSIA Misere de la Philosophic one of the things
AND
1848.
357
16 states that in his evidence Balasoglo which him to Petrashevsky's that attracted liberal patter discussion group was that, on the whole, it avoided itself with concrete discussion and concerned and aimless issues, statistical with a view to direct studies action. and conducted references to the tendency of his fellow Dostoevsky's contemptuous conspirators play at being liberal?looks poliberalnichat?to mainly like an attempt to whitewash himself. In fact, the of this circle for Dostoevsky consisted attraction probably which had also attracted in that Balasoglo?namely, principal precisely that the
was not amiably and intimate, liberal, atmosphere gay, informal like the and given to literary and intellectual gossip, lively evenings or Herzen, at which he seems to Sollogub given by the Panayevs, have been snubbed and had suffered was acutely. Petrashevsky earnest man, and the groups, both his own and the a remorselessly even more secret groups which sprang from it?as well subsidiary, " that to as as allied which a circles," e.g. Chernyshevsky belonged student?meant business. The was broken university conspiracy were tried and sent into exile. up in April, 1849, an^ the Petrashevtsi Between I in the last months 1849 an(i the death of Nicholas of the Crimean war, there is not a glimmering of liberal thought. but Turgenev, who ventured Gogol died an unrepentant reactionary, to praise him as a satirical genius in an obituary article, was promptly arrested for it. Bakunin was in prison, Herzen lived abroad, Belinwas silent, and developing Granovsky depressed The in of Moscow Slavophil sympathies. centenary University a affair. dismal The themselves, 1855 proved although Slavophils and all its works, and continued they rejected the liberal revolution a ceaseless western felt the heavy influences, against campaign sky dead, hand of official and Koshelev Kireyevsky the special brothers, ; the Aksakov repression Khomyakov, under official suspicion much as Ivan fell Samarin, had done in the previous decade. The secret police and committees considered all ideas to be dangerous as such, was
that of a nationalism which took up the cause of the particularly Slav nationalities of the Austrian oppressed Empire, and, by implica? tion thereby placed itself in opposition to the dynastic principle and and to multi-racial between the government The battle empires. long Left the various war, like the parties was not an ideological opposition conflict the and eighties between fought out in the seventies and the Right, between and socialists liberals, early populists on one side, and such reactionary nationalists as, for instance, 1 T. 2. cit., Op
358
THE
SLAVONIC
REVIEW.
and Leontiev Strakhov, Maikov, and above all Katkov Dostoevsky, the government, on the other. and the party 1848-56, During " to be hostile of official patriotism/' (as it was called) appeared to thought no attempt to obtain as such, and therefore made intellectual offered themselves, ; when volunteers supporters they were accepted made use of, and occasionally somewhat disdainfully, I made no conscious If Nicholas effort to fight ideas rewarded. with as he disliked all thought and speculation ideas, it was because his own bureaucracy so deeply, such ; he distrusted perhaps of intellectual because he felt that it presupposed the minimum required activity by any form of rational organisation. " To those who lived through it, it seemed that this dark tunnel " was destined to lead nowhere/' wrote Herzen in the sixties. Never? theless, the effect of these years was by no means wholly negative/' And this is acute and true. The Revolution of 1848 by its failure, the of Europe which had by discrediting revolutionary intelligentsia been put down so easily by the forces of law and order, was followed by a distrust of the very idea by^a mood of profound disillusionment, of progress, of the possibility of the and equality by .means of persuasion open to men of liberal convictions. recovered from disoriented attainment of liberty peaceful or indeed any civilised means Herzen himself never wholly of his hopes and ideas. Bakunin was
this collapse the older generation of liberal intellectuals left it; by in Moscow and St. Petersburg some to drift into the scattered, conservative others to seek comfort in non-political fields. camp, But the effect which the failure of 1848 had had on the stronger natures Russian radicals was to convince them among the younger that no real the accommodation with Tsar's was firmly government the result that the Crimean a War, possible?with during good were close to being defeatist : and many of the leading intellectuals this was by no means confined to the radicals and revolutionaries. that in his memoirs, published in Berlin in the eighties,17 declares he and his friends?nationalists and Slavophils?thought that a defeat would serve Russia's best interests, and dwells on public Koshelev to the outcome of the war?an admission far more
indifference
at the time of its publication, shocking during the full tide of panSlav agitation, than the facts themselves can have been during the Crimean war. The Tsar's uncompromising line precipitated a moral crisis which finally divided the tough core of the opposition from the opportunists : it caused the former to turn in more narrowly This applied to both camps. Whether they were upon themselves. ' A. I. Koshelev, Zapiski, pp. 80-83, Berlin, 18
RUSSIA Slavophils materialists,
AND
1848.
359
and rejected the West like the Aksakovs and Samarin, or atheists of western and champions scientific ideas like
and Pisarev, Chernyshevsky, they became increasingly Dobrolyubov in the specific national absorbed and social problems of Russia and, in particular, in the problem of the peasant?his his ignorance, the forms of his social life, their historical their misery, origins, economic future. The liberals of the forties may have been stirred to genuine compassion or indignation : by the plight of the peasantry of serfdom had long been an acute public problem and a great and recognised evil. as they were by Yet, excited the latest social and philosophical ideas which reached them from the West, they felt no inclination to spend their time upon detailed indeed and tedious the researches multitude into the actual social by had condition and of the upon had been of unexplored so superficially described economic peasantry, data which the institution
or later in greater Custine, done to awaken by Turgenev something interest in the day-to-day of the realism the of his peasants byt by Sketches. had moved both and Sportsman's Grigorovich Belinsky a his later to lifeless and over? but, taste, Dostoevsky tragic by of peasants in The Village, and Anton Goremyka, wrought descriptions detail Haxthausen. in 1847. But these were ripples on the surface. published During the period of enforced insulation after 1849, with Europe in the arms of reaction, and only Herzen's voice faintly audible from plaintive those conscious Russian intellectuals who had survived afar, socially the turmoil, directed their sharp and fearless analytical apparatus the vast majority conditions in which of their upon the actual were living. Russia, which a decade or two earlier was countrymen in considerable of becoming a permanent intellectual danger of Berlin or of Paris, was forced by this insulation to dependency a native social and political outlook of her own. A sharp develop in tone is now noticeable and ; the harsh, materialistic change " " nihilistic criticism of the sixties and seventies is due not merely to the change in economic and social conditions, and the consequent a of new class in and a tone Russia as in Europe, but new emergence in at least equal measure to the prison walls within which Nicholas I had enclosed the lives of his thinking led to a This subjects. sharp break with the polite civilisation and the non-political interests of the past, to a general toughening of fibre and exacerbation of political differences. The gulf between the Right and the Left? between the disciples of Dostoevsky and Kathov and the followers of Chernyshevsky or Bakunin?equally radical intellectuals typical in 1848?had In due course there grown very wide and deep. and social
360 a emerged conscious?too vast
THE and
SLAVONIC
REVIEW.
of practical revolutionaries, growing army the conscious?of Russian sharply specifically character of their problems, Russian solutions. seeking specifically were forced from the general current of European They away in their to have seemed development (with which, any case, history so little in common) the in the libertarian by bankruptcy Europe of movement the of 1848 : they drew which the failure discipline from the very harshness of strength in the West had indirectly imposed Russian radicals the view accepted unsupported ; and they
force were by material this truth and adopted abandoned sentimental liberalism without being forced to pay for their liberation with that bitter, personal disillusionment and acute frustration which proved too much for so many idealistic radicals in the west. The Russian radicals learned this lesson by means of as it were, without the destruction precept and example, indirectly of their inner resources. The experience obtained by both sides in the struggle during these dark years of the later revolutionary character New College, determined movement the uncompromising in Russia. Isaiah Oxford. Berlin.
Henceforth the upon them. that ideas and agitation wholly doomed to impotence necessarily

Berlin - Russia and 1848

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Russia and 1848 Author(s): Isaiah Berlin Reviewed work(s): Source: The Slavonic and East European Review,

RUSSIA The year

the possi? remote to

342 revolution France, in Prussia

SLAVONIC The revolutions

had been made

political parties, were composed

help peasantry. people but none whatever of a constitution?that

they look for of potatoes, only by educated

RUSSIA the reflected the economic backward

REVIEW. of its cargo?that infinity and perilous expeditions.

sinking because it cannot of treasures accumulated

rid itself in distant

346 and these apathy,

THE which But

is so noticeable this was bought The new

years. within the intelligentsia. are left-wing populists,

men, Chernyshevsky a much wider gap

RUSSIA Tsar Nicholas

THE by Louis Blanc and Thiers?these

SLAVONIC .... men Louis were

REVIEW. and Philippe almost personal L. V. Dubbelt.4 Guizot, Duchatel

RUSSIA the needs of his

cried loudly, gesture, has been proclaimed

SLAVONIC was that attached

REVIEW. to the touch capture with of Bakunin Polish was

they were plotting involved?which

emigres? Polish mutiny

in the breast inspired its reached borders, beyond

RUSSIA the land most

352 editors reproved of the

REVIEW. and Zapiski The latter

and of Otechestvonniye " unsoundness." general

RUSSIA the orthodox Church. This

354 beast?and the first

REVIEW. and fled from disaster into

shuddered everything rabbit hole/' available

pro-western the political

Nevertheless, of such radicals

RUSSIA Misere de la Philosophic one of the things

RUSSIA Slavophils materialists,

360 a emerged conscious?too vast

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