[This is Chapter 14 of Murphey’s
book Understanding the Modern Predicament.]
The
history of
The instruction consists, at least for my
purposes in light of the themes I have been stressing, of two major points.
First, those years demonstrate -- perhaps better than any other example we
might give -- the impact and destructiveness of the alienated European
intellectuality when it was exported from
So that we can see these things in the
context of the specific history, I will want to review the events after 1800.
It is a history that most Americans know only vaguely.
The reign of Tsar Alexander I began in 1800 and ended in 1825.
Although as a young man he was tutored in the liberal ideas of the
Enlightenment by La Harpe, his liberalism later became mixed with the mysticism
that was so prominent a part of the Romantic reaction that followed the
Napoleonic wars. Accordingly, it was mysticism rather than liberalism that
dominated his later years. He delegated much of his power to an autocrat,
Arakcheyev, whose approach was just the opposite of La Harpe's. As late as 1812
Alexander had appeared
the enlightened savior of
As luck would have it, though, Alexander's
death in December, 1825, triggered the revolt prematurely. The
"Decembrist" uprising proved ineffectual -- and resulted in the
execution or exile of its leaders. The Tsarist regime continued, with Nicholas
I taking Alexander's place.
For his part, Nicholas, was firmly
committed to autocracy. During his reign, which continued until 1855, he used
his powers to restrict the nobility and repress education and innovation. But
this wasn't enough to stem the intellectual ferment that was occurring
underneath the surface of Russian life and that was producing an
"intelligentsia" that was no longer drawn just from the army and the
gentry. This intelligentsia became, eventually, the most important fact in
Russian history. Its members listened thirstily to the revolutionary ideas
emanating from
Alexander II -- the next Tsar -- is
described as having been of mixed character; he was at once gentle, indulgent,
humane, sentimental, peevish, indolent and lacking in
conviction.1 His initial impulse was toward a liberal program
sponsored by the monarchy, an impulse he probably received from the
humanitarian education given him by Zhukovsky. He rejected the idea of a
national representative assembly, at least partly because he feared it would be
controlled by landowners; but in several areas he took major liberalizing
steps. Perhaps most importantly, he declared the emancipation of the serfs in
1861. His judicial reforms in 1864 sought to establish the "rule of
law." In 1863, his university reforms permitted universities to elect
their own councils, rectors and deans (although the Minister of Education
retained a veto). In the armed services, he replaced the barbarous twenty-five-year
recruitment of peasants with universal conscription; and he began efforts to
educate the soldiers. And in 1864 he established local representative
government through elective bodies known as the zemstva.
These were major steps forward, at least from the
point of view of anyone who was receptive to a peaceable reform of Russian
autocracy. Needless to say, the reforms didn't carry
The important point, however, is that the
alienated intelligentsia were intractable. The reforms weren't well received;
the intelligentsia viewed gradual improvement with contempt. Alexander's reward
was intense criticism -- and assassination. He was killed by a bomb in 1881
after several unsuccessful attempts. His last words were: "They hunt me
like a mad dog."
This reaction struck a severe blow at the
process of gradual reform. After his initial “Epoch of Great Reforms,”
Alexander himself drifted from the process, probably in large measure because
of the response he received. He was, however, planning further reforms during
the year before his death. The next Tsar, Alexander
It is often overlooked, by those who seek
at least some extenuation of the later Soviet tyranny on the ground that
Tsarist Russia had been so intolerable, that a constitutional monarchy did in
fact come into being as a result of the revolution of 1905. But, again,
although this reform satisfied most liberals, the intelligentsia remained adamantly
committed both to socialism and to terrorism. They continued their efforts and
in 1917 waged what was from the first an essentially leftist revolution. The
moderate socialist Kerensky held power for a few months, but even he was
unacceptable; he was overthrown by Lenin.
I would suppose it is not unworthy as a
parenthesis at the end of this history to add that the Socialist
Revolutionaries and even most of the original Bolsheviks were put to death
within a few years by the totalitarian state they helped create.
The
liberals’ limitation.
Probably the greatest significance of the liberal movement, as
distinguished from the socialist, during those twelve decades is found in its
limitations. The Decembrists had themselves been ideologically split. After the
liberals were defeated in that uprising, they did not become a major element in
the intelligentsia as it emerged. The intelligentsia was increasingly radical.
Liberals were found mainly in the nobility, the zemstva and in a small
circle of writers and newspaper editors. Their position was in the middle,
melioristic and benevolent, seeking the improvement of existing institutions.
Primarily, they were anxious to support the Tsar in reforms whenever he would
take the lead. Their goal was the gradual development of a constitutional legal
order -- and, if possible, they hoped this would incorporate certain peculiarly
Russian elements. In the 1860s they wanted a central representative assembly
that would be based on the zemskii sober of the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries rather than on the model of a Western- style parliament. In common
with a great many liberals on the continent of
The
intelligentsia. The subculture that we know as the
"intelligentsia" began to form at
Alexander Herzen was the leading
intellectual of that early period. As time went on, the subculture became
increasingly removed from the liberals of the Decembrist period. In Sons Against Fathers, Lampert makes the point that “the
intelligentsia was no longer what it had been in 1825 or 1835. It differed in
mood, in conviction, in social status and composition. It still included a few
army officers and a few members of the gentry, but they had been largely
displaced or absorbed by the raznochintsy, the declasses
of Russian society." They were "most of all teachers, students, and
scribblers of every sort,” according to a secret report at the time. As of a
still later time, Hugh Seton-Watson has given some interesting statistics about
the make-up of the intelligentsia. He says that "of all (the
revolutionaries) condemned to prison or administratively exiled between 1873
and 1877, 279 were children of noble parents, 117 of non-noble officials, 197
of priests, 33 of merchants, 68 of Jews, 92 of meshchane, and 138 of
peasants. The last two categories refer to the legal status rather than the
actual occupation, and it may be assumed that these were in fact children of
city workers. The large number of children of priests is particularly
striking."3
By mid-century, there was considerable
intellectual ferment in
The first small groups of revolutionaries
began to form in the early 1860s. This was the decade of the
"nihilists" -- as they were called by Turgenev. Because the label is
somewhat deceptive, it is worth noting Robert Payne's description of them in The
Terrorists: "They possessed no philosophy except their simple faith in
science and their repudiation of existing conventions, and while attempting to
create a morality of their own, they were trapped into an extreme form of
asceticism which could have no popular appeal. Turgenev gave them the name 'nihilists,'
but he did not mean that they believed in nothing; he meant that they believed
in the destruction of the existing state."4 Historians
frequently comment on their similarity to the Puritans, at least in
single-mindedness and moral fervor. They were also in the tradition of
Savonarola; more than austere virtue was involved -- there was also extreme
militancy. They had that icy moral fury that has sometimes typified the more
saintly intellectuals in Western civilization, personifying a fanaticism imbued
with piety that has subordinated all other values to its own point of
concentrated focus. Such a temperament has occurred several times historically
and has to be understood if certain periods in the history of Western society
are to be understood.
Despite the fact that many of them were
atheists, the movement had a good deal in common with the religious mysticism
that was widespread in
Socialism was yet another ingredient,
combining with the atheism and the opposition to prevailing values.
Chernyshevsky was a socialist before he was a revolutionary. Dobrolyubov held
to an uncompromising socialist ideology even though he repudiated all fixed
moral law; and although he died quite young -- at age twenty-five -- he is
thought to have been the person who inspired Turgenev to use the label
"nihilist." Tkachyov sought "a new socialist order." And
although Nechayev possessed only a hazy vision of the type of society he
wanted, he essentially shared the anarchism and socialism of his mentor
Bakunin. He was the author of The Revolutionary Catechism, in which he
proclaimed that "the revolutionary lives in this world only because he has
faith in its speedy and total destruction."5
There was a period during which the
intelligentsia sought wide support from the peasants. "Populism" held
center stage in the 1870s, and consisted of a program for agrarian socialism.
We can imagine the scene in 1874 as described by Richard Freeborn:
"Dressed in peasant clothes and carrying socialist tracts, about 3,000
young members of the intelligentsia, mostly students, left the universities and
urban centers in order to live and work among the peasants." The upshot,
however, was that the peasants proved quite conservative, contrary to Bakunin's
expectations. They were not the "dry tinder of revolution","
Freeborn says, that the intelligentsia hoped they would be. In effect, this was
a lesson that a Marx, but not a Mao, could understand: that the revolution
could not rely on the peasants.
The violent revolutionary activity suffered
a lull because of police activity after the attempted assassination of
Alexander II in 1866, but it gradually revived. The Socialist Revolutionary
Party mixed Populist Agrarian socialism with terrorism. A group called
"The People's Will" concentrated on killing the Tsar. It succeeded in
1881 after several attempts.
By the end of the nineteenth century, Marx
began to dominate socialist ideology in
There were four main political movements in
The revolution of 1905 did in fact create a
constitutional, liberal regime; and although the Tsar was not deposed, a
national parliament, the Duma, was established. But it is noteworthy that this
moderate solution suffered much the same fate that the early phase of the
French Revolution had suffered: the Duma became increasingly dominated by the
radicals, and revolutionary activity escalated. By now, the universities had
been granted autonomy -- and they became centers for revolution. The Socialist
Revolutionaries began a series of executions through their "combat
organization." The Left, with its hierarchy of values that placed great
weight on its utopian goals and thoroughly devalued everything else in the
society, was plainly unwilling to accept a liberalized
Social
changes. Important social changes were taking place
during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Not counting
Some
Significant Voids
The events that actually occur in a society and that catch the eye of historians are only part of the story. Sometimes the events themselves are void-filling makeshifts. If we seek an interpretive understanding, we need to appreciate the factors that were missing from the society -- the voids. As we look back on Russian history with the hindsight that we now enjoy, we can see that the positive factors were weak and the negative ones strong.
The
intellectual void. The "Golden Age of Russian
Literature" produced some of the world's enduring writing, but even within
it we can see a profound intellectual void. Tolstoy was the giant -- but do we
have grounds for thinking that his writings included clear and civilizationally
satisfactory concepts about political philosophy, economics and jurisprudence?
He was essentially a lost soul even though his magnificent fatalism and
spiritual yearning provoked the most creative genius. His lostness was especially
apparent during the last years of his life when he renounced literature and
turned to mysticism. It stands out, too, in his most monumental works, War
and Peace and Anna Karenina. But if we were to find balanced reason
anywhere among the Russian authors it would mainly have to have been with
Tolstoy. We could hardly expect clear leadership to have come from the
delightfully warped Dostoyevsky, whose novels were works of art giving flesh to
the Russian torment of spirit and intellect.
There is no difficulty in seeing how the
tormented, mystical mentality could relate to utopianism. A mystic may easily
forsake the day-to-day tedium of ordinary life for a distant panacea. This in
itself will reinforce a tendency that I have already commented upon about the
alienation of the intellectual: the propensity to place an extremely high value
upon a utopian goal and to devalue everything else. Visionaries rarely
appreciate that a civilization requires a balance of values. Their distortion
of values comes at terrible expense.
Such a mentality arrogates all claims to
piety, morality, compassion and Godliness. It deserves credit for its
sincerity, but we should fault it for usurping man's common morality by its
incomparable presumptuousness. The success of this moral stake-out is in part
due to the failure of sounder, more balanced, men to express an ethic that can
serve as an alternative to such claims. The effectiveness of the militant
intellectual as an agitator is enhanced by the acting man's passive acceptance
of the moral code offered by that intellectual. One of the major insights Ayn
Rand has stressed has been that productive men often fail to proclaim an
ethical philosophy that is consistent with their own values. By this default
they leave themselves open to be victimized by the insistent claims of the alienates who champion the worldview of the have-nots.
Reflection
of the European void. Because of the Russians' absorption of
European intellectual modes, Russian thought in the nineteenth century embraced
as its own the void that existed in
But European socialism didn't provide a
constructive philosophy. The bleak horrors of the
The lack of a democratic tradition deprived
all Russians, including the intellectuals, of a chance to gain experience in
real life. Without his "feet on the ground," a person who cares
deeply about humanity will tend to become a dreamer. This immaturity is at
least part of what we mean when we say that a people is
not prepared to govern itself.
One important effect is that the society
loses the benefits that could come from on-going intellectual participation.
Such a drain of intellect occurred in
Lack of
a viable middle class. There was no large human base, such as a
middle class, which would support a free society on the American model. The
peasantry's "conservatism" amounted almost entirely of their not
being revolutionary. As people who had just recently emerged from serfdom, they
weren't a sufficient base if freedom and democracy were to be achieved. In
another connection, Wilhelm Ropke has written about how essential it is that
there be a "middle class properly so called, that
is, an independent class possessed of small or moderate property and income, a
sense of responsibility, and those civic virtues without which a free and
well-ordered society cannot, in the long run, survive."6
The Russian example suggests a strong
analogy to the more recent situation of the so-called "
Human
weakness. The combination of factors I have just
mentioned -- an immature, alienated intelligentsia, growing multitudes of
ill-prepared people (or in advanced societies a spoiled, shallow and rootless
public) -- means, in effect, a rise of internal barbarism. In such a context, civilized
values become problematical. In light of the history we have just reviewed,
1. E. Lampert, Sons Against
Fathers (London: Oxford at the Clarendon Press, 1965), pp. 2, 85, 70.
2. Richard Freeborn, A
Short History of Modern
3. Hugh Seton-Watson, The
Russian Empire, 1801-1917 (London: Oxford at the Clarendon Press, 1967), p.
423.
4. Robert Payne, The
Terrorists (New York: Funk & Wagnalls Company, 1957), p. XV.
5. Nechayev is described in Payne's The
Terrorists, pp. 3-130. His "The Revolutionary Catechism" is
published in full there at pp. 21-27.
6. Wilhelm Ropke, A
Humane Economy (Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1960), p. 32.