A history of Russia

order as the death penalty, government intrusion into private life, and bureaucracy in general. 'Thus the first relationship of the government and the people is the relationship of mutual non-interference…' No wonder Slavophile publications never escaped censorship and prohibition for long.

The Westernizers were much more diverse than the Slavophiles, and their views did not form a single, integrated whole. Besides, they shifted their positions rather rapidly. Even socially the Westernizers consisted of different elements, ranging from Michael Bakunin who came from a gentry home like those of the Slavophiles, to Vissarion Belinsky whose father was an impoverished doctor and grandfather a priest, and Basil Botkin who belonged to a family of merchants. Yet certain generally held opinions and doctrines gave a measure of unity to the movement. The Slavophiles and the Westernizers started from similar assumptions of German idealistic philosophy, and indeed engaged in constant debate with each other, but came to different conclusions. While Khomiakov and his friends affirmed the uniqueness of Russia and the superiority of true Russian principles over those of the West, the other party argued that the Western historical path was the model that Russia had to follow. Russia could accomplish its mission only in the context of Western civilization, not in opposition to it. Naturally, therefore, the Westernizers took a positive view of Western political development and criticized the Russian system. Contrary to the Slavophiles, they praised the work of Peter the Great, but they wanted further Westernization. Also, whereas the Slavophiles anchored their entire ideology in their interpretation and appraisal of Orthodoxy, the Westernizers assigned relatively little importance to religion, while some of them gradually turned to agnosticism and, in the case of Bakunin, even to violent atheism. To be more exact, the moderate Westernizers retained religious faith and an essentially idealistic cast of mind, while their political and social program did not go beyond mild liberalism, with emphasis on gradualism and popular enlightenment. These moderates were typified by Nicholas Stankevich, who brought together a famous early Westernizer circle but died in 1840 at the age of twenty-seven before the movement really developed, and by Professor Timothy Granovsky, who lived from 1813 to 1855 and taught European history very successfully at the University of Moscow. The radical Westernizers, however, largely through Hegelianism and Left Hegelianism, came to challenge religion, society, and the entire Russian and European system, and to call for a revolution. Although few in number, they included such major figures as Vissarion Belinsky, 1811-48, Alexander Herzen, 1812-70, and Michael Bakunin, 1814-76.

Belinsky, the most famous Russian literary critic, exercised a major in-

fluence on Russian intellectual life in general. He had the rare good fortune to welcome the works of Pushkin, Lermontov, and Gogol and the debuts of Dostoevsky, Turgenev, and Nekrasov. Belinsky's commentary on the Russian writers became famous for its passion, invective, and eulogy, as well as for its determination to treat works of literature in the broader contexts of society, history, and thought, and to instruct and guide the authors and the reading public. Belinsky's own views underwent important changes and had not achieved cohesiveness and stability at the time of his death. His impact on Russian literature, however, proved remarkably durable and stable: it consisted above all in the establishment of political and social criteria as gauges for evaluating artistic works. As Nekrasov put it later, one did not have to be a poet, but one was under obligation to be a citizen. Following Belinsky's powerful example, political and social ideologies, banned from direct expression in Russia, came to be commonly expounded in literary criticism.

Both Herzen and Bakunin became prominent in the 1830's and 1840's, but lived well beyond the reign of Nicholas I. Moreover, much of their activity, such as Herzen's radical journalistic work abroad and Bakunin's anarchist theorizing and plotting, belonged to the time of Alexander II and will have to be mentioned in a subsequent chapter. Yet their intellectual evolution in the decades preceding the 'great reforms' formed a significant part of that seminal period of Russian thought. Herzen, whose autobiographical account My Past and Thoughts is one of the most remarkable works of Russian literature, came from a well-established gentry family, like the Slavophiles and Bakunin, but was an illegitimate child. He became a leading opponent of Khomiakov in the Muscovite salons and a progressive Westernizer. Gradually Herzen abandoned the doctrines of idealistic philosophy and became increasingly radical and critical in his position, stressing the dignity and freedom of the individual. In 1847 he left Russia, never to return. Bakunin has been described as 'founder of nihilism and apostle of anarchy' - Herzen said he was born not under a star but under a comet - but he began peacefully enough as an enthusiast of German thought, especially Hegel's. Several years earlier than Herzen, Bakunin too left Russia. Before long he turned to Left Hegelianism and moved beyond it to anarchism and a sweeping condemnation of state, society, economy, and culture in Russia and in the world. Bakunin emphasized destruction, proclaiming in a signal early article that the passion for destruction was itself a creative passion. While Herzen bitterly witnessed the defeat of the revolution of 1848 in Paris, Bakunin attended the Pan-Slav Congress in Prague and participated in the revolution in Saxony. After being handed over by the Austrian government to the Russian, he was to spend over a decade in fortresses and in Siberian exile. Both Herzen, disappointed in the

West, and Bakunin, ever in search of new opportunities for revolution and anarchism, came to consider the peasant commune in Russia as a superior institution and as a promise of the future social transformation of Russia - a point made earlier by the Slavophiles, although, of course, from different religious and philosophical positions - thus laying the foundation for subsequent native Russian radicalism.

The Petrashevtsy were another kind of radicals. That informal group of two score or more men, who from late 1845 until their arrest in the spring of 1849 gathered on Fridays at the home of Michael Butashevich-Petra-shevsky in St. Petersburg, espoused especially the teaching of the strange French Utopian socialist Fourier. Fourier preached the peaceful transformation of society into small, well-integrated, and self-supporting communes, which would also provide for the release and harmony of human passions according to a fantastic scheme of his own invention. Many Petrashevtsy, however, added to Fourierism political protest, demand for reform, and general opposition to the Russia of Nicholas I. The government took such a serious view of the situation that it condemned twenty-one men to death, although it changed their sentence at the place of execution in favor of less drastic punishments. It was as a member of the Petrashevtsy that Dostoevsky faced imminent execution and later went to Siberia. The Petrashevtsy, it might be added, came generally from lower social strata than did the Lovers of Wisdom, the Slavophiles, and the Westernizers, and included mostly minor officials, junior officers, and students.

Several trends in the intellectual history of Russia in the first half of the nineteenth century deserve attention. If we exclude the Decembrists as belonging ideologically to an earlier period, Russian thought moved from the abstract philosophizing and the emphasis on esthetics characteristic of the Lovers of Wisdom, through the system- building of the Slavophiles and, to a lesser extent, the Westernizers to an increasing concern with the pressing issues of the day, as exemplified by the radical Westernizers and, in a different sense, by the Petrashevtsy. At the same time radicalism grew among the educated Russians, especially as German idealistic philosophy and romanticism in general disintegrated. Moreover, socialism entered Russian history, both through such individuals as Herzen and his life-long friend Nicholas Ogarev and through an entire group of neophytes, the Petra-shevsty. Also, the intellectual stratum increased in number and changed somewhat in social composition, from being solidly gentry, as the Slavophiles still were, to a more mixed membership characteristic of the Westernizers and the Petrashevtsy. All in all, Russian thought in the reigns of Alexander I and Nicholas I, and especially the 'intellectual emancipation' of the celebrated forties, was to have a great impact on the intellectual evolution of Russia and indeed on Russian history all the way to 1917 and even beyond.

The Arts

While contemporaries and later many scholars showed special interest in the Russian literature and thought of the first half of the nineteenth century, the fine arts, too, continued to develop in the reigns of Alexander I and Nicholas I. Both emperors were enthusiastic builders in the tradition of Peter and Catherine. At the time of Alexander the neo-classical style, often skillfully adapted to native traditions, reached its height in Russia. It affected not only the appearance of St. Petersburg, Moscow, and other towns, but also the architecture of countless manor houses all over the empire throughout the nineteenth century. The leading architects of Alexander's reign included Hadrian Zakharov, who created the remarkable Admiralty building in St. Petersburg, and Andrew Voronikhin, of serf origin, who constructed the Kazan Cathedral in the capital and certain imperial palaces outside it. Under Nicholas neo-classicism gave way to an eclectic mixture of styles.

Largely guided by the Academy of Arts, painting evolved gradually from neo-classicism to romanticism as exemplified by Karl Briullov's enormous canvas 'The Last Day of Pompeii.' A few more realistic genre painters also