the inalienable right of each.55
Saint-Simon did not see his ideas take hold during his lifetime. His pleas to Alexander I for the adoption of his new Christianity by the Holy Alliance were no more heeded than his disciple Comte's later appeal to Nicholas I to adopt his new 'system of positive politics.'56 But these theologians of progress were perceptive in addressing their grandiose theories to a nation 'not yet withered up with scepticism' or (in Comte's words) 'retrograde empiricism.' Neglected by the tsars, their new theories of history were taken up by the Westernizing aristocracy. 'Spiritually we lived in France,' explained one of the Westernizers of Nicholas' reign. 'We in studying turned to France. Not, of course, to the France of Louis Philippe and Guizot, but to the France of Saint-Simon, Cabet, Fourier, Louis Blanc, and particularly George Sand. From there, came to us a belief in humanity; from there, certainty burst upon us that 'the golden age' lay not behind, but before us.'57 Pecherin heard in Saint-Simon 'the giant steps of the approaching future.'58 Most important of all, the young figure of Alexander Herzen, who had sworn to avenge the Decembrists and continue their Westernizing traditions, carried around Saint-Simon's works 'like the Koran.' His Moscow circle of the 1830's began to lead the opposition to Schellingian philosophy and the turn to social problems which became characteristic of the new radical Westernizers.
After Saint-Simon's death in 1825, Prospere Enfantin, one of his French followers who had begun his study of philosophy and economics in Russia, established a new Saint-Simonian religion. One of its adepts linked himself with Moses, Zoroaster, and Mohammed and darkly hinted that he might even be a reincarnation of Christ in modern dress. The Russians were fascinated by this strange, semi-sectarian movement and read its journal, The Globe, with great interest. Herzen's early followers can be considered a kind of splinter group within this 'new Christianity'; for, although they were neither industrialists nor cultists in the manner of Enfantin's group, they were inspired by the Saint-Simonian view of history. By 1833 Herzen subscribed to the view that history moves in a three-stage progression from medieval Catholicism to philosophic Protestantism to the 'new Christianity.' This last phase was the 'truly human' phase, a 'renovation' rather than a revolution of society, designed to abolish poverty and war by the systematic application of scientific method to social and economic problems.59 A new elite of social managers and organizers must give man a modern, practical form of Christianity. The three-stage theory of history of Saint- Simon's
protege Auguste Comte enjoyed even greater popularity among the radical Westernizers in Russia after being mtroduced by Valerian Maikov in the forties. Comte's idea that everything must progress from a theological through a metaphysical into a 'positive' or scientific stage became the reigning theory of history among populist intellectuals.60
At first the difference between Westernizers and Slavophiles was not great. Both believed in some new form of Christianized society and were opposed to revolution and egalitarian excess. The tendency to idealize the peasant commune and narodnosf, or 'spirit of the people,' as a regenerative life force in history was particularly characteristic of Slavophilism but also to be found among Polish revolutionaries and radical Westernizers. Narodnosf for all of these visionary reformers meant neither nationality as it did for Uvarov nor popularity in the Western electoral sense. It meant the unspoiled wisdom of the noble savage as revealed in the newly collected popular proverbs of Vladimir Dal or the folk songs and poems of Alexis Kol'tsov. Almost all the great social theorists had philological or ethnographic interests and rejoiced that a writer of their generation had written a History of the Russian People in answer to Karamzin's History of the Russian State.91
The man who dispelled the euphoria of friendly agreement and romantic fancy from Russian historical thinking was Georg Hegel, the last of the German idealistic philosophers to cast his spell over Russia. More than any other single man, he changed the course of Russian intellectual history during the 'remarkable decade' from 1838 to 1848. He offered the Russians a seemingly rational and all-encompassing philosophy of history and led the restless Westernizers-for the first time-to entertain serious thoughts of revolution.
The introduction of Hegelian thought into Russia followed a pattern that had become virtually institutionalized. The seed was planted in a new philosophic circle formed around a suitably handsome and brooding figure (Stankevich) with some intense younger members (Belinsky and Bakunin) and a new foreign center for pilgrimage and study (Berlin). The new prophet was hailed as 'the Columbus of philosophy and humanity' and became identified with a new intellectual generation. Stankevich, Belinsky, Bakunin, and Herzen-unlike Chaadaev, Odoevsky, and Khomiakov-had no memories of the war against Napoleon and the mystical hopes of the Alexandrian era. They were nurtured on the frustrations of Nicholas' reign, and Hegelian philosophy became their weapon of revenge.
As with the preceding Schellingian generation, the young Hegelians were inspired by a series of new professors: Redkin in law with his constant reminder that 'you are priests of truth'; Rul'e in zoology, tracing Hegel's
dialectic in the animal world; and above all, Granovsky in history. Like earlier circles, Stankevich's followers called one another 'brother' and engaged in group readings and group confessions.
As with previous Western thinkers, Hegel was known as much through Western discussions of his work as through original texts-Stankevich discovering him through a French translation, Herzen through a Polish disciple. But Hegel's basic conviction that history makes sense shone through even the most superficial reading of Hegel and appealed to the young generation. Hegel's famous declaration that 'the real is rational and the rational is real' offered reassurance to a generation overcome by a feeling of isolation and subjective depression. Stankevich wrote from Berlin that 'there is only one salvation from madness-history.'62 Hegel made it possible to find meaning in history-even in the oppressive chapter being written under Nicholas. 'Reality, thou art wise and all-wise,'63 Belinsky exclaimed, applying the adjectives of higher order Masonry, mudra i premudra, to the real world. One need no longer run away to find truth in a lodge or circle. Objective truth can be found in the everyday world by the 'critically thinking' individual who is informed by Hegelian teachings. 'As a result of them,' said Belinsky in the condescending tone of the converted Hegelian, 'I am able to get along with practical people. In each of them I study with interest the species and type, not the individual…. Every day I notice something… .'64 Coming at a time when depression, wanderings, and even suicide were taking an increasing toll among the romantic idealists, Hegel seemed to say that all purely personal and subjective feelings are irrelevant. Everything depends on objective necessity. 'My personal I has been killed for ever,' wrote Bakunin after his conversion; 'it no longer seeks anything for itself; its life will henceforth be life in the Absolute; but in essence my personal I has gained more than it has lost. … My life is now a truthful life.'65
Whether Slavophile or Westernizer, the older generation found this philosophy repellent. In comparison with Schelling, Hegel stood in the tradition of those who 'placed the root of intimate human convictions . . . outside the sphere of aesthetic and moral sense.'66
Many of the Hegelians who contributed to building the modern German state were excited by the Hegelian idea that the state was the supreme expression of the World Spirit in history. In Russia, too, Hegel found some disciples principally concerned with increasing rationality and civic discipline through the state; but they tended to be (like Hegel himself) relatively moderate figures mainly concerned with political reform: the so-called Rechtsstaat liberals like the historian Granovsky and Chicherin, the mayor of Moscow.
However, Hegel convinced many more Russians that the dialectic
requires not the apotheosis of the present state but its total destruction. Seemingly impossible changes suddenly became possible by considering the fact that history proceeded through contradictions. Even more than the Hegelian left in Germany, the Russian Hegelians found in his theory of history a call to revolution: to the
