aristocrat (and one of three well-known brothers). Each was a teacher of law Mid apopularizer of Auguste Comte's pleafor a new non-metaphysical science of society; each enjoyed 8???* ?????? '?, ?* jjav, ??^ djg^ ?' ???]? and unnatural death.
' Maikov was the son of a famous painter, the grandson of a director of the imperial theater, and a descendant of the most famous masonic poet ol the eighteenth century. Had he not died in a mysterious drowningJn_?847, it is likely that this extraordThafyiMd'pfo^igyivo^ra^'ve beenthe most f???????!*^1????~??? 1???8, Includ^ig~ffis^stogjushed^*brotiier, the poet ????????? received ? ??????^?^??????? age of nineteen, founded a journaTfor the study of society, The Finnish Herald, at twenty-two, was the principal author of the first volume of the Pocket Dictionary of Foreign Words Used in Russian, and wrote two thick volumes of essays (and many others that remained unpublished) on every subject from chemistry to agriculture. He was hjule^byjnany as the leading literary critic in Russia before dying shortly after his twenty-fourth birffiday]
Maikov's~most important_essay was his long and never complgisd. 'Social Sciences in Russia' 011845, inwhich hecalled for a new 'Philosophy oj_gociety'_to provide the basis for a regeneration of Russian life. This 'plulosoplry_ofjoaety'' was to be a compTrmtionjjLthe historical ideas of Auguste Comte and the moralistic socialism of Blanc andF^rojidbaa. Only such a philosophy can provide the basis for an 'organic' culture that will avoid the 'disembodied' metaphysical speculations of German culture ('the Hindus of today') and the 'one-sided' and 'soulless' English preoccupation with economic production. The preoccupation of Adam Smith and English liberal economists with wealth as something separable from the quality of social development he finds 'false in theory and disastrous in practice.'8
Miliutin picked up where Maikov left offwith his long study, 'The
???1?1??????~?^???1????«?^whlcTHvlSTenaTjzeffjiir
the~firsFfour issues ot The Annals of the Fatherland (the journal on which
MaikoT]5d^ustli^^1847.
Miliutin contrasts the vigor of French social thought with the degeneracy of bourgeois sociel^r^oWiiis~aftTcles~and his '1??????*?? Moscow 'Unrvgtaly reflect a Comtian optirffisnTaBouf the ?? ^?????????????? ^the struggle of interests' characteristic onTgfowing economy luce that of France' and
J r* JtlUKM
England through the 'future development of science.' Miliutin was a friend of many Decembrists and a leading court advocate of reform in the institution of serfdom; and his two brothers were to become important court figures under Alexander II. But Miliutin succumbed to the melancholia of late Nicholaevan..R?aa^nd_s^othirnself in 1855.
The translation of the new interestmsocialauestions into socialist.
?? Eeycircles of ueHfflchoiaevanj|ra^
activity was the_worlc of thelast of 1
that of Michael Petrashevsky. In conscious imitation of the French Encyclopedists, Petrashevsky sought to gather a groupthat would lead the intellectual development of the ftu^slanpeopTe! Tbe~~P~ockeT~Dictionari was drawn up by Petrashevsky and Maikov to serve as its Encyclopedia and also as a kind of ideological guidebook for combating German idealism. Young ___
writers and civil servants largely ^??^????????? gathered to discuss
the l^oyatjon^Q?j|gg^thinkers.
Lamennais' Words of a Believer was read in a Church Slavonic translation at one meeting, and friends of the group scheduled a dinner to honor the birthday of Fourier on April 7, 1849.9
Though the various programs discussed by the Petrashevsky group came to notiWngJTtTlIeTeTmT decidedliijgra^^
of affiliated provincial circlestoappliarlmce the time of the Decembrists-
stretc?ln^?nI^^m^^^Sra'Estnorfla, to KaZaTTTmTIfenmldle VoIgaTA
recenTfefurnee from the revolutionaiyTworld of Western Europe, Speshnev,
cafiedlumselfa Cominunistrafter than a socialist and urged the crgation of
a 'central committee' or^neJtSeleven^rrh^wo4^to be
as^ociatgdJwI|E eacK affiliated^ group_ A military officer from the East,
Chernosvitov, suggested that eastern Siberia be separate from Russia and
joined through revolution to a great Pacific empire that was to include
Mexico, California, and Alaska.10 Others ^?^?^^???^?^??^??-^?^^.
Lsignedjtojttunsform the peasant communTmto the nucleus of a new socialist Jp3 amp;
society^' '
Some of the most imaginative minds of the late nineteenth century servedjheir intellgfijiiji^
biologist and ideologist of militant Pan-Slavism, Nicholas Danilevsky, the satirist, Michael Saltykov-Shchedrin. Above all, in future importance, stands^ejier4rJojto?j^^jajwrng writer lnterSte^TfrthTTSeTBfpropa? gan3aamong the Old Belkyersand^ciaMfrtmllt onTES*lffllage~-commurie ahjnjrtejibrrns of nrgani7^tion~n~He~was jhe one wlro*i'ead3nlie*Petrashev-sky group Belinsky's famous letter ^buking''tjDg6TTfor his reconciliation^ wi??ffiap^x? s?r^dinsk^s-^e?tfasti?g-gf Christ's^xample with that of official Christendom was to ????? echo not only in Dostoevski's Brothers
Although the Petrashevtsy were not explicitly Christian (unlike the contemporaneous Ukrainian circle, the Brotherhood of Cyril and Methodius), they didclaim to be rediscovering 'the teaching of Christ in its original purity.,' which 'had as its basic doctrine 'charity ana its ?? the realization of freedom and the destruction of private ownership.'1* Following Saint-Simon and Comte, they spokeof a 'new'Qvristianityj4a new 'nor mal' and 'natural' society ofso?ialharrhwty'That was evolving peaceftrHy
