successoTlhTirnewji^^When it
collapsed m_i856, most of its personnel moved to St. Petersburg, where the
most important newnmtT-WBsTerrflz^:
rarjgjng ????? amp;????^????'?^?? b^A^M^fTpiayr''
??? nntTmistic hone that a new sociaTorder migbLcpme into being in
The optimistic hope that a new sociaTorder the WesForUrte-bSsis of advanced French sociaf theories was deajj^a fourttH9tow'~b'y~tne failure of the
W0i1abwiar5jrprmn^*of 1848-9 in J WSftern and Centra Europe. Russia did not participate in' thiswave~5f revolutions and thus did notfe^bdjscredite5~bytEeir faim7e7Tn3eed, the Russians~werr7Tifm^eliced by the impassioned writings of Herzen, who witnessed these events, and Bakunin, who participated in them, to conclude that the torch of leadership in the coming transformation of society had simply been passed from Jthe^jiefeated workers of the West to the slumbering peasants of the East.
1. me 1 urn ? juciui x nvugru
The furious„ reaction of Nicholas I to the revolutionary events of
48-9 further crystallae‹rtEe~sSmT^social
thinners camTtcnEeelwM^iefrustrated Western hopes for social reforrrl''
???~????31^^^^^^^?^??^2^^^? ^^n|^threie~were ??????^ and^exiled) and the^dispatching of Russian troops to help put down the KossuffiTebellion in Hungary^^trrmn^e~A^H!^fT849-were followed'' by a crude effo^Jo^ill_o^jth?intellectual ferment of the 'remarkable de6a3e/' No more than three hundred students were to be enrolled in a university at one time. Philosophy was banned from the curriculum, and all public merujrojofJ^linskyTnanTe^was ????????? Letters signed 'all my love' aeifc?ensored foxthehnpligd denial^ of affection 5-G^lMidlBg[l^T' and thgjnusical compositions of an astonished Rubinstein were confiscated as he returjjeiLlttfflP^
notesiinight be_a secret revolutionary code.
Lacking as yet the 'escape valve' of large-scale emigration to America that was draining off so many of the revolutionary intellectuals of Central Europe, the ^Russian intellectuals compensated themselves with the _vague and appeahngjd^ajIilrR^
kinooiT^merica in the making. GlorifilSioTrtiftne communal peasant
forms of organization among the~Sravs~was thus corribmed wiTSTEe*political
ideal of a loose, democratic federalism. Bakunin proposed atteTTHe* llav
Congress of 1848 in Prague the ideal of a revolutionary federation of Slavic
peoples opposed to the 'knouto-Germanic' rule of central authority. A
friend of Herzen wrote a verse play praising the 'socialist' William Penn,
and spoke of America as the 'natural ally' of a regenerated Russia.21
Herzen believed that the Padfib^JceanjsQuld become the 'Mediterranean
Sea oTthe future,' which Russia and. America would jointly Duua.'!! Kussian
radwSs_fc]lowed_with romantic fascination the Jiajf^understood develop-
ments injjje^d^tant^ja^tmejinv^advance'
resembled the Russianj^astward advance in so manyjespects: and the semi-anarchistic criticism of all existing political authorities which was to become commonplace in Russian radical social thought was rarely extended to America.
Saltykov spoke retrospectively of the Petrashevtsy as a group which wanted 'to read without knowing the alphabet, to walk without knowing how to stand upright.'23 Yet its strivings inside Russia and the prophetic reflections of Herzen and Bakunin outside reflect the turn in mid-century Russian thinking from philosophic to social thought: from Hamlet to Don Quixote, to use the terminology of Turgenev's famous essay of the late fifties. In order for the brooding Hamlet to become the chivalric Don Quixote-to leave his castle and set forth into the countryside- there had
to be an ideal to serve. TMs^j.deal was the vision of a coming golden age in which there would be no more serfdom, bureaucracy, private property, or oppressive_central authority. In its place menwould ???^?~???????1??1 Christianity, build socialism on the model of the peasant commune, and live under a lapse federal system vaguely like that of distant America. These themes were to be developed more explicitly and fully during the reign of Alexander II, and particularly in the populist movement; but all of them are already present in this initial turn to social thought in the late Nicholaevan period.
More than any other single event, the Crimean War opened Russia up-for a moreseriQijsand widespread discussion of social issues. Indeed, of all thef leitmotivs of modern Russian history, few are more striking than the unsettling influence of great wars on Russian thought and culture. Just as the' schism in the Church was an outgrowth of the first northern war and Peter's reforms of the second, just as the agitation of the late years of Alexander I's reign and the Decembrist uprising grew out of the Napoleonic invasion, so did the great wars of the late nineteenth and the twentieth century have a profound ancl unsettling~tnffiact on Russian .cultural development. The Turkish1 waf Of the'rriid-seventieswas followed by the movements of revolutionary populism inside Russia; the Japanese war of 1904-5, by the Revolution of 1905; and the First World War, by the revolutions of 1917. War invariably put new strains on the outmoded social and economic system and aTthe^sameJS^exposeQ^^trssKtrrthinkel'S ? the methods and ideas of
the outsig
The Crimean War appears as a watershed in Russian history. Resounding defeaTon Kussian soil shattered'! hn ???1?|????????1?????'? of ?cr7-olaevan Russia and left a legacy of national bitterness as well as an incentive'' f6Finnovation_and reform. The failure of Russia's traditional allies, Austria
and Prussjau. to comejtoJier affidiscteffitejjlhrae'SoBtmefu; forced Russia to look to the victorious liberal
