some perspectives on russia and the west from the history of russian philosophy

International Phenomenological Society

Some Perspectives on Russia and the West from the History of Russian PhilosophyAuthor(s): John SomervilleSource: Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. 13, No. 3 (Mar., 1953), pp. 324-336Published by: International Phenomenological SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2103934 .

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SOME PERSPECTIVES ON RUSSIA AND THE WEST FROM THE

HISTORY OF RUSSIAN PHILOSOPHY*

Russia and the West is an expression which represents one of the great perennial themes of Russian philosophic thought-indeed, of Russian history as a whole, and increasingly so since the time of Peter the Great. Anyone who has concerned himself with the literature of either field may have been struck by the extraordinary number of books, chapters of books and articles bearing the title: Russia and the West, or, Russia and Europe. The centrality of this theme is manifested, of course, not only in the formal titles, but in the substance and focus of intellectual effort, as is shown by the fact that, in the whole of Russian history so far, the philosophic controversy which proved to be the longest in duration, the fullest in volume, and the broadest in scope is that between the Westernizers and the Slavophils. This essay makes no claim to deal with all of the many aspects and viewpoints which are of importance to the theme of Russia and the West. Our aim is to try to see what light may be thrown upon it from the history of Russian philosophy, and from the connection of that history with some other developments in Russian culture.

From the earliest moments of Russian history, there has been a special "situation" as between Russia and the countries of western Europe (with the addition now of other countries of the Western hemisphere)-a situation charged with certain fears, tensions, and interested motives on either side. The fears and tensions have always been increased by ignorance, as well as selfish interest, and overt conflicts have often been the result.

In one sense, the basic fact here is that Russia has been for centuries numerous in population, large in territory, rich in unexploited resources, and backward in technical accomplishments, compared to the leading countries of western Europe. She was thus at one and the same time a source of temptation and a source of fear. It was indeed an unusual combination of circumstances. Each one of the leading powers of western Europe was aware of the fact that it was technologically superior to Russia. Yet these powers were also aware that Russia was bigger than all of them put together. They usually felt that they could muster more actual strength on a given occasion, but they were also conscious of the potential strength

* Supplemented text of Phi Beta Kappa Lecture at University of Southern Cali- fornia, 1950 meeting. The writer is greatly indebted to the Hoover Institute and Li- brary of Stanford University, and its Director, Dr. Harold Fisher, for making available to him, through research grant, the Institute's excellent Russian materials from which this and other studies were made.

324



SOME PERSPECTIVES ON RUSSIA AND THE WEST 325

of Russia, in manpower and natural resources, and could not help but wonder what would happen when the fulness of that potential power became actual. All the while the western nations lived in relatively close proximity to the obviously spacious, desirable lands and obviously rich but undeveloped resources of what always seemed a half grown giant, or, at least, one who was only half awake.

One result of all this was what might have been expected-a series of invasions. They came, in the course of time, from the East as well as from the West, but it is with the West that we are concerned here. The territory fronting the West was always good Lebensraum, and the pattern of these invasions may in fact be seen centuries before even the existence of the earliest Russian state. In 551 A. D., Jordanes, chronicler of the Goths, describing their invading migrations, wrote ("Getica") that "Filimer, their king, decided that the army of the Goths with their families should move from that region," and, "in search of suitable homes and pleasant places, they came to the land of' Scythia." Hrdlicka, commenting on these happen- ings, says: "Whatever the details of their invasions, it is certain that by the beginning of the third century A. D. the Goths reached as far as the western parts of present Ukrainia and the Black Sea and the Danube, as well as over the Carpathians."'

Medieval Vikings and Teutons, Renaissance Poles and Swedes, modern Frenchmen and Germans, among others, followed the ancient Goths. Russia also invaded and expanded to the limit of its ability. The history of Russia is, in a sense, the story of a series of invasions and their various consequences. The biggest incursions were usually met by the successful strategy of allowing the invader to dissipate his strength in the vastness of the country. After the main danger from the East was finally surmounted in the sixteenth century, that quarter presented no major threat for some four hundred years, but became, on the contrary, a field for the aggressive expansion of Russia herself. However, the West remained a continuously potential and recurrently actual source of invasion. At the same time Russia, in Realpolitik, remained for the West an actually weak and backward, but potentially strong and fearful antagonist. At times the reaction to Russia became as extreme as that of King Sigismund of Poland who wrote to Queen Elizabeth of England in the effort to dissuade her from ex- tending trade relations with Russia, and especially from sending British craftsmen to teach the Russians, on the ground that it would prove too dangerous to other countries if Russia were to develop technical powers in any great degree.

While it may be-as Sir Bernard Pares was wont to maintain-that the Russia of Kiev and Novgorod could compare quite favorably with the

1 Peoples of the Soviet Union, p. 6.



326 PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH

centers of culture in western Europe prior to the Mongol invasion of the thirteenth century, it is undeniable that the yoke of conquest held Russia back, and prevented her from participating, in many ways that might otherwise have been possible, in the general movement of Europe. It is also undeniable that, ever since the Mongol yoke was thrown off, that is, during the whole of modern times, the feeling in Russia grew steadily that it was necessary for her to learn from the West. The consciousness of Western power, sometimes brought home to Russia the hard way, played in with and reenforced this feeling.

The most dramatic expression and embodiment of the drive to learn from the West in order better to compete with it was Peter the Great. In the historical sense it might even be said that the entire debate between the Westernizers and the Slavophils was about Peter: Were his purpose and the nature of his work a monstrous betrayal of the Russian spirit, or its Promethean emancipation? However conflicting the convictions of Russians may be upon this point, the outside observer can hardly help but feel that Peter was a completely Russian phenomenon, and most Russian of all precisely in virtue of presenting that combination which has frequently baffled the comprehension of the outside world: not only a radical upon the throne, but an absolute radical. Herzen, in his brilliantly written Past and Thoughts, records how the Westernizers of the eighteen-forties used to refer to Peter the Red, while Belinsky went so far as to write, in a letter to Kavelin: "Peter is my philosophy and my religion, my revelation in all that concerns Russia. He is an example for great and small alike, for anyone who wants to do something or be something useful."2

There is no doubt .that what Peter represented could be felt as a revolutionary e5lan. Yet he carried out his work in terms of despotic absolutism. While his purposes and reforming drive were associated in the West with the opponents of absolute monarchy, his methods of attaining his ends, and his conceptions of governmental power were in the West identified with absolute monarchy. In Anglo-Saxon countries there has been a marked tendency, over the centuries, to associate the progressive with opposition to strong and centralized governmental power. And it is at least possible that the influence of the "New Deal" in America, and Socialist Govern-

2 Sochineniia V. G. Beltinskogo v chetyrekh tomakh (Izd. F. Pavlenkova, S. P. B., 1900) Vol. IV, p. 1356. Translation J. S. The letter is dated Nov. 22, 1847. Turgenev had a somewhat similar interpretation: "Peter the Great was pre-eminently a Rus- sian-Russian, above all, in his reforms. The Russian is so convinced of his own strength and powers that he is not afraid of putting himself to severe strain; he takes little interest in his past, and looks boldly forward. What is good he likes, what is sensible he will have, and where it comes from he does not care." (A Sportsman's Sketches, Garnett trans., Vol. I, p. 17.)




ments in Britain will have no lasting effect on the predominant theoretical temper. That depends, of course, partly on the eventual duration of such phenomena. However, as Professor Carr acutely remarked in his "Soviet Impact on the Western World," the French tradition of social radicalism, as distinguished from the Anglo-Saxon, saw no obstacle to the realization of humanistic, progressive, and democratic objectives through the exercise of large-scale, centralized state power. In fact, the French, under their conditions, considered this by far the best method. Carr concluded that the Soviet Russian pattern had far more connection with the French (there is also a German link here which he did not emphasize) than with the Anglo- Saxon tradition in this regard.

Whatever differences of opinion there may be on the merits of the issues, most if not all of those who have had an opportunity to follow the Rus- sian controversy would doubtless agree that the Westernizers, all things considered (especially history) emerged victorious in the eyes of the world. The Slavophils had an idea-that Russia would solve her problems, and fulfill her destiny by relying on elements of her pre-Petrine Slavic culture, and especially on her eastern Orthodox Christianity. However, they lacked a coherent body of doctrine; and, unfortunately for them, not only were they trying to buck the tide of history, but far greater talent, energy, and crusading zeal were marshalled on the other side. The acclaim and recog- nition bestowed on figures like Belinsky, Herzen, and Chernyshevsky can probably not be matched by a single representative of the Slavophil camp- neither by the Kireevskys nor Aksakovs, Khomiakov nor Samarin, nor even by bitter opponents of the Westernizers who were not Slavophils, like Leontev and Pobedonostsev.

The case of Dostoevsky is exceptionally complex. In The Brothers Kara- mazov, when Alyosha and Ivan sit down to their famous debate about the Grand Inquisitor, Dostoevsky puts the following speech into the mouth of Ivan (the philosophic core of whose argument in the discussion as a whole clearly reflects Belinsky's thought): "I want to travel in Europe, Alyosha, I shall set off from here. And yet I know that I am only going to a grave- yard, but it's a most precious grave-yard, that's what it is! Precious are the dead that lie there, every stone over them speaks of such burning life in the past, of such passionate faith in their work, their truth, their struggle and their science, that I know I shall fall on the ground and kiss those stones and weep over them; though I'm convinced in my heart that it's long been nothing but a grave-yard."

It must of course be remembered that Dostoevsky had special feelings toward the character of Ivan, in whom the forces of Nihilism are manifest. It is evident in his work, over and over again, that, in the ultimate analysis,




Dostoevsky equated these forces with crime and suicide.3 In this regard, I am convinced it is entirely demonstrable that Dostoevsky misconstrued both the value-motives and the doctrinal content of Nihilism. His polemic against it (leaving aside the depth of creative feeling) will remind a student of philosophy who is able to examine the literature of Nihilism (in such writers as Chernyshevsky, Dobroliubov, and Pisarev, for example, far too little of those work is available in English4), of much of the contemporary polemic against schools of thought like logical positivism or Deweyan instrumentalism. Actually, the American or British reader would gain a much clearer idea of what Nihilism was about if he would compare it to movements like those; unfortunately, however, the exaggerated Dostoev- skian approach suggests an association of Nihilism with doctrines of violence in ethics rather than with the humanistic philosophy of science which it in fact aspired to be. The Nihilists were trying to build on founda- tions some of the most important parts of which were laid by British em- piricism, in the work of Bacon, Hobbes, Locke, Hume, and Mill.

This strong point of Anglo-Saxon culture, perhaps most richly conceived and expressed in the original Baconian humanism, and for which Dostoev- sky had an occasional blind spot, was exactly what Herzen seized upon so eagerly and rendered so brilliantly in his Letters on the Study of Nature, still untranslated into English, although as an essay in the philosophy of science, it is on a level which compares favorably with anything produced in the nineteenth century before Comte. However, not only is it impossible on this occasion to pursue the Dostoevskian theme to its conclusion, but, were we to take account of the battles over Nihilism as they were reflected in the great novels, we should certainly have to reckon with Turgenev as much as with Dostoevsky. In this connection, it would be incumbent upon us to note that, contrary to the general impression, it is quite probable that the character of Bazarov in Fathers and Children (so veracious a portrait of a Nihilist that it was accepted by their champion Pisarev), was actually created by Turgenev con amore, as Kropotkin affirmed and documented in

Anti-Nihilism was not, of course, always the same thing as Slavophilism. In fact, it was not necessarily the same thing as anti-Westernism. Dostoevsky, in his speech on Pushkin, did not hesitate to characterize "all our narrower nationalism, our Slavo- philism" as "only a great misunderstanding," and to insist that "the destiny of a Russian is pan-European and universal."

4Almost nothing of Pisarev, and not very much of Chernyshevsky; however, Selected Philosophical Essays of Dobroliubov appeared in an English translation by J. Fineberg, Moscow, Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1948, 650 pp. There is a companion volume, put out in the same year and by the same publisher, of Selected Philosophical Works by Belinsky; who did the work of translation, which is markedly inferior to that of the Dobroliubov volume, is not indicated. A Chernyskevsky translation from the same quarter has been announced as in preparation.




his Ideals and Realities in Russian Literature. Of course, though all Nihilists were Westernizers, not all Westernizers were Nihilists.

To explore these lines of inquiry in any detail would take us afield from our present theme. What we are chiefly concerned with here is the question: Precisely what was the attitude of the Westernizers as a group towards the West? Or, still more bluntly: Just what did they think Russia had to learn from the West? The answer is highly selective, and in some respects came to involve a large degree of historical irony. First and foremost, there was, of course, science, and all its technological offspring. Russia needed everything that science had to offer, first, because it represented the spread of enlightenment in a vast and general darkness of the mind. Science meant truth and literacy and civilization where before were superstition, ignorance, and barbarism. Not only was there a backwardness of the mind, but a stul- tification of the spirit, and science meant a humanistic emancipation from the unholy trinity of orthodoxy, autocracy, and nationalism, emancipation from serfdom and Tsardom, from "the spectacle of a land where men traffic in men, not having therefor even that justification which the American plantation owners craftily avail themselves of, affirming that a Negro is not a man," as Belinsky says in his flaming letter to Gogol.6 ". . . Russia sees its salvation," Belinsky goes on in this document which, written almost upon his death bed, summed up the moral meaning of his life's work, "not in mysticism, not in asceticism, not in pietism, but in the successes of civilization, of enlightenment, of humanity. It is not preach- ments that Russia needs (she has heard them aplenty), nor prayers (she has said them over and over aplenty!) but an awakening among her common folk of a sense of human dignity (for so many ages lost among the mire and manure) and rights and laws...."I

Science meant all this, and it meant, too, vast improvements in trans- portation and communication, in the production of necessities and luxuries, in all matters connected with health and disease, the alleviation of pain and the lengthening of life. Herzen could see a joyful source of philosophic significance in the the functioning of the telegraph or the laying of the Atlantic cable; and "Dostoevsky tells us that Belinsky, when he went for

6 London, 1905. " 'I loved Bazarov. I will prove it to you by my diary,' he (Tur- genev-J. S.) once told me in Paris" p. 107. It could not be said, however, that Herzen loved him. Neither could it be said that Turgenev agreed with Bazarov. It is a fact that in the sixties both Turgenev and Herzen were attacked as compromisers by the extreme radicals.

6 Translation of Bernard Guilbert Guerney in his A Treasury of Russian Literature. (Blakiston, 1945), p. 242.

7Ibid. There is more than one kind of irony in the fact that one of the chief charges of which Dost6evsky was found guilty in 1848, and for which he was made to pay with ten years of his life, was that he had taken part in circulating Belinsky's letter.




a walk, was fond of going to watch the building of the first railway station at St. Petersburg. 'It cheers me to stand there for a while, and watch the work going on. At last, I say to myself, we are going to have one railway at least. You can't imagine how this raises my spirits.' "8

There is decided piquancy in the fact that, at just about the time Belinsky was taking such encouragement from the thought that Russia was to have at least one railroad, Thoreau, writing in an America where railroads were beginning to multiply, could complain in Walden: "Men think it is essential that the Nation have commerce, and export ice, and talk through a telegraph, and ride thirty miles an hour.... But if we stay at home and mind our business, who will want railroads? We do not ride on the railroad; it rides upon us."9

Science and technology, in the strict sense, represent the more obvious and readily understandable part of what the Russian Westernizers wanted from the West. In regard to the social and political part of what Belinsky, Herzen, Chernishevsky, and their followers wanted, the situation is not so obvious, nor has it been readily understood. First of all, their desires were quite selective. No one of them simply wanted to copy the West mechan- ically or indiscriminately. Every one of them had a lively sense of certain faults and vices of the West which he was determined to avoid, which he was anxious not to import or encourage in Russia.

It is true enough but not precise enough to say that what they wanted was democracy and freedom. In fact, such a formulation will mislead us unless we take account of the concrete ideas of democracy and freedom which they formed in their minds and held up before Russia as an ideal. In

8 Thomas G. Masaryk, The Spirit of Russia, Vol. I (N. Y., Macmillan, 1919) p. 368. It is interesting to recall that Masaryk's two volumes, by far the best history of Russian philosophy now available in English (written originally in German under the title Ru8sland und Europa), represented in his own view a kind of study preliminary to the main part of his work, which was to deal with the whole problem of Russian philosophy and its relation to Russian culture by means of a thorough consideration of the significance of Dostoevsky.

9 Chap. II. While this is too interesting a contrast to go unnoticed, I venture to think that, had contact been possible, the author of Civil Disobedience and A Plea for Captain John Brown would have understood perfectly the author of the Letter to Gogol. They had a common enemy, the same that Turgenev identified: "My enemy had a definite configuration, a known name: the enemy was serfdom. Under this name I subsumed everything which I should have to fight against to the day of my death, everything I had sworn never to make terms with.... Such was my Hannibal's oath, nor was I the only one to make it. I took myself to the west to enable myself to fulfill it better.... I had to move to a distance from my enemy so that I might be able to hurl myself upon him with greater impetus." (Quoted, Masaryk, op. cit., I, p. 137.) A better expression of the psychology of the Westernizers could hardly be found. If, as Turgenev declared on another occasion, "Belinsky and his 'Letter' are my whole religion," it must be said that the novelist added to it many a beautiful prayer.




regard to this side of the matter certain significant trends of emphasis stand out in their thought taken as a-whole:

1. They tended to construe democracy in a broad social sense (particularly including the economic area), rather than in a strict political sense.

2. In the economic area they tended to construe the democratic ideal in terms of a basically socialist rather than a capitalist economic system.

3. In the political area they tended to construe democracy in terms of ends and results more than means and methods. They were predominantly and particularly suspicious of identifying political democracy with the mechanics of the parliamentary system, as if that told the whole story. In their eyes, such a system might exist, under certain conditions, and yet betray or pervert the ends and objectives of democracy.

4. They tended to construe freedom in terms of removing age-old shackles and burdens from the people by centralized state action and large-scale social projects, rather than in terms of the laissez-faire liberal tradition which emphasized non-intervention by the state.

These tendencies might be summed up in one way by saying that what the Russian Westernizers fell in love with was not the actual conditions in the status quo of the West, but rather the ideals, aspirations, and objectives found in the philosophy and humanistic literature of the West, as yet un- realized in practice. Mainly it was the Word not yet made flesh to which they responded. Another way of putting the same fact is to say that they were drawn more to the social radicals of the West than to the liberals. In taking their position they apparently knew exactly what they were doing, and carried it off with a high degree of realistic aplomb. Herzen, for example, in a letter quoted in his Memoirs says: "You love European ideas- I love them too. With these ideas and only with them, can Russia be brought into possession of (her) heritage.... But you are unwilling to recognize that contemporary life in Europe is not in harmony with her ideas."'0 In his reply to Michelet, which reads almost as if it were intended for today as much as for a hundred years ago, he adds: ". . . the past of the Western European peoples serves us as a lesson and nothing more."'

Likewise characteristic of the acuteness and sophistication found among the Westernizers is the following passage from a letter of Herzen to Tur- genev, written December 29, 1862:

Christianity has grown shallow and quietened down into the calm stony haven of the Reformation; the Revolution too has grown shallow, and sunk into the calm sandy haven of liberalism. Protestantism, a religion austere in

0 My Past and Thoughts, Garnett trans., VI, p. 86. 11 Ibid., VI, p. 240. This document is all the more significant, as it shows, with

characteristic force and spirit, how Herzen drew the line between Russian pro- Westernism and Western anti-Russianism.




trifles, has found the secret of reconciling the Church, which despises earthly goods, with the supremacy of commerce and profit. Liberalism, austere in political trifles, has learned even more artfully to unite a continual protest against the government with a continual submission to it.12

Interestingly enough, the same sort of characterization of liberals and liberalism may be found a dozen years earlier, in Herzen's Letters from France and Italy.

The liberals-those political Protestants-in their own turn the most frightful conservatives, are all for tinkering with charters and constitutions, but they view the spectre of socialism with fear and trembling, which is not at all surprising, for they have something to lose and something to fear. But we are not at all in that position; our approach to social questions is much simpler and more naive.

The liberals fear to lose freedom, but we have no freedom. They fear government interference in business, but among us, government interferes in everything. They fear to be deprived of personal rights, but we still need to acquire them.... Europe is sinking because it cannot cast off the heavy load of precious freight which it has gained in distant and perilous voyages. But to us this is artificial ballast. Overboard with it. Forward on the high seas under full sail.'3

Clearly, such a statement on Herzen's part does not represent an aban- donment of Westernism, but an expression of its conditions: an enthusiastic acceptance of what was felt to be strong and good in the West, but a no less forceful rejection of what was felt to be weak and bad. And the acceptance, it should be emphasized, was not just agreement in a general sense. It meant taking that which they accepted from the West as a very guiding star for their own development. In a remarkable passage Herzen goes sc far as to say: ". . . one thing we have discovered for certain, and it will not be rooted out of the consciousness of the coming generations; that is: that the free and rational development of Russian national existence is at one witl the ideas of Western Socialism."'14

Chernyshevsky shared Herzen's dislike for the Western liberalism which while striking so virtuous an attitude in politics, closed its eyes to what wa. happening in economics, and whose virtue, even in politics, so often seeme to them more theoretical than actual. As early as 1848, when he was bu twenty years of age, he defined in his diary the following position, which] became characteristic of his career as a whole:

I do not like these gentlemen who talk freedom, freedom, but whose idea of freedom is limited to a declaration on paper which has no real implementa-

12Ibid., VI, p. 65. 13 Pisma iz Frantsii i Italii (1847-1852). Written under the pseudonym of IskandE

(London, Trubner, 1858), pp. xi-xiii. Translation J. S. 14 My Past and Thoughts, II, p. 278. Italics of text.




tion in life. They are willing to abolish the old laws which contain references to inequality among citizens, but they are not willing to abolish the social conditions which actually enslave nine-tenths of the people.15

As Chernyshevsky saw it, this actual emancipation of the people from the economic and social conditions of life which enslaved them could never be brought about by stressing political liberalism. In the first place, the problem was as much economic as political, so that, in his eyes, as in those of Herzen and most of the Westernizers, political liberalism which was frightened of, or refused to commit itself to radical economic and social reforms would not meet the needs of Russia. In other words, democratic concepts which stressed political mechanics and methods rather than social objectives and consequences seemed to them to miss the point, particularly insofar as Russia was concerned.

It is significant that Chernyshevsky puts the matter specifically in terms of freedom. It would certainly not be accurate to say that Chernyshevsky and the other Westernizers were insensitive to the values of freedom. It is rather that they were very careful to inquire: Whose freedom? And, freedom from what? Their predominant feeling was that the liberalism of the West in actual practice gave the advantages of freedom to the minority group who were owners of capital rather than to the masses of people, and that the freedom in question consisted largely in being let alone by the state. This system of freedom really helped the budding capitalist who had resources and intelligence, but the Russian thinkers were not convinced that it would particularly help masses of illiterate peasants and improver- ished proletarians. What the Westernizers were primarily after was a way of freeing such people from such conditions. It was not so much the ideal of individuals free from the state, as it was the kind of state which would free the masses from oppressive conditions of life. In this matter they seemed to feel that the liberals of the West did not speak their language, but that the radicals of the West did. The thinking of the radicals appeared to them deeper and more realistic precisely because it had more scope, because it insiste@4'on putting political, economic, and social questions all in one package, and approaching human problems through a unified view of the social totality. Thus Chernyshevsky speaks of himself as having been "a decided partisan of the socialists and communists."'

15 Dnevnik. Entry under Sept. 8, 1948 (Polnoe sobranie sochinenii 1939), Vol. I, p. 110. Translation J. S.

l6 Ibid., I, p. 122. It should perhaps be emphasized that we are dealing throughout with the main line and predominant tendency of the Westernizing school of thought. However, one notable exception at least, should not go unmentioned. Peter Chaa- daev (1794-1856), author of Philosophical Letters (originally written in French, eventually published in both Russian and French), was one of the first Russians to deal seriously with philosophy of history in a modern way. He is usually classed as the




Referring to this approach, Berdiaev, who emphasizes his deep sympathy with tle social ideas and objectives, if not the metaphysical position of the radical Westernizers, uses the word "totalitarian." "It is very important to note," he says, "that Russian thinking has an inclination toward totalitarian doctrines and a ... way of looking at life as a whole. That is the only kind of teaching that meets with any success among us. The religious make-up of the Russian people plays a part in this."''7

Long before now the reader will no doubt have perceived the historic irony which was referred to earlier: that which seems, in the eyes of so many Western spokesmen of today to set Russia apart from the West, and to make her anti-Western, that for which she is so frequently condemned and feared in the West-the socialistic-communistic radicalism which she represents-is one of the chief desiderata which the classic Russian Western- izers found in the West, one of the chief reasons why they admired and respected the West.

Whether it be good or bad, it certainly is not strange that the main force of the Westernizing stream of thought played in the direction of Social Democracy rather than liberalistic capitalism in Russia. The leading West- ernizers exhibited remarkable agreement in wanting the advantages and benefits of Western scientific technology, but not the social evils, as they saw them, of the capitalist economic system.

Hence, it is not surprising to find that Lenin's teacher, Plekhanov, one of the first Russian Marxists, is generally regarded as a thinker who carried on where Chernyshevsky left off, much as Chernyshevsky carried on where Herzen left off, or Herzen where Belinsky left off. In Plekhanov, Western- ism as Russian radicalism is almost taken for granted. The only question is, how to apply it to best advantage, and work out its political and economic future under the actual conditions of Russia. Plekhanov himself, who grew into Marxism out of narodnichestvo, (socialism based on agriculture and the peasantry rather than industry and proletariat), criticized Cherny- shevsky and Herzen for a certain narodnik utopianism.'8 earliest of the Westernizers, although the burden of his thought had this peculiarity: he admired the West for what it had done in developing and socializing the religious tradition of Christianity; and he saw the mission of Russia as building the Kingdom of God on earth. Thus he was at one with the later Westernizers in looking to the West for the lesson Russia had to learn, only they did not agree with him on what the lesson was. He was influenced by idealistic and religious thinkers of the West, like Schelling, Bonald, de Maistre, and Jung-Stilling. In a sense, he was close to the Slavo- phils in the thought that Russia's problem could be solved only on the basis of a Christian world view socially realized; but he differed with them on where to look for guidance in working out such a world view. He condemned Russia's pre-Petrine past, whereas the Slavophils idealized it. What he tended to idealize was the unified social- religious life of western Europe in the Middle Ages.

17 The Russian Idea, p. 31. N. Y., Macmillan, 1948. 18 Narod means people, especially the peasantry.




However, it should be noted that none of the earlier Westernizers showed any special sympathy for Marxism as differentiated from other schools of socialism or communism. (The particular distinction between socialism and communism which is drawn today did not exist prior to the time of World War I. Marx and Engels usually called their general social doctrine by the name of communism in their early days, and socialism in their later days.) While Belinsky did not live long enough to make contact with any considerable body of Marxian work (and, apparently, did not know Ger- man), this could not be said of Herzen and Chernyshevsky. They knew of Marx, and of many Marxian ideas, but they evidently did not choose to attach their work to them in any central or deliberate way. Herzen, in fact, took sharp exception to what he considered the rudeness of Marx's polemics, and the intrigues of certain followers of Marx against him."9

One is also not surprised to find that Marx and Engels in their day bestowed high praise on various representatives of Russian Westernism, such as Chernyshevsky and Dobroliubov.20 Nor is it surprising, finally, to observe that Soviet thought in general has displayed as marked a sympathy for the representatives of Westernism, as antipathy for those who stood in opposition. In respect to all these issues, however, in connection with the currents of the present day, there are far too many factors involved for justice to be done them within the scope and limits of the present paper.

JOHN SOMERVILLE.

HUNTER COLLEGE.

19 References of this kind will be found in My Past and Thoughts, Garnett trans., III, p. 97; IV, p. 314, p. 317. At the same time, Herzen does not hesitate to describe himself as "a socialist and a revolutionary" as in IV, p. 116; and emphasizes, in Pisma iz Frantsii i Italii that "It is impossible for a socialist in our time not to be a revolutionary.' Op. cit., p. 237. Herzen could also make a spirited defense of materialism, as witness his crackling correspondence with Petcherin in Vol. IV of My Past and Thoughts. This was characteristic of the Westernizers in general, who were consider- ably influenced by philosophers like Vogt, Moleschott, Btichner and Feuerbach, among others.

20 Cf. Marx's Preface to the Second Edition of the English translation of the first volume of Capital in which he refers to Chernyshevsky as a "master mind." Engels evaluated Dobroliubov and Chernyshevsky, and, in general, the "historical and critical school in Russian literature" as superior to French and German "official history." Cf. M. Iovchuk, Osnovnye cherty russkoi klassicheskoi filosofii XIX veka, p. 29. At the same time, as is well known, a bitter dispute of considerable historical significance arose between Marx and Bakunin, a figure of major importance among the Westernizers. But the very dispute itself emphasizes the strength of the Western orientation: it was in one sense a quarrel over means and methods of implementing a radical social philosophy which on both sides had grown out of Hegel and Left Hegel- ianism. Bakunin was not only influenced by the Western world but, as a founder and leader of international anarchism, exerted, in turn, a decided influence upon that world, whether for good or ill.




EXTRACTO La importancia del tema Rusia y Occidente puede verse desde el comienzo

mismo de la historia rusa. En los tiempos modernos, Pedro el Grande re- presenta el primero y el mas dramatico de los esfuerzos por aprender del Oeste, a fin de competir mej or con 61. La significaci6n de sus proyectos y -prop6sitos constituy6 una cuesti6n fundamental en el importante debate filos6fico que se desarrollo a lo largo del siglo XIX entre los occidentalistas y sus contraries, principalmente los eslav6filos.

La posici6n basica que adoptaron en sus escritos los principales occidentalistas, como Belinsky, Dobroliubov, Pisarev y Chernichevsky, era la de que Rusia podia tan s6lo resolver sus problemas asimilando y aplicando creadoramente a sus peculiares condiciones propias los dos grandes pro- ductos de la cultura occidental: la tecnologia cientiffica y la ideologia social, los cuales, en su mayor parte, se asociaban al radicalismo occidental. No era el status quo capitalist liberal de Occidente lo que atraia principalmente a los occidentalistas rusos, sino mas bien sus proyectos y dQctrinas radical- socialistas. Comprendiendo las implicaciones de esa situaci6n, la cual no carece de una cierta ironia hist6rica, podria aclararse mucho de lo que ha ocurrido en el desarrollo de la cultura rusa.



some perspectives on russia and the west from the history of russian philosophy

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