In Belinsky we encountered that impressive aloofness from the latest ideas and authorities, which is the distinguishing feature and strength of Russian genius, something that Chaadaev vaguely foresaw, and about which we have said a great deal.
Maybe this aloofness, this inner freedom in the presence of outward slavery, deprived our life of many warm moments, many attachments, maybe it introduced an aching that manifested itself in the predominance of irony. But it gave us a terrible feeling of independence. Like children who knew neither father nor mother, we were poorer, but more free; our mother and our father were ideals, and therefore did not hinder us, and we infused them with our own purified image and likeness.
Belinsky's ideal, and our ideal, our church and parental home, in which our first thoughts and sympathies were nurtured, was the Western world with its scholarship and its revolution, with its respect for the individual, with its political freedom, with its artistic treasures and its unshakeable hope.
The ideal for Khomyakov18 and his friends lay in the past of the Russian people, their everyday existence, transformed into an unbelievable purity. But its apotheosis, however exaggerated, was, in its principal features, true. A saint's life is required for every canonization, and in the ideal of the Slavs, who had preserved the everyday features of our people, there was a great prophecy that they saw as a memory.
Which of these ideals had to be overcome? Or on what point could they be reconciled and go forth arm in arm?
The revolution of 1848 and its consequences brought with it elements of a resolution of this question.
At the very least, since that time the argument about which we have been speaking has changed.
It seemed that everything had abandoned the Russian development that had begun, it seemed that it would disappear like an unsuccessful experiment, and would plunge into a new millennium of serfdom, barbarity, and byzantinism.
The light from Europe that had entered through the cracks of our prison walls began to fade, and it was difficult to make anything out. In the West only dark clouds drifted by, jostling each other. [. . .] Russia grew silent. Having put up with it for a long time and seeing no way out, Granovsky, weary, worn out, blessed the fate of the deceased Belinsky and envied him his death!..19 Then he who passionately loved Russia asked if some sort of position could be found for him in Belgium, because while he had the strength to die for Russia, he did not have the strength to live there any longer.
But life went on.
Russian life is tenacious—all the adversity, all the blows missed their mark. Why? Isn't it because they did not apply the blows in the places on which the life and growth of this strange organism depended?
At the very height of despotism and persecution in Russia and reaction in Europe, the dominant turn of mind in Moscow and Petersburg began to worry about other issues. Khomyakov, K. Aksakov, and their circle gave particular attention to the Russian rural commune and the communal ownership of land. The Petrashevsky circle in Petersburg made the study of social- economic theory their program of study.
In this way the Slavophiles abandoned archeology.
With the Petrashevsky circle, a retrospective movement began, which of necessity had gained control of minds after the 14th of December. A practical move, which had become bookish, rushed once more out of the book and into practical activity. The Petrashevsky circle formed a society, and the government took it to be a conspiracy. There was no conspiracy, but Liprandi, like a truffle hunter, sniffed it out.20
The Petrashevtsy were led out onto the square, the maneuvers for execution were performed, and they were led off in shackles to "houses of the dead," and hard labor; but their ideas fermented, and were expressed in private arguments and discussions.21
One thing horrified everyone—the force majeure of imperial power. All human aspirations struck uselessly against an impregnable, granite barrier.
Faith in the impregnable power of Nicholas himself saved Russia—it brought the fleet of Sir Charles Napier to the Gulf of Bothnia.
Nicholas went to take a look at it and returned with aged eyes and a sunken face.22
He understood the calamity. the magic disappeared.
With every salvo in the Crimea the echo shook Petersburg; the walls of the Winter Palace cracked. Everyone began to suspect that only the outside layer was granite, and that inside was filler. Given the historically bureaucratic construction of the Russian imperial state, as with all government construction, some quartermasters had indulged in theft.
Nicholas understood that it was impossible to cover this up; wandering sleeplessly like a specter through the halls of his palace and making the sentries kneel and pray for victory, he began to think about betrayal, the betrayal of all that he held sacred, for which he had trampled his own human heart and ruined two or three young generations.
He wanted to issue a call to the Slavs, to restore the hated Poland and to get Hungary, which he had recently crushed, back on its feet, if only to once again have the Winter Palace unshakeable and threatening, to have the granite covering once again taken for a solid cliff, to not see any more the oscillating masts of Sir Charles Napier, and to not hear the echo of the Sevastopol thunder. Let the peasants arm themselves; let military units choose their own officers!
This was the end of the dark Petersburg reign. [. . .] The dismally suppressed dissatisfaction raised its head, and the whispering was replaced by a murmur: "What is this? After the blood, after the money, after being deprived of all human rights, they cannot defend the land from an enemy who lives at the other end of the world and sailed here on ships." This could not be printed—manuscript notebooks passed from person to person, were read aloud, because the former fear was gone. He is dead—what is there to fear? Everyone forgot that another he is alive. And through the burst dam rushed a cloudy foaming stream of liberal and conservative slops, carrying with it all kinds of things: shards of philosophical systems, the debris of social ideas, the corpses of drowned economic doctrines, the skeletons of constitutions, in a word, everything that had come up against the wall of censorship and had lain there for years rose to the surface in its old clothes, covered in slime and moss. This made respectable people angry because they wanted Russia to leave the embraces of Nicholas and emerge like Minerva, with an owl, a globe, and a compass. [. . .]
As soon as a person sees the possibility of taking part, of acting, action becomes a physiological necessity for him. It may be premature, not well thought out, even false, but it cannot fail to take place. No religion, no social theory can reach its full consciousness before the beginning of its implementation. [. . .]
The nonsense that rose to the surface floated away, but the movement of the waves remains. The habit of participating and declaring one's will and ideas—that will not pass away. [. . .]
Freeing ourselves surreptitiously from the idol worship of autocracy, without noticing it we came upon the path to another church, to another form of idol worship, but in it we did not find faith in ourselves. For every Western people the transition from a theological monarchy to a theologically liberal orthodoxy was easy. Our happiness and unhappiness lie in the fact that we are satisfied with less than they were, but demand much more. If you give us Protestantism, we will become spirit wrestlers.23 If you touch serfdom, we will demand the land as well. Our senses tell us, who have lagged behind, who are slaves, that the social religion that has outstripped us is not ours. What is surprising about the fact that it was all expressed awkwardly, chaotically, with desperate nihilism and hopeless Orthodoxy? The idea made itself understood with all the extremes of going from an infantile state of instinct to the possibility of consciousness.