If we follow the development of the Russian intelligentia we notice at once that all the currents of its intellectual life are, at the present time at least, converging into one centre, swelling the stream, that is already running high, to a vast and mighty ocean, which is sending its waters, through many channels, all over Europe. This centre is literature. Since the foundation of the Academy of Science by Peter the Great Russian achievements in the domains of science, technical education, art, sculpture, music, painting, history and philosophy have been very small.
In science and art the Russians have produced nothing of importance, nothing original. Mendeleev, Lobatshevski, Pirogov, Botkin, Soloviev are a few scientific names of some eminence but they are few as compared with Europe and America. Many others, who are known to the western world as Russians, are in reality Germans or Armenians. The great historian, Karamzin, was of Tatar extraction. In the domain of art Vereshchagin is a Russian but Ainasowski is an Armenian, Brulov a Prussian and Antokolski a Jew (cf. Bruggen, Das heutige Russland, p. 182).
Russia has had no Spinoza and no Kant, no Newton and no Spencer. Since the foundation of the University of Moscow in 1755, some semblance of Russian philosophy has appeared but a Soloviev and a Grote, a Troitski and a Preobrajenski have only introduced the philosophy of Germany, France, and England into Russia, but not worked out their own philosophical systems. Thus, whilst Russian scientists, technicians, artists and even musicians have to go abroad to complete their education, Russian philosophers borrow from Hegel or Descartes, from Locke or Comte. This is, however, not the case with Russian literature. Russia has quickened her development in the realm of literature. Her decades were centuries. Rapidly she has lived through phases of growth and evolution, of achievement and reflection which have filled long periods in other people's lives. The peaks of Russian creative power in this domain, the productions of Pushkin and Turgeniev, of Lermontov, Dostoievski and Tolstoi proudly face the heights of literary western Europe.
Whilst, however, the Russian genius of the intelligentia centred its force in literature, this literature bears the unmistakable trait, that distinguishes it from European literature, of having a tendency to teach and of taking a moral aspect. Russian literature on the whole has not entered the sphere of artistic interest, it has always been a pulpit whence the word of instruction came forth. With very few exceptions, like Merejkovski and Andreiev, the Russian author is not practising art for art's sake (Vart pour I'art) but is pursuing a goal, is accomplishing a task.
The Russian literature is a long cry of revolt, a continuous sigh or an admonition. Taine says, somewhere, when speaking of Stendhal and Balzac: "They love art more than men — they are not writing out of sympathy for the poor, but out of love for the beautiful." This is just what the Russian modern author is not doing. The intellectual and instructive moments predominate over the emotional and artistic.
This state of the intellectual development is explained by what has been stated above. It is due to the sudden introduction of western ceremonies and superficial civilisation, followed by a powerful foreign influence on the one hand, and the general social and political state of the country. When Peter had suddenly launched Russia—which was floating like some big hulk between Asia and Europe — towards the west, the few who helped him in this endeavour came under the complete influence of western thought and manners. St. Petersburg soon became a Versailles in miniature. Voltaire, Diderot, and the encyclopaedists governed and shaped Russian thought and Russian society. But not only France — Germany too, and England, Byron and his individualism, had gained great sway in Russia. The independence of Russian thought and its intellectual development only dates from about 1840. When it awoke at that time, when it became conscious of itself, it felt that it had a great work, a great mission to fulfil. Surrounded on one side by a people that was ignorant, ready to sink lower and lower; opposed, on the other, by a government that did its best to check individualism and independence in every possible way—the Russian intelligentia felt its great responsibility.
Surrounded by a population whose mental development was on a very low level, the atmosphere was and still is not propitious for the cultivation of art or science, whilst the Russian author had no time simply to admire the beautiful in nature but was compelled to look round and try what good he could do. Thus Russian genius concentrated itself in literature as the best vehicle to expose the state of Russian society. The Russian writer became an apostle. He is not anxious to be artistic, to shape his style and to be fascinating, but to give as true a picture of Russian life as he possibly can, to show the evil and to suggest the remedy.
Such, in broad lines, is the present state which the few, whom we termed the Russian intelligentia, have reached in their intellectual development. In a moment of strength the Russian genius has attained itself, with self- asserting individuality. Its task is great, its obstacles are manifold, but it fights valiantly and moves on steadily. This only applies to the few. When the day of political freedom will dawn for Russia, then and then only the great evolution and the intellectual development of Russia itself, of the Russian people as a whole, will begin. On the day when civil and religious despotism, that everywhere crushes individuality, will cease, then the genius of the Russian people will spread its pinions, and the masses will awake from their inertia to new life, like the gradual unfolding of spring into summer.
CHAPTER I LAND AND PEOPLE AND EARLY HISTORY
[To 1054 a.d.] EXTENT, CONFIGURATION, AND CLIMATE
To arrive at a just appreciation of Russia's genius we must have a knowledge of the soil that nourishes her, the peoples that inhabit her, and the history through which she has passed. Let us begin with nature, soil, and climate.
The first fact that strikes us in regard to the Russian empire is its vast- ness.1 Its colossal dimensions are so out of proportion to the smallness of the greatest among European states, that, to bring them within the sphere of human imagination, Alexander von Humboldt, one of the greatest scientists of his century, makes the statement that the portion of the globe under Russia's dominion is greater than the entire surface of the moon at its full.
The territories of that vast empire acknowledge no limits; its vast plains stretch toward the heart of the old continent, as far as the huge peaks of central Asia; they are stopped between the Black and the Caspian seas by the great wall of the Caucasus, whose foot is planted below the sea-level, and the height of whose summits exceeds by eight hundred feet that of Mont Blanc.
In lakes Ladoga and Onega, in the northwest, Russia possesses the greatest lakes in Europe; in Lake Baikal, in Siberia, the greatest in Asia; in the Caspian and Aral seas, the greatest in the world. Her rivers equal her plains in proportion: the Obi, the Yenisei, the Amur, in Asia; the Dnieper, the Don, the Volga, in Europe. The central artery of Russia is the Volga — a river that, in its winding course of nearly twenty-four hundred miles, is not altogether European. Nine tenths of the Russian territory are as yet nearly empty of inhabitants, and nevertheless the population, according to the census of 1897, taken over all the empire except Finland, numbered 129,000,000; and the annual increase is very nearly two million.
1 According to recent computations the Russian Empire covers an area of 8,660,000 square miles— about one sixth of the land surface of the globe.
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Europe is distinguished from other regions of the globe by two characteristics which make her the home of civilisation: her land is cut into by the seas — "cut into bits," as Montesquieu says; she is, according to Humboldt, "an articulated peninsula " ; her other distinctive advantage is a temperate climate which, in great measure the result of her configuration, is duplicated nowhere under the same latitude. Russia alone, adhering solidly to Asia by her longest dimension, bordered on the north and northwest by icy seas which permit to the borders few of the advantages of a littoral, is one of the most compact and eminently continental countries of the globe.