A trend toward communalism among native sectarians was evidenced, however, in thei!|3oTw1tfrtheTppTaTa^
"?????????????
'seKIcTobshchykh). This sectadarjted_Jhe_ old
– ?~-,^v-.. ???? ??? jjiyunciii activities, inier-
preting St. Paul literally, this sect insisted that eachjnember was* actually" and literaljybutjpnejwtof a common body. All things were sHared iff common by the nine menanHthreewomen" in each commune; public confessions were conducted in order to excoriate infection from any part of the body; and each person in the community was given a function corresponding to some bodily organ. Abstract thought was the exclusive province of the thinker (myslennik); physical work, of "the hands"; and so on. In this way, no one was complete in and of himself; each onederiejodfid^gn thejamb,. munity. The "tidings of Zion" sect of the TKjiys reveals the same pre-????????? with a new ideal conception of society, insisting that the coming millennial kingdom should be divided into twelve inseparable parts and that each member of each kingdom should live in total equality. This form of social organization was to be accompanied by the divinization of nterr,"ffte rearrangement where necessary of his physical organs, and thephgic,aj enlargeraenipf the earth in order to accommodate his expandingphysical needs.
In this sameperiod one finds the first serious interest in social analysis
? and socialism among the "aristocratic intdl amp;cTu^sTTTieyTurHed" to social
T^migHrT^^"peaceful
vj political change. Russian thinkersot tnThfe'Weliolae'v^
develop a program of reform for the real world, gradually concluded that
the Decembrists had chosen the wrong field of battle. Political programs.
constitutions, projects, and so on, were merely an elegant form of deception that the bourgeoisie of England and France had devised for deceiving and enslaving their people. The most magnetic figures of the decadejall tended to reject j›olilisjal_reform as a subject worthy of consideration. Herzen,J3ehnsky, and Bakjinin all thought in terms of a socjaLrather than
a political transformation. All had briefperiods ofjdealizmg_theniUn^JsS as a possible instrument for-erecting socjaJTptrirm; but none of them ever idealized the forms of political.organization to be found in the liberal democracies of Western Europe. Whether one's vision of social transformation begaTn^Pliberating Slavs abroad or serfs at home, the ultimate objective remained that which a Serb explained to a radical itinerant Russian in the 1840's: the creation of a new type of human society in which men can live simply aijJgcjnmunicate WmTone SloThgJj^taneouslv "without anypolitlci^bez vsiakoi politiki).s
To be sure, there were some voices rai^ to behjilfortheoM Deceng^ brist ide^-oTTpoTuIcar?^^
???§?^???????????*^????? Russians in 1847 eloquently restated the
classical enlightened arguments for constitutional monarchy; but this was
the voice of an old manj amp;rjJmginParj amp;JIis. tonTTs^rela^Ttet"^oTthe
innuln amp;able memoirists of thelate imperial period: semi-fatalistic and
elegiac regret combined with a scholarly desire to set the record straight.
Turgenev's work is a masterpiece of this genre, with his praise of the civiliz
ing effects of pietism and Masonry under Alexander, his criticism of the
"Adonises in uniform" who prevailed over right reason at the court, and his
indictment of "the fatalism which seems to weigh on Russia as much as
despotism."4*
One interesting nevMbjafimui£-24U^^Vs_j2p^ the morTli3vanc^^
SympatrTyTorsubjugated Poland wasto become a mark of the new radical^ so£ial_tnittkers inRussia; ancjinterest in Finland was to become in some / respectseven more impoTEant. F^laSLSasTfirst of~3l^"Protestant state;
t
and Turgenev was not alone in_suggestingJh4tProtestantlSm^rovi3ea ? m^jfefav^We-^frnosrAwe^'far freelRSclaljdjgvelopmentffiatr‹SthoMclsm. yOiteof theTe^arrjg^ewjtraTHab devo!e3to thedisCu^ionof~s6cial ques-I tions in St. Petersburg was entitled The Finnish Herald, and there was a steady increase in Finnish settlement in the St. Petersburg region as well as increased contact through the Helsinki-St. Petersburg steamboat line.
Of particular interest to Russians was the fact that the Finnish diet included not only the sta^3ard~three* estateTb^Tajso--following thejoodgl of the SwedisTTw^ag-rBpre^eTIfaTrves""oF"a"fourth estate: the peasantry. ForJit_y^L_ffienimst6cratic atSSSvEiyoFthe peasantry that was principally
v. UN ? NEW SHORES
1. The Turn to social inougm
responsible for the turn to social reform in the 1840's. Jnterest in the peas"^^^S^mulated_b^tiie gradual increase in peasant disordersjmder Nicholas I and by the attend5ur"actiyifTeTl3f"^e various commissions ap-pomtedjtoj|nid^rejmdjiyJs£^^
the same time, the peasantry appears as a kind of final object of romantic fascination for the alienated intellectuals. Having traveled in vain to foreign lands and studied at the feet of foreign sages, the Russian Faust now heard happy murmurs from JtejjejisjmJ^masjse^^ «"rcpundmes of his voutL
Althoughsynthetic pastoral themes were sounded much earlier in
J ????^^^???????????? fo'becorn^ErmnanTior the first time in the
j›3P840's. HarjbingeroT~tEe new trend '^wSs^ffie^pbs^umous "criticaT~praise
heaped on the poems and folks^m5S__ofAlexis KoPtsov by Belinsky, who
foundTn^mTmaffected and unperfected art oftBerough-hewn Kol'tsov a
"new simplicity" that seemed to satisfy the "loneimjfor normalcy" that was
charact5Sicofhis IaSTjears.5 "Sociality or death" had been BelinsKy's"
vatedictoTy^siogSTcTthe aristocratic intellectuals just before his death in
?/i848. They were to find this "sociality" (or "social life," sotsial'nosf') in the
^real or imagined company of the noble savages in the Russian countryside.
With the appearance in 1846 ol"nmitfy-6fl^fovich7s The Village and of
the first of Ivan Turgenev's Sportsman's Sketches the following year, the
i_peasant emerged as a new heroictype for Russian literature. In part, this
new interest was just another Russian reflection ofa Western trend
noticeable in the sudden popularity of Berthold Auerbach's Village Tales of
the Black Forest and George Sand's Francois de Champi. But there was a
peculiar intensity to the E?stemJB?m^?l¦?at^?stj?^^^^?n^_JQl^
resulted from the slirvival theie_Qfthe brutaHzingJnstitution of serfdom, and
is exemplified ? such writers of the fortieTas the PoIe*Easzewski and'lhe
UkrSnTffi" SBivchgnko.6
»«- It is arneasure of_ue Russian aristocrats' alienation from their own
peor^es__uafJhe^35scojvei^jtoe peas^nTsnotofTtheir ownesTates~Hut'in
books-above all in thejfluse=J5Iu5^?1£150????^"BaYon
Haxthjm_sj^jjjej^ajpng trip through Russia in 1.841..