*
suited to Russian conditions. However passing the infatuation with Fourier, the belief in a kind jpXXlu^tianize4_socialism remained JLJSflnslant.-fif -Russian socijl_ft£ueht:Those like Speshnev who advocated more violent VTrand conspirajorjajjmethods in the forties were careful to call themselves '^''Commimkts^^and^Herzen went to some pains to distin^uishethical and aristoc^atic_sacial.ism ?????!?????4??11?"???1 metaphysical communism, "the_socialism of revenge."15
Along with "socialism,'Ulje__social thinkers of the forties tended to
????^?_|?]2^???????.'' The Pocket Dictionary defined it as the form of
government where "each citizen takes part in the review and decisions of the
affairs of the whole hafxon." It was destined to prevail everywhere, alsTmilng"
different forms "in accordance with the stage of development of the moral
forces in a people and the consciousness of true, rational freedom."16 J[he_
political goal for Russia is never spelled outJbut_the Pocket Dictionary also
incrtidj^je^erTn^"national gat|Srmg??r"andr"some
forcesjva^jdfiaa^Zassjmied.
Lp*
"Democracy'' in Russian__sjjgial thought was, however, juxtaposed
??? the" beginning to constitutionalism or liberalism as understood in the
West. Democrats and liberals were in fact often contrasted, the formeF be
ing portrayetfasi^lifariarr*^English rJuiinessmefi
interested in pT5:eryTormirTibbr^s~Ior~the imdllle~^ss715ne article" of the
fifties insisted that SiBeria^wasamore congenial land for true democrats
than liberal England. A dictionary of foreign terms prepared in the early
sixties in imitation of the Petrashevsky dictionary defines a liberal as
a man loving freedom, usually a boyar [who enjoys] freedom to look through a window without doing anything, then to go for a walk, to the theatre, or a ball-that is what is known as a liberal man.17
1840 to 1845. In the foUowin^ihreejjearj^ publications were imported into Russia.18
At ?????????^^moved back
from Moscow to St. P^grs6urg_in trJeTfepSi's. StPetersburgnadaornmated^ RussiarT^tundlife under Catherine until the movement of Novikov and Schwarz to Moscow and the final disillusioned years of her reign. Peter's city had also dominated the optimistic early years of Alexander's reign until the burning and reconstruction of Moscow made that city the focus of the nationalist revival. But the gradual triumph of the Westernizers (or the "Europeans" and "Cosmopolitans" asthey were "more often* called during the ''remarkable decade") was to a lafge extent a victory of St. Petersburg over Moscow, Chaadaev's~"eity ? tile dead."
rrjrn" Moscow to St i'etersDurginib^ojsvas accompanied by the ostentatio^s~q^claratioh: "To .Petersburg, to Petersburg, therein lies my salvation."19 St. Petersburg was the laijestjmd most commercially active of Russian cities. The journals to which Belinsky contributed there, Thelinnals of the Fatherland and The Contemporary, attained by 1847 an unprecedented number of subscriptions (4,000 and 3,000, respectively)20 and were to become the leading vehicles for the populism of the seventies ano^Tra amp;caTTcbnoclasm of the sixties, resibettlWlvrBy ? 1,'????
Sail half of the privately operated journals in
private journals
"PoffiififfTMuscovite was the last effort of the romantic nationalists to found
a major "thick journal" (that is, a journal with ideological pretensions sup
ported by comprehensive bibliographical and critical sections) in Moscow.
Despite (or perhaps because of) official support, it enjoye^ripihingUketiie
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