Here we come face to face once more with this great question: where is the evidence that the Russian people can rise up again, and what is the evidence to the contrary? This question, as we have seen, had preoccupied all thinking men without any of them finding an answer.
Polevoy, who encouraged others, believed in nothing; would he have otherwise allowed himself to become discouraged so quickly, and gone over to the enemy at the first setback? The Library for Reading leaped right over this problem, circumventing the question without having made an effort to answer it. The solution offered by Chaadaev was no solution at all.
Poetry, prose, art, and history demonstrate for us the formation and development of this absurd milieu, these harmful ways, this monstrous power, but no one points to a way out. Must one become acclimated, as Gogol did later on, or rush toward one's doom like Lermontov? It is impossible to become acclimated; and yet we are loath to perish; something tells us from the bottom of our heart that it is too early to die, it seems there are still some living souls behind the dead souls.
The questions have reappeared with greater intensity, and all that is still hopeful demands a solution at any cost.
After 1840, two opinions absorbed the public's attention. From a scholastic controversy they soon passed into literature, and from there into society.
We are speaking of Muscovite pan-Slavism and Russian Europeanism.
The battle between these two opinions was ended by the revolution of 1848.
This was the last spirited polemic that occupied the public, and for that very reason it had real importance. We therefore dedicate the following chapter to it. [. . .]
Epilogue
[. . .] Behind the visible state in Russia there exists no invisible state which could presumably serve as the apotheosis and transformation of the present order of things; there is no unattainable ideal that never coincides with reality, although forever promising to do so. There is nothing behind the stockades where superior force holds us captive. The question of revolution in Russia comes down to a question of material force. That is why, without considering causes other than the ones we have mentioned, this country is the best possible place for a social regeneration.
We have said that after 1830, with the appearance of Saint-Simonism, socialism made a strong impression on minds in Moscow. Accustomed as we were to communes, land partition, and workers' cooperatives, we saw in this doctrine an expression of sentiments that were closer to us than what was found in political doctrines. Having witnessed the most terrible abuses, we were less bothered by socialism than the Western bourgeoisie.
Little by little, literary works were imbued with socialist tendencies and inspirations. Novels, stories, and even Slavophile manuscripts protested against contemporary society from more than simply a political point of view. It is sufficient to mention Dostoevsky's Poor Folk.
In Moscow, socialism marched alongside Hegelian philosophy. The alliance of modern philosophy and socialism is not difficult to imagine, but it is only recently that the Germans acknowledged the close ties between science and revolution, not because they had not formerly understood this, but because socialism, like all things practical, simply didn't interest them. Germans can be profoundly radical in science while remaining conservative in their actions—poets on paper and bourgeois in life. Such a dualism is unacceptable to us. Socialism seems to us to be the most natural syllogism, the application of logic to government.
We must note that in Petersburg socialism assumed a different character. Revolutionary ideas were always more practical there than in Moscow; theirs is the cold fanaticism of mathematicians. In Petersburg, they love order, discipline, and practical applications. Whereas in Moscow they argue, in Petersburg they form groups. In the latter city you will find the most passionate adherents of the Masonic movement and mysticism, and The Messenger of Zion, the organ of the Bible Society, was published there. The conspiracy of December 14th ripened in Petersburg; in Moscow it never developed sufficiently to go out onto the public square. In Moscow it is difficult to come to any understanding; individuals there are too capricious and too expansive. In Moscow there are more poetic elements, more erudition and, along with that, more nonchalance, greater carelessness, more useless words and a greater divergence of opinions. Saint-Simonism—vague, religious, and at the same time analytic—goes remarkably well with Muscovites. Having studied it, they passed naturally on to Proudhon, just as they went from Hegel to Feuerbach.
Fourierism suited the students of Petersburg more than Saint-Simonism. Fourierism values an immediate realization and seeks a practical application, but it also dreams, basing its dreams on mathematical calculations, concealing its poetry under the name of production, and its love of freedom under the union of workers in brigades—Fourierism was likely to find a response in Petersburg. The phalanstery is nothing more than a Russian commune and a workers' barracks, a military colony on a civilian basis, and an industrial regiment. It has been observed that an opposition openly battling with a government always has something of its character, but in an inverse sense. And I am sure that there is a basis for the fear of communism experienced by the Russian government: communism is Russian autocracy turned inside out.
Petersburg is outstripping Moscow, thanks to these sharp—perhaps limited—but active and practical views. The honor of taking the initiative belongs to it and Warsaw, but if tsarism falls, the center of freedom will be in the heart of the nation, in Moscow.
The complete failure of the revolution in France, the unfortunate outcome of the revolution in Vienna, and the comic finale of the revolution in Berlin served as a basis for a renewed reaction in Russia. Once again, everything was paralyzed; the plan to free the serfs was abandoned and replaced by a decision to close all universities. Censorship was doubled and more difficulties were put in the way of issuing foreign passports. Newspapers, books, words, clothing, women, and children were all persecuted.
In 1848 a new phalanx of heroic young people were sent to prison, and from there to hard labor in Siberia.22 An oppressive wave of terror cut down all the new shoots and forced everyone to yield; intellectual life once again hid itself, and, if it revealed itself, then only fearfully, only in mute despair, and, since then, every bit of news coming out of Russia has filled the soul with sorrow and deep sadness. [. . .]
No matter what people say, the methods employed by the Russian government—cruel methods—are not, however, sufficient to choke all the new shoots of progress. They cause many to perish in terrible moral suffering, but we must be prepared for this, and there are doubtless more people aroused than disarmed by these measures.
In order to actually choke off the revolutionary principle in Russia—the consciousness of our position and the desire to get out of it—Europe itself must assimilate more deeply the Petersburg government's principles and paths so that its return to absolutism is complete. One must wipe the word Republique from France's facade—that terrible word, even if it is only a lie and a taunt. In Germany the right to free expression—imprudently given— must be taken away. The day after a Prussian gendarme, with the aid of a Croat, has broken up the last printing presses which were dragged in the mud by des Freres Ignorantins23 against the pedestal of Gutenberg's statue, or when an executioner in Paris, with the pope's blessing, has burned the works of French philosophers on la place de la Revolution—on the following day the all-powerful tsar will have reached his apogee.