The sacrifice of the Man of the People restored the political balance and, therefore, promised the preservation of the colonial order. From the point of view of the characters, the author, and many readers, Pushkin's Pugachev was a criminal and was executed by a legal court. The sacrifice of an innocent woman raised the narrative to the level of a final, apocalyptic catastrophe. The sacrifice of the Man of Culture represents the victory of the colonized people, which the metropolitan elite cannot, indeed does not want to, resist. Possessed by a sense of historical guilt, the elite oversees its own destruction, organizes its own sacrifice. A good example is Andrei Bely's Silver Dove (1909), in which we observe, once again, a familiar triangular structure. Darialsky is a poet-symbolist and typical intellectual of late populism. The idyll that attracts him is as irrepressible as it is nonsensical; as usual for idylls, it combines three vectors - the mystical, the political, and the erotic. The Wise Man of the People, Kudeiarov is described in more expressive terms than either Pugachev or Rogozhin. But Matrena, a subject of fatal attraction for Darialsky, is faceless. Her only secret is the nature of her relationship to Kudeiarov: is she a mistress? a daughter? a spiritual sister?
The new resolution of the triangular narrative - the sacrifice of the Man of Culture - sends a different message. Like Myshkin before him, Darialsky descends "into the depths" of the mystical sectarians. His sectarian guru, Kudeiarov, is close to the Khlysty and the author describes their rituals with many ethnographical details. Along with his Russian contemporaries, the erudite Andrei Bely was aware of Durkheim's writings on religion and many volumes by the nineteenth- century classicists who depicted the redeeming effects of pagan sacrifices. But the collective murder of Darialsky is entirely senseless; the purposelessness of this sacrifice is emphasized throughout the entire plot. Neither the victim, who did not expect to be killed, nor the murderers, who experience no redemption afterwards, invest any meaning in the sacrifice. In attempting to grasp and accept the faith of the people, Darialsky ends up being ritually murdered because of his desperate search for a popular tradition. Constructing this story, Bely used the living memory of the populists' journeys to the countryside and the rich ethnography of the Russian sects (see Chapter 10). In performing for revolution, the intelligentsia - a group whose existence is justified by its civilizing mission in relation to the people - attempts to find some religious or political meaning in its own self- sacrifice. Aware of the consequences, Bely has deconstructed the idea of sacrifice itself. The murder of Darialsky is presented as an evil deed, behind which there is the contact of two systems of belief that have nothing in common with one another, those of the people and those of the populists.
Darialsky and his murderer, Kudeiarov, are distinct from one another in every possible way, except in race and gender. Once again, we see the paradoxical situation of internal colonization, which makes it so suitable for literary development. In this contact zone, the colonies were as close to the metropolitan center as suburbs, and utterly different people had the same skin color. The meaning of The Silver Dove could be clarified by comparing it with Conrad's The Heart of Darkness, which Bely probably read (Lavrov 2004). Like Darialsky, Kurtz had his own local woman, but all the natives in Conrad's text are nameless, and we do not see a single witch-doctor here, let alone any rival to Kurtz. By way of contrast, Bely showed Darialsky in the detailed context of the rituals of the Khlysty sect; their leader Kudeiarov's spiritual hegemony over the intellectual Darialsky is clear from the story. In contrast to Darialsky's, Kurtz's religious innovations were "efficient": his rituals allowed him to extract more ivory than his colleagues. Colonial power does not require the eradication of local customs, but rather their reconstruction from within and their exploitation by Men of Culture. In pursuing their colonial projects, Darialsky failed where Kurtz succeeded. But as both stories teach us, these projects were equally doomed.
The Double
Carried to its extreme, the situation of internal colonization brings us back to Girard's concepts of the "crisis of difference" and "the monstrous double." In mythology and literature, doubles and monsters are often the same, writes Girard. Nobody understood their dynamics better than Dostoevsky, he states, though he does not explain how Dostoevsky managed to reach an understanding that others, from Sophocles on, have not (1995: 160-1). A re-reading of Dostoevsky's crucial text, The Double (1846), helps to grasp the historical sources of his inspiration.
As in Gogol's "The Nose," a low-level St. Petersburgclerk, Goliadkin, has met his double. This clone carries his name, works in the same position, and is one day a friend, another day a foe. Worst of all, the double is always quicker, smarter, and more beloved than the original. Goliadkin is insane, of course, but he does not know it. He feels the apparition of the double as a personal and a cultural catastrophe, an overthrow in the heart of the social order; he is amazed that others do not share his sentiment. The story develops within a narrow social space, which is defined by an inverted pyramid of power, from the undifferentiated crowd of Goliadkin's superiors to his servant, Petrusha. The only horizontal relationship that Goliadkin seems to have ever had is the one with his clone. He is unhappy with himself and his place in the world. He always pretends to be someone else, to take someone's role, to be "an impostor." He rents a carriage that is appropriate to a higher rank and drives around the city with no purpose; he bargains for expensive purchases that he does not need, promises to come and pay, and never does. Pretending to be someone else, he is punished by someone else who pretends to be him, his double.
A St. Petersburgdweller, Goliadkin was born "elsewhere" and this birthplace made him alien to his fellow officials. Still, he is a gentleman who owns his apartment, hires a servant, and has savings. His ninth rank in the Table of Ranks was the first that, according to the law of 1845, guaranteed him rights that belonged to the gentry, such as the ability to own serfs and freedom from corporal punishment. By law and status, he is a master; but his mind and speech are destroyed to such an extent that he looks and sounds like he does not belong to himself. Though he speaks often, nobody - neither his doctor, nor his superiors, nor his servant - understands him. He is listened to as if he is a subaltern, i.e. he is not listened to at all. Only his unreliable double understands him; but the double is always ready to betray him in order to take his place. Now that he is in two places at once, the gaze of power cannot control him. He pays for it dearly.
We do not know in which Ministry Goliadkin served. From what we do know, his knowledge and interests are all connected to what Russians then considered to be their orient. In his conversations with his double, Goliadkin mentions Turkey, Algeria, and India. The only writer that he ever refers to is the prolific Osip Senkovsky, the orientalist scholar and also author, editor, and censor. Goliadkin and his double "smiled a lot about the simple-mindedness of the Turks" and talked about the Turks' "fanaticism which is aroused by opium." There is no further word in the story about Goliadkin's national sentiments or political views; his only allegiance seems to be his self- affirmation at the cost of those whom he considers inferior because they are more oriental than the Russians. There is not a word in the story about serfs either, though the servant Petrusha is a pertinent object of rivalry between Goliadkin and his double. As Goliadkin's delirium unfolds, Petrusha works as his reality check; when Petrusha leaves Goliadkin for his double, Goliadkin collapses. Superiors sack Goliadkin-the-original, hire Goliadkin-the-copy, and send the original Goliadkin to the asylum. There is a gloomy anti-utopian message in this early fantasy of Dostoevsky's. In order to be listened to and understood, the subaltern needs his equals; if he does not have them, he creates them; but these equals, inescapably, subject our subject to a new kind of oppression. His doctor, the embodiment of his horror, carries the name Rutenshpits, an inverted double of the Russian word shpitsruten, the gauntlet.