Isaiah Berlin - Russian Thinkers

not susceptible to the methods of empirical investigation. The historicism of his time doubdess inAuenced the young Tolstoy as it did all inquiring persons of his time; but the metaphysical content he rejected

instinctively, and in one of his letters he described Hegel's writings

as unintelligible gibberish interspersed with platitudes. History alone

-the sum of empirically discoverable data-held the key to the mystery

of why what happened happened as it did and not otherwise; and only

history, consequently, could throw light on the fundamental ethical

problems which obsessed him as they did every Russian thinkP.r in

the nineteenth century. What is to be done? How should one live?

Why are we here? What must we be and do? The study of historical

connections and the demand for empirical answers to these prolclyatyt

'1Joprosy1 became fused into one in Tolstoy's mind, as his early diaries

and letters show very vividly.

In his early diaries we find references to his attempts to compare

Catherine the Great's Nalcaz1 with the passages in Montesquieu on

which she professed to have founded it.8 He reads Hume and Thie�

as well as Rousseau, Sterne, and Dickens.5 He is obsessed by the

thought that philosophical principles can only be understood in their

concrete expression in history.• 'To write the genuine history of

present-day Europe: there is an aim for the whole of one's life.'7 Or

again : 'The leaves of a tree delight us more than the roots',8 with the

implication that this is nevertheless a superficial view of the world.

1 'Accursed questions' -a phrase which became a cliche! in nineteenthcentury Russia for those central moral and social issues of which every honest man, in particular every writer, must sooner or later become aware, and then

be faced with the choice of either entering the struggle or turning his back

upon his fellow-men, conscious of his responsibility for what he was doing.

a Instructions to her legislative experts.

a L. N. Tolstoy, Polrwe sobr(IJiit socbmmii (Moscow/Leningrad, 1918"64), vol.

46, pp. 4-18.

' ibid., PP· 97· I I ], 1 14-o 1 17, 123-+o 1 27.

1 ibid., pp. 1 26, 1 27, 130, 13 2-4-o 167, 1 76, 249; 82, 1 10; 14-o.

• Diary entry for 1 1 June 18§2.

7 Entry for 22 September 1 Bsz.

• N. N. Apoatolov, LIP TolslfiJ su1l s1rai1s11mi islmi (Moscow, 1928),

p. zo.

30

T H E H E D G E H O G AND T H E FOX

But side by side with this there is the beginning of an acute sense of

disappointment, a feeling that history, as it is written by historians,

makes claims which it cannot satisfy, because like metaphysical

philosophy it pretends to be something it is not-namely, a science

capable of arriving at conclusions which are certain. Since men cannot

solve philosophical questions by the principles of reason they try to

do so historically. But history is 'one of the most backward of sciences

-a science which has lost its proper aim'.1 The reason for this is

that history will not, because it cannot, solve the great questions

which have tormented men in every generation. In the course of

seeking to answer these questions men accumulate a knowledge . of

facts as they succeed each other in time: but this is a mere by-product,

a kind of 'side issue' which-and this is a mistake-is studied as an end

in itself. And again, 'history will never reveal to us what connections

there are, and at what times, between science, art, and morality,

between good and evil, religion and the civic virtues. What it will

tell us (and that incorrectly) is where the Huns came from, where they

lived, who laid the foundations of their power, etc. • And according to

his friend Nazariev, Tolstoy said to him in the winter of 1 846:

'History is nothing but a collection of fables and useless trifles, cluttered

up with a mass of unnecessary figures and proper names. The death

of Igor, the snake which bit Oleg-what is all this but old wives'

tales? Who wants to know that Ivan's second marriage, to Temryuk's

daughter,, occurred on 2.1 August 1 562., whereas.his fourth, to Anna

Alekseevna Koltovskaya, oa:urr� in 1 572.

?'2

• • .

History does not reveal causes; it presents only a blank succession

of unexplained events. 'Everything is forced into a standard mould

invented by the historians: Tsar Ivan the Terrible, on whom Professor

Ivanov is lecturing at the moment, after 1 560 suddenly becomes

transformed from a wise and virtuous man into a mad and cruel

tyrant. How? Why? -You mustn't even ask . . . '1 And half a century

later, in 1 908, he declares to Gusev: 'History would be an excellent

thing if only it were true.'' The proposition that history could (and

should) be made scientific is a commonplace in the nineteenth century;

but the number of those who interpreted the term 'science' as meaning

1 ibid.

• V. N. Nazariev, 'Lyudi bylogo vremeai', L. N. TolsiiJ 11 1101/fJiflifllllliytllA

s�lfltllllilflll (Moscow, I9§ S), vol. r, p. 52.

1 ibid., pp. §2·3·

' N. N. Guaev, D11t1gDU s L. N. TolsiJIII (Moecow', 1973), p. 188.

l•

R U S S IAN T H I N K E R S

natural science, and then asked themselves whether history could be

transformed into a science in this specific sense, is not great. The most

uncompromising policy was that of Auguste Comte, who, following

his master, Saint-Simon, tried to turn history into sociology, with

what fantastic consequences we need not here relate. Karl Marx was

perhaps, of all thinkers, the man who took his programme most

seriously; and made the bravest, if one of the least successful, attempts

to discover general laws which govern historical evolution, conceived

on the then alluring analogy of biology and anatomy so triumphantly

transformed by Darwin's new evolutionary theories. Like Marx (of

whom at the time of writing War and Peau he apparently knew

nothing) Tolstoy saw clearly that if history was a science, it must be

possible to discover and formulate a set of true laws of history which,

in conjunction with the data of empirical observation, would make

prediction of the future (and 'retrodiction' of the past) as feasible as it

had become, say, in geology or astronomy. But he saw more clearly

than Marx and his followers that this had, in fact, not been achieved,

and said so with his usual dogmatic candour, and reinforced his thesis

with arguments designed to show that the prospect of achieving this

goal was non-existent; and clinched the matter by observing that the

fulfilment of this scientific hope would end human life as we knew it:

'if we allow that human life can be ruled by reason, the possibility

of life (i.e. as a spontaneous activity involving consciousness of free

will] is destroyed'.1 But what oppressed Tolstoy was not merely the

'unscientific' nature of history-that no matter how scrupulous the

technique of historical research might be, no dependable laws could

be discovered of the kind required even by the most undeveloped

natural sciences-but he further thought that he could not justify to

himself the apparently arbitrary selection of material, and the no less

arbitrary distribvtion of emphasis, to which all historical writing seemed

to be doomed. He complains that while the factors which determine

the life of mankind are very various, historians select from them only

some single aspect, say the political or the ..:conomic, and represent

it as primary, as the efficient cause of social change; but then, what of

religion, what of 'spiritual' factors, and the many other aspects-a

literally countless multiplicity-with which all events are endowed?

How can we escape the conclusion that the histories which exist

represent what Tolstoy declares to be 'perhaps only o·OOI per cent of

1 Wtlr tl11d Pttlct, epilogue, part 1, chapter 1 .

32

T H E H E D G E H O G AND T H E F O X

the elements which actually constitute the real history of peoples'?

History, as it is normally written, usually represents 'political' - public

-events as the most important, while spiritual-'inner'-events are

largely forgotten; yet prima facie it is they-the 'inner' events-that

are the most real, the most immediate experience of human beings;

they, and only they, are what life, in the last analysis, is made of;

hence the routine political historians are talking shallow nonsense.

Throughout the 5os Tolstoy was obsessed by the desire to write

a historical novel, one of his principal aims being to contrast the 'real'

texture of life, both of individuals and communities, with the 'unreal'

picture presented by historians. Again and again in the pages of War

and Peace we get a sharp juxtaposition of 'reality' -what 'really'

occurred-with the distorting medium through which it will later be

presented in the official accounts offered to the public, and indeed be

recollected by the actors themselves-the original memories having

now been touched up by their own treacherous (inevitably treacherous

because automatically rationalising and formalising) minds. Tolstoy is

perpetually placing the heroes of War and Peace in situations where

this becomes particularly evident.

Nikolay Rostov at the battle of Austerlitz sees the great soldier,

Prince Bagration, riding up with his suite towards the village of

Schongraben, whence the enemy is advancing; neither he nor his

staff, nor the officers who gallop up to him with messages, nor anyone

else is, or can be, aware of what exactly is happening, nor where, nor

why; nor is the chaos of the battle in any way made dearer either in

fact or in the minds of the Russian officers by the appearance of

Bagration. Nevertheless his arrival puts heart into his subordinates;

his courage, his calm, his mere presence create the illusion of which

he is himself the first victim, namely, that what is happening is somehow connected with his skill, his plans, that it is his authority that is in some way directing the course of the battle; and this, in its turn,

has a marked effect on the general morale all round him. The dispatches

which will duly be written later will inevitably ascribe every act and

event on the Russian side to him and his dispositions; the credit or

discredit, the victory or the defeat, will belong to him, although it is

clear to everyone that he will have had less to do with the conduct

and outcome of the battle than the humble, unknown soldiers who

do at least perform whatever actual fighting is done, i.e. shoot at each

other, wound, kill, advance, retreat, and so on.

Prince Andrey, too, knows this, most dearly at Borodino, where

33

R U S S IAN T H I N K E R S

h e i s mortally wounded. H e begins to understand the truth earlier,

during the period when he is making efforts to meet the 'important'

persons who seem to be guiding the destinies of Russia; he then

gradually becomes convinced that Alexander's principal adviser, the

famous reformer Speransky, and his friends, and indeed Alexander

himself, are systematically deluding themselves when they suppose

their activities, their words, memoranda, rescripts, resolutions, laws