Isaiah Berlin - Russian Thinkers

preached by the disciples of Hegel, of Feuerbach, of Fourier, of

Christian and neo-Christian social mystics, when utilitarians and

neo-medievalists, romantic pessimists and nihilists, peddlers of 'scientific' ethics and 'evolutionary' politics, and every brand of communist and anarchist, offered short-term remedies and long-term Utopiassocial, economic, theosophical, metaphysical- Herzen retained his incorruptible sense of reality. He realised that general and abstract

1 'By nature I am not a charlatan,' he said in his letter to the Tsar, 'but the

unnatural and unhappy predicament (for which, in point of fact, I was

myself responsible) sometimes made me a charlatan against my will.' V. A.

Polonsky (ed.), op. cit.(p. 109, note z above), vol. 1 (Moscow,,r 9z 3), p. I S9·

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terms like 'liberty' o r 'equality', unless they were translated into

specific terms applicable to actual situations, were likely, at best,

merely to stir the poetical imagination and inspire men with generous

sentiments, at worst to j ustify stupidities or crimes. He saw-and in

his day it was a discovery of genius-that there was something absurd

i n the very asking of such general questions as 'What is the meaning

of life?' or 'What accounts f;r the fact that things in general happen

as they do?' or 'What is the goal or the pattern or the direction of

history?' He realised that such questions made sense only if they were

made specific, and that the answers depended on the specific ends of

specific human beings in specific situations. To ask always for 'ultimate' purposes was not to know what a purpose is; to ask for the ultimate goal of the singer in singing was to be interested in something

other than songs or music. For a man acted as he did each for the

sake of his own personal ends (however much, and however rightly,

he might believe them to be connected or identical with those of

others), which were sacred to him, ends for the sake of which he was

prepared to live and to die. It is for this reason that Herzen so seriously

and passionately believed in the independence and freedom of individuals; and understood what he believed in, and reacted so painfully against the adulteration or obfuscation of the issues by metaphysical

or theological patter and democratic rhetoric. In his view all that is

ultimately valuable are the particular purposes of particular persons;

and to trample on these is always a crime because there is, and can

be, no principle or value higher than the ends of the individual, and

therefore no principle in the name of which one could be permitted

to do violence to or degrade or destroy individuals-the sole authors

of all principles and all values. Unless a minimum area is guaranteed

to all men within which they can act as they wish, the only principles

and values left will be those guaranteed by theological or metaphysical

or scientific systems claiming to know the final truth about man's

place in the universe, and his functions and goals therein. And these

claims Herzen regarded as fraudulent, one and all. It is this particular

species of non-metaphysical, empirical, 'eudaemonistic' individualism

that makes Herzen the sworn enemy of all systems, and of all claims

to suppress liberties i n their name, whether in the name of utilitarian

considerations or authoritarian principles, of mystically revealed ends,

or of reverence before irresistible power, or 'the logic of the facts',

or any other similar reason.

What can Bakunin offer that is remotely comparable? Bakunin,

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H E RZEN AND B A K U N I N ON L I B E RTY

with his gusto and his logic and his eloquence, his desire and capacity

to undermine and burn and shiver to pieces, now disarmingly childlike, at other times pathological and inhuman; with his odd combination of analytical acuteness and unbridled exhibitionism; carrying with him, with superb unconcern, the multicoloured heritage of the

eighteenth century, without troubling to consider whether some

among his ideas contradicted others - the 'dialectic' would look after

that-or how many of them had become obsolete, discredited, or had

been absurd from the beginning- Bakunin, the official friend of

absolute liberty, has not bequeathed a single idea worth considering

for its own sake; there is not a fresh thought, not even an authentic

emotion, only amusing diatribes, high spirits, malicious vignettes, and

a memorable epigram or two. A historical figure remains-the 'Russian

Bear', as he liked to describe himself- morally careless, intellectually

irresponsible, a man who, in his love for humanity in the abstract,

was prepared, like Robespierre, to wade through seas of blood ; and

thereby constitutes a link in the tradition of cynical terrorism and

unconcern for individual human beings, the practice of which is the

main contribution of our own century, thus far, to political thought.

And this aspect of Bakunin, the Stavrogin concealed inside Rudin,

the fascist streak, the methods of Attila, 'Petrograndism', sinister

qualities so remote from the lovable 'Russian Bear' -die grosse Liselwas detected not merely by Dostoevsky, who exaggerated and caricatured it, but by Herzen himself, who drew up a formidable indictment against it in the Letters to an Old Comrade, perhaps the most instructive, prophetic, sober and moving essays on the prospects of

human freedom written in the nineteenth century.

1 As Herzen used to call him after his three-year-old daughter, Bakunin's

friend.

A Remarkable Decade

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M v title- 'A Remarkable Decade'-and my subject are both taken

from a long essay in which the nineteenth-century Russian critic and

literary historian, Pavel Annenkov, described his friends more than

thirty years after the period with which he deals. Annenkov was an

agreeable, intelligent, and exceedingly civilised man, and a most understanding and dependable friend. He was not, perhaps, a very profound critic, nor was the range of his learning wide-he was a scholarly

dilettante, a traveller about Europe who liked to meet eminent men,

an eager and observant intellectual tourist.

It is clear that in addition to his other qualities he possessed considerable personal charm, so much, indeed, that he even succeeded in captivating Karl Marx, who wrote him at least one letter considered

important by Marxists on the subject of Proudhon. Indeed, Annenkov

has left us an exceedingly vivid description of the physical appearance

and ferocious intellectual manner of the young Marx-an admirably

detached and ironical vignette, perhaps the best portrait of him that

has survived.

It is true that, after he went back to Russia, Annenkov lost interest

in Marx, who was so deeply snubbed and hurt by this desertion by

a man on whom he thought he had made an indelible impression, that

in after years he expressed himself with extreme bitterness about the

Russian intellectual fldneurs who Buttered around him in Paris in the

40s, but turned out not to have any serious intentions after ali. But

although not very loyal to the figure of Marx, Annenkov did retain

the friendship of his compatriots Belinsky, Turgenev and Herzen to

the end of his days. And it is about them that he is most interesting.

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'A Remarkable Decade' is a description by him of the life of some

among the early members-the original founders-of the Russian

intelligentsia, between 1 8 38 and 1 848, when they were all young

men, some still at the university, some j ust emerged from it. The

subject is of more than literary or psychological interest because these

early Russian intellectuals created something which was destined

ultimately to have world-wide social and political consequences. The

largest single effect of the movement, I think it would be fair to say,

was the Russian Revolution itself. These rlvoltes early Russian

intellectuals set the moral tone for the kind of talk and action which

continued throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries,

until the final climax in 1 9 1 7.

It is true that the Russian Revolution (and no event had been more

discussed and speculated about during the century which preceded itnot even the great French Revolution) did not follow the lines that most of these writers and talkers had anticipated. Yet despite the

tendency to minimise the importance of such activity by such thinkers

as, for example, Tolstoy or Karl Marx, general ideas do have great

influence. The Nazis seemed to grasp this fact when they took care

at once to eliminate intellectual leaders in conquered countries, as

likely to be among the most dangerous figures in their path ; to this

degree they had analysed history correctly. But whatever may be

thought about the part played by thought in affecting human lives,

it would be idle to deny that the influence of ideas-and in particular

of philosophical ideas-at the beginning of the nineteenth century did

make a considerable difference to what happened later. Without the

kind of outlook of which, for example, the Hegelian philosophy, then

so prevalent, was both the cause and the symptom, a great deal of what

happened might, perhaps, either not have happened, or else have

happened differently. Consequently the chief importance of these

writers and thinkers, historically speaking, lies in the fact that they

set in train ideas destined to have cataclysmic effects not merely in

Russia itself, but far beyond her borders.

And these men have more specific claims to fame. It is difficult

to imagine that the Russian literature of the mid-century, and, in

particular, the great Russian novels, could have come into being save

for the specific atmosphere which these men created and promoted.

The works of Turgenev, Tolstoy, Goncharov, Dostoevsky, and of

minor novelists too, are penetrated with a sense of their own time,

of this or that particular social and historical milieu and its ideological

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content, t o a n even higher degree than the 'social' novels o f the west.

To this topic I propose to revert later.

Lastly, they invented social criticism. This may seem a very bold

and even absurd claim to make; but by social criticism I do not mean

the appeal to standards of judgment which involve a view of literature

and art as having, or as obliged to have, a primarily didactic purpose;

nor yet the kind of criticism developed by romantic essayists, especially

in Germany, in which heroes or villains are regarded as quintessential

types of humanity and examined as such ; nor yet the critical process

(in which the French in particular showed superlative skill) which

attempts to reconstruct the process of artistic creation mainly by

analysing the social, spiritual and psychological environment and the

origins and economic position of the artist, rather than his purely