Isaiah Berlin - Russian Thinkers

artistic methods or character or specific quality; although, to some

degree, the Russian intellectuals did all this too.

·

Social criticism in this sense had, of course, been practised before

them, and far more professionally, scrupulously and ·profoundly, by

critics in the west. The kind of social criticism that I mean is the

method virtually invented by the great Russian essayist Belinsky-the

kind of criticism in which the line between life and art is of set purpose not too clearly drawn; in which praise and blame, love and hatred, admiration and contempt are freely expressed both for artistic forms

and for the human characters drawn, both for the personal qualities

of authors and for the content of their novels, and the criteria involved

in such attitudes, whether consciously or implicitly, a.re identical with

those in terms of which living human beings are in everyday life

judged or described.

This is, of course, a type of criticism which has itself been much

criticised. It is accused of confusing art with life, and thereby derogating from the purity of art. Whether these Russian critics did perpetrate this confusion or not, they introduced a new attitude

towards the novel, derived from their particular outlook on life. This

outlook later came to be defin� as that peculiar to members of the

intelligentsia - and the young radicals of 1 8 38-48, Belinsky, T urgenev,

Bakunin, Herzen; whom Annenkov so devotedly describes in his

book, are its true original founders. 'Intelligentsia' is a Russian word

invented in the nineteenth century, that has since acquired worldwide significance. The phenomenon itself, with its historical and literally revolutionary consequences, is, I suppose, the largest single

Russian contribution to social change in the world.

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B I RT H OF T H E R U S S I AN INTE L L I G ENTSIA

The concept of intelligentsia must not be confused with the notion

of intellectuals. Its members thought of themselves as united by

something more than mere interest in ideas; they conceived themselves

as being a dedicated order, almost a secular priesthood, devoted to the

spreading of a specific attitude to life, something like a gospel. Historically their emergence requires some explanation.

I I

Most Russian historians are agreed that the great social schism

between the educated and the 'dark folk' in Russian history sprang

from the wound inAicted on Russian society by Peter the Great. In

his reforming zeal Peter sent selected young men into the western

world, and when they had acquired the languages of the west and

the various new arts and skills which sprang from the scientific

revolution of the seventeenth century, brought them back to become

the leaders of that new social order which, with ruthless and violent

haste, he imposed upon his feudal land. In this way he created a small

class of new men, half Russian, half foreign-educated abroad, even

if they were Russian by birth; these, in due course, became a small

managerial and bureaucratic oligarchy, set above the people, no

longer sharing in their still medieval culture; cut off from them

irrevocably. The government of this large and unruly nation became

constantly more difficult, as social and economic conditions in Russia

increasingly diverged from the progressing west. With the widening

of the gulf, greater and greater repression had to be exercised by the

ruling elite. The small group of governors thus grew more and more

estranged from the people they were set to govern.

The rhythm of government in Russia in the eighteenth and early

nineteenth centuries is one of alternate repression and liberalisation.

Thus, when Catherine the Great felt that the yoke was growing too

heavy, or the appearance of things became too barbarous, she relaxed

the brutal rigidity of the despotism and was duly acclaimed by Voltaire

and Grimm. When this seemed to lead to too much sudden stirring

from within, too much protest, and too many educated persons began

to compare conditions in Russia unfavourably with conditions in the

west, she scented the beginnings of something subversive; the French

Revolution finally terrified her; she clamped down again. Once more

the regime grew stern and repressive.

The situation scarcely altered in the reign of Alexander I. The

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RU SSIAN THINKERS

vast majority of the inhabitants of Russia still lived in a feudal darkness,

with a weak and, on the whole, ignorant priesthood exercising relativdy little moral authority, while a large army of fairly faithful and at times not inefficient bureaucrats pressed down on the more and

more recalcitrant peasantry. Between the oppressors and the oppressed

there existed a small cultivated class, largely French-speaking, aware

of the enormous gap between the way in which life could be livedor was lived-in the west and the way in which it was lived by the Russian masses. They were, for the most part, men acutely conscious

of the difference between justice and injustice, civilisation and barbarism, but aware also that conditions were too difficult to alter, that they had too great a stalce in the regime themselves, and that reform

might bring the whole structure toppling down. Many among them

were reduced either to an easy-going quasi-Voltairean cynicism, at

once subscribing to liberal principles and whipping their serfs; or to

noble, eloquent and futile despair.

This situation altered with the invasion ofNapoleon,which brought

Russia into the middle of Europe. Almost overnight, Russia found

herself a great power in the heart of Europe, conscious of her crushing

strength, dominating the entire scene, and accepted by Europeans

with some terror and great reluctance, as not merely equal but

superior to them in sheer brute force.

The triumph over Napoleon and the march to Paris were events

in the history of Russian ideas as vitally important as the reforms of

Peter. They made Russia aware of her national unity, and generated

in her a sense of herself as a great European nation, recognised as

such; as being no longer a despised collection of barbarians teeming

behind a Chinese wall, sunk in medieval darkness, half-heartedly and

clumsily imitating foreign models. Moreover, since the long Napoleonic

war had brought about great and lasting patriotic fervour, and, as a

result of a general participation in a common ideal, an increase in the

feeling of equality between the orders, a number of relatively idealistic

young men began to feel new bonds between themselves and their

nation which their education could not by itself have inspired. The

growth of patriotic nationalism brought with it, as its inevitable concomitant, a growth of the feeling of responsibility for the chaos, the squalor, the poverty, the inefficiency, the brutality, the appalling

disorder in Russia. This general moral uneasiness affected the least

sentimental and perceptive, the hardest-hearted of the semi-civilised

members of the ruling class.

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B I RT H OF T H E R U S S IAN INTE L L I G E NTSIA

Ill

There were other factors which contributed to this collective sense of

guilt. One, certainly, was the coincidence (for coincidence it was) of

the rise of the romantic movement with the entrance of Russia into

Europe. One of the cardinal romantic doctrines (connected with the

cognate doctrines that history proceeds according to discoverable laws

or patterns, and that nations are unitary 'organisms', not mere collections, and 'evolve' in an 'organic', not a mechanical or haphazard fashion) is that everything in the world is as and where and when it

is because it participates in a single universal purpose. Romanticism

encourages the idea that not only individuals but groups, and not only

groups but institutions-states, churches, professional bodies, associations that have ostensibly been created for definite, often purely utilitarian purposes - come to be possessed by a 'spirit' of which they

themselves might well be unaware-awareness of which is, indeed,

the very process of enlightenment.

The doctrine that every human being, country, race, institution

has its own unique, individual, inner purpose which is itself an

'organic' element in the wider purpose of all that exists, and that in

becoming conscious of that purpose it is, by this very fact, participating

in the march towards light and freedom- this secular version of an

ancient religious belief powerfully impressed the minds of the young

Russians. They imbibed it all the more readily as a result of two causes,

one material, one spiritual.

The material cause was the unwillingness of the government to

let its subjects travel to France, which was thought of, particularly

after 1 830, as a chronically revolutionary country, liable to perpetual

upheavals, blood-letting, violence and chaos. By contrast, Gennany

lay peaceful under the heel of a very respectable despotism. Consequently young Russians were encouraged to go to German universities, where they would obtain a sound training in civic principles that

would, so it was supposed, make them still more faithful servants of

the Russian autocracy.

The result was the exact opposite. Crypto-francophile sentiment

in Gennany itself was at this time so violent, and enlightened Cennans

themselves believed in ideas-in this case those of the French enlightenment-so much more intensely and fanatically than the French themselves, that the young Russian Anacharsises who dutifully went to Gennany were infected by dangerous ideas far more violently there

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R U S S IAN T H IN K E R S

than they could ever have been had they gone to Paris in the easygoing early years of Louis Philippe. The government of Nicholas I could hardly have foreseen the chasm into which it was destined to fall.

If this was the first cause of romantic ferment, the second was its

direct consequence. The young Russians who had travelled to

Germany, or read German books, became possessed with the simple

idea that if, as ultramontane Catholics in France and nationalists in

Germany were sedulously maintaining, the French Revolution and

the decadence that followed were scourges sent upon the people for

abandoning their ancient faith and ways, the Russians were surely

free from these vices, since, whatever else might be true of them, no

revolution had been visited upon them. The German romantic

historians were particularly zealous in preaching the view that, if the

west was declining because of its scepticism, its rationalism, its

materialism, and its abandonment of its own spiritual tradition, then

the Germans, who had not suffered this melancholy fate, should be

viewed as a fresh and youthful nation, with habits uncontaminated

by the corruption of Rome in decay, barbarous indeed, but full of

violent energy, about to come into the inheritance falling from the

feebie hands of the French.

The Russians merely took this process of reasoning one step

further. They rightly judged that if youth, barbarism, and lack of

education were criteria of a glorious future, they had an even more