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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2009
Few movements of ideas or of public opinion have been more significant than the Russian radicalism of the 1860's, of which D. I. Pisarev (1840–1868) was the most popular and effective propagandist. Turgenev in his Fathers and Children attached to this trend die appellation of ‘nihilism.’ The Russian scholar Nestor Kotlyarevski has characterized this movement as follows: ‘The radicalism of die 60's was a complete rejection of all the previously dominant views regarding the abstract fundamentals of life and an attempt to replace these views by a new outlook based upon a materialist and utilitarian interpretation of all the problems of life and the spirit.’ The Russian intellectual movement of the 60's represents the most decisive phase in pre-Soviet Russia of that process of the ‘desertion of die intellectuals’ which Crane Brinton has singled out as an essential characteristic of a disintegrating ‘old regime.’ The revolt of die intellectuals assumed in Russia extreme and peculiar forms. A special group, almost a sect, known as the intelligentsia, developed. This group, as Berdyaev says, ‘lived in schism with its environment, which it considered evil.’
1 Kanun osvobozhdeniya (Petrograd, 1916), introduction, VIII.Google Scholar
2 See his Anatomy of Revolution (New York, 1938), chapter II.Google Scholar
3 Berdyaev, Nicholas, The Origins of Russian Communism (London, 1937), p. 18. Berdyaev, it seems, tends to extremes in his attempt to explain the Russian radical mentality as shaped ultimately by the influence of the Russian Orthodox religion. But many who will be unable to accept his explanation of this mentality will find his characterization of some of its aspects illuminating.Google Scholar Probably the best study of the character and development of the radical intelligentsia is that of Ivanov-Rozumnik, , Istoriya russkoi obshchestvennoi mysli (4th ed., 2 vols., St. Petersburg, 1914).Google Scholar The best work on the intellectual history of Russia available in English is Masaryk's, T. G.The Spirit of Russia (English trans., London, 1919, 2 vols.)Google Scholar. Most of Sir John Maynard's excellent and too little known Russia in Flux (London, 1941) is devoted to the movement of ideas in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries pre-Soviet Russia.Google Scholar See also Gurian, Waldemar, Bolshevism (New York, 1932), ch. I.Google Scholar
4 On this point see Gurian, op. cit., pp. 12–18.Google Scholar
5 For a penetrating analysis of the psychology of the Russian intellectual, particularly of the types of the “superfluous man” and the “repentant nobleman” see Gershenzon, M., Istoriya Molodoi Rossii (Moscow, 1908)Google Scholar and Islorichestfe Zapislp (Moscow, 1910).Google Scholar
6 The term intelligentsia is used in this article in the sense commonly employed in Russia to mean not the entire body of persons with a higher education or intellectual interests, but the radical, politically-minded intellectuals. On this distinction, see, for example, Mirsky, D. S., Contemporary Russian Literature (New York, 1926), p. 43.Google Scholar
7 Many writers, including Masaryk, have been impressed by the intellectual instability of the Russian nineteenth century intellectuals. Kotlyarevski, , op. cit., pp. 43–64Google Scholar, presents interesting observations regarding this point in regard to the 60's. The Government publicist Schedo-Ferroti (pseudonym of Baron Fircks), a bitter critic of nihilism, pointed out that it made no impression on the Baltic German subjects of the Tsar. He attributed the difference in response to radical doctrine between Russians and Baits to differences in home training. See his Nihilisme en Russie (Berlin, 1867).Google Scholar
8 An example of the latter tendency is furnished by Yovchuk's, M. article “On Certain Problems of the Scientific Study of the History of Russian Materialist Philosophy,” in the Proceedings of the Academy of Sciences of the U.S.S.R.,July-August 1947.Google Scholar Yovchuk maintains that the Russian thinkers “surpassed all pre-Marxian social thought,” and made it possible for Russia to master the Marxist doctrine more fully than other countries. Yovchuk's article is one of the numerous manifestations of the sort of “Russian National Socialism” which has developed in the U.S.S.R. since the midthirties. Courses on “Russian classical philosophy” have been established in Soviet higher educational institutions for the dissemination of this point of view.
9 This was not always ture. In the best Soviet work on Pisarev, , Radikalnyi raznochinets, D. I. Pisarev (Leningrad 1929, 1934), the author, Kirpotin, V., quotes Pisarev's statement that he as well as Belinski, Chernyshevski and Dobrulyubov, received all their idear in “Prepared form” from the Western writers. A Soviet writer using such material today would be denounced for “kowtowing to the West,” or worse.Google Scholar
10 Herzen, A. I., Du developpemenl des idées revolutionnairea en Russie (Nice, 1851)Google Scholar in Polnoe sobranie sochinenii i pisem A. I. Gertsena (Petrograd, 1919 vol. VI, 232).Google Scholar
11 Masaryk, T. G., The Spirit of Russia, tr. from German, by Eden, and Paul, Cedar (2 vols., London, 1919), vol. I, 365.Google Scholar
12 On Chernyshevski, N. G., cf. Literaturnoe Nasledstvo (3 vols., Moscow, 1928), I, 198–488.Google Scholar
13 See for example Kotlyarevski, , op. cit., 57.Google Scholar
14 For a vivid picture of the background shaping the “seminarist” outlook see Pomyalovski's, Ocherki Bursy.Google Scholar
15 The literature on Cherayshevski, both pre-revolutionary and post-revolutionary is immense. Perhaps the most useful and comprehensive single work is by Steklov, Y. G., N. C. Chernyshevski (2 vols., Moscow, 1928). One need not of course accept its author's thesis seeking to make of Cherayshevski almost a Russian Marx.Google Scholar
16 Kucharzewski, Ian, Od bialego Caratu do Czerwonego (7 vols., Warsaw, 1923–1935), vol. III, p. 322. This comparison does justice to Dobrolyubov's indignation against social injustice, but overlooks his erratic sex life.Google Scholar
17 On this case see Lemke, M. K., Politicheskie protsessy 60kh godov (St. Petersburg, 1907).Google Scholar
18 There are two English translations, both published in 1886. One is by N. H. Dole and S. S. Skidelski; the other by the anarchist Benjamin Tucker. There are a number of Russian editions. A particularly fine one is the Academia edition of 1937 with notes and a critical article by N. Vodovozov. Soviet scholars have compiled much evidence indicating the influence exerted by Chernyshevski's novel on communists. See for example, Lileralurnoe Nasledstvo (No. 25–26, Moscow, 1936), p. 70, citing the well-known Bulgarian Communist, G. M. Dimitrov on “What is to be Done” as a formative influence on his Weltanschauung.Google Scholar
19 One of the chief merits of L. Plotkin's long book on D. I. Pisarev (Moscow, 1945)Google Scholar is that it supplements the hitherto scant bibliographical data on him. On Pisarev's prison experiences see Lemke, , Polilicheskie protsessyGoogle Scholar, and other works cited by Plotkin. Plotkin had at his disposal archival materials not available to Armand Coquart, a French scholar who has written a study “Dimitri Pisarev et l'idéologie du nihilisme russe,” (Paris, 1947)Google Scholar described in the London Times Literary Supplement for October 11, 1947 as “an immensely detailed monograph.”Google Scholar
20 Sochineniya Pisareva (6 vols., St. Petersburg, 1897), I, p. 375. Hereafter cited as Soch.Google Scholar
21 Dostoievski's thought. Shigalev in The Possessed ventured a prophecy to this eftect in his statement that “starting from unlimited freedom I arrive at unlimited despotism.” Quoted from Constance Garnett trans. (London, 1913), p. 376.Google Scholar
22 Soch., I. 262, 265.Google Scholar
23 Soch., I, 367; II, 223.Google Scholar
24 See Satronov, B. G. “Pisarev kak ateist,” Sovetskaya Nauka, 09 1938, pp. 121–138.Google Scholar
25 Pisarev, , Soch., II, 234; 465–525.Google Scholar
26 Pisarev, , Soch., II, 234; VI 465–525. The gymnazium was the Russian term for secondary school of the academic type, borrowed from West European usage.Google Scholar
27 Soch., II, 257.Google Scholar
28 Soch., 356–358.Google Scholar
29 Among the most important were: “Stagnant Waters” (1861)Google Scholar, “Pisemski, Turgenev and Goncharov” (1861)Google Scholar, “Female Types” (1861)Google Scholar, “Bazarov” (1862)Google Scholar, “The Story of a Calico Girl” (1865)Google Scholar, “Those Who Have Perished and Those Who are Perishing” (1865).Google Scholar
30 Soch., III, 72.Google Scholar
31 Mirsky, Prince D., A History of Russian Literature (New York, 1934), pp. 283, 290. Among the victims of Pisarev's onslaught was the “microscopic” poet, Fet, as Pisarev called him, who disappeared from print for twenty years.Google Scholar
32 Soch., IV, 119–121.Google Scholar
33 Soch., VI, 419–448.Google Scholar
34 Soch., II, 288–302.Google Scholar
35 Soch., V, 213–214Google Scholar. For a fuller discussion of Pisarev's attitude toward social and economic problems see the writer's article “The Russian Radicals of the 1860's and the Problem of the Industrial Proletariat,” Slavonic Review, (American Series II), vol. XXI, no 56, 03 1943, pp. 57–69.Google Scholar
36 Full text in Pisarev, D. I., Izbrannye filosofkie i sotsialno-politicheskie siatii (Moscow. 1944). pp. 102–109.Google Scholar
37 Soch., I, 572.Google Scholar
38 Published in the Supplement to the 1907 edition of Pisarev's works.
39 Soviet writers such as V. Kirpotin, B. Kozmin, and most recently L. Plotkin, have worked up elaborate but unconvincing argument! which greatly exaggerate Pisarev's interest in revolution as a means for the transformation of society.
40 Supplement, op. cit., p. 146.Google Scholar
41 Vengerov, S. A., Kritiko-biograficheskij slovar russkikh pisatelei i uchennyfkh (St. Petersburg, 1892. III, 352.Google Scholar
42 Chudnovski, S. L., Iz dalnikh let (first published 1907). Moscow, 1934), pp. 8, 9.Google Scholar
43 Witte, Graf S. Yu., Vospominaniya (3 vols., Berlin, 1923), I, 59, 88, 89.Google Scholar
44 See her Memoirs (Stanford University Press, 1931), pp. 19, 20.Google Scholar
45 Rusanov, N. S., Na Rodine (Moscow, 1931), p. 86.Google Scholar
46 Trotski, , Sochineniya (Moscow, 1926), XX, p. 21–25. Article written in 1901.Google Scholar