DOSTOEVSKY AND POLITICS
33
Russian like and what is his mission-that is the problem which tor–
ments him.
Three times, in
Fathers and Sons,
Turgenev essayed to define the
"typical Russian," and each time he betrayed his sense of inferiority
toward the West and the complacent, moderate cast of his sensibility.
\
(The three definitions occur in subordinate verbal constructions:
a.
" ...
a coarse, half-educated, but not ill-natured man, a typical
Russian";
b.
"the only good point in a Russian is his having the..Iowest
possible opinion of himself";
c.
" . . .
a young man at once progres–
sive and a despot, as often happens with Russians.") Dostoevsky was
outraged by Turgenev's common sense and by his insistent deprecia–
tion of Russia. Into
his
own conception of Russia and Russians he
injected
his
characteristic emotion of extremity. The Russians are to
him
a kingdom of priestS and a chosen people; even God is appro-
priated to its uses. In Shatov's scheme of things God is merely "the
"YIILU',.,·,,,
personality of the whole people, taken from its beginning to
end." But these national visions anticipate much that Europe was
experience later. Stavrogin's psychic conundrums-"his life, so to
of mockery"- prefigure many of the tendencies in twentieth cen-
Irv,~esI:.eClalIV
post-war-European literature.
To Dostoevsky's characters ideas are a source of suffering. Such
are unknown in countries like America, where social tension
at a relatively low point and where, in consequence, the
idea
counts
very little and is usually dismissed as "theory." Only in a society
contradictions are unbridled in temper do ideas become a mat–
of life and death. Such is the historical secret of that "Russian
which Western critics find so admirable. Alyosha 'Karama–
, for example, was convinced "as soon as he reflected seriously, of
existence of God and immortality, and at once he said to himself:
want to exist for God, and I will accept no compromise'." In the
way, adds Dostoevsky, "if he had decided that God and immor–
did not exist he would at once have become an atheist and a
""",I<U."'•."
As
simply as that. And in
The Possessed,
Kirillov decides
God "is necessary and must exist," but at the same time he knows
"He doesn't and He can't." "Surely," he says, "you must under–
that a man with two such ideas can't go on living." Kirillov
himself.
Dostoevsky decided against socialism on a principled metaphysical
. His antipathy to it, however, had nothing in common with the
objections of conservative householders. What he feared most
its rationality. He understood that "socialism is founded on the
..
u.".~"""
of science and reason. .. that it is not merely the labor
.U''''U'JU,
it is before all else the atheistic question, the question of the
