80 0 KS
323
pan-Slav "in the reat sense." The fact is, however, that Dostoevsky's
Diary of a Writer
is full of the most extreme pan-Slav propaganda,
especially in the essays relating to the Russo-Turkish war
Of
1876-77.
In this respect it is interesting to compare Tolstoy's wonderfully alert
and just appraisal of that war (in
Anna Karenina )
with Dostoevsky's
expressions of enthusiasm for it-an enthusiasm which led him to under–
take a polemic against Tolstoy in his
Diary.
Mr. Lloyd ignores the fact
that in his political writings Dostoevsky went beyond pan-Slavism to
assume the position of a Great Russian imperialist ; he did not hesitate
to speak of "the absolute necessity of subjugating Asia," an exploit which
he envisioned as preliminary to an armed incursion into the western
states. Nor is it true, as Mr. Lloyd blandly assures us, that Dostoevsky
is wrongly regarded as an enemy of Poland. There is scarcely another
Russian writer-above the level of the run-of-the-mill patrioteers--who
abused the Poles as coarsely as Dostoevsky did (
cf.
the gratuitously malig–
nant portrait of Grushenka's Polish suitor in
The Brothers. Karamazov ).
Of
course, it is mostly the publicist rather than the creative writer in
Dostoevsky who is guilty of chauvinism and national
hatred.
Leo Shestov
was entirely in the right when in his essay "The Gift of Prophecy" he
remarked that the political ideas to which Dostoevsky committed himself
in
his
Diary
"have the mark of rapacity upon them: to
grab,
and still
blanche bonestell
gallery
modern
painting
and
sculpture
I8
east
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street
new
york
city
•
Paintings by Stephen Greene
May
I
to
May
29
Old and Modem
Painting~
and
Drawings
June and
July
DURLACHER BROS.
R. KIRK ASKEW,
.H.
II East 57th Street
New York
Dllro
through may
pierre matisse
41 east 57th street
new
york 22
