THE GRAND INQUISITOR
265
its undertones, political hints and ideological anecdotes cunningly in–
troduced at strategic moments and then deliberately cut short before
their full intent is disclosed. One such anecdote, for example, is re–
lated by the liberal Miiisov, whose very liberalism serves here as a
screen behind which the author can have his say without too obvi–
ously compromising himself. Miiisov tells of meeting a Frenchman
in Paris, an influential personage in the Government, who confides
in him that "we are not particularly afraid of all those socialists,
anarchists, infidels and revolutionists. . . . But there are a few
pe–
culiar men among them who believe in God and are Christians, but
at the same time are socialists. These are the people we are most
afraid of.... The socialist who is a Christian is more to be dreaded
than a socialist who is an atheist." In the given context this comes
through as virtually a confession on Dostoevsky's part. The crypto–
anarchist or socialist element in the novel was not noticed, to be sure,
by Dostoevsky's reactionary mentors, such as Pobedonostsev for in–
stance,
7
who lauded him for showing up the disrupters of the imperial
authority without suspecting that he himself-or was it his double?–
was inextricably involved with them. Merezhkovsky was essentially
right, I think, in the claim he once made that the author of
The
Brothers Karamazov,
though fearful of speaking out, was at bottom
a religious revolutionist.
The Russian intelligentsia of the nineteenth century was deeply
antagonistic to State and Empire. It produced all sorts of libertarian
ideas, secular and religious, which, while related to Western influences,
at the same time reflect the elemental hatred of authority prevailing
among the peasant-masses, a hatred sometimes taking the form of
blind anarchic revolt but more often that of meek submission; yet
the submission has something about it so flagrant, a perfection of
abjectness as it were, which is in itself a kind of challenge and provo–
cation. It goes without saying that Dostoevsky was thoroughly in–
fected with such feelings, and that their ambivalence suited his psy–
chological make-up. And, in speaking of this anarchism, what is
7 Pobedonostsev, at that time Procurator of the Holy Synod and tutor of
the Crown Prince, was an out-and-out reactionary authoritarian bearing in his
role and personality a rather strong family-likeness to the Grand Inquisitor: so
much so in fact that some Russian critics (e.g., Georgi Chulkov in
Kak rabotal
Dostoevski)
have speculated on the possibility of Dostoevsky actually having had
him in mind as a model even while enjoying his patronage and writing him
letters of fulsome flattery.
