I N TELL I GENTSIA
593
rebellious priest's son, "but I in turn deny you. Look how crumbly,
soft, and formless I am - you'll never catch hold of me. I can neither
bind you nor discipline you, that's true; you have your 'freedom.' But
as sculptural material for modeling your ideals I'm good for nothing.
You're on your own and I'm on my own. Make your own history but
count me out."
We have peoJJle but no society
In solitude Russian thought grew up
And it wanders without work to do.
Versilov's version of "freedom" could have no other meaning than
this freedom of our thought to wander without any work to do. It is
the sort of absolute freedom possessed by the revolutionary Morozov,
a member of the People's Will party, who in prison set out to produce
solutions to the riddles propounded in the Book of Revelations. This is
the "freedom" that hangs like a curse over the whole history of the
Russian intelligentsia.
"What difference does it make whether or not my words are trans–
lated into action? My thoughts and words serve as action," the
intelligent
might say about himself, "and I will them to my heirs."
But in the realm of world thought the Russian intelligentsia was only
a Johnny-corne-lately; it made its way on the basis of what was already
accomplished, contributing nothing of its own.
It
found at its disposal
an enormous choice of prepared literary movements, philosophical sys–
tems, scientific doctrines and political programs. In any European
library it could observe the image of its spiritual growth in thousands
of mirrors, large, small, round, square, fiat, concave or convex. This
taught it the process of self-observation, refined its intuition, flexibility,
adaptiveness, sensitivity - the feminine attributes of the psyche in gen–
eral; at the same time, however, it cut at the roots of the physical
strength of thought. This perpetual possibility of getting an idea easily
and at once, almost without effort, together with a ready-made criticism
of the idea and a criticism of the criticism, could not but paralyze
independent theoretical creativity. "Our minds," Chaadayev once re–
marked perceptively about the Russian intelligentsia, "are not furrowed
by the indelible traces of consistent intellectual movement because we ·
borrow our ideas already developed." In consequence we often produce
a terrible intellectual hash, a continuous series of theoretical misunder–
standings, and the most unexpected philosophical home brews. . . .
