594
LEON TROTSKY
One cannot but reac t with exasperati on to the smugly respec tful
historians and portrait a rtists of our intelligentsia . For a r.entury and a
half it has been selfless, living "for Eu rope," etc., etc. - and what
exactly have we given in the area of philosophy or socia l science?
Nothing, a round zero. Try to name some Russian philosopher whose
greatness is beyond doubt? Vladimir Solovyov, who is usually remem–
bered only on the anniversary of his death.
9
His foggy metaphysics has
not entered the history of world thought; even in Russia his ideas failed
to produce anything like a philosophical movement. A little bit was
borrowed from Solovyov by Messrs. Berdyayev, Ern and Viaches lav
Ivanov.
1o
Mr. Cart, a philosopher from the ranks of the right-wing bourgeois
liberals, feels lost in view of the unrestrained manner in which the
military martinets commit outrages, bewailing the impotence of his
party in the face of all their excesses. Helplessly he searches for some
categorical imperative, which must of course come from nowhere else
but the "wide Russian soul" (including no doubt the souls of the
military martinets) ; and he hopes that this imperative would somehow
correspond with the Russian soul's good-natured, easygoing quality,
helping it to develop a sense of inner discipline and weaning it from
the habit of taking bribes. "Where is the imminent Slavic Kant?" ash
his puny forerunner. In truth, where is he? He does not exist. Where
is our Hegel? Where is one of our own of equal importance in the
h istory of thought? In philosophy we have none but third-rate disciples
and faceless epigoni.
We have been rich with "original" social Utopianism, and even
now we distract ourselves a bit with it. But what exactly have we con–
tributed to the treasury of social thought? Populism, the Russian sur–
rogate of socialism? It is nothing bu t the ideological response of the
Asiatic element within us to the capitalist progress threatening us.
Russian populism is only a small chapter in the spiritu al history of
historical provincialism.
Where are our great U topians? The best of th em is Chernyshevsky,
but he was held back by the narrowness of his social environment; so
he remained a disciple and never grew into a teacher. Herzen, Lavrov
9
Vladimir Solovyov
(1853-1900),
a religious philosopher, poe t and pu')licist.
10
Nikolay Berdyayev
( 1874-1948 ),
philosopher and analyst of Russia n ideol–
ogical movements, lived abroad after the Bolshevik R ev lution and wrote
many books that have been translated into European languages. Ern
( 1882-
1917) ,
a Slavophile writer. Vyacheslav Ivanov
(1866-1 949 ) ,
a Russian sym–
bolist
poet
and critic who played a leading role in the modernist Russian
literary movement.
