INTELLIGENTSIA
595
and Mikhaylovskyll will never in any way enter the history of world social–
ism; they are completely absorbed in the history of the Russian intel–
ligentsia. Perhaps Bakunin alone has inscribed his name in the book
of the European workers' movement, but to accomplish that he had to
cut himself off from his roots in Russian society. Moreover, he did not
enter the European movement as a necessary and integral part. His
participation is a transient episode, and one not even representing a step
forward. What remains now of Bakuninism? A few prejudices in the
workers' organizations of the Latin nations....
To be sure, at this point one could bring in Tolstoy. But this will
not carry full conviction. There can be no doubt that the image of
Tolstoy, with the cord around his peasant shirt and the bast sandals
on his feet, has imposed itself upon world thought; yet this is not be–
cause of his social philosophy but rather because he himself was such
an enormous human fact. His "teachings" have remained what they
always were: subjective forests of his soul of great biographical value.
After the European religious transformations and revolutions and after
the spread of the Western social doctrines of the nineteenth century,
what new meaning can the words of Tolstoy have?
Let us say it once more: the history of our social thought has up to
this time not even driven a small wedge into the general history of
the human mind. I s this a little hard on national pride? Well, in the
first place, historic truth is not a lady-in-waiting on national self-love.
And secondly, we would do better to invest our national pride in the
future rather than in the past.
The absence of historical traditions and distinct political groupings
h:ls necessarily brought about a deficiency in personal moral stability. In
a disintegrating "unhistorical" environment it is much easier to sacrifice
one's life for an idea than to actualize it in a coherent fashion
throughout
one's life. It must be admitted that the well-known criticism at the ex–
pense of the Russian intelligentsia - that "up to the age of thirty they
are radicals and after that they are scoundrels" - is not without a
grain of truth. However crudely Goncharov's caricature of the nihilist
in his novel
The Precipice
is drawn, there is nothing implausible about
the fact that he has a change of heart and turns into a Junker. Has it
been long since the candidate for the Gracchi, who eventually becomes
a customs-inspector because his "milieu devoured him," has been retired
from his traditional role in Russian fiction?
11 Pyotr Lavrov (1823-1900), one of the philosophicalleade!"s of the Populist
radical movement. Nikolay Mikhaylovsky (1842-1904), a radical literary critic
and a sociologist stressing the "subjectivist" method.
