Isaiah Berlin - Russian Thinkers

confusion on the left as a result of being unexpectedly faced with its

own image in nihilism, which pleased some and horrified others, he

reproaches the author for being altogether too anxious not to be unjust

to Bazarov, and consequently for representing him always in the best

possible light. There is such a thing, he says, as being too fair: this

leads to its own brand of distortion of the truth. As for the hero,

Bazarov is represented as being brutally candid: that is good, very good;

he believes in telling the whole truth, however upsetting to the poor,

gentle 'Kirsanovs, father and son, with no respect for persons or

circumstances: most admirable; he attacks art, riches, luxurious living;

yes, but in the name of what? Of science and knowledge? But, Katkov

declares, this is simply not true. Bazarov's purpose is not the discovery

of scientific truth, else he would not peddle cheap popular tracts­

Biichner and the rest-which are not science at all, but journalism,

materialist propaganda. Bazarov (he goes on to say) is not a scientist;

this species scarcely existli in Russia in our time. Bazarov and his

fellow nihilists are merely preachers: they denounce phrases, rhetoric,

inflated language- Bazarov tells Arkady not to talk so 'beautifully'but only in order to substitute for this their own political propaganda; they offer not hard scientific facts, in which they are not interested,

with which, indeed, they are not acquainted, but slogans, diatribes,

radical cant. Bazarov's dissection of frogs is not genuine pursuit of

the truth, it is only an occasion for rejecting civilised and traditional

values which Pavel Kirsanov, who in a better-ordered society-say

England-would have done useful work, rightly defends. Bazarov and

his friends will discover nothing; they are not researchers; they are

mere ranters, men who declaim in the name of a science which they

do not trouble to master; in the end they are no better than the

ignorant, benighted Russian priesthood from whose ranks they mostly

spring, and far more dangerous.•

Herzen, as always, was both penetrating and amusing. 'Turgenev

1 ibid.

1 'Roman Turgeneva i ego kritiki', R•sslii fltllflil, May 1 86z, pp. 393"

.f.Z6, and '0 nashem nigilizme. Po povodu romana Turgeneva', ibid., July

1 86z, pp. 4oz-z6.

FATHERS AND C H I LDREN

was more of an artist in his novel than people think, and for this

reason lost his way, and, in my opinion, did very well. He wanted

to go to one room, but ended up in another and a better one.'1 The

author clearly started by wanting to do something for the fathers, but

they turned out to be such nonentities that he 'became carried away

by Bazarov's very extremism; with the result that instead of Bogging

the son, he whipped the fathers'.21 Herzen may well be right: it may

be that, although Turgenev does not admit this, Bazarov, whom the

author began as a hostile portrait, came to fascinate his creator to such

a degree that, like Shylock, he turns into a figure more human and a

great deal more complex than the design of the work had originally

allowed for, and so at once transforms and perhaps distorts it. Nature

sometimes imitates art: Bazarov affected the young as Werther, in the

previous century, influenced them, like Schiller's The Rohhers, like

Byron's Laras and Giaours and Childe Harolds in their day. Yet these

new men, Herzen added in a later essay, are so dogmatic, doctrinaire,

jargon-ridden, as to exhibit the least attractive aspect of the Russian

character, the policeman's-the martinet's-side of it, the brutal

bureaucratic jackboot; they want to break the yoke of the old despotism,

but only in order to replace it with one of their own. The 'generation

of the 4os', his own and Turgenev's, may have been fatuous and weak,

but does it follow that their successors-the brutally rude, loveless,

cynical, philistine young men of the 6os, who sneer and mock and

push and jostle and don't apologise-are necessarily superior beings?

What new principles, what new constructive answers have they

provided? Destruction is destruction. It is not creation. 8

In the violent babel of voices aroused by the novel, at least five

attitudes can be distinguished.& There was the angry right wing which

thought that Bazarov represented the apotheosis of the new nihilists,

and sprang from Turgenev's unworthy desire to Ratter and be accepted

by the young. There were those who congratulated him on successfully exposing barbarism and subversion. There were those who denounced him for his wicked travesty of the radicals, for providing

reactionaries with ammunition and playing into the hands of the

1 A. I. Herzen, 'Eshche raz Bazarov', So6ra11it SIJchilltllii, vol. zo, p. 339·

I ibid.

a 81J6r1111it so&hi11t11ii, vol. 1 1, p. 3 5 1.

& For a full analysis of the immediate reaction to the novel see 'Z' (E. F.

Zarin), 'Ne v brov', a v glaz', Bi6/iottlta dlya chlt11iya, 1 86z No 4.. pp. z 1-5 5·

..

R U SS IAN T H INKERS

police; by them he was c;alled renegade and traitor. Still others, like

Dmitry Pisarev, proudly nailed Bazarov's colours to their mast and

expressed gratitude to Turgenev for his honesty and sympathy with

all that was most living and fearless in the growing party of the future.

Finally there were some who detected that the author himself was

not wholly sure of what he wanted to do, that his attitude was genuinely

ambivalent, that he was an artist and not a pamphleteer, that he told

the truth as he saw it, without a clear partisan purpose.

This controversy continued in full strength after Turgenev's death.

It says something for the vitality of his creation that the debate did

not die even in the following century, neither before nor after the

Russian Revolution. Indeed, as lately as ten years ago the battle was

still raging amongst Soviet critics. Was Turgenev for us or against us?

Was he a Hamlet blinded by the pessimism of his declining class, or

did he, like Balzac or Tolstoy, see beyond it? Is Bazarov a forerunner

of the politically committed, militant Soviet intellectual, or a malicious

caricature of the fathers of Russian communism? The debate is not

over yet.1

1 The literature, mostly polemical, is very extensive. Among the most

representative essays may be listed: V. V. Vorovsky's celebrated 'Dva nigilizma:

Bazarov i Sanin' (1909), Sochin�niya (Moscow, 193 I), vol. z, pp. 74-Ioo;

V. P. Kin in Lit�ratura i mark1izm, vol. 6 (Moscow, I 9z9), pp. 7 I-I I6;

L. V. Pumpyansky, '0111y i J�ti. lstoriko-literatumyi ocherk', in I� S.

Turgenev, Sochin�niya (Moscow/Leningrad, I939), vol. 6, pp. 167-86; I. K.

lppolit, unin D Turg�ntfl� (Moscow, I93.f.); I. I. Veksler, /. s. Turg�ntfl ;

politichukay• 6or'6a JAtJtituJyatyk!t goJIJfJ (Moscow/Leningrad, 1 93 5); V. A.

Arkhipov, in Ruukaya lituatura, 1958 No I, pp. I 3z-6:z; G. A. Byaly, in

NIJfJyi mir, Moscow, I958 No 8, pp. :z5 5-9; A. I. Batyuto, in /. 8. Turg�nto

(I8I8-I883-I958): Jtat'i i mat�rialy (Orel, I96o), pp. 77-95; P. G.

Pustovoit, Roman /. 8. Turg�ntoa Otllly i deti i iJtinaya 6or' 6a 6okh godot:J

XIX r;da (Moscow, 1 96o); N. Chernov in Yopro1y lit�ratury, Moscow,

1961 No 8, pp. I 88-93; William Egerton in Ruukaya lit�ratura, I967 No I,

PP· I49-54·

This represents a mere sample of the continuing controversy, in which