Isaiah Berlin - Russian Thinkers

Lenin's scathing reference to the similarity of Turgenev's views to those

of German right-wing social democrats is constantly quoted both for and

against the conception of Bazarov as a prototype of Bolshevik activists. There

is an even more extensive mass of writing on the question of whether, and

how far, Katkov managed to persuade Turgenev to amend his tert in a

'moderate' direction by darkening Bazarov's image. That Turgenev did

alter his text as a result of Katkov's pleading is certain; he may, however,

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FATH ERS AND C H I LDREN

T urgenev was upset and bewildered by the reception of his book.

Before sending it to the printer, he had taken his usual precaution of

seeking endless advice. He read the manuscript to friends in Paris, he

altered, he modi lied, he tried to please everyone. The figure of Bazarov

suffered several transformations in successive drafts, up and down the

moral scale as this or that friend or consultant reported his impressions.

The attack from the left inflicted wounds which festered for the rest

of his life. Years later he wrote 'I am told that I am on the side of

the "fathers"- I, who in the person of Pavel Kirsanov, actually sinned

against artistic truth, went too far, exaggerated his defects to the point

of travesty, and made him ridiculous !'1 As for Bazarov, he was

'honest, truthful, a democrat to his fingertips'.1 Many years later,

Turgenev told the anarchist Kropotkin that he loved Bazarov 'very,

very much . . . I will show you my diaries-you will see how I wept

when I ended the book with Bazarov's death.'8 'Tell me honestly,'

he wrote to one of his most caustic critics, the satirist Saltykov (who

complained that the word 'nihilist' was used by reactionaries to damn

anyone they did not like), 'how could anybody be offended by being

compared to Bazarov? Do you not yourself realise that he is the most

sympathetic of all my characters�'' As for 'nihilism', that, perhaps,

was a mistake. 'I am ready to admit . . . that I had no right to give

our reactionary scum the opportunity to seize on a name, a catchword;

the writer in me should have brought the sacrifice to the citizen- I

admit the justice of my rejection by the young and of all the gibes

hurled at me . . . The issue was more important than artistic truth,

have restored some, at any rate, of the original language when the novel was

published as a book. His relations with Katkov deteriorated rapidly; Turgenev

came to look on him as a vicious reactionary and refused his proffered hand

at a banquet in honour of Pushkin in I 88o; one of his favourite habits was

to refer to the arthritis which tormented him as Katkovitis (AatlOfl.fa). On

this see N. M. Gutyar, lrJtlfl Strguviclz TurgtflttJ (Yurev, 1907), and V. G.

Bazanov, /z littraturtloi poltmiAi 6oAh godOfl (Petrozavodsk, 1 94I), pp. 46-8.

The list of 'corrections' in the text for which Katkov is held responsible is

ritually reproduced in virtually every Soviet study of Turgenev's works. But

see also A. Batyuto, 'Parizhskaya rukopis' romana I. S. Turgeneva Ottsy i

tkti', RussAaya littratura, 1 961 No 4o pp. 57-78.

1 Littralurtlyt i z.hiltisAit tJospomiflafliya, p. I S S.

t Letter to K. K. Sluchevsky, :z6 April I 86:z.

a /. S. TurgtflttJ fJ tJospomiflafliyaAII SOtJrtflltflfliAOtJ, vol. I, p. 441 .

• Letter to M . E . Saltykov-Shchedrin, I S January I 876.

•'

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R U S S I AN T H IN K E R S

and I ought to have foreseen this. '1 He claimed that he shared almost

all Bazarov's views, all save those on art. 1 A lady of his acquaintance

had told him that he was neither for the fathers, nor for the children,

but was a nihilist himself; he thought she might be right. 8 Herun

had said that there had been something of Bazarov in them all, in

himself, in Belinsky, in Bakunin, in all those who in the I 84os

denounced the Russian kingdom of darkness in the name of the west

and science and civilisation.' Turgenev did not deny this either. He

did, no doubt, adopt a different tone in writing to different correspondents. When radical Russian students in Heidelberg demanded clarification of his own position, he told them that 'if the reader does not love Bazarov, as he is-coarse, heartless, ruthlessly dry and brusque • . . the

fault is mine; I have not succeeded in my task. But to "dip him in

syrup" (to use his own expression)-that I was not prepared to do . . . I

did not wish to buy popularity by this sort of concession. Better lose a

battle (and I think I have lost this one), than win it by a trick.'11 Yet

to his friend the poet Fet, a conservative landowner, he wrote that he

did not himself know if he loved Bazarov or hated him. Did he mean

to praise or denigrate him? He did not know.8 And this is echoed

eight years later: 'My pei'S(Jnal feelings [towards Bazarov] were

confused (God only knows whether I loved him or hated him) !'7 To

the liberal Madame Filosofova he wrote, 'Bazarov is my beloved child;

on his account I quarrelled with Katkov . . . Bazarov, that intelligent,

heroic man-a caricature? !' And he added that this was 'a senseless

charge'.8

He found the scorn of the young unjust beyond endurance. He

wrote that in the summer of I 862 'despicable generals praised me, the

young insulted me'. 8 The socialist leader Lavrov reports that he bitterly

complained to him of the injustice of the radicals' change of attitude

towards him. He returns to this in one of his late Ponns in Prost:

'Honest souls turned away from him. Honest faces grew red with

1 ibid.

1 Liltrotumyt i zhittis �it rJospDmittoniyo, p. 1 55.

8 ibid., P· I 57.

' 'Eshche raz Bazarov', 8o6ronit sochintnii, vo]. zo, pp. 3 3 5-50.

6 Letter to K. K. Sluchevsky, z6 April I 86z.

8 Letter of 1 8 April I 86z.

7 Letter to I. P. Borisov, 4 January I 87o.

8 Letter of 30 August I 874.

11 Letter to Marko Vovchok (Mme Markovich}, z7 August I 8liz.

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FATHERS AND C H ILDREN

indignation at the mere mention of his name. '1 This was not mere

wounded amour propre: He suffered from a genuine sense of having

got himself into a politically false position. All his life he wished to

march with the progressives, with the party ofliberty and protest. But,

in the end, he could not bring himself to accept their brutal contempt

for art, civilised behaviour, for everything that he held dear in Eur�

pean culture. He hated their dogmatism, their arrogance, their

destructiveness, their appalling ignorance of life. He went abroad,

lived in Germany and France, and returned to Russia only on flying

visits. In the west he was universally praised and admired. But in the

end it was to Russians that he wished to speak. Although his popularity

with the Russian public in the I 86os, and at all times, was very great,

it was the radicals he most of all wanted to please. They were hostile

or unresponsive.

His next novel, Smoke, which he began immediately after the

publication of Fathers and Children, was a characteristic attempt to

staunch his wounds, to settle his account with all his opponents. It

was published five years later, in I 867, and contained a biting satire

directed at both camps: at the pompous, stupid, reactionary generals

and bureaucrats, and at the foolish, shallow, irresponsible left-wing

talkers, equally remote from reality, equally incapable of remedying

the ills of Russia. This provoked further onslaughts on him. This time