Isaiah Berlin - Russian Thinkers

process, for our civilisation is far from exhausted yet.

Civilisation, humane culture, meant more to the Russians, latecomers to Hegel's feast of the spirit, than to the blase natives of the west. Turgenev clung to it more passionately, was more conscious of

its precariousness, than even his friends Flaubert and Renan.But unlike

them, he discerned behind the philistine bourgeoisie a far more furious

opponent-the young iconoclasts bent on the total annihilation of his

world in the certainty that a new and more just world would emerge.

He understood the best among these Robespierres, as Tolstoy, or even

Dostoevsky, did not. He rejected their methods, he thought their goals

naive and grotesque, but his hand would not rise against them if this

meant giving aid and comfort to the generals and the bureaucrats. He

offered no clear way out: only gradualism and education, only reason.

Chekhov once said that a writer's business was not to provide solutions,

only to describe a situation so truthfully, do such justice to all sides

of the question, that the reader could no longer evade it. The doubts

Turgenev raised have not been stilled. The dilemma of morally

sensitive, honest, and intellectually responsible men at a time of acute

polarisation of opinion has, since his time, grown acute and worldwide. The predicament of what, for him, was only the 'educated section' of a country then scarcely regarded as fully European, has

come to be that of men in every class of society in our day. He recognised it in its earlier beginnings, and described it with incomparable sharpness of vision, poetry, and truth.

Appendix

As an illustration of the political atmosphere in Russia in the 1 87os

and 8os, especially with regard to the mounting wave of political

terrorism, the account that follows of a conversation with Dostoevsky

by his editor, A. S. Suvorin, may be of interest. Both Suvorin and

'Dostoevsky were loyal supporters of the autocracy and were looked

upon by liberals, not without reason, as strong and irredeemable

reactionaries. Suvorin's periodical, Ntw Timts (NovrJt vrtmyo), was

the best edited and most powerful extreme right-wing journal published

in Russia towards the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the

..

R U S S IAN THINKERS

twentieth century. Suvorin's political position gives particular point

to this entry in his diary .1

On the day of the attempt by Mlodetsky1 on Loris Melikov I

was with F. M. Dostoevsky.

He lived in a shabby little apartment. I found him sitting by a

small round table in the drawing-room, he was rolling cigarettes;

his face was like that of someone who had just emerged from a

Russian bath, from a shelf on which he had been steaming himself

. . . I probably did not manage to conceal my surprise, because he

gave me a look and after greeting me, said 'I have just had an attack.

I am glad, very glad, to see you' and went on rolling his cigarettes.

Neither he nor I knew anything about the attempted assassination.

But our conversation presently turned to political crimes in general,

and a [recent] explosion in the Winter Palace in particular. In the

course of talking about this, Dostoevsky commented on the odd

attitude of the public to these crimes. Society seemed to sympathise

with them, or, it might be truer to say, was not too clear about how

to look upon them. 'Imagine', he said, 'that you and I are standing

by the window of Datsiaro's shop and looking at the pictures. A

man is standing near us, and pretending to look too. He seems to be

waiting for something, and keeps looking round. Suddenly another

man comes up to him hurriedly and says, "The Winter Palace will

be blown up very soon. I've set the machine." We hear this. You

must imagine that we hear it-that these people are so excited that

they pay no attention to their surroundings or how far their voices

amy. How would we act? Would we go to the Winter Palace to

warn them about the explosion, would we go to the police, or get

the corner constable to arrest these men? Would you do this?'

'No, I would not.'

'Nor would I. Why not? After all, it is dreadful; it is a crime.

We should have forestalled it.8 This is what I had been thinking

about before you came in, while I was rolling my cigarettes. I

went over all the reasons that might have made me do this. Weighty,

solid reasons. Then I considered the reasons that would have stopped

me from doing it. They are absolutely trivial. Simply fear of being

1 Dntr�niA A. S. Suflorina, ed. M. G. Krichevsky (Moscow/Petrograd,

1923). PP· I s-r 6. This entry for r 887 is the first in the diary of Dostoevsky's

(and Chekhov's) friend and publisher.

1 lppolit Mlodetsky made his attempt on the life of the head of the

Government on :zo February r 88o,some weeks after the failure ofKhalturin's

attempt to kill the Tsar. He was hanged two days la,ter.

• The Russian word can also mean 'give warning'.

JO.of.

FAT H E R S A N D C H I LD R E N

thought an informer. I imagined how I might come, the kind of

look I might get from them, how I might be interrogated, perhaps

confronted with someone, be offered a reward, or, maybe, suspected

of complicity. The newspapers might say that "Dostoevsky identified the criminals." Is this my affair? It is the job of the police. This is what they have to do, what they are paid for. The liberals would

never forgive me. They would torment me, drive me to despair. Is

this normal? Everything is abnormal in our society; that is how

these things happen, and, when they do, nobody knows how to actnot only in the most difficult situations, but even in the simplest. I might write about this. I could say a great deal that might be good

and bad both for society and for the Government; yet this cannot be

done. About the most important things we are not allowed to talk.'

He talked a great deal on this theme, and talked with inspired

feeling. He added that he would write a novel, the hero of which

would be Alesha Karamazov. He wanted to take him through a

monastery and make him a revolutionary; he would then commit a

political crime; he would be executed. He would search for the

truth, and in the course of this quest would naturally become a

revolutionary . . . 1

1 The editor of this text, which he calls a 'fragment', mentions a passage

in the novel in which Ivan Karamazov speaks to his saintly brother Alesha

about the case of the general who set his dogs to hound a peasant boy to

death before the eyes of his mother; he asks Alesha whether he would want

the general to be killed for this. Alesha, after a tormented silence, says that

he would. 'Bravo' says Ivan.

Index of Names

Compiled by Patricia Utech in

About, E., 161

Balzac, H. de, ZJ, 1 30, 141, 183, 2.86

�hylus, 74

Baratyoaky, E. A., 1 75, 183

Akhsharumov, D. D., 16, 16, 45• so

Baring, M., 162.

Aksaltov, I. S., 6, 1 8-19, 150

Barri:a, M., 79

Aluakov, K. S., 6, 1 8-19, 168

Bartenev, P. 1., 57

Akselrod, P. B., 133

Batyuto, A. I., z.86n, 2.87n

Albertus Magnus, J Z 7

Bayle, P., 1 37

d'Aiembert, J . le R., 7 2.

Baz.a.nov, V. G., z.hn, 2.87n

Alexander I , Emperor, J+• 38-9, 41, 63,