Isaiah Berlin - Russian Thinkers

power', ' Figaro-bankers' and ' Figaro-ministers' whose livery could

not be shed because it had become part of their skins. He liked free

men and unbroken personalities. He detested spiritual slavery more

than any other quality. And like Herzen he looked on the Germans

as irredeemably servile and said so with insulting repetitiveness:

When an Englishman or an American says ' I am an Englishman', 'I am an American', they are saying ' I am a free man'; when a German says ' I am a German' he is saying ' I am a slave, but my

Emperor is stronger than all the other Emperors, and the German

soldier who is strangling me will strangle you all' . . . every people

has tastes of its own-the Germans are obsessed by the big stick of

the state.3

Bakunin recognized oppression when he saw it; he genuinely rebelled

against every form of established authority and order, and he knew

an authoritarian when he met one, whether he was Tsar Nicholas

and Bismarck, or Lassalle and Marx (the latter triply authoritarian,

in his view, as a German, a Hegelian and a Jew).' But he is not a

serious thinker; he is neither a moralist nor a psychologist; what is

to be looked for in him is not social theory or political doctrine, but

1 ibid., pp. I 22-3.

I Her zen, in a letter to Turgenev of 10 November 1 862, justly called

it 'fatrtu bakuninskoi demagogii' ('Bakunin's demagogic hotchpotch').

B M. Bakunin, 'Statism and Anarchy', in A. Lehning (ed.), Arclzif!�l

Balou11i11�, vol. 3 (Leiden, 1967), p. 3 58.

' ibid., p. 3 17.

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H E R Z E N AND BAK U N I N ON L I B E RTY

an outlook and a temperament. There are no coherent ideas to be

extracted from his writings of any period, only fire and imagination,

violence and poetry, and an ungovernable desire for strong sensations,

for life at a high tension, for the disintegration of all that is peaceful,

secluded, tidy, orderly, small scale, philistine, established, moderate,

part of the monotonous prose of daily life. His attitude and his teaching

were profoundly frivolous, and, on the wholf", he knew this well,

and laughed good-naturedly whenever he was exposed.1 He wanted

to set on fire as much as possible as swiftly as possible; the thought of

any kind of chaos, violence, upheaval, he found boundlessly exhilarating. When in his famous Confession (written in prison to the Tsar) he said that what he hated most was a quiet life, that what he longed

for most ardently was always something-anything-fantastic, unheard

of adventures, perpetual movement, action, battle, that he suffocated

in peaceful conditions, he summed up the content as well as the

quality of his writings.

VI

Despite their prima facie similarities-their common hatred of the

Russian regime, their belief in the Russian peasant, their theoretical

federalism and Proudhonian socialism, their hatred of bourgeois

society and contempt for middle-class virtues, their anti-liberalism and

their militant atheism, their personal devotion, and the similarity of

their social origin, tastes, and education -the differences of the two

friends are deep and wide. Herzen (although this has been seldom

recognised even by his greatest admirers) is an original thinker,

independent, honest, and unexpectedly profound. At a time when

general nostrums, vast systems and simple solutions were in the air,

preached by the disciples of Hegel, of Feuerbach, of Fourier, of

Christian and neo-Christian social mystics, when utilitarians and

neo-medievalists, romantic pessimists and nihilists, peddlers of 'scientific' ethics and 'evolutionary' politics, and every brand of communist and anarchist, offered short-term remedies and long-term Utopiassocial, economic, theosophical, metaphysical- Herzen retained his incorruptible sense of reality. He realised that general and abstract

1 'By nature I am not a charlatan,' he said in his letter to the Tsar, 'but the

unnatural and unhappy predicament (for which, in point of fact, I was

myself responsible) sometimes made me a charlatan against my will.' V. A.

Polonsky (ed.), op. cit.(p. 109, note z above), vol. 1 (Moscow,,r 9z 3), p. I S9·

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R U S S IAN TH I N K E R S

terms like 'liberty' o r 'equality', unless they were translated into

specific terms applicable to actual situations, were likely, at best,

merely to stir the poetical imagination and inspire men with generous

sentiments, at worst to j ustify stupidities or crimes. He saw-and in

his day it was a discovery of genius-that there was something absurd

i n the very asking of such general questions as 'What is the meaning

of life?' or 'What accounts f;r the fact that things in general happen

as they do?' or 'What is the goal or the pattern or the direction of

history?' He realised that such questions made sense only if they were

made specific, and that the answers depended on the specific ends of

specific human beings in specific situations. To ask always for 'ultimate' purposes was not to know what a purpose is; to ask for the ultimate goal of the singer in singing was to be interested in something

other than songs or music. For a man acted as he did each for the

sake of his own personal ends (however much, and however rightly,

he might believe them to be connected or identical with those of

others), which were sacred to him, ends for the sake of which he was

prepared to live and to die. It is for this reason that Herzen so seriously

and passionately believed in the independence and freedom of individuals; and understood what he believed in, and reacted so painfully against the adulteration or obfuscation of the issues by metaphysical

or theological patter and democratic rhetoric. In his view all that is

ultimately valuable are the particular purposes of particular persons;

and to trample on these is always a crime because there is, and can

be, no principle or value higher than the ends of the individual, and

therefore no principle in the name of which one could be permitted

to do violence to or degrade or destroy individuals-the sole authors

of all principles and all values. Unless a minimum area is guaranteed

to all men within which they can act as they wish, the only principles

and values left will be those guaranteed by theological or metaphysical

or scientific systems claiming to know the final truth about man's

place in the universe, and his functions and goals therein. And these

claims Herzen regarded as fraudulent, one and all. It is this particular

species of non-metaphysical, empirical, 'eudaemonistic' individualism

that makes Herzen the sworn enemy of all systems, and of all claims

to suppress liberties i n their name, whether in the name of utilitarian

considerations or authoritarian principles, of mystically revealed ends,

or of reverence before irresistible power, or 'the logic of the facts',

or any other similar reason.

What can Bakunin offer that is remotely comparable? Bakunin,

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H E RZEN AND B A K U N I N ON L I B E RTY

with his gusto and his logic and his eloquence, his desire and capacity

to undermine and burn and shiver to pieces, now disarmingly childlike, at other times pathological and inhuman; with his odd combination of analytical acuteness and unbridled exhibitionism; carrying with him, with superb unconcern, the multicoloured heritage of the