Isaiah Berlin - Russian Thinkers

kind of criticism in which the line between life and art is of set purpose not too clearly drawn; in which praise and blame, love and hatred, admiration and contempt are freely expressed both for artistic forms

and for the human characters drawn, both for the personal qualities

of authors and for the content of their novels, and the criteria involved

in such attitudes, whether consciously or implicitly, a.re identical with

those in terms of which living human beings are in everyday life

judged or described.

This is, of course, a type of criticism which has itself been much

criticised. It is accused of confusing art with life, and thereby derogating from the purity of art. Whether these Russian critics did perpetrate this confusion or not, they introduced a new attitude

towards the novel, derived from their particular outlook on life. This

outlook later came to be defin� as that peculiar to members of the

intelligentsia - and the young radicals of 1 8 38-48, Belinsky, T urgenev,

Bakunin, Herzen; whom Annenkov so devotedly describes in his

book, are its true original founders. 'Intelligentsia' is a Russian word

invented in the nineteenth century, that has since acquired worldwide significance. The phenomenon itself, with its historical and literally revolutionary consequences, is, I suppose, the largest single

Russian contribution to social change in the world.

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B I RT H OF T H E R U S S I AN INTE L L I G ENTSIA

The concept of intelligentsia must not be confused with the notion

of intellectuals. Its members thought of themselves as united by

something more than mere interest in ideas; they conceived themselves

as being a dedicated order, almost a secular priesthood, devoted to the

spreading of a specific attitude to life, something like a gospel. Historically their emergence requires some explanation.

I I

Most Russian historians are agreed that the great social schism

between the educated and the 'dark folk' in Russian history sprang

from the wound inAicted on Russian society by Peter the Great. In

his reforming zeal Peter sent selected young men into the western

world, and when they had acquired the languages of the west and

the various new arts and skills which sprang from the scientific

revolution of the seventeenth century, brought them back to become

the leaders of that new social order which, with ruthless and violent

haste, he imposed upon his feudal land. In this way he created a small

class of new men, half Russian, half foreign-educated abroad, even

if they were Russian by birth; these, in due course, became a small

managerial and bureaucratic oligarchy, set above the people, no

longer sharing in their still medieval culture; cut off from them

irrevocably. The government of this large and unruly nation became

constantly more difficult, as social and economic conditions in Russia

increasingly diverged from the progressing west. With the widening

of the gulf, greater and greater repression had to be exercised by the

ruling elite. The small group of governors thus grew more and more

estranged from the people they were set to govern.

The rhythm of government in Russia in the eighteenth and early

nineteenth centuries is one of alternate repression and liberalisation.

Thus, when Catherine the Great felt that the yoke was growing too

heavy, or the appearance of things became too barbarous, she relaxed

the brutal rigidity of the despotism and was duly acclaimed by Voltaire

and Grimm. When this seemed to lead to too much sudden stirring

from within, too much protest, and too many educated persons began

to compare conditions in Russia unfavourably with conditions in the

west, she scented the beginnings of something subversive; the French

Revolution finally terrified her; she clamped down again. Once more

the regime grew stern and repressive.

The situation scarcely altered in the reign of Alexander I. The

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RU SSIAN THINKERS

vast majority of the inhabitants of Russia still lived in a feudal darkness,

with a weak and, on the whole, ignorant priesthood exercising relativdy little moral authority, while a large army of fairly faithful and at times not inefficient bureaucrats pressed down on the more and

more recalcitrant peasantry. Between the oppressors and the oppressed

there existed a small cultivated class, largely French-speaking, aware

of the enormous gap between the way in which life could be livedor was lived-in the west and the way in which it was lived by the Russian masses. They were, for the most part, men acutely conscious

of the difference between justice and injustice, civilisation and barbarism, but aware also that conditions were too difficult to alter, that they had too great a stalce in the regime themselves, and that reform

might bring the whole structure toppling down. Many among them

were reduced either to an easy-going quasi-Voltairean cynicism, at

once subscribing to liberal principles and whipping their serfs; or to

noble, eloquent and futile despair.

This situation altered with the invasion ofNapoleon,which brought

Russia into the middle of Europe. Almost overnight, Russia found

herself a great power in the heart of Europe, conscious of her crushing

strength, dominating the entire scene, and accepted by Europeans

with some terror and great reluctance, as not merely equal but

superior to them in sheer brute force.

The triumph over Napoleon and the march to Paris were events

in the history of Russian ideas as vitally important as the reforms of

Peter. They made Russia aware of her national unity, and generated

in her a sense of herself as a great European nation, recognised as

such; as being no longer a despised collection of barbarians teeming

behind a Chinese wall, sunk in medieval darkness, half-heartedly and

clumsily imitating foreign models. Moreover, since the long Napoleonic

war had brought about great and lasting patriotic fervour, and, as a

result of a general participation in a common ideal, an increase in the

feeling of equality between the orders, a number of relatively idealistic

young men began to feel new bonds between themselves and their

nation which their education could not by itself have inspired. The

growth of patriotic nationalism brought with it, as its inevitable concomitant, a growth of the feeling of responsibility for the chaos, the squalor, the poverty, the inefficiency, the brutality, the appalling

disorder in Russia. This general moral uneasiness affected the least

sentimental and perceptive, the hardest-hearted of the semi-civilised

members of the ruling class.

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B I RT H OF T H E R U S S IAN INTE L L I G E NTSIA

Ill

There were other factors which contributed to this collective sense of

guilt. One, certainly, was the coincidence (for coincidence it was) of

the rise of the romantic movement with the entrance of Russia into

Europe. One of the cardinal romantic doctrines (connected with the

cognate doctrines that history proceeds according to discoverable laws

or patterns, and that nations are unitary 'organisms', not mere collections, and 'evolve' in an 'organic', not a mechanical or haphazard fashion) is that everything in the world is as and where and when it

is because it participates in a single universal purpose. Romanticism

encourages the idea that not only individuals but groups, and not only

groups but institutions-states, churches, professional bodies, associations that have ostensibly been created for definite, often purely utilitarian purposes - come to be possessed by a 'spirit' of which they