Dostoevsky (72 page)

Indeed, as if to obviate any misunderstanding, he pointedly makes clear that nothing is more despicable than to exhibit insensibility or indifference to the suffering of others, or worse, callously to impose suffering for the sake of self-advantage. For Dostoevsky, the nadir of human perversity is to justify a base or vicious act on the ground that the suffering it causes is “good” for the unwilling victim. Prince Valkovsky takes exactly this line in cynically accounting for his behavior toward Nellie’s mother: “I reflected that by giving her back [her] money I should perhaps make her unhappy. I should have deprived her of the enjoyment of being miserable
entirely owing to me
, and cursing me for it all her life. . . . This ecstasy of suffering can be found in Schilleresque natures, of course; perhaps she will have nothing to eat, but I am convinced that she was happy. I did not want to deprive her of that happiness and did not send her back her money” (3: 367). The underground man, with somewhat less conviction, will use exactly the same reasoning to justify his odious humiliation of the repentant prostitute Liza in the closing scene of
Notes from Underground
.

These brief considerations should illustrate the anticipatory interest of Dostoevsky’s first major post-Siberian novel. Its deficiencies will only be surmounted
when, a few years later, he places the theme of egoism squarely at the center of his action and portrays the radical ideologies of both the 1860s and the 1840s as having encouraged the growth and spread in Russia of this noxious moral plague. Dostoevsky will continue to employ the roman-feuilleton plot, the technique of this kind of melodramatic thriller derived from the Gothic novel by way of Scott, Dickens, and Balzac (the “urban Gothic,” as George Steiner has called it),
⁷
and rely on its effects of suspense and dramatic surprise to rivet the attention of his reader. But he will recast it completely to eliminate its usual motivation, or better, to subordinate such motivation firmly to his own creative explorations of the ultimate moral consequences of radical belief.

¹
A. A. Belkin, ed.,
F. M. Dostoevsky v Russkoi kritike
(Moscow, 1956), 42.

²
I. I. Zamotin,
Dostoevsky v Russkoi kritike, 1848–1881
(Warsaw, 1913), 36–37.

³
Cited in
PSS
, 3: 529.

⁴
Belkin,
Dostoevsky v Russkoi kritike
, 94–95.

⁵
K. Mochulsky,
Dostoevsky: His Life and Work
, trans. Michael A. Minihan (Princeton, NJ, 1967), 210.

⁶
Nietzsche read
The Insulted and Injured
with great appreciation. Indeed, according to an account given by a friend, he told her that he had perused it with “his eyes overflowing” with tears. The formidable Nietzsche surrendered completely to Dostoevsky’s efforts to pluck the heartstrings of his readers. As Wolfgang Gesemann has suggested, the German philosopher may also have been intrigued by Dostoevsky’s attack against the sentimental idealism of the “schöne Seele,” as well as “the excitement of the encounter with the creatively genial refinement of Stirnerism” in Prince Valkovsky. See Gesemann, “Nietzsche’s Verhältnnis zu Dostoevsky auf dem europäischen Hintergrund der 80er Jahre,”
Die Welt der Slaven
2 (July 1961), 135, 147–150.

⁷
George Steiner,
Tolstoy or Dostoevsky
(New York, 1961), 197.

The one or two years following the liberation of the serfs on February 16, 1861 are known by Russian historians as “the era of proclamations.” For the first time since the Decembrist uprising in 1825, open agitation was carried on against the regime in the streets of Petersburg and Moscow. Inflammatory leaflets turned up everywhere—not only on doorhandles and in mailboxes but also lying scattered along main streets such as the Nevsky Prospect. The sheer fact of their appearance was a highly significant and unprecedented event—not to mention the boldness of those who wrote and distributed them. The sudden explosion of this propaganda campaign revealed the rancorous discontent of the radical intelligentsia with the tsar whom, just a few years before, they had been hailing in adulatory terms for his intention to bring an end to serfdom.

Even before the issuance of the liberation decree, the radical progressives had become convinced that the economic terms proposed would, in the long run, lead to the impoverishment of the peasantry. The peasants themselves were simply bewildered by the complicated terms of the manifesto, which, of course, most of them could not read, and rumors swept the vast countryside that the “true liberation” supposedly proclaimed by the tsar was being concealed by the rapacious landed gentry. Literate peasants, who set up as “interpreters” (in the sense desired by the people) of the floridly written and ambiguous liberation decree, gained a wide following among credulous listeners only too willing to believe in the treachery and mendacity of their overlords. Such a “true liberation” had long been cherished in the apocalyptic imagination of the Russian peasants, who dreamed that they would be granted, without repayment,
all
the land they deemed to be their own—“mainly,” writes Franco Venturi, “the complete separation of their community from the landlord, the breaking of all ties between them, and hence the
obshchina
closing in on itself.”
¹

Refusal to obey the local authorities occurred in several districts, and the most widespread disorder took place in the small village of Bezdna in the province of Kazan. Here, a
raskolnik
named Anton Petrov acquired an immense authority over the peasantry of the region when, on the basis of an aberrant reading
of the manifesto supposedly inspired by divine illumination, he proclaimed the “true liberation,” which pretended to disclose the genuine intentions of the holy tsar. Troops were finally sent in during April 1861 to arrest the agitator, who was telling the peasants not to comply with any of their obligations to the landowners, and when his followers refused to surrender him, several salvos were fired into the unarmed and peaceful mass. The official casualty figures listed fifty-one dead and seventy-seven wounded, but word-of-mouth reports spoke of several hundred casualties. A requiem mass for the peasants killed at Bezdna was organized in nearby Kazan by the students of the university and the Ecclesiastical Academy, and a popular young clergyman who taught history at the academy made a speech declaring Anton Petrov to have been “a new prophet . . . and he too has proclaimed liberty in the name of God.”
²

This clergyman, Afanasy Prokofievich Shchapov by name, had already achieved some notoriety for a Slavophil interpretation of the religious schism in the Russian Church. He depicted the schismatics as a native form of defiance against the imposition of foreign customs and ideas; and when the
raskolniki
rejected the alien state reforms imposed by Peter the Great, even declaring the tsar himself to be nothing less than the dreaded Antichrist, Shchapov considered such a reaction to be a struggle for cultural independence. Tried for his subversive speech at the Kazan service, he was sentenced to confinement in a monastery, but Alexander II intervened and ordered Shchapov to be given a post in the branch of the Ministry of Internal Affairs dealing with relations with the Old Believers.

A year later he issued his most important work,
The Land and the Schism
, the second part of which was published in
Time
. Much of this text was devoted to the sect of the
Beguny
(“Runners” or “Wanderers”), whose beliefs Shchapov interpreted as a form of social protest. The
Beguny
refused to carry an internal passport, as required by law, because they believed the world to be ruled by Antichrist, and they wandered through the Russian land as wayfarers, stubbornly rejecting all the obligations imposed on them by the godless state. Shchapov’s theories certainly contributed their share to Dostoevsky’s own assessment of the dissenting sects, and he sought in their heretical theology an insight into the indigenous essence of the Russian folk character. A bill from a bookstore dated August 1862 shows him to have ordered, among many other works, five books on the
Raskol
, including the major historical study by Shchapov.
³

Three months after the fusillade at Bezdna, the first leaflet of what was to become a veritable blizzard made its appearance in Petersburg and then in Moscow. Called
The Great Russian
and moderate in tone, it was inspired by the fears
aroused by events in Bezdna and elsewhere in the countryside and was addressed to the educated classes. “The government is bringing Russia to a Pugachev revolt,” declared the first issue.
⁴
The government, it was suggested, should pay the redemption fees for the land allotted to the peasants, and at the same time free the nationalities of the Russian Empire. A national assembly should also be convened to help the tsar come into more direct contact with the nation as a whole. The authors of
The Great Russian
remain unknown, but the suspects all belong to the circle of students and young army officers grouped around Chernyshevsky and
The Contemporary
. V. A. Obruchev, an ex-officer who had joined the staff of
The Contemporary
, was caught distributing the leaflet and was sent to Siberia for a number of years.

Simultaneously with the second and third numbers of
The Great Russian
, which circulated in the fall of 1861, another proclamation appeared, entitled
To the Young Generation
. Its author is now known to be N. V. Shelgunov, who also contributed social-economic articles to
The Contemporary
. The leaflet was revised by M. L. Mikhailov, who had gained fame as a defender of woman’s rights in the pages of
The Contemporary
, and Herzen printed it in London, with considerable reluctance and foreboding, at his Free Russian Press. Mikhailov, already under surveillance, was arrested on September 14, 1861, and his sentence to Siberia for six years produced a widespread wave of indignation.

To the Young Generation
was only one of a series of leaflets written by Mikhailov, Shelgunov, and perhaps Chernyshevsky (the others, addressed to peasants and soldiers, were never printed), and it took a much harsher line than the moderate
The Great Russian
. No question now remained that a political change was envisaged, and that the authors had broken with tsarism once and for all: “We do not need a power that oppresses us; we do not need a power that prevents the mental, civic, and economic development of the country; we do not need a power that raises corruption and self-seeking as its banner.” What Russia needs is “an elected leader receiving a salary for his services,” and Alexander II should be told that the greatest achievement of his reign—the liberation of the serfs—had created a new order in which he had become superfluous: “If Alexander does not understand this and does not wish voluntarily to make way for the people—so much the worse for him.” The general dissatisfaction can still be kept within bounds if the tsar gives up the throne; but “if to achieve our ends, by dividing the land among the people, we have to kill a hundred thousand of the gentry, even that will not deter us.”
⁵

Noticeable in
To the Young Generation
is the strong influence of Herzen’s “Russian Socialism,” with its messianic vision of a social-political future for
Russia without precedent in the history of Europe. “We believe in the forces of Russia because we believe that we have been destined to bring a new principle into history, to hand on our own message and not to haunt the old gardens of Europe.”
⁶
A full democracy was envisaged; all land belonging to the nation would be divided into
obshchinas
; everyone would be a member of a self-administered commune, and whether a state of any kind would continue to exist is left unclear. The leaflet attacks “constitutionalism” and “economists” who desire “to turn Russia into England and impregnate us with English maturity.” “We have aped,” the leaflet declares, “the French and Germans quite enough. Do we need to ape the English as well?”
⁷
Dostoevsky mentions
To the Young Generation
by name and was certainly familiar with its contents.

After the events at Bezdna and their aftermaths, the government tightened restrictions in all areas where they had been relaxed in recent years. Nowhere had they been more liberal than in the universities, where limitations on admission had been lifted and lectures were thrown open to all who wished to attend. Students had also acquired the right to set up their own libraries, establish mutual-aid funds, publish newspapers, and run their own affairs. New regulations drawn up for the universities abolished all the corporate liberties of the students and reimposed fees that had been eliminated for the poorer ones just a few years earlier. These regulations were installed at the beginning of the fall term; but the students refused to accept them, and, to the unfeigned delight of a large crowd of onlookers, organized a protest march through the streets despite the presence of police and army troops. Many were arrested the same night, other arrests followed later, and, when agitation continued, the universities were closed for a full year. A number of the students who participated in these events later became well-known in the ranks of the Russian revolutionary movement.