I. The Theocratic Theory of Chaädaev

The representative theorizer of the Theocratic phase of Russian Westernism was Chaädaev.1 His opinion of Russia was that" it is one of those nations which, it seems, do not represent any necessary part of humanity but merely exist for the purpose of teaching the world at some time a great lesson".

According to our geographic location between the West and the East, resting with one elbow on China and with the other on Germany, we ought to unite in ourselves the two great fundamentals of knowledge: imagination and reason. We ought to correlate in our civil education the history of the whole world. But such has not been our lot. Marooned in the world we have given nothing to it, have taken nothing from it. We have added no single idea to the mass of human ideas, have given nothing to perfect human understanding, and have distorted everything which brought us such perfection.2

The root of this evil, according to his opinion, lies in the fact that Russia received its "first seeds of moral and intellectual enlightenment from corrupt Byzantium, ostracized by all peoples ".3 "Our exotic civilization," he continues, "has set us apart from the rest of Europe in such a way that we have none of her ideas. . . . If our own ante

1 Peter Yakovlevitch Chaädaev (1793-1856) was a Moscovite gentleman of considerable erudition. His theories concerning Russia appeared in his "Philosophical Letters", the first of which when published in a Russian periodical, the Telescop, vol. 34, no. 15, roused the Russian nationalists to great indignation. The government exiled the publisher, and the author was declared insane and put under medical observation. Chaädaev's works are now being edited in Moscow; the first volume appeared in 1913, and contains his famous "Philosophical Letters", in French.

2 Chaädaev, Lettres sur la philosophie de l'histoire. Works, vol. i, Moscow, 1913, p. 84.

Ibid., p. 85.

cedents do not tie us to any other people on earth, if, in fact, we do not belong to any other people on earth, nor to any of the moral systems of the universe, we cling, in spite of it, through our social superficiality, to the occident." 1

Chaädaev thinks that the only way for Russia to become truly civilized lies through yielding to the Roman Catholic Church and faith. He looks with great admiration upon the Roman Church, which succeeded in accomplishing the unity of Europe, something that since the schism created by the reformation, no other institution has been able to achieve.

We never dreamed that for centuries this society [the Roman Church] had formed a real federal system and that this system was not dissolved until the time of the reformation. The nations of Europe considered themselves before this deplorable event as one social body. Although geographically divided into states, they were one from the moral point of view, as for a long time there was no other public right among them than the decree of the Church.2

Medieval history is to Chaädaev a history of one great Christian people and its wars may be viewed as civil wars. Trouble began with the Protestant schism. The breaking of the unity of thought has broken the unity of society."

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3

This last statement may be taken as the basic doctrine of Chaädaev. He saw no other institution fit to establish unity of thought except the intolerant Roman hierarchy. Rome has guarded the moral and intellectual development of all former generations since the origin of things. She, therefore, should remain the unifying and

1 Works, vol. ì, p. 137.

'Ibid., p. 106.

Idem.

civilizing force of humanity. Chaädaev hoped for the day on which the schismatic churches, in a spirit of penitence and humility, in sack-cloth and ashes, should decide to recognize their error and return to the mother church.1

Chaädaev was admired for his bold thinking by many of the Russian intellectuals, although but few of them took him seriously. They preferred for themselves the Hegelian philosophy of history which promised them a little more than an opportunity to yield to the control of a medieval institution.

II. The Humanitarianism of. Belinsky

Belinsky 2 was representative of the humanitarian trend of Russian Westernism. He was not a sociologist in the severely scientific sense of the word, but he may be regarded as a precursor of what later became known as the populist wing of the Subjectivist School of Sociology. He saw the fundamental problem of that school and tried to find a solution of it. This problem consisted in finding a principle that would establish the true relation between society and the individual. He made use of the organic view. "A people," he says, "is not an abstract concept; a people is a living individuality whose vital diversities serve one end. A people is an individual like a separate man."

When it first arises, a people is unconscious; passing

1 Works, vol. i, p. 118.

'Vissarion Gregorievitch Belinsky (1810-1848), one of Russia's illustrious literary critics and publicists, reflects in his writings the rapid changes through which the intellectual class of Russia passed. From Schelling, Fichte and Hegel he went over to Feuerbach and Marx, becoming one of the first advocates of Marxian ideas in Russia. Works (Russian), four volumes.

Belinsky, Works, St. Petersburg ed., 1896, vol. i, p. 337.

through all the stages of a human being it emerges into consciousness within the periods of its youth and manhood. "The beginning of the life of each people is hidden by geographic, ethnographic, geological and climatic conditions. When man passes out from his state of nature, he begins a struggle with nature, subjects her to himself and even changes her by the power of his reason." 1

Primitive groups or tribes are "a kind of infusoria of political society, powerless to take on a definite, rational form, i. e., a form of government.'

Through conflict primitive tribes become increasingly self-conscious and are amalgamated into peoples. “A people becomes a state only when control, sanctioned by time, reaches formulation; then folk life receives definite, confirmed spoken or written forms, and these forms pass into laws." Hence," the state is the highest stage of associated life and its highest and only rational form. Only by becoming a member of the state does man cease to be a slave to nature, and only as a member of the state does he appear as a truly rational being."

In Hegelian fashion Belinsky views society as a product of opposites. He says, "Struggle is the necessary condition of life; when the struggle ends life ceases. The subjective man is in eternal conflict with the objective world and therefore with society-but this conflict is not a revolt, it is a continuous striving towards one side or the other."♦ "Hence each man has two lives, each of which successively holds and impresses him. In the conflict of these two he finds his own life.'

Thus Belinsky attempts to solve the problem of the rela

1 Works, vol. i, p. 342.

2 Ibid., p. 343.

4

• Ibid., p. 355.

3 Idem.

5 Ibid., p. 357.

We see that he makes the Society is to him "a huge

tion of the individual to society. individual subject to the group. body with innumerable heads, but with one soul, with one individual I." 1

When in later years Belinsky disavowed his allegiance to the German idealist metaphysicians and entered the ranks of the young Hegelians, he still remained true to his earlier views which made the individual a product of and subject to the group. He says: "What lives unconsciously in a people as a potentiality appears in the genius as a realization and as an actuality. A people is related to its great men as the soil is to the plant which it brings forth. Here is unity and not division, there is no dualism here." The source of all progress, of all advance lies not in the dualism of a people, but in the nature of man.

2

Belinsky, after he accepted positivism and German materialism, did not live long enough to develop these new views nor to apply them to the political and social life of his generation.

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III. Herzen, the Precursor of Russian Populism The thought which Belinsky seized upon in the latter years of his life was brilliantly developed by Herzen, the famous leader of the Russian intellectuals, who was one of the first of the group later known as the Populist or Russian Socialist School of Sociologists.

1 Works, vol. i, p. 358.

2 Vol. iv, p. 466.

'Alexander Ivanovitch Herzen (1812-1870), one of Russia's most powerful writers. He lived in exile in Western Europe after 1846. He is best known through the publication of his progressive periodical, "The Bell", which played a great rôle in bringing about the great Russian reforms of the sixties. Works, Petrograd ed., 1905, vii vol

umes.