Russia under the Old regime

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somewhat later, after 1836, in response to a sensational article published that year by a leading figure of Moscow society, Peter Chaadaev. Chaadaev, who was deeply influenced by Catholic thought of the Restoration era and came close to conversion, argued that of all the major nations Russia alone had contributed nothing to civilization. Indeed, it was a country without a history: 'We live entirely in the present in its narrowest confines, without a past or future, amid a dead calm.'1* Russia was a kind of historic swampland, a backwater where things stirred now and then but never flowed anywhere. This was so because Christianity had been drawn from a polluted source, Byzantium, which caused it to be isolated from the mainstream of spiritual life issuing from Rome. Officially pronounced insane for espousing these ideas, Chaadaev partly recanted, but towards the end of his life his pessimism about Russia reasserted itself. In 1854, during the Crimean War, he wrote these words:

Talking about Russia one always imagines that one is talking about a country like the others; in reality, this is not so at all. Russia is a whole separate world, submissive to the will, caprice, fantasy of a single man, whether his name be Peter or Ivan, no matter - in all instances the common element is the embodiment of arbitrariness. Contrary to all the laws of the human community, Russia moves only in direction of her own enslavement and the enslavement of all the neighbouring peoples. For this reason it would be in the interest not only of other peoples but also in that of her own that she be compelled to take a new path.15

Chaadaev's 1836 essay set off a controversy that raged for two decades splitting the Russian intelligentsia in two.

One camp, the Slavophile, produced what became the most seminal current in Russian intellectual history. It created the first ideology of Russian nationalism (as distinct from xenophobia) and it did so by borrowing ideas from western Europe to extol Russia at western Europe's expense. Its leading theorists came from the ranks of that middle level of the dvorianstvo which retained close links with the land. Their ideas were first elaborated in discussions held in Moscow salons during the late 1830s and the 1840s. In the 1850s, when their influence was at its peak, the Slavophiles formed a party grouped around the periodical The Muscovite (Moskvitianin). Although they disavowed any interest in polit-tics, they were constantly harassed by the authorities who treated with suspicion any ideology, even one favouring absolutism.

According to Slavophile theory, all the essential differences between Russia and the west were ultimately traceable to religion. The western churches had from their inception fallen under the influence of classical cultures and from them become poisoned with rationalism and hubris. Orthodoxy had remained constant to true Christian ideals. It was a truly communal church, which drew its strength from the collective faith and wisdom of the flock. This communal spirit (sobornost') formed the quintessential feature of Russian national character and provided the basis of all Russian institutions. In the west, by contrast, the foundations of organized life were individualistic and legalistic. Thanks to Orthodoxy, Russians have managed to retain 'integral' personalities in which logic and faith fused to produce a superior kind of knowledge which Alexis Khomiakov, Slavophilism's outstanding theorist, called 'living knowledge' (zhivoe znanie).

Having succumbed to rationalism, western civilization has isolated the individual from the community: as each westerner follows the dictates of his understanding he comes to inhabit a world of his own making. To use a word which Hegel had made current, he is 'alienated'. In Russia, by contrast, every individual (except those who had become westernized) submerges in the community and feels at one with it. Russian intellectuals who have received a western education ought to find their way back to the community, to the peasantry. Spontaneous social organization, as exemplified by the rural commune and the artel was, in the Slavophiles' opinion, the natural form in which the Russians' social instincts expressed themselves. Legality and private property were alien to the Russian spirit.

These premisses led to a peculiar anarcho-conservative political philosophy. According to the Slavophiles, it was in the Russian tradition to draw a sharp line of demarcation between the state or authority (vlast') and the 'land' (zemlia). The land entrusted the management of high politics to the state, without imposing on it any legal limitations. The most that it ever asked for was to be heard when major decisions had to be taken. In return, the state did not interfere with society's right to lead its life as it saw fit. This mutual respect between state and society, unencumbered by any formalities, was the true Russian constitution. This tradition was violated by Peter the Great, and ever since his reign Russia had been following a path entirely alien to her nature. By creating in St Petersburg a bureaucratic machine, Peter had broken the communication between the crown and the people. Even worse was his interference with the nation's customs, manners and religion. The entire St Petersburg period in Russian history was a horrendous mistake. The country had to return to its heritage. There ought to be no constitution or parliament, but neither should there be a meddlesome, arbitrary bureaucracy. The 'land' should be given back to the people, who had a right to full freedom in all matters except politics. Serfdom should be abolished.

The Slavophile view of their country's past bore no resemblance whatever to the historic record, and did not long withstand scholarly critique. But then the facts about the development of Russian state and society