Russia under the Old regime

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Literature was the first human activity to break away from patrimonial subservience in Russia; and in time it was joined by other spiritual activities, the visual arts, scholarship, science. One may say that by the middle of the nineteenth century, 'culture' and the pursuit of material interest were the only two spheres which the regime allotted to its subjects reasonably free of interference; but since the pursuit of material interest, as pointed out at the beginning of this chapter, tended in Russia to go in hand with complete political subservience, culture alone provided a possible base of opposition. It was natural, therefore, that it should become progressively politicized. One can state categorically that not one great Russian writer, artist, scholar or scientist of the old regime placed his work in the service of politics; the few who did, were without exception untalented third-raters. There is a fundamental incompatibility between politics, which requires discipline, and creativity, which demands freedom, for the two to make at best uneasy allies and most often, to confront one another as deadly enemies. What did happen, however, was that creative persons in Russia found themselves under immense pressure from the intelligentsia left of centre to place themselves and their work at the disposal of society. Poets were under pressure to write novels, and novelists to write social exposes. Painters were asked to use their art to bring vividly to the attention of all, especially illiterates, the suffering of the masses. Scholars and scientists were urged to occupy themselves with problems of immediate social relevance. This utilitarian approach was not unknown in contemporary western Europe, but in Russia its exponents were much more strident because of culture's, and especially literature's, unique function. As the high priest of utilitarian aesthetics, Ghernyshevskii, put it:

In countries, where intellectual and social life has attained a high level of development there exists, if one may say so, a division of labour among the various branches of intellectual activity, of which we know only one - literature. For this reason, no matter how we rate our literature compared to foreign literatures, still in our intellectual movement it plays a much greater role than do French, German or English literatures in the intellectual movement of their countries, and there rests on it heavier responsibility than on any of the others. As things stand, [Russian] literature absorbs virtually the entire intellectual life of the people, and for that reason it bears the duty of occupying itself also with such interests which in other countries, so to say, have come under the special management of other kinds of intellectual activity... In Russia literature has retained a certain encyclopedic importance which has been already lost by the literatures of more enlightened peoples. That which Dickens says in England, is also said, apart from him and the other novelists, by philosophers, jurists, publicists, economists etc., etc. With us, apart from novelists, no one talks about subjects which comprise the subject of their stories. For that reason, even if Dickens need not feel it incum- bent upon him, as a novelist, to bear direct responsibility for serving as spokesman for the strivings of his age, in so far as these can find expression in fields other than belles lettres, in Russia the novelist cannot have recourse to such justification. And if notwithstanding this both Dickens and Thackeray do consider it the direct responsibility of belles lettres to touch on all questions which occupy society, then our novelists and poets ought to feel this responsibility a thousand times more strongly.28 The key word in this passage, repeated four times, is 'responsibility'. The utilitarian school of criticism, which enjoyed in Russia virtual monopoly from i860 to 1890, insisted that all writers, but those of Russia particularly, had a sacred duty to 'act as spokesmen for the strivings of their age', in other words, to put their pen at the disposal of the peoples' social and political aspirations. An extreme theory of utilitarian aesthetics was put forward by the young Dmitry Pisarev. Applying the principle of conservation of energy, he insisted that a backward society could not afford the luxury of a literature that did not serve the purposes of social betterment. Intelligence to him was a form of capital which had to be conserved. 'We are stupid because we are poor, and we are poor because we are stupid', he wrote in an essay called 'Realists', concluding that it was an unpardonable waste of national resources to write (and read) literature whose primary aim was to please.

In the polemic which developed between utilitarians and the exponents of'art for art's sake', the central figure of contention was Pushkin. Until the 1860s his place in Russian culture had been unchallenged. He was revered not only as Russia's greatest poet and the founder of her literature, but as a new national type. 'Pushkin is the Russian man as he is in the course of becoming,' Gogol wrote, 'such as he may appear, perhaps, in two hundred years hence.'23 But Pushkin was known to have detested all who wished to make art serve some ulterior purpose. For him, 'the aim of poetry was poetry', and 'poetry stood above morality'.24 It is because of these sentiments that the radical critics chose him as their target, seeing in him the central bastion of that Idealism which they were determined to bring down. To Ghernyshevskii, the idea of art serving itself was callous to the point of treason. For him 'the useless had no right to exist.'25 He attacked Pushkin on numerous occasions not only as an irresponsible and useless human being but as a second-rate poet, a mere imitator of Byron. Pisarev, the enfant terrible of his generation, called Pushkin a 'lofty cretin'.28 Relentless campaigns of this sort not only sent Pushkin's reputation into temporary eclipse, but had a profoundly discouraging influence on all but the very greatest literary and artistic talents.

The great ones fought back. They refused to serve as propagandists, convinced that their social role, such as it was, was best fulfilled by