RUSSIAN LITERATURE AS A POLITICAL FORCE

BY FRANKLIN EDGERTON

Assistant Professor of Sanskrit

Russian literature differs in various respects from the literatures of other countries. Presumably most, if not all, of its distinctive features could be explained in terms of its environment, if we were sufficiently omniscient. Attempts have, in fact, frequently been made to explain these distinctive features on the basis of alleged qualities of the Russian people, or of facts in their history. Often I must say that these attempts at explanation seem to me of very doubtful validity, much as I sympathize with the natural and laudable human tendency to seek explanations for everything, even for such elusive things as literary qualities.

But today I want to speak of one peculiarity of Russian literature which seems to be so obviously related to the conditions of Russian life that the most hardened sceptic could scarcely resist the temptation to explain it in terms of them. This is in fact more than a peculiarity of Russian literature. It is itself a condition of Russian life, an attitude of the Russian people towards literature and towards life. It involves also a theory of esthetics, which differs from those that are most prevalent among us, and which I think would not have gained the popularity it has enjoyed in Russia had it not been for the political and social conditions of the country.

This peculiarity of Russian literature-I mean its political and social aspect-goes back to the eighteenth century, and the theory of esthetics with which it is connected to the early part of the nineteenth. The political and social conditions out of which they sprang were inherited from still earlier times. In spite of the reforms of Peter the Great in

the beginning of the eighteenth century, Russia remained essentially medieval down into the nineteenth, in some particulars one might say into the twentieth. Thus for example the system of serfdom, under which the peasants, that is the great mass of the people, were the personal property of their lords, was not abolished until 1861. Again, the absolute and personal autocracy of the government was not limited in any way until 1905, and the attempt at limitation then made proved abortive; it took the revolution of 1917 to complete the work.

All through this time, however, there have been periodic movements in the direction of modernization. These movements have invariably been due to direct influence from the west. At first they were limited to a few of the members of the upper social circles, the nobility, and the gentry. This was inevitable, because these were the only classes that knew anything about western ideas. The imperial court itself has been by no means always free from such leanings; several of the tsars have been liberal in tendency, at least at the start of their reigns. What usually happened was that the tsar would begin his rule by granting or promising liberal reforms, and would cater to progressive ideas for a few years; then he would become alarmed by something, think things were going too far, and go back into the camp of the reactionaries, whereupon all the old methods would be applied again with redoubled force.

The first case of this sort was no less a personage than the famous Empress Catherine. In her youth she coquetted with the ideas of the French philosophers of the eighteenth century; she herself wrote controversial articles on social and political topics, and even undertook to edit a magazine. The French revolution shocked and frightened her out of all such tendencies. She immediately did her best to stamp out every sign of liberalism in Russia. From this time on it became treasonable, not only to say anything complimentary about the French revolution or its underlying ideas, but to criticize in any way the political or social system of Russia.

If anyone ventured to do this, he was immediately accused of being a defender of the "barbarities" of the French.

Yet in spite of all the court could do, there persisted among the few intellectuals of the time (who were of course all nobles) quite a bit of liberal sentiment and even of sympathy with the French revolution. It could not be openly and frankly acknowledged, especially not in print; Catherine's censorship saw to that. Consequently it took two directions; first, it traveled underground, secretly, from man to man, or from one small group to another; and secondly, it found public but veiled and somewhat indirect expression in bellettristic literature.

The first great example in Russia of literary art doing the work of propaganda is Radishchev's Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow, published in 1790. Externally it is fairly harmless. In form it is modelled on Sterne's Sentimental Journey. It professes to be nothing but a narrative of a stage-coach trip from the western to the eastern capital of Russia; the chapters are named after the post-stations on the way. In reality it is a scathing attack on the institutions of the time, especially serfdom with all its attendant barbarities, but also the corruption and incompetency of courts of justice and officials generally, and other things. The realism of the picture is perfect; nothing is set down that was not of everyday occurrence; any traveler might easily have seen in a similar journey all that Radishchev records. That only makes the effect all the more devastating. The censor passed the book, with the stupid innocence of his kind. Well would it have been for the author if the Empress Catherine had been equally dull. She herself wrote a sharp criticism of it; being unable to make any real reply, she simply accused Radishchev of sympathy with French and American radicals (he had been so incautious as to allude in the preface to Benjamin Franklin in complimentary terms). After this her judges could scarcely do less than condemn the author to death. This sentence was commuted to exile at hard labor in Siberia, whither he was transported in chains, to be released only in

1801 by Alexander I. His book was banned forever; as long as tsardom lasted it was forbidden to be printed or circulated in Russia, except that in 1888 special permission was granted for an edition of one hundred copies for private distribution to "safe" persons only. For a long time it was forbidden to mention the very name of Radischchev, even to speak ill of him.

As Radíshchev was the spiritual father of tendentious literature in Russia, so Catherine's treatment of him typifies the usual attitude of the government towards this movement. Down to the very end of tsardom the government's theory always was that all would be well in Russia if only it could stamp out the small band of "agitators" who were stirring up discontent. It declared that the great mass of the people were content with things as they were. And this was in general true; at least, the great mass of the people had no idea of rising against the government. In fact, they had few ideas of any sort until very recent times; little opportunity was given them for acquiring any. It never occurred to them, until it was suggested by the "agitators," that the system under which they lived was anything but natural and inevitable. In that sense they were "content." And to keep them so, the government among other things did all that it dared do by open and secret means to discourage general education, and to control very strictly such educational media as it could not eliminate. Universities were hampered to such an extent that at times even their governmentallyappointed officials threw up their hands in disgust and resigned. For a long time such dangerous subjects as political science and economics could not be taught in them; nay, at one time, and that in the middle of the nineteenth century, even philosophy was considered too unsafe a subject, and instruction in it was ordered abolished at Moscow. And the number and size of the universities were deliberately restricted, on the theory that education should be only for a few "leaders"

1It was reprinted freely outside of Russia-once by Herzen in London, 1858, and again at Leipzig in 1876.

of the people; it was undesirable that the sons of the "masses" should be educated. For this same reason even elementary schools were not encouraged, and at times were actually forbidden in certain regions. As to freedom of speech and expression, no pretense was ever made of permitting it. At one time, under Nicholas I, it was forbidden to refer in print to any action of the government in any way—even to praise it. In the fifties of the last century the censor suspended the profoundly learned and profoundly dull Publications of the Moscow Historical Society because of a reprint of a sketch of Russia in 1590, by an English traveler of that time, Fletcher. About the same time permission was refused to print an ardently Slavophile study of conditions in primitive Russia, because, in the words of the minister, "it assumes democratic principles for ancient Russia, and our people must be protected against the spread of such foreign doctrines." These last words give the keynote to the theory of the censorship on literature and speech. The government conceived its duty to lie in "protecting" the great mass of good and virtuous citizens against the pernicious propaganda of insidious agitators, imbued with radical notions from abroad, who were seeking to stir them up against the institutions of their forefathers. Such statements abound in the censor's records. With the enormous spread of direct and increasingly revolutionary propaganda by underground methods, which was one immediate result of this policy, we are not now especially concerned. What does concern us is the turn given to bellettristic literature. In spite of the example of Radíshchev's fate, the advocates of reform began more and more to imitate him, giving expression to their ideals and aspirations in the form of fiction and poetry. Experience taught them caution, and they gradually worked out a kind of technique by which they sought, with varying success, to evade the censor and the prosecutor. Their language was veiled; their ideas were implied rather than expressed; but he who had ears could hear them. And since such ideas could not be expressed openly, it gradually came about that those who sympathized