The Spirit of Russia/Volume 1/Introductory Chapter
THE SPIRIT OF RUSSIA
INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER
RUSSIA AND EUROPE.THE RUSSIAN MONK
A GENERAL survey of Russian development since the days of Peter the Great shows the country divided into two halves, consisting respectively of an Old Russia with a prepetrine civilisation, and a New, European Russia.
An alert observer travelling through Russia will gain a vivid perception of the nature and evolution of this cultural divergence. One entering Russia from Europe (it must be remembered that the Russian crossing the western frontier speaks always of "going to Europe") has first to traverse a nonrussian province or territory. He must pass through Poland, the Baltic provinces, or Finland, through lands annexed from Europe, whose inhabitants are Catholic or Protestant, and who have a European civilisation of old date. The connection of these regions with Orthodox Russia is still comparatively superficial. But the further eastward we go, the further do we find ourselves from Europe, until at length Europe is represented only by the railway, the refreshment rooms at the stations, and isolated hotels furnished and managed in European style. The same contrast strikes us between Petrograd and Moscow. In Moscow, and also in Petrograd, it strikes us between the modern portions of the city and the old town which is purely Russian. Odessa, on the other hand, is a new town, quite European.
When compared with the two capitals, and especially when compared with Petrograd, the rural districts, the villages, are Russian. The great landowners, aristocrats, furnish their country-seats in European style. Similarly, many factories in country districts are European oases. Things technical, things practical, are for the most part European: railways, factories, and banks; commerce to some extent (including internal trade); army and navy; in part, also, the bureaucratic machine of state. It is true that any one whose first impression of this machine is derived from the Warsaw post office will find it extremely disagreeable. I need hardly say that European elements are everywhere intermingled with Russian, and after a little practice we learn to distinguish the transitional stages and the manifold combinations. Close observation and increasing knowledge enable us to detect the difference between that which has been directly imported from Europe and the native imitation or adaptation, so that we come to recognise how Russia and Europe merge in great things and in small.
After a time we shall obviously learn to detect the same contrasts in men as well as in things. European and Russian thought and feeling present themselves in the most diversified combinations. Before long the conviction is forced upon us that the Europeanisation of Russia does not consist solely in the adoption of isolated ideas and isolated practical institutions, but that we have to do with a characteristic historical process in virtue of which the Old Russian essence, civilisation, and modes of life are being transformed and destroyed by the inroad of the European essence, civilisation, and modes of life. The individual Russian undergoing Europeanisation experiences this contrast in his own intimate personality. Since the human being cannot live disintegrated, there is forced upon him the attempt to secure an organic connection between the Russian that he is by inheritance and the European that he is by acquirement, to secure as far as possible a unification of the two. The task is difficult! Try to picture to yourself vividly the contrast between the Russian peasant (and the peasant is still Russia), on the one hand, and the writer, the officer, the landowner, or the skilled technician, on the other—men who have been educated in Paris, Berlin, or Zurich, and who are familiar with the life of these cities. People differing thus widely have not merely to live side by side, but must think and work with one another and for one another!
The spiritual contrast between Russia and Europe is displayed in its fullest significance in the Russian monastery. Here we find the most genuine and the oldest Russian life, the feeling and thought of Old Russia. We see this already in the monasteries of Petrograd, but we see it yet more clearly in remoter monasteries and hermitages. Russia, Old Russia, is the Russian monk. During my first visit to Russia I had a vivid experience of this. In Moscow I was moving in circles where intellectual development was most advanced, but withdrawing one day from this Europeanised environment, I paid a visit to the Troicko-Sergievskaja monastery. With its institutions, its treasures, and its relics, this monastery takes us back into fourteenth-century Russia; but in the dependent monastery Bethany, and yet more in the hermitage of Gethsemane, we find ourselves in an even remoter historical epoch. In the centre of the forest stands the hermitage, with an ancient wooden church—a veritable Gethsemane! The contrast was all the more striking seeing that the previous day I had been debating religious problems with Tolstoi and his friends. Brandes, too, chanced to be visiting Moscow at the time, to expound his literary views in lectures delivered in the French tongue. Now I found myself at the hermitage of Gethsemane, with its catacombs, its wonder-working relics, and its icons! One of Tolstoi's friends, a man of position, had given me a letter of introduction to the head of the monastery, so that I was able to see everything. Never shall I forget the man who showed me round the hermitage. This monk was about twenty-five years old. He had grown up in and for the monastery, and his mind was entirely dominated by its Orthodox ideas. To him the world seemed something altogether foreign, whilst I was an emissary from, a part of, the outer world, from which he was a refugee. Now he was to accompany me through the catacombs and to explain what I saw. The things which to him were objects of the most devout contemplation were to be elucidated to the nonrussian, the European, the heretic, the mere sightseer! I could not fail to note and to be sorry for my guide's distress, but I must admit that his uneasiness was a trifle irritating to the European in me. He genuflected before every relic and every icon, at least before the principal ones; he was continually crossing himself; kneeling down he touched the holy precincts with forehead and lips. As I watched him closely I perceived that alarm was gaining on him, that he was obviously terrified, momentarily expecting that Heaven would punish me for my wickedness and unbelief. But punishment was withheld, and almost without his knowledge and understanding, into the depths of his soul there crept a shadow of doubt. This was obvious in his earnest request that I would at least bow before the chief relic. It was plain that he was no longer anxious about the safety of the heretic, but that the Almighty's failure to send due punishment was troubling him. . . . After we had finished with the catacombs I wished to return alone, but my guide would not leave me. Before long I realised that the monk on his side wanted to acquire knowledge. He gave free rein to his curiosity, to his eager desire to learn something of the world, of Europe. His world-hunger sparkled in his eyes, and I could not satisfy his appetite for narrative and explanation. At length he, a Russian, began to ask me, a nonrussian, about Moscow, Petrograd, Russia. Several times we paced the distance between the hermitage and the margin of the forest. My companion never wearied in his interrogations. Hitherto he had known the world in the light of the Bible and the legends of the saints, but now he was listening to the unheard of and unsuspected. At length I had to make my way back to the principal monastery. Despite my repeated and cordial thanks, the monk accompanied me to the very gate; there he continued to stand, and would not take his homeward path after my last words of farewell had been uttered—what on earth did the man want? Did he expect a gratuity? The thought had been worrying me for some little time. I was ashamed of it; it hurt me to entertain it; but in the end I found it impossible to doubt that this strictly religious contemner of the world was accustomed to receive tips! My head was whirling with thoughts about Russia and Europe, belief and unbelief; and I blushed as I slipped a note into the extended palm of the guardian of Gethsemane. . . .
This experience and many similar ones, especially those gained during a pilgrimage to another leading monastery, and during my intercourse with the "old believers" and the sectaries—in a word, the observation and study of the religious life of the churches, afford ample insight into Old Russia of the days before Peter the Great. To understand European and Europeanised Russia, it is necessary to know what Moscow, the third Rome, has been and still is for Russia in matters of civilisation.
I owe to Tolstoi my introduction to the old believer wonderland. One of the best old believer curio dealers in Moscow gave me his personal guidance through the length and breadth of this Old Russia.[1]
Old Russia, Russia in contrast to Europe! Yet the monk in Gethsemane, the pilgrims, the Orthodox, the peasantry—they all carried me back in memory to childhood, when my primitive faith was undisturbed. Such were my own beliefs and such were my own actions when I went on pilgrimage in boyhood; such are still the beliefs and actions of the children and the wives of our Slovak peasants when they visit the shrine of the miracle-working virgin on Mt. Hostein; such were the beliefs and such was the teaching of my own mother. But this childhood has passed away for ever, simply because childhood must yield place to maturity. . . .
Russia has preserved the childhood of Europe; in the overwhelming mass of its peasant population it represents Christian medievalism and, in particular, Byzantine medievalism. It was but a question of time when this middle age would awaken to modernity, and the awakening was in large part due to Peter and his successors.
I am acquainted with a fair proportion of the civilised and uncivilised world and I have no hesitation in saying that Russia was and is the most interesting country known to me. Slav as I am, a visit to Russia has involved many more surprises than a visit to any other land. In England and America, for example, I had no feeling of surprise. The latest novelty seemed to me nothing more than an obvious development of something with which I was already familiar at home. Yet in Russia, although as a Slav I am competent, I believe, to grasp in Russian literature what is termed the spirit of the language and of the nation; although Russian life, as revealed in the creative works of Russian authors, is intimately congenial to my own moods, in so far as these are Slav, and arouses harmonious echoes in my own Slav nature—yet in Russia I ever and anon feel surprise! The European, one who lives in the present, has the current of his thought involuntarily directed towards the future, and anticipates the conclusions that will follow from the given historic premises. But in Russia he finds himself back in the past, often in the middle ages, finds himself in a life utterly different from that of the modern and progressive west. In the nonchristian lands of Asia and Africa we do not receive this general impression in anything like the same strength, because the customs differ so utterly from ours; but Russia is of our own kind, exhibits our own quality, is what Europe has been. . . .
Russia is—Europe as well. When, therefore, I contrast Russia and Europe, I contrast two epochs. Russia does not differ essentially from Europe; but Russia is not yet essentially one with Europe.
- ↑ The novels of Mel'nikov (whose pen-name is Pečerskii) entitled "In the Forests," and "On the Mountains," give an excellent description of old believer life as far as details are concerned, but the general picture is marred by a modern, decadent, subflavour.