Dostoevsky and The Idea of Russianness

A New Perspective on Unity and Brotherhood

Sarah Hudspith

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2004
• Print ISBN: 9780415304894
• eBook ISBN: 9781134406876
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Ethnic Studies
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book examines Dostoevsky's interest in, and engagement with, "Slavophilism" - a Russian mid-nineteenth century movement of conservative nationalist thought. It explores Dostoevsky's views, as expressed in both his non-fiction and fiction, on the religious, spiritual and moral ideas which he considered to be innately Russian. It concludes that Dostoevsky is an important successor to the Slavophiles, in that he developed their ideas in a more coherent fashion, broadening their moral and spiritual concerns into a more universal message about the true worth of Russia and her people.

1
The Slavophile context

The critic and publicist Nikolai Strakhov reminisces that he once called Dostoevsky an unconscious (bessoznatelnyi) Slavophile. Whenever he remarked to the novelist that the Slavophiles had also expressed an idea of his, Dostoevsky would reply that he did not know that.¹ Dostoevsky’s relationship to the Slavophiles and their philosophy was always ambivalent and, in my view, extraordinarily complex. In the early 1860s through his journals Vremia and Epokha he entered into debates and polemics as much with the Slavophile camp as with the Westernizers. But as Dostoevsky grew older, it appears that he gradually realized that there was a growing affinity between his ideas and those of the most prominent figures of early Slavophilism, especially Alexei Khomiakov and Ivan Kireevsky. This engagement with the Slavophiles in fact began remarkably early in his career and lasted all his life, continually growing in importance long after the movement itself had died out. However, he refrained from any outright declaration of allegiance. His writings tease us with the elusiveness of such ironic pronouncements as ‘Confessions of a Slavophile’ from Diary of a Writer (XXV, 195–96), so that, as is typical of Dostoevsky, we are unable categorically to fix a label upon him. We may not call Dostoevsky a Slavophile, although many of his contemporaries, like Strakhov, might implicitly have regarded him as such. And yet the latter was right that there is much that echoes Slavophilism in Dostoevsky’s works.

While I do not seek to prove that Dostoevsky was a follower of Slavophilism, I believe that a great deal is to be gained by applying as it were a lens of Slavophilism to his works, for it may bring into sharper focus some of the fundamental issues with which Dostoevsky was concerned. Therefore, the aim of my study is to examine the areas where correspondences between Dostoevsky’s ideas and those of Khomiakov and Kireevsky can be discerned, to discuss aspects of Dostoevsky’s work that could be said to constitute an active dialogue with Slavophile ideas, and to demonstrate the way these common points lead to a more complete understanding of Dostoevsky’s ideas and artistic purpose.

By studying Dostoevsky in the context of Slavophilism, we can not only see where he considered the issues of Slavophile thought, but we can also reveal a new coherence and ethos in certain areas of his work that would not at first glance appear to be connected with Slavophilism. In particular, an examination of Dostoevsky in the light of Slavophilism is useful in offering a new perspective on the writer’s concerns with unity and brotherhood, and in my view such an undertaking sets these concerns at the forefront of his world view.

In addition, by discussing the aesthetic and artistic aspects of Slavophile thought with regard to Dostoevsky’s artistry, I believe that it is possible to bridge what I perceive to be a gap existing between studies of the writer’s moral-spiritual universe and studies of his poetics. It is in these respects that I consider Strakhov’s statement to ring true. In other words, Dostoevsky’s efforts in his nonfiction to define his own position in relation to Slavophilism bear fruit in his fiction in a complex but consistent set of beliefs that pervade his works on many different levels.

In this study, I take an approach that makes use of more than one discipline, beginning with intellectual history, progressing through traditional literary criticism to the exploration of theories of poetics. The direction of my work moves from an account of statements that actively profess an engagement with Slavophilism, whether sympathetic or hostile, towards an investigation of the more subtle and intricate involvement found in Dostoevsky’s artistic works. The next chapter charts the development of Dostoevsky’s interaction with the Slavophiles within the milieu of Russian intellectual society. I use his private letters and notebooks in order to establish a background chronology of his views. This is then followed by a study of Dostoevsky’s journalistic works, which for argument’s sake I take at face value as an expression of his beliefs, so as to provide a contrast with my analysis of journalism as a problematic literary genre in the final chapter. Placing an emphasis on Dostoevsky as a thinker at this stage, I show where he distanced himself from the Slavophiles as well as where he sympathized with them.

I then go on to explore the question of the extent to which Dostoevsky’s fiction supports or contradicts the face-value evidence from the letters, notebooks and journalism. I discuss the dramatization of Dostoevsky’s views in his fiction, focusing on Dostoevsky as an artist, but restricting the discussion to themes and motifs. At this stage such concerns as rootlessness, fragmentation, faith and the lack thereof, egoism and humility come into play.

In my final chapter, I turn my attention to the way Dostoevsky’s views are translated into artistic technique and form, so as to suggest that he wrote in a Slavophile way, as well as about Slavophile matters. The points of similarity between Dostoevsky and the Slavophiles are in my view as much to be found in Dostoevsky’s artistic technique as in the content of his works. I propose the existence of a Slavophile aesthetic in Dostoevsky’s fiction; in my opinion the moral importance for the Slavophiles of organic unity in works of art was upheld by the writer both in his theories of art and in his literary practice. Here I return to key journalistic works such as Diary of a Writer as something less straightforward, taking into account the role played by irony and other artistic devices. I examine the role of art, the nature of beauty and the variety of genres present in his oeuvre.

My study concludes with an attempt to balance the superficial evidence with the more elusive picture presented by Dostoevsky’s artistry, and demonstrates how the two inform each other.

To begin with, I would like to clarify what for the purposes of this study is to be understood by the term ‘Slavophilism’. The Slavophiles gained their place in Russian intellectual history as thinkers interested in evaluating Russia’s past, her cultural and religious heritage, and in using the values of this heritage as a means of giving Russia a stronger identity and a way forward in the world arena. They stood in opposition to the so-called Westernizers, who argued in favour of the adaptation of European ideas and models for the same purpose. The main figures were Alexei Khomiakov, Ivan Kireevsky, his brother Peter, Konstantin and Ivan Aksakov, and Iury Samarin, the so-called Moscow Slavophiles. Each had their own interpretation of fundamentally similar ideas, but the younger men, Samarin and particularly the Aksakovs, focused rather more on the social possibilities of Slavophilism than on its theological context. As the movement developed over the decades, the nationalistic element came to the fore, so that the term ‘Slavophilism’ has sometimes been used as a blanket term, both by commentators contemporary with the movement and by later critics, to describe various generations of conservative nationalist thought, beginning from the classical Slavophilism of the 1840s and 1850s, down to the more chauvinist derivatives such as the Pan-Slavism of later decades. Nicholas Riasanovsky acknowledges the problem:

‘Slavophilism’ was at times stretched to cover all the Pan-Slav friends of Ivan Aksakov, all champions of Russian superiority over the West, such varied contributors to Russian culture as Danilevskii, Dostoevskii, and Leontiev. These inclusions were based on confusion, on the assumption that certain striking and often superficial resemblances to the Slavophile doctrine were sufficient to make one a Slavophile.²

Indeed, Dostoevsky himself was aware of this loose usage and the negative associations that sometimes accompanied it, hence his ironic use of the term in his ‘Confessions of a Slavophile’. Leaving aside the problems of interpretation associated with Dostoevsky’s Diary of a Writer, it can be said from the aforementioned article that Dostoevsky would prefer, at least publicly, to align himself not with the retrogressive element, nor with the Pan-Slavist element of Slavophilism, but rather with the moral and Orthodox roots of the movement. The writers who best match this definition are the acknowledged founders of the movement, Khomiakov and Ivan Kireevsky, whose work may be said to constitute the essence of Slavophilism. The remaining central figures of Slavophilism are thus less appropriate for attention in this study. Peter Christoff suggests that Konstantin Aksakov, for example, showed more signs of fanaticism and extremism than the other Slavophiles, and he notes that Alexander Herzen considered the Kireevsky brothers to be ‘more consistent’ than the younger Slavophiles.³ Khomiakov and Kireevsky’s main concern was the role played by Christianity, in the form of the Russian Orthodox Church, in the development of Russian national character and moral values, and that this should be the starting point for further consideration of social or political questions. Accordingly, my analysis concentrates largely on their ideas, although reference is occasionally made, where appropriate, to other Slavophiles for the sake of contrast. By this I hope to make clear the kind of Slavophilism that interested Dostoevsky and with the works of which writers his writings have the most affinities.

The question of what Dostoevsky actually read of the Slavophiles, and when he read what he did, is difficult to establish. Most of the books in his library were lost during his prolonged travels in Europe between 1867 and 1871. His wife Anna Grigor¡evna made lists of those publications he collected from then on, and these have been edited and published by Leonid Grossman.⁴ Scholarly opinion, however, suggests that as these catalogues number fewer than a thousand publications, they may not represent all the books he must have read.⁵ Therefore we must reconstruct what we can, given the data in Anna Grigor¡evna’s catalogues, references Dostoevsky made in letters, notebooks and creative works, and supported by reminiscences of his contemporaries. Another useful indicator is the date and place of publication of key works by the Slavophiles, which we may use in conjunction with what is known of Dostoevsky’s life and the availability of literature to him at various times.

There is little to indicate with any degree of certainty that at the time of his debut on the literary scene in the mid 1840s, in St Petersburg where progressive thought from Europe was dominant, Dostoevsky had much direct contact with ideological works written by the early Slavophiles, Alexei Khomiakov, Ivan Kireevsky, Iury Samarin and Konstantin Aksakov. His letters of this time make more mention of foreign writers. He would, on the other hand, have been familiar with contemporary opinion on the ideas of the Slavophiles, and would have probably read about their works through critics such as Belinsky. The references to the Slavophile movement in Dostoevsky’s pre-Siberian work do not name specific authors or works, so there is no way of clarifying what he read himself or what he learned second-hand, although we do know that he was always a voracious reader, particularly of journalism. This has led Robert Belknap to assert that ‘it is safer in any given context to assume that Dostoevsky knew the writings of his contemporaries in Russia or France than to assume he did not’.⁶

Nevertheless, I believe it is possible to make certain qualified judgements regarding Dostoevsky’s reading of the Slavophiles. For a start, of course, one must take into account the fact that, between the end of 1849 and 1854, he was denied access to all literature. It was also during his imprisonment and exile in Siberia that such central works for the Slavophile movement as Khomiakov’s ‘Quelques mots par un chre´tien orthodoxe’ trilogy, and Kireevsky’s ‘On the necessity and possibility of new principles in philosophy’ were published; the former were published in France in 1853, 1855 and 1858, and the latter in Russia in 1856. Dostoevsky’s letters from Siberia bemoan the difficulty in obtaining current literature in such a far-flung corner of the Russian empire, and it is highly unlikely that the aforementioned works were available to him even had he required them.

What is certain is that Ivan Aksakov’s Slavophile publication Den¡ was launched in October 1861, and it published posthumously articles by Khomiakov, Konstantin Aksakov and Kireevsky.⁷ Dostoevsky read Den¡ avidly, as he did newspapers and journals in general, and more specifically because it was a rival publication with which he could polemicize. So we know that at least from 1861 onwards, he was reading the Slavophiles first-hand. However, Vladimir Viktorovich suggests that Dostoevsky initially based his active acquaintance with the Slavophile movement solely on the content of Den¡; he argues that because of the political interpretation given by the journal to the cultural and philosophical ideas of Khomiakov and Kireevsky, the impression Dostoevsky formed of their ideas was not accurate.⁸ Wayne Dowler also concedes that the Dostoevsky brothers and their associates, in forming the pochvennichestvo or ‘native soil’ movement, made little distinction in the pages of Vremia between the early Slavophilism of Khomiakov and Kireevsky, and the later Slavophilism of Ivan Aksakov,⁹ an assertion that supports my view that at this time Dostoevsky’s personal experience of these writers was minimal.

It is not until 1863 that the most definite indication of direct reading appears; in a letter to his brother dated 8 September 1863, Dostoevsky writes: ‘Tell Strakhov that I am diligently reading the Slavophiles and have read something new’ (XXVIII/ii, 46). The editors of the Academy edition note here that by ‘the Slavophiles’ Dostoevsky meant the works of Khomiakov as well as Den¡ (XXVIII/ii, 385). Ten days later, he wrote to Strakhov himself and gave a guarded appraisal of what he had read, proclaiming that the Slavophiles had pronounced a new word (XXVIII/ii, 53). From this point on, in accordance with what I believe to be a more thorough knowledge, Dostoevsky’s appreciation of the Slavophiles becomes more positive. The final clue is that in Grossman’s catalogue of his library is recorded volume 1 of Khomiakov’s Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, edited by Ivan Aksakov, published in 1861, volume 1 of Iury Samarin’s Sochineniia, published in 1877, and Narodnye pesni by Peter Kireevsky, published 1860–72, although nothing by Ivan Kireevsky.¹⁰ The dates of publication of these works are notable only in that they show how early they were available to Dostoevsky, and should not be assumed to be necessarily the years in which he purchased them.

My first task is to set out the specific areas of Slavophilism that are most relevant to Dostoevsky’s thought and on which I shall be focusing. I shall be tracing a series of abstract concepts and principles from the work of Khomiakov and Kireevsky through Dostoevsky’s oeuvre, and these require a few words of explanation. Several studies of Khomiakov and Kireevsky exist.¹¹ For a full account of their philosophy reference should be made to works such as these.

The Slavophile movement developed in opposition to the Westernizers at a time when the Russian intelligentsia felt a pressing need to assess Russia’s identity and its future both on the domestic plane and in the global community. Whereas the Slavophile–Westernizer debate had run its course by the beginning of the 1860s, the issues they had been concerned with were still very much of the essence, though addressed in different ways by the succeeding generations. Dostoevsky too was deeply concerned with the question of Russian identity and his manner of approaching the matter was largely similar to that of Khomiakov, Kireevsky and their fellow like-minded thinkers. Their works all show a broad, underlying opposition between Russia and the West, with predominantly positive principles associated with Russia and negative ones associated with the West. This, I believe, is not only a result of their common cultural and spiritual heritage, but is also due to the active way in which Dostoevsky assessed and engaged with the ideas of his predecessors. Of course, at a more detailed level, complexities save both Slavophile thought and Dostoevsky’s ideas from the intransigence of black and white divisions. Indeed, Kireevsky in particular strove to acknowledge positive and negative qualities on both sides of the Russia–West spectru...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Acknowledgements
• Note on editions, transliteration and translation
• 1 The Slavophile context
• 2 Dostoevsky’s ideological position with regard to the Slavophile movement
• 3 The dramatization in Dostoevsky’s fiction of themes found in Slavophile thought
• 4 The Iranian text: Slavophile principles applied to the practice of writing
• 5 Concluding remarks
• Glossary of Russian terms
• Notes
• Bibliography