Natasha's Dance полностью

This convergence on the peasant issue was indicative of a broader national consensus or ideology which emerged in Russia at this time. The old arguments between the Westernizers and the Slavophiles gradually died down as each side came to recognize the need for Russia to find a proper balance between Western learning and native principles. There were hints of such a synthesis as early as 1847, when the doyen of the Westernizers, the radical critic Belinsky, said that, as

far as art was concerned, he was 'inclined to side with the Slavophiles' against the cosmopolitans.¹⁵ For their part, the younger Slavophiles were moving to the view in the 1850s that 'the nation' was contained in all classes of society, not just the peasants, as the older ones maintained. Some even argued, in a way that made them virtually indistinguishable from the Westernizers, that the nation's true arena was the civic sphere and that Russia's progress in the world was dependent on the raising of the peasants to that sphere.¹⁶ In short, by the 1860s there was a common view that Russia should evolve along a European path of liberal reform, yet not break too sharply from its unique historical traditions. It was a case of keeping Peter and the peasant, too. This was the position of the 'native soil' movement to which Dostoevsky and his brother Mikhail belonged in the 1860s.

Populism was the cultural product of this synthesis and, as such, it became something of a national creed. The romantic interest in folk culture which swept through Europe in the nineteenth century was nowhere felt more keenly than among the Russian intelligentsia. As the poet Alexander Blok wrote (with just a touch of irony) in 1908:

… the intelligentsia cram their bookcases with anthologies of folk-songs, epics, legends, incantations, dirges; they investigate Russian mythology, wedding, and funeral rites; they grieve for the people; go to the people; are filled with high hopes; fall into despair; they even give up their lives, face execution or starve to death for the people's cause.¹⁷

The intelligentsia was defined by its mission of service to the people, just as the noble class was defined by its service to the state; and the intelligentsia lived by the view, which many of its members came to regret, that 'the good of the people' was the highest interest, to which all other principles, such as law or Christian precepts, were subordinate. Such attitudes were so endemic that they were even shared by members of the court, the state administration and the aristocracy. The liberal spirit of reform which had brought about the emancipation continued to inform the government's approach towards the peasantry in the 1 860s and 1870s. With the peasant's liberation from the gentry's jurisdiction there was a recognition that he had become the state's responsibility: he had become a citizen.

After 1861 the government set up a whole range of institutions to improve the welfare of its peasant citizens and integrate them into national life. Most of these initiatives were carried out by the new assemblies of local government, the zemstvos, established at the district and provincial level in 1864. The zemstvos were run by paternal squires of the sort who fill the pages of Tolstoy and Chekhov -liberal, well-meaning men who dreamed of bringing civilization to the backward countryside. With limited resources, they founded schools and hospitals; provided veterinary and agronomic services for the peasantry; built new roads and bridges; invested in local trades and industries; financed insurance schemes and rural credit; and carried out ambitious statistical surveys to prepare for more reforms at a future date.* The optimistic expectations of the zemstvo liberals were widely shared by the upper classes of society. There was a general attitude of paternal populism - a sympathy for the people and their cause which induced the high-born from all walks of life to support the students radicals.

The Minister of Justice, in a report to the Tsar, listed a whole catalogue of foolish acts in the 'mad summer' of 1874: the wife of a colonel in the Gendarmes had passed on secret information to her son; a rich landowner and magistrate had hidden one of the leading revolutionaries; a professor had introduced a propagandist to his students; and the families of several state councillors had given warm approval to their children's revolutionary activities.¹⁸ Even Turgenev, who saw the solution to the peasant problem in liberal reform, could not help admiring (and perhaps envying) the idealistic passion of these revolutionaries.¹⁹ He mixed in their circles in France and Switzerland, and he even gave some money to the Populist theorist Pyotr Lavrov