Abstract
This article discusses Leo Tolstoy’s view of the Russian revolutionary movement. Taking as a focal point the writer’s lifelong interest in the Decembrist uprising of 1825 and particularly in the personalities of the gentry revolutionaries, the article argues that Tolstoy’s fascination for these figures was due to their superior moral qualities, rather than to their political and socioeconomic doctrines. Following Alexander Herzen, Tolstoy came to regard the Decembrists as full-fledged individualities and “beautiful souls” (in Friedrich von Schiller’s sense of the term). Thus, Tolstoy’s much debated “conversion” and subsequent attempts to transform literary art into a medium of religious and moral reform (and thus a peaceful cultural revolution) can also be viewed as extensions of his project of self-understanding and self-formation according to the model of kalokagathia provided by Russia’s aristocratic revolutionaries.
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Notes
For a detailed account of Herzen’s path as an “intellectual revolutionary,” see Acton (1979).
One of the most famous literary tributes to the Decembrists is N.A. Nekrasov’s narrative poem “The Russian Women” dedicated to Princesses E.I. Trubetskaya and M.N. Volkonskaya, the first two Decembrist wives who decided to share their husbands’ exile in Siberia. In 1855, A.I. Herzen began to publish (in London) an almanac The Polar Star. Named after the almanac published by the Decembrists K.F. Ryleev and A.A. Bestuzhev (Marlinsky) in 1822–25, Herzen’s Polar Star became a major venue for (re) publishing works by the Decembrists as well as those about them. For further information, see Anatole G. Mazour (1962) and Marc Raeff (1966).
On the history of Tolstoy’s project see M.A. Tsiavlovskii’s commentary to the fragment The Decembrists in Polnoe Sobranie Sochinenii, 17, 469–585. Tolstoy’s unfinished story (actually three fragments) entitled Ot’ezzhee Pole is published in the fifth volume of Tolstoy’s Polnoe sobranie sochinenii (The Jubilee Edition), 214–18.
See Kathryn B. Feuer, Tolstoy and the Genesis of War and Peace, 16.
The story (actually three fragments) entitled Ot’eezzhee Pole is published in the fifth volume of Tolstoy’s Polnoe sobrane sochinenii (Jubilee Edition), 214–18.
Important Soviet sources include books by N.N. Ardens (1962) and A.A. Saburov (1959). See also N. N. Gusev, “Gerzen i Tolstoy” in Literaturnoe nasledstvo, 41–42 (1941), 490–525. In Tolstoy and the Genesis of War and Peace Kathryn B. Feuer provides a helpful overview of some of these Russian and some Anglophone sources.
The extent of Tolstoy’s familiarity with Herzen’s works prior to his visit to London has been much debated by both Russian and Western scholars. On this issue see especially Gusev, Feuer, as well as Nicholas Rhzhevsky (1975).
For a classic discussion of Tolstoy as a reader of de Maistre see Isaiah Berlin, “The Hedgehog and the Fox” (Berlin 1978).
N.K. Ogaryov, “Kavkazskie vody (Otryvok iz moei ispovedi).” See Ogaryov (1988, 55–66).
Orlando Figes provides helpful biographical glosses on both S.G. Volkonsky and his wife M.N. Volkonskaya (née Raevskaya) in chapter two, “Children of 1812” of Natasha’s Dance: A Cultural History of Russia. (Feiges 2002, 72–146).
M.A. Tsiavlovsky discusses the hypothesis that S.G. Volkonsky was the main prototype for the Decembrist in his commentary to Tolstoy’s fragment “The Decembrists” published in volume 17 of Polnoe Sobranie Sochinenii (The Jubilee Edition), pp. 469–528.
As Katheryn Feuer has justly pointed out, Tolstoy had serious reservations about the reforms. He realised that the liberation of peasants without land threatened to worsen their economic situation and lead to pauperism. This does not mean, however, that Tolstoy wholeheartedly rejected “the sprit of 1856” and sided with the conservatives. The main motivation behind his turn to the study of European and Russian history since the Napoleonic wars is to understand European liberalism and its applicability to Russia.(Feuer 1996, 135–79).
On Schiller’s significance for the young Herzen and the idealists of the 1840s (the Stankevich circle) see chapter three of Martin Malia’s book (1961). Aileen Kelly (1999) has further developed the Schiller-Herzen connection in her recent book, The Discovery of Chance: The Life and Thought of Alexander Herzen. An earlier version of her argument is found in chapter two of her book Views from the Other Shore. I briefly recapitulate Kelley’s argument below.
For a helpful overview of the Slavophiles vs. Westernizers debate see Sergei Horujy’s essay “The Birth of Russian Philosophical Humanism.” (Horujy 2010) Among the Slavophiles, A.S. Khomiakov was particularly outspoken in his criticism of the Humboldtian vision of “individuality.” See especially his essay “Po povodu Gumdbol’dta.” (Khomjakov 2007).
The Discovery of Chance. See especially chapters five through ten (Kelly 2016).
As is well-known, Humboldt was a major influence on Mill. Herzen was personally acquainted and corresponded with Mill. Although he does not often invoke Humboldt’s name, it is safe to assume that he was well-read in Humboldt’s works, which enjoyed great popularity in Russia in the 1830 s and 40 (as evidenced, for example, by Khomiakov’s attack on Humboldt mentioned in footnote). I discuss Herzen’s connection to the Humboldtian liberal tradition in “A Vital Questions: The Quest for Bildung in Russia, 1860s–80s.”
The Slavophiles’ negative attitude toward both thinkers reveals itself very clearly in A.S. Khomiakov’s essay “Po povodu Gumbol’dta” (Khomiakov 2007).
A number of scholars (Malia, Acton, Kelly) have argued that Herzen’s growing bitterness about Europe in the 1850s, which made him turn hopefully to the Russian peasant commune, was caused not only by the outcome of the 1848 Revolution, hut also by his family drama. As I have argued elsewhere, Herzen’s disappointment with Europe and Europeans, even those who professed to be liberals, certainly had much to do with his disappointment in Georg Herwegh, a friend and fellow revolutionary who carried out a secret affair with Herzen’s wife Nathalie. For Herzen’s friendship (understood as a union of “beautiful souls”) was an indispensable spiritual medium. Therefore, when separated from his best friend Ogaryov, who remained in Russia until 1856, he became close to Herwegh to the point of inviting him and his wife Emma to live in his household. This fatal decision not only ruined his family and his friendship with Herwegh, but also shook his “Westernizer” convictions (Steiner 2007).
I draw on Kelly’s essay “Herzen, Schiller, and the Aesthetic Education of Man” (chapter two of Views from the Other Shore) as well as on chapter eleven of The Discovery of Chance.
In the penultimate scene of the fifth act (which some reviewers considered redundant from the dramatic point of view) Schiller represents a chance encounter between Tell and Johann Parricida, a nephew and murderer of the Holy Roman Emperor. Tell condemns the Duke for committing a crime motivated solely by personal enmity. He explains that the murder he committed was justified by his outrage against a sadistic ruler. On the significance of this scene as an “apology” for Tell see a review in Isis, March 1805 (Schiller 2008, 781–7).
In the published text of the novel Denisov refers disapprovingly to the appointment of the “soldier” Schwartz as a regimental commander at this famous regiment. The mutiny at the Semyonovsky Regiment was still in the living memory of Tolstoy’s older contemporaries and was well-known enough to all educated Russians to require elaborate explanations (Tolstoy 12:282).
For a detailed analysis of Schiller’s view of “the beautiful soul” in comparison both other invocations of this term in the eighteenth century see Marie Wokalek’s book (Wokalek 2010).
Due to space constraints, I leave the figure of Andrei Bolkonsky out of consideration here. However, as E. Zaidenshnur points out, it was this handsome and noble character who was originally conceived as an ideal aristocratic character (to be juxtaposed not only to the half-aristocratic Pierre, but also to the more provincial and down-to-earth Rostov, named “Count Prostoi (Simple)” in some of the drafts). Andrei, who dies from the wound he receives at Borodino, leaving Natasha free to marry Pierre, serves as a kind of precursor to the Decembrists, including his surviving friend and his son. (Zaidenschnur 1961, 291–396).
I discuss Tolstoy’s debt to Herder in “The Russian Aufäklaerer: Tolstoy in Search of Truth, Freedom and Immortality.” (Steiner 2011).
See chapter 12, part two of volume two of War and Peace.
Like Agathon in Ch. M. Wieland’s pedagogical novel Geschichte des Agathons Pierre outgrows Schwärmerei and develops a more sober and mature perspective. One of Agathon’s key experiences occurs at the court of the Tyrant of Syracuse, where he learns the difference between the Platonic political ideal and realpolitik. In the image of Platon Karataev Tolstoy likewise presents his hero with a lofty ideal, which he, unlike Wieland, hesitates to unmask as a sheer dream. Unlike Agathon, who has to experience multiple disillusionments and give up on Romantic love, Tolstoy’s hero acquires more depth and discernment without relinquishing his enthusiasm. In the first volume Tolstoy treats his hero with as much irony as Wieland treats Agathon. However, as the story continues to unfold, it transforms from an eighteenth century “novel of worldliness” (whose hero is to become mature by recognizing and accepting the ways of the world) into one resembling a Romantic narrative of infinite quest. As this article argues, this change might have been due to Tolstoy’s discovery of Schiller’s idealism.
See chapter 34 of part three of volume three.
Pierre’s encounter with Karataev is described in chapters 11–14 of part two of volume four and chapters 12–15 of part four of volume four.
All translations are my own.
I have in mind works like Philosophie der Physiologie (Schiller 1962a, 10–29) and especially Philosophische Briefe.
For a nuanced discussion of Schiller’s conception of freedom see Beiser (2005, 213–235).
I discuss Schiller’s and Tolstoy’s experimentations with the modern idyll in another recent article (Shtainer 2018).
Tsiavlovsky also suggests that this new story was to be merged with the earlier draft featuring the Decembrist Labazov and his wife in 1856, upon their return to Russia (Tolstoy 17: 469–585, 472).
Many of these documents were made available by Herzen. Another major Decembrist document was a book by Nikolai Turgenev (2001) La Russie et les Russes. Written and published in the West, this work by a notable political economist and one of the masterminds of the Decembrist movement was a major source of information about Russia in the West.
For an illuminating discussion of this story see Ilya Kliger and Nasser Zakariya, “Poetics of Brotherhood: Organic and Mechanistic Narrative in Late Tolstoi.” (Kliger and Zakariya 2011).
Young Tolstoy’s interest in sentimentalism has been thoroughly discussed by Tolstoy scholars starting with Eikhenbaum (1968). However, Tolstoy’s return to sentimentalist conventions in The Resurrection is yet to be explored by the critics. My hypothesis is that this return might have to do with Tolstoy’s return to the theme of the aristocrat’s search of a more authentic self through recognition of his moral guilt and self-abasement. That this moral quest takes him to Siberia is a clear give away of Nekhliudov’s affinity with the earlier guilt-ridden, spiritually active princes in Tolstoy’s fiction, including his Decembrist characters. That these themes were not just a result of Tolstoy’s newly awakened interest in Dostoevsky’s life and work (in the wake off his arch-rival’s death) but have deep roots in Tolstoy’s own fiction should have become clear from my essay.
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Steiner, L. A revolutionary as a “beautiful soul”: Lev Tolstoy’s path to ethical anarchism. Stud East Eur Thought 71, 43–62 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11212-019-09320-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11212-019-09320-x