Page:The American Review of Reviews - Volume 24.djvu/58

 Russia, Christianity and conscience play the part which material considerations and legal formalities play in western Europe."

"Then do you think that the Russians are capable of producing a really higher civilization than western Europeans?"

"That I cannot say. If you mean by civilization Western civilization, there can be no question of relative highness and lowness. I only say that an essential difference exists."

"But admitting, as you do, that Russian conditions are very imperfect, on what do you rely to improve them ?"

"Certainly not upon what you call Western reforms. Because, having decided that there is nothing in common between Russia and Europe, there is not even a ground for experimenting with Western reforms in Russia. The Western system fails to insure real morality in the West, and why should it do better in a country for which it was not devised than in countries for which it was? The most we can do is to admit that Russian systems have failed equally. But I can simply repeat that it is only by developing the consciences and moral sense of mankind, whether in Russia or elsewhere, that you can look for any improvement in their condition."

Tolstoy spoke very much more in the same strain, always showing himself completely out of sympathy with ordinary Russian Liberalism, and particularly with Marxism, its most popular form among the younger men. Socialism in every form lie seemed to regard as little better than autocratic despotism, saying, "Our government keeps one class in idleness by means of violence; the Socialists would keep every one at work by violence." But he spoke of cooperation with respect, though, in the abstract, condemning industrialism in all its forms.

IV.—TOLSTOY IN PRECEPT AND EXAMPLE.

The question how far Count Tolstoy applies literally his principles has been much discussed, and particularly in Russia, among those who do not know him personally. Owing to the lack of publicity, and the impossibility of free discussion, there is an intense vagueness even in the minds of educated Russians as to the personalities of their famous countrymen. I remember once, a short time before my first meeting with the count, discussing the subject with two students. As is usual, both these students were mature political thinkers, one a Slavophile and reactionary, the other the son of a small tradesman and a fanatical propagandist of all the new doctrines from Marxism to Tolstoyism. Neither really knew anything about the count's life, but both were full of the astonishing fables so common in Russia. "It is mostly hypocrisy," said my Slavophile. " When a man preaches poverty, lives in luxury, and keeps up two palaces with the millions of rubles he earns with his novels he had better"

"He had better say nothing; and so ought your uncle, the Bishop of, who preaches poverty also. But Lyeff Nikolaievitch does not live in luxury, and makes no millions. I have seen him myself near Tula walking barefoot to market with his daughter, and carrying baskets on his arm."

My friend had never been near Tula, but knew very well the value of a positive statement. He went on to give a very highly colored account of Tolstoy's work among the peasantry, declaring, among other things, that one day outside Moscow the count had walked home barefoot in the snow, having given his boots to a peasant woman who complained of chilblains. The argument continued, and gradually drifted, as most Russian arguments on literature do, into a discussion whether or not the author in question was or was not truly penetrated by the "Russian spirit." For all Russians, like their Western critics, agree that a very distinct Russian spirit exists, and may be discerned both in their art and their social organization. But what the Russian spirit is, is a matter of eternal dispute.

"If there were anything really Russian in Tolstoy's novels they would not be so popular among foreigners," said my Slavophile. "Turgenieff is the only other Russian novelist read in the West. And Turgenieff was a Westerner. The only difference is that Tolstoy knows Russia better than Turgenieff, but he is no more a Russian. Real Russian literature is incomprehensible to western Europeans. Nobody in France or in England reads real Russian literature, but every one reads Pushkin and Tolstoy, and thinks he knows everything about Russia. But atheism and German uniforms and anarchism are not Russian. Tolstoy is an atheist with a Western education; his sons are disguised in German uniforms. ..." And my friend went on to give a highly imaginative account of the Tolstoy ménage, ending by giving his ideas of what a real Russian and a real reformer ought to be.

"Father John, of Cronstadt, for instance—he is a real Russian, and a really honest man. He is the really popular man in Russia. The mass of the Russian peasantry—even those who are his own neighbors, as he admits himself—distrust Tolstoy. But Father John? Who is it that gives every penny he earns to the poor ? Who is it that receives hundreds of letters every day from