Page:The Russian Review Volume 1.djvu/101

Rh —the Western idea of individuality—and also with a firm belief in change and growth.

Perhaps our exposition of these two opposing views of life makes it appear that they are completely irreconcilable. In reality, this is not so. Disagreement implies some common basis. Trends of thought have a disconcerting way of merging, in their final analysis and effects, with philosophic theories that seem to be at the opposite pole. And intellectual, as well as other forces, defy all our attempts to coop them up within convenient dates and periods. It is not surprising, then, that the ideas current in the "thirties" and "forties" have passed down through the generations "even unto our own day." Of course, they have undergone change and development, and apparent transformation. Nor is it strange that Westernizers and Slavophiles were in virtual agreement on many matters, or that a writer like Dostoyevsky, or Tolstoy, reflects the contrasting influences of tendencies theoretically opposed to one another. These men attempt to solve the problems raised by the theorists of both camps. But it is Turgeniev who saw the birth of these ideas and their gradual development. From one point of view, his works are a study, by an acute observer, of the contending forces in the intellectual life of his countrymen. He belongs, first of all, to the early period when the abolition of serfdom was the burning issue of the day. And he lived through the next three decades, the chief ideas of which we shall now attempt to summarize.

With the beginning of the "fifties," a new force enters into Russian literature. The old conditions of life were falling to pieces under the strong attack of industrial and commercial changes. Chernishevsky had said about his country, "We are a backward people, and in this lies our hope. We must bless our fate that we have not lived the same life as Europe. Her present condition must be a lesson to us. We don't want her proletariat, and we don't want her aristocracy." But the rejection was in vain. With the development of the industrial system, there came the realization that there were, as a Russian critic puts is, "larger communities than the commune."

The literature of this decade is marked by the spirit of realism. The idealized peasant of Turgeniev gives way to the real peasant of a literature whose aim is purely objective. Then, too, the writers are no longer drawn exclusively from the gentry. The new literature is the product of men of different ranks (raznochintzy), and among them are many who spring from the people: Gogol, Dostoyevsky, Nekrasov. The milieu is no longer