Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 1.pdf/148

122 journalism began. To sum up, that which is commonly spoken of as modern Russian literature, the Russian literature that is generally recognised as part of world literature, took its rise under Alexander and Nicholas. Today, with inexact chronology, Russians continue to speak of "the forties," of the "idealists of the forties." If Russian literature be esteemed for its characteristic realism, we have to admit that a factor in the development of this realism was the practical trend of the reaction under Alexander and still more under Nicholas.

Herzen describes the age of Nicholas as an extraordinary period of outward slavery and inward freedom. It cannot be denied that this inward freedom which, as we shall see, was extolled by the slavophils, and which even men of the west admire, was to a degree the outcome of that political abstinence which absolutism enforces. The "superfluous man," who plays so notable a part in the Russian literature of succeeding reigns, was born under Nicholas, if not before.

T is characteristic of Nicolaitan Russia that under the theocratic oppression of Uvarov's system there germinated the philosophic and political ideals and tendencies which persist and are undergoing further evolution to-day. Through alienation from France, those Russians who longed for culture had their faces directed towards Germany, and French enlightenment was amplified by German science and philosophy. Politically, in fact, the Russians had exchanged bad for worse. But Nicholas and his henchmen of the Uvarov type were incompetent to understand that the Berlin lectures of a Schleiermacher or of a Hegel and his disciples (which the Russians might attend with exalted approval), that acquaintance with German literature and philosophy, would have a more persistent effect than acquaintance with the writings of Voltaire.

Attendance at German universities began in the eighteenth century, for it was natural that German professors and academicians summoned to Russia should induce some of their students to visit Germany. At the German universities the Russians studied various disciplines, devoting themselves above all to the officially demanded economic, legal, and technical culture, mining being the most important subject under