Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 1.pdf/295

Rh the true Russia and that Moscow was its capital; he held that the state of Muscovy still existed.

Most energetically did Aksakov contest the westernisers view as to the tribal origin of the state. In the first beginnings the Russian community was a tribe, but the next and subsequent stages did not take the form of tribal patriarchalism but of the democratic family and of the mir with its assembly (věče) developing therefrom. Aksakov opposes his own theory of the primitive mir and the věče to the patriarchal tribal theory.

Aksakov repudiates Europe and the European state in the strongest terms, going so far as to see nothing in Europe but slavery, whereas he discerns true freedom in Russia. He considers that the United States is wanting in freedom; and the constitutionalist European state with its constitutional guarantees is for him merely a proof that in Europe peoples and rulers lack mutual trust. Europe, devoid of intemal freedom, lapsed from absolutism into revolution; Russia, being endowed with internal freedom, need not bow the knee before the new European idol of revolution—it is plain that Aksakov has forgotten the decabrists. But perhaps the oversight was intentional, for he too was harassed by the Nicolaitan censorship. When Alexander II ascended the throne Aksakov composed one of the customary memorials, those memorials which, besides advocating well-meaning constitutionalist utopias, demanded freedom of speech and the summoning of a deliberative zemskii sobor.

The official title "Holy Russia" was taken literally and in all earnestness by Aksakov. He regarded prepetrine Russia and the Russia of the mužik as sacred. There were doubtless sins in this Russia, but no vices, and he was inclined to make a distinction in this respect between Moscow and St. Petersburg. Whilst Homjakov spoke of Moscow as the laboratory of Russian thought, Aksakov saw in Moscow the ideal ethical capital of the holy land of Russia, whereas to him St. Petersburg was merely the residence of Peter and his European bureaucracy.

It is needless for me to expose the utopianism of this teaching. It must be obvious to every reader that Aksakov imaginatively creates for himself in and behind the Russian state a "country" that has never existed. In actual fact Aksakov had to satisfy his appetite with his own words. We have to postulate Aksakov's "country" side by side with the state, his “ethical