Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 1.pdf/351

Rh of the Russian people. It was the natural gift of the Russian people to be nonpolitical; Russians had no desire to rule, and preferred to leave the exercise of the powers of state to a foreign European government. Konstantin Aksakov elaborated an entire political system of this character.

The opponents of the slavophils are apt to say that there was a tincture of anarchism in the views of these writers, but the assertion amounts to very little.

The Russian absolutism of the time misled many people to this unpolitical standpoint; the theocratic ideal of the slavophils was a refuge from the theocratic reality. To be unpolitical often signifies the possession of strong political views, conservative views, and this was true in high degree of most of the slavophils who, as respected aristocrats and members of the wealthy landowning class, were ultraconservative in politics. Accepting tsarism as the given form of autocracy, they were content to idealise it, and it was from above not from below that they hoped for the coming of the reforms they desiderated. For themselves, for their own class, they wished a number of radical reforms, and in especial freedom of the press and the establishment of a territorial assembly (in which they would of course play the leading role). The territorial assembly, modelled upon the design of the zemskii sobor of old days, was not to be a legislative parliament, for K. Aksakov and Samarin, in full agreement here with Kirěevskii's teaching, protested against constitutionalism. In this respect the slavophils were more logical and more conservative than the Catholic liberals of that day, Tocqueville and Montalembert. Samarin, at any rate, disapproved their policy, and in his attitude towards constitutionalism agreed rather with Nicholas I, who, as is well known, "could understand" republicanism and absolute monarchy, but "could not understand" constitutional monarchy. He looked upon this form of government as infamous. In the sphere of politics the slavophils did not advance beyond the standpoint of absolutist patriarchalism, and from this standpoint of agrarian patriarchalism and patrimonialism the slavophils, like the aristocrats in general, were opponents of the bureaucracy.

The church and ecclesiastical tradition being recognised as the supreme authority, and much emphasis being aid upon catholicity, it was logical that in every department individualism should be bluntly rejected. European liberalism fell with indi-