Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 1.pdf/372

Rh have previously referred to the panslavism of the freemasons and the decabrists. In any case it cannot be asserted that the westernisers had no political interest in the Slavs, and we might even speak of westernist panslavism as more realist than that of the slavophils. Pypin, the westerniser, did much more to promote knowledge and due appreciation of the eastern and southern Slavs and their respective civilisations than did the panslavist and slavophil utopians. In the political field, Čičerin considered the importance of the Slavs to Russia (thinking of a free Russia) as a European power.

The difference of outlook of the two parties upon the national and Slav question is especially notable in their attitude towards the Poles. The westernisers sympathised with Polish efforts to secure liberty, and even-with the Polish revolution. The decabrists had had direct associations with Polish secret societies, and these relationships were renewed by the more radical among the westernisers (Herzen, Bakunin). Conservative westernisers were adverse to the Poles.

It is necessary to emphasise the fact that the westernisers had just as strong an affection for Russia as the slavophils. Herzen says of the two parties: "By them and by us from youth upwards a powerful, unpremeditated, instinctive, and passionate sentiment was operative, a sentiment of unbounded and all-embracing love for the Russian folk, for the Russian way of life, and for the Russian mode of thought We were their opponents, but opponents of a quite peculiar kind. We and they were animated by a love that was single though not identical; like Janus or the two-headed eagle, we looked in different directions while a single heart was beating within our breast."

The westernisers criticised Russia and hated the errors and defects of their country, but their knowledge of Europe taught them to love Russia with all her errors and defects. This combination of love and hatred was extremely characteristic of the westernisers. More than one among them came to the conclusion that Europe had the same defects as Russia, and had them perhaps in even greater degree. Odoevskii, who intellectually and emotionally was westernist through and through, declared that Europe was perishing. Among the later westernisers no less a man than Herzen had for Europe a feeling tantamount to hatred. We see the same thing to-day in Gor'kii.