Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 1.pdf/447

Rh In 1862 he tells us that the Russian revolution must be a return to the folk and to the mir, and writes: "Preach to the people, not Feuerbach or Babeuf, but a religion the people will understand, the people of the soil Make ready, for the day of destiny is at hand." Then follows his tirade about the rising sun, accompanied or not with "blood-tinged clouds."

We must now see whether Herzen furnishes clear suggestions as to what is to be the relationship between Europe and Russia when Russia comes to fulfil her messianic mission vis-à-vis Europe. In his answer to Michelet's scepticism about Russia (1855), Herzen tells us that revolutionary Europe will as a matter of course join forces organically with Russia. "In Russia the man of the future is the mužik, just as in France the operative. Tsarism will disappear, and so will the Russian intelligentsia, for the latter's sole function is to mediate between the Russian people and revolutionary Europe.

Nevertheless Herzen was ever somewhat inclined to regard the masses from the outlook of a superior person. In 1850, when he demanded a socialist folk-state, the realisation of this ideal was deferred to a remote future. After 1861, however, he talks of immediate-realisation, speaks favourably of the masses, not of the mužiks alone, but also of European operatives; and he even gives the intelligentsia its congé. How and why is the intelligentsia to disappear? Is it because Rousseau passed sentence upon civilisation—or does Herzen foresee the immediate organisation of brain equality?

According to the plan of 1862 the tsar in his Monomach crown is not to vanish, provided only that the sun rises unaccompanied by blood-tinged clouds, and it is plain that Herzen could readily contemplate the retention of the tsar, seeing that he did not consider the tsar to be a monarch in the strict sense of the term.

But what is the drift of this criticism? It is that Herzen did not whole-heartedly believe in the Russian saviour, and was never able completely to overcome his own seepticism. The task he assigned to Russia was far too great for him to hope that the Russian mir would ever be able to achieve it in its entirety.

The kernel of his philosophy of history is as follows. The old world was perishing beyond hope of rescue. Christianity, which had renovated the Roman world, was in process of decomposition The reformation and the great revolution