Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 2.pdf/157

Rh Late in life (1893) Lavrov wrote an introductory article entitled "History, Socialism, and the Russian Movement" for a collection Materials for the History of the Russian Social Revolutionary Movement, published by some of the older adherents of the Narodnaja Volja. Herein, and likewise in a second article written in 1895, "The Narodniki 1873–1877," he expressed warm approval of the propaganda of the revolutionary narodniki as a fulfilment of the Russian socialist mission. He welcomed this propaganda amongst the people as the logical continuation of the civilisation and Europeanisation of Russia that had been begun by Peter. The movement "towards the people" seemed to him the fruit of the humanist idealism of the forties, and above all of the enthusiastic materialism and realism of Černyševskii and Pisarev. When, shortly before his death, the Russian refugees founded an agrarian socialist league, Lavrov hailed its program with delight.

ROFESSOR KARĚEV declared that Lavrov was the first and most influential of Russian sociologists. In my opinion, Čaadaev and Kirěevskii were more notable than Lavrov as philosophers of history and as thinkers. The questions which by Comte, Marx, and the later sociologists were placed in the foreground of sociological interest, questions of fact and of methodology, were not, it is true, discussed by Caadaev and Kiréevskii, or at any rate were not discussed in detail, for the only philosophy of history with which they were acquainted was that of German idealism; but they did not fall into the errors which characterised Lavrov's thought upon such matters.

Lavrov, though familiar with the sociological and philosophical situation of his day, was incompetent to play an effective part in its further development. Let me give an example. Lavrov's conception of the historical subjective method was that the ndividual historian or philosopher of history, taking his stand in the present at the close of a historical period, acquires thereby a historical perspective, and crom this standpoint looks on into the future. The presentation is quite accurate, but explains nothing, for it merely states he fact of historical contemplation and historical construction