Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 2.pdf/229

Rh tary government? Do not the anarchists, moreover, reject parliamentarism? A number of notable Europeans, alike men of the study and men of practical life, have held views which do not differ greatly from those held by Pobědonoscev. But the great distinction lies in this, that in Europe we already have some experience of parliamentary government and of emocracy, and hence it is not merely our right but our duty to criticise these institutions, for to do this is to fulfil democracy. But a Russsian who from western literature sharks up arguments against parliament, democracy, and the newspaper press, in order to incorporate these arguments into his absolutist system, is a man ever open to suspicion. Indisputably, demagogy (not parliamentarism per se) is one of the great lies of our epoch. But in this epoch of ours to defend autocratic absolutism, even for Russia; to endeavour to find historical, philosophical, and religious arguments on behalf of this regime, though its incapacity is manifest to all the world—what is it, when done by a man of culture but a literary crime? Pobědonoscev was the declared enemy of the west, and yet it was from the west that he derived his own culture and his own antiliberal and antidemocratic arguments.

For the representation of Pobědonoscev's views the question of the relationship between state and church has an important bearing, seeing that Pobědonoscev was in a position to speak, not only as teacher of public law, but also as chief procurator. He criticised the various attempts at a solution that had been made in Europe. In the Catholic system, he said, the church controlled the state. The more or less liberal systems which had developed from the eighteenth century onwards, granting equal rights to all religions, independence of the state from the church, and a free church in a free state, were vague half-measures, and could not be effectively carried out in practice. The church, in view of its educational function, could not possibly renounce the moral guidance of the citizens; a separation between church and state was de facto impossible; "a state without a creed is a purely utopian ideal, and one incapable of realisation, for unbelief is the direct negation of the state.