Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 2.pdf/232

206 religion was a world problem and an intimately vital question; Pobědonoscev to whom religion was a means to political ends.

After the death of Alexander II, Tolstoi sent Pobědonoscev, for transmission to Alexander III, a heartfelt letter petitioning that the assassins should be pardoned. Pobědonoscev kept the letter to himself, and did not reply to Tolstoi until after the execution of the condemned. The defender of capital punishment then wrote as follows: "Our Christ is not your Christ. To me Christ is the man of energy and truth, who heals the weak; but it seems to me that your Christ shows lineaments of weakness, is himself in need of healing."

Other writers and artists besides Tolstoi were subjected to censorship by Pobědonoscev. I may recall the chief procurator's intention to forbid the exhibition of Polěnov's picture of Christ and the woman taken in adultery. The tsar, however, liked the picture and purchased it.

Some interest might attach to a discussion of Pobědonoscev's ideas concerning foreign policy. His feelings towards France, for example, were far less cordial than those of most chauvinists, advocates of the Franco-Russian alliance; he had little fondness for Austria; he was by no means an enthusiast for the Slavs, and the liberal Czechs were especially uncongenial to him. But he took pleasure in the description of travel written by Vratislav von Mitrovič, the Bohemian nobleman who visited Constantinople in 1591 as member of an embassy from Rudolf II. Pobědonoscev translated the book, and it is obvious that he took a sympathetic delight in the believing author's descriptions of the life and doings of the Turks.

Pobědonoscev, despite his hostility to negation, was himself after all merely negative; he negated the west. But his negation was weak and half-hearted; he cast out Satan with Satan's aid; the pillars of his theocratic orthodoxy were European authorities, whose works he turned to his own account; à Kempis, de Maistre, Emerson, Spencer, Carlyle, Goethe, etc., were utilised to lay the foundations of the crown jurist's scholastic edifice. Amid his incessant appeals for uniformity, he displayed a deplorable lack of uniformity. But this is characteristic of al! theological and theocratic apologetic literature, and is by no means peculiar to Russia. Two German translations of the Moscow Studies have been published, both under Protestant auspices, the translators being delighted with the Russian obscurantist.