Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 2.pdf/249

Rh finds it necessary to furnish reasons to himself and others in defence of his traditional beliefs, is already a lost man.

Hence the theocratic apologia is mere Jesuitry. Even Leont'ev is under no illusions; he recognises that the reaction can find nothing but specious reasons for the defence of its unavowed aims, and that in the last resort it must necessarily have recourse to force.

Leont'ev felt that he was defending a lost post.

This is why the ex-revolutionary Tihomirov was dissatisfied, not only with Dostoevskii, Solov'ev, and Homjakov, but also with Leont'ev.

In the seventies Tihomirov had been a revolutionist and terrorist, and had been one of those to collaborate with Mihailovskii in composing the letter to Alexander III, Tihomirov drafting for that document the minimum demands for reform. As member of the executive committee of the Narodnaja Volja he took part in the before-mentioned negotiations with the "Holy Retinue." In the year 1888, in a writing entitled Why I am no longer a Revolutionary, he attempted to defend his change of view. Mihailovskii has written concerning the early activities of the convert in St. Petersburg. Tihomirov, collaborating on Katkov's paper and other reactionary journals, demanded absolute faith in religion and politics. He knew what scepticism was, since for a long time he had doubted the justification for revolution, but had none the less remained active for years in the refugee movement. In 1893 Tihomirov published a work upon Clergy and Society in the Contemporary Religious World, declaring here quite unambiguously that the believer must be absolutely devoted and perfectly submissive to the church. Religious faith, in his view, was exclusive of any kind of spontaneous religious activity on the part of the critical understanding; ecclesiastical authority rendered all search for religious truths superfluous; this search was pernicious. Just as the church was the highest spiritual authority, so were the autocracy and the government alone competent and alone entitled to regulate social order; Europe, no less than Russia, could be saved only by absolute monarchy. In Russia, "a skilled and vigorous police" would suffice to put an end to the various socialist fantasies.

In the first work written after his conversion, Tihomirov renounced revolution in favour of peaceful evolution, but when he had himself evolved in the reactionary direction he aban-