Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 2.pdf/270

244 God-humanity (by which he meant, the united church universal). But none the less for Solov'ev the Russian people and the Russian state were the chosen theocratic people and the chosen theocratic state.

Contrasting nationality with nationalism, Solov'ev fiercely attacked the nationalism of the younger slavophils. He considered that Russian nationalism had exhibited three stages. The early slavophils prostrated themselves before the nation as the chosen bringer of universal (religious) truth. Next came Katkov, who saw in the nation the elemental vital energy which was independent of universal truth. Last of all came the chauvinistic obscurantism of late date (he was referring to the era of Alexander III), when people paid homage to the national one-sidedness and the historical anomalies by which the Russians were kept separate from civilised mankind. Katkov was the nemesis of the slavophils; recent obscurantism was the nemesis of Katkov. Solov'ev went so far as to say that slavophilism had declined to the level of "national and political blackmailing." He condemned Jaroš, professor at Moscow university, who proposed to supplement Katkov's program by the apotheosis of John the Terrible as the first and most exemplary Russian, Orthodox, and Tsar. Whilst Katkov had taken his crude politics from de Maistre, Katkov's successors contented themselves with a caricature of de Maistre (Bergeret, Principes de politique); in like manner, Danilevskii borrowed his leading idea from Professor Rückert, a German. This alleged primal Russian slavophilism was in fact unrussian and foreign. Solov'ev's definitive formula was that we should love all other nationalities as we love our own.

From this outlook we must consider and appraise Solov'ev's own views concerning the Poles and the Jews. He gave due recognition to the valuable religious inheritance of these two peoples, who were wher he wrote more hostile to the Russians than any others. The Poles and the Jews, he declared must lend aid to the Russians. The messianism of the "theocratic nation" was not a source of privilege, but involved duty and service; it did not give any right to dominance or hegemony. True patriotism, said Solov'ev, was to be found in national self-knowledge, not in national self-complacency, whereas the nationalists had reduced the slavophil idea of messianism to the level of zoomorphic, zoological patriotism. True patriotism involved conviction of sin and confession.