Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 2.pdf/382

356 believing energy of socialism as contrasted with the scepticism of the bourgeoisie, and declares that the proletarian is peculiarly unsceptical. Before Plehanov, nearly all the socialists, and in particular the revolutionary socialists, valued and demanded this energy of belief. In such a sense, for example, the nihilists were "religious,’" were persons animated with faith. We recall, too, how the earlier writers, beginning with Bělinskii and Herzen, demanded faith and condemned scepticism. But it is necessary to distinguish between faith and religious faith, between belief and religion.

Intimately related with this mood of faith is the enthusiasm of the socialists, admired even by their adversaries—an enthusiasm which may on occasion pass into fanaticism.

Another notable trait is the self-sacrificingness and the active fraternity of the socialists. Those to whom the essence of religion lies in morality will gladly term socialists "religious persons."

We have further to consider the mystical tendency and the belief in miracle, factors which play a notable part in Russia in constituting the idea of religion. Whilst the orthodox Marxists cling to Marxist rationalism and its associations with the enlightenment, the Marxists with religious inclinations (to whom Plehanov, of course, refuses the name of Marxists) turn towards mysticism which is, they insist, a necessary supplement to purely scientific, one-sidedly scientific, Marxism. From this outlook, ceremonial and symbolism are recognised as important. (For Lunačarskii, for example, productive energies are the Father, the proletariat is the Son, and scientific socialism is the Holy Ghost.)

Finally an appeal is made (as by V. Bazarov, whose philosophic starting-point is Engel's empiricism) to religion as an authority which will be competent, in virtue of its higher religious power, to maintain order in a disintegrated society that is breaking up into separate classes and castes.

In this study of the relationships between Russian socialism and religion, it is interesting to note that Christian socialism is practically unknown in Russia. A certain number of priests have joined the liberal movement, and a few even have entered the Social Democratic Party; this party carries on an agitation among the sectaries and old believers, but there are few traces of Christian socialism. Whereas in France, England, Germany, and everywhere throughout the west, socialism