Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 2.pdf/385

359 of the scientific and fully conscious socialist are guided by the idealism of the class and the species. Collectivism is religious; socialism is a religious system; Marxist socialism, above all, is "the fifth great religion formulated by Jewry."

Since the days of Herzen the Russian socialists have followed in the footsteps of Feuerbach. Bulgakov, who gave the watchword "from Marxism to idealism," needed therefore strong personal reasons before forsaking Feuerbach. In a work entitled The Religion of the Man-Godhead in the Works of L. Feuerbach (1906), a belated contribution to the Feuerbach centenary (1904), the sometime Marxist declares that the Feuerbachian religion of humanity is inadequate. Not the man-god, he says, not the god-humanity, but the God-Man, the Christ, is the true object of religious devotion. As the terminology indicates, Bulgakov, too, is returning from Feuerbach to Solov'ev and Dostoevskii. Bulgakov states the alternatives: "Humanism with Christ and in Christ's name, or humanism versus Christ and in man's own name." Nevertheless, Feuerbach is given a place among the holy ones of the Christian calendar (an honour which Solov'ev had paid to Comte as well), for the social freedom of mankind is and must remain the precondition of the kingdom of God on earth, and Feuerbach, despite his atheism, sincerely cooperated in the upbuilding of this kingdom.

OR Russia, as for Europe, Marxism is something more than a living memento to the defenders of the old social order, it is in addition a positive creative energy.

Apart from its scientific performances in the domain of economics and economic history, Marxism during the nineties awakened and reinvigorated the Russian intelligentsia. The revision of the narodničestvo and its documentary refutation with the aid of economic and financial statistics was a valuable service, through the performance of which realism first became wholly realistic. The blind hopes based upon the peasant had to be abandoned—though we must admit that the Marxists, in their campaign against the narodniki, endeavoured to prove a good deal more than was susceptible of proof.

The political achievements of Marxism have been con-