Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 2.pdf/64

38 in Siberia when his disciple Serno-Solov'evič wrote the before-mentioned pamphlet against Herzen. By this time, as previously explained, the younger generation had turned away from Herzen.

In attacking the liberals, Černyševskii wished to hit the bourgeoisie, those whom Dobroljubov termed the Oblomovs. He reproached the Russian liberals for desiring to secure the dominion of the mercantile classes, for he himself would have preferred the dominion of the peasantry. On principle, in opposition to the liberals, he approved state interference in economic concerns.

Detailed investigation would be required to enable us to determine whether the fierce campaign against the liberals, whose best representatives were then endeavouring to secure political and administrative reforms, was invariably discreet. It is true that at this particular epoch Lassalle and others were likewise attacking the liberals, but we must bear in mind the differences between the countries. It may be true that in Europe the question of constitutional government is already of small importance, but in Russia its importance is now only beginning. In Černyševskii and in Dobroljubov, we discern the rasnočincy; we see the democratic "children" rising in complaint against their aristocratic "fathers."

For the same reason, Černyševskii's condemnation of the bourgeoisie has a different ring from that of Herzen; the latter writes rather as an aristocrat, the former as a democrat

The liberals, in their turn, strongly opposed the trend of the "Sovremennik." It will suffice to mention that Kavelin, who had defended Herzen against Čičerin, did not hesitate to suspect Černyševskii's adherents of arson when great conflagrations took place in St. Petersburg in 1862.

In the question of nationality, which was an incessant topic of controversy between the westernisers and the easternisers, Černyševskii's view was that national character is conditioned, not by race, but rather by the degree of economic development or of division of labour; but he had not made a detailed study of the question either psychologically or sociologically. To some extent he threw light upon the problem by his view of the influence which a working life or an idle life has upon men. He considered the fact that the aristocracy and the well-to-do invariably live without working was a more potent cause of organic differences than any