The Scientific Monthly, October to December, 1915Various
Science
The Scientific Monthly, October to December, 1915
Various
Science -- Periodicals; Technology -- Periodicals
Among the prominent advocates of this philosophy might be
mentioned, first, Constantine Aksakoff, Russia's Rousseau, who
in the middle of the nineteenth century, was a virtuous
propagandist of the doctrine. He earnestly, even religiously,
preached the return of Russia from the allurements of western
Europe, unto her own theory of national salvation, declaring
that "the social order of the west is on a false foundation"
and that Slavophilism would offset its degeneracy, if only
Russia would free herself from the false class leadership for
whose origin the Great Peter stands the convicted sponsor! Thus
Slavophilism, under the leadership of Aksakoff, instead of
leading forward with the great liberal movement that came after
the Crimean War, resulting finally in the emancipation of the
serfs, would lead backward to the stagnant hours of medieval
Russia. Then there were no German words to disfigure the
Russian language! Then there were no German divisions of rank
among the officials to strangle life by their formality. No,
none of these, nor the disturbing importations of Peter; in
Aksakoff's variation of the gospel, the Russians are the
"beyond men" and need them not. Thus before Peter's reign all
was Slavophilic!--a religion of the simple Christian gospel, a
church considering itself the only true ecclesia, a government
of the Czar's will, a life of passive humility; creating
freedom of conscience and speech for the peasants, and freedom
of activity and legislation for the rulers, unknown in modern
corrupted Russia!
And thus was old peaceable-hearted Muscovy of the past
centuries pictured as the metropolis of true political and
individual morality.
Herzen, too, an able pamphleteer in revolutionary things,
preached something similar, crying from his pulpit at home or
in exile, that Russia would solve all her problems and lead the
human race by the simplicity of the Slavophile ideal. His early
and rabid westernism was greatly tempered on contact with the
west. Disillusion and disgust overcame him. The mercantilism of
the bourgeoisie there drove him into Aksakoff's fold, and he
too thereafter found faith alone in the "regenerative power of
Russia," and her system of the mir, the central sun of the
Slavophilic state, the village commune, self-governing and
self-contained. And then from that, this was to ensue: the
whole world made of village communes as in Russia, perhaps even
their log cabins too, and fresh mud to go with them on their
walls! But this did not deter the vision of these evangelists.
The commune was to be indefinitely extended; national and
international ones were to be organized, all self- governing,
and then would follow as the night the day, universal peace
wherever these communes were found.
This is the Utopia Russia has given to the world to stand
beside Plato's, or Sir Thomas More's or Morris's or Bellamy's.
This was the dream of pacific Pan-Slavism.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account