The Thinking Reed

was in a certain sense predestined by the fate of this, the most politically active group. And it is extremely important to understand the path it took, the height of its ascent and the depth of its fall, so that, in our own day, we may correctly estimate the prospects before our country’s development.48

The preparation and realization of the Reform of 1861, which emancipated the peasantry, helped public opinion to take shape in Russia — especially because the government, which feared opposition from its traditional backers, began to flirt with liberalism. When, however, it became clear that the authorities would not proceed beyond half-measures, conflict arose between the reform-minded intelligentsia, who had been roused by the promises recently given by the rulers, and the actual policy that the latter pursued. This clash was, as we have seen, typical of Russian history down to our own time. Paradoxically, a reforming government always finds itself up against a stronger left-wing opposition than a conservative government because, to its misfortune, through its reforms it awakens hopes in society which it is incapable of satisfying. Belief is engendered that something can change in our country, in a general way, and not after five hundred years but ‘here and now’ (we shall find a similar situation when we come to look at the ‘Khrushchev era’). In attempting to cope with social discontent and put an end to the hopes which official policy had just aroused, the government resorted to repressive measures which led to the development of an underground press and clandestine organizations. The logic of the struggle carried the intelligentsia further and further to the left. Europeanism was at first understood in a liberal spirit, then in a democratic spirit, and from the middle of the nineteenth century in a socialist spirit. Later, in 1910, Tugan-Baranovsky wrote: ‘The socialist sympathies of the Russian intelligentsia constitute one of its most characteristic distinguishing features.’49 Moreover,

a Russian intelligent, if he is interested at all in social problems, is usually more or less inclined towards, and sometimes is even fanatically committed to socialism. This is so plain to see that it hardly calls for proof.50

On this basis Pipes considered that in general, acceptance of socialism ‘in some one of its several forms’ was a necessary feature of all Russian intelligenty.51 In my view it would be more correct to say that for the Russian intelligentsia of the nineteenth century, socialism became the embodiment of the humanist ideals of the Westernist tendency.

Marxists were later to abuse the Narodniks, the first Russian socialists, for their insufficiently ‘European’ views (especially their idea that Russia’s road to socialism lay not through up-to-date industry but through the village commune). Then, still later, the Mensheviks among the Marxists were to attack the Bolsheviks for returning to Narodism (with their idea of a socialist revolution in backward Russia, their preference, in practice, for centralized organizations of intellectuals rather than the spontaneous movement of the workers, their conspiratorial methods, and so on).52 In both cases such criticism was probably correct, but somewhat exaggerated. For example, the Bolsheviks saw the Russian road to socialism differently from the Narodniks; according to the statements of Trotsky and Lenin, it proceeded by way of what Trotsky and Parvus called the European ‘permanent’ revolution.53 On the other hand, the Narodniks’ views were more complex than is indicated in present-day official history books. It is to their credit that they were the first to formulate the problem of non-capitalist development Furthermore, their approach can be regarded as the more fruitful in that they alone linked this path of development with democracy and political freedoms. It is this, I think, that explains why Marx, unlike the Russian Marxists, treated the theoretical views of the Russian Narodniks quite seriously, as an interesting hypothesis, refusing either to endorse them or to reject them ‘out of hand’.