The Icon and the Axe

To be sure, there were some voices rai^ to behjilfortheoM Deceng^ brist ide^-oTTpoTuIcar?^^

???§?^???????????*^????? Russians in 1847 eloquently restated the

classical enlightened arguments for constitutional monarchy; but this was

the voice of an old manj amp;rjJmginParj amp;JIis. tonTTs^rela^Ttet"^oTthe

innuln amp;able memoirists of thelate imperial period: semi-fatalistic and

elegiac regret combined with a scholarly desire to set the record straight.

Turgenev's work is a masterpiece of this genre, with his praise of the civiliz

ing effects of pietism and Masonry under Alexander, his criticism of the

"Adonises in uniform" who prevailed over right reason at the court, and his

indictment of "the fatalism which seems to weigh on Russia as much as

despotism."4*

One interesting nevMbjafimui£-24U^^Vs_j2p^ the morTli3vanc^^

SympatrTyTorsubjugated Poland wasto become a mark of the new radical^ so£ial_tnittkers inRussia; ancjinterest in Finland was to become in some / respectseven more impoTEant. F^laSLSasTfirst of~3l^"Protestant state;

t

and Turgenev was not alone in_suggestingJh4tProtestantlSm^rovi3ea ? m^jfefav^We-^frnosrAwe^'far freelRSclaljdjgvelopmentffiatr‹SthoMclsm. yOiteof theTe^arrjg^ewjtraTHab devo!e3to thedisCu^ionof~s6cial ques-I tions in St. Petersburg was entitled The Finnish Herald, and there was a steady increase in Finnish settlement in the St. Petersburg region as well as increased contact through the Helsinki-St. Petersburg steamboat line.

Of particular interest to Russians was the fact that the Finnish diet included not only the sta^3ard~three* estateTb^Tajso--following thejoodgl of the SwedisTTw^ag-rBpre^eTIfaTrves""oF"a"fourth estate: the peasantry. ForJit_y^L_ffienimst6cratic atSSSvEiyoFthe peasantry that was principally

v. UN ? NEW SHORES

1. The Turn to social inougm

responsible for the turn to social reform in the 1840's. Jnterest in the peas"^^^S^mulated_b^tiie gradual increase in peasant disordersjmder Nicholas I and by the attend5ur"actiyifTeTl3f"^e various commissions ap-pomtedjtoj|nid^rejmdjiyJs£^^

the same time, the peasantry appears as a kind of final object of romantic fascination for the alienated intellectuals. Having traveled in vain to foreign lands and studied at the feet of foreign sages, the Russian Faust now heard happy murmurs from JtejjejisjmJ^masjse^^ «"rcpundmes of his voutL

Althoughsynthetic pastoral themes were sounded much earlier in

J ????^^^???????????? fo'becorn^ErmnanTior the first time in the

j›3P840's. HarjbingeroT~tEe new trend '^wSs^ffie^pbs^umous "criticaT~praise

heaped on the poems and folks^m5S__ofAlexis KoPtsov by Belinsky, who

foundTn^mTmaffected and unperfected art oftBerough-hewn Kol'tsov a

"new simplicity" that seemed to satisfy the "loneimjfor normalcy" that was

charact5Sicofhis IaSTjears.5 "Sociality or death" had been BelinsKy's"

vatedictoTy^siogSTcTthe aristocratic intellectuals just before his death in

?/i848. They were to find this "sociality" (or "social life," sotsial'nosf') in the

^real or imagined company of the noble savages in the Russian countryside.

With the appearance in 1846 ol"nmitfy-6fl^fovich7s The Village and of

the first of Ivan Turgenev's Sportsman's Sketches the following year, the

i_peasant emerged as a new heroictype for Russian literature. In part, this

new interest was just another Russian reflection ofa Western trend

noticeable in the sudden popularity of Berthold Auerbach's Village Tales of

the Black Forest and George Sand's Francois de Champi. But there was a

peculiar intensity to the E?stemJB?m^?l¦?at^?stj?^^^^?n^_JQl^

resulted from the slirvival theie_Qfthe brutaHzingJnstitution of serfdom, and

is exemplified ? such writers of the fortieTas the PoIe*Easzewski and'lhe

UkrSnTffi" SBivchgnko.6

»«- It is arneasure of_ue Russian aristocrats' alienation from their own

peor^es__uafJhe^35scojvei^jtoe peas^nTsnotofTtheir ownesTates~Hut'in

books-above all in thejfluse=J5Iu5^?1£150????^"BaYon

Haxthjm_sj^jjjej^ajpng trip through Russia in 1.841..

"On the basis of his study, Russja??istocra^s^ddenlyJ?›fessed Jo_jmdki the"p^asant_commune (oBsftCfunal^^^bas oOro"ettersoTletyT Although"^ the peasant ??????? had ???? idealizedDefore^-as an organic religious community by the Slavophiles and as a force for revolution by Polish extremists-Haxtihausen's praise was based on a detailed study of its social, functions of regulating land ?????????????? dispensing local jusjjcjl He saw ???*??????? a~modelfor "free productive associations like those of 1 lie Saint-Simonians"; and the idea was born among Russians that a renova-

tion of society on the model of the commune might be possible even if a political revolution were not.7

The belief in a coming transformation of social relationships wasSwd

propaga^lKff^TyT›yTwo"lnT^¦*

aristocrat (and one of three well-known brothers). Each was a teacher of law Mid apopularizer of Auguste Comte's pleafor a new non-metaphysical science of society; each enjoyed 8???* ?????? '?, ?* jjav, ??^ djg^ ?" ???]? and unnatural death.