Page:The Czechoslovak Review, vol4, 1920.pdf/37

Within the last six years, thousands of books have been written on and about Russia. Everybody who ever looked through a car window over its broad steppes, everyone who had a veneer of knowledge of some names in Russian history or literature, everyone who mayhep as a Red Cross or Triangle man learned the meaning of ‘spasivo’ or ‘nichevo’ even though he got no farther in the mastery of the Slavic tongue, undertook to tell the world all about Russia. American journalists—male and female—who well knew the reading public back home expected the bizarre and the startling from Russia forthwith perpetrated in their reports, based on the most superficial knowledge of pre-war Russia, such inanities—beg pardon—one almost said asininities—as would provoke to laughter the obscurest mužik if he knew the stupidities set down about him and his country. But the books written by these shallow and cursory observers were issued in ruddy and shrieking colors and what was mainly to the point with their writers and publishers—they sold. The public bought, read and after reading knew really less than it did before about Russia, for it had devoured the writings of individuals who were either uninformed or misinformed or both.

That the first comprehensive series of studies of Russian History, Literature and Philosophy should have emanated from a representative of one of the little Slavic nations which had been accustomed to look on Russia as the ‘big brother’ who would succor all the other Slavic lands some day, is not only significant, it is prophetic. Natives of that little land of Czechoslovakia for the past six years have been valiantly helping the “big brother” to help himself against a world of woes.

In the gathering of the material for “The Spirit of Russia” Prof. Thomas G. Masaryk undoubtedly spent years of indefatigable, conscientious labor, though he states that the pith of the work was first delivered by him in a course of lectures at the University of Chicago in 1902, under the auspices of the Charles R. Crane foundation. It was a labor trebly valuable, for on it was brought to bear all the energy of a trained scholar who had a thorough and intimate knowledge of every world movement, every philosophy whether sweeping or minute in its scope and action, since the beginning of time.

When one has read Masaryk’s work, one appreciates more than ever the truth that no one country or people can be studied effectively without a broad understanding of every other land or nation, for no nation liveth unto itself just as truly as no man liveth unto himself. And so to know what swayed Russian writers, thinkers and moulders of national aspirations, it is necessary to understand how the philosophies of the Western world reacted on a civilization struggling with the handicaps of climate, vast distances, Mongol hordes, theocracy, monarchical absolutism, serfdom, pan-German political philosophy and all the ills attendant and developing from these facts and factors.

It is essential to know, as Masaryk has shown us in his monumental work, how Russians accepted or developed the principles of Mills, Hegel, Comte, Kant, Fichte, Hume, Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Spencer, Lasalle, Marx, Darwin, Voltaire, Rousseau and Feuerbach.

Again, for one who wishes to discuss Russia and its present day crisis with intelligence, it is indispensable to have an acquaintance with the rise and growth of the family and village communities—the Zadruga and the Mir,—the Duma, the importance of the period of Peter the Great, of czarism, the political and philosophical revolution under Catherine II. and Nicholas I.; terrorism, Westernism and Slavophilism, Nihilism, Mysticism, Anarchism and Socialism. The peculiar aspects of these “isms” under the special conditions which they encountered in Russia are all shown in an enlightening manner by Prof. Masaryk who indicates to what extent each theory was inaugurated, advocated, abridged or broadened by such leaders of Russian thought as Speranski, Čaadaev, Bakunin, Bělinskii, Herzen, Černyševskii, Mihailovskii, Solovev, Tolstoi, Turgenev, Kropotkin and Dostoevskii.

Most significant is the statement of Prof. Masaryk that “an analysis of Dostoevskii is a sound method of studying Russia”. Dostoevskii’s conception of Nihilism as a desire for new life by new men was a fruitful subject of discussion with him. Hostile to all needless formalities, “Nihilism”, says Masaryk, “was the most radical emancipator of the Russian woman. . . The nihilist felt proud of his contrast with the aristocrat; he was class conscious; he was in revolt against oppression, theoretically at first, but before long practically, ethically and politically as well. . . nevertheless, the nihilist above all loved Russia, in his own peculiar manner; he loved in Russia that which seemed to him loveworthy and sacred.”

Not only the type—Russian, Dostoevskii, reveals the spirit of his home land, but innumerable authors are cited as ‘exponents of national thought. The author shows how novels, like Turgenev’s “Fathers and Sons” and Černyševskii’s “What is to be done?” in which the figures of Bagarov and Rahmetov, respectively