The Icon and the Axe

The most remarkable and original historical prophecy of the age may well be that of Prince Odoevsky, the original "lover of wisdom" and one of the leading musical and literary critics of the period. In a series of dialogues written during the thirties and published together in 1844 as Russian Nights, Odoevsky wrote that "the West is perishing," that "the nineteenth century belongs to Russia," and that "the sixth part of the world designated by Providence for a great deed (podvig). . . will save not only the body but the soul of Europe as well."43 He was well aware of the West and its accomplishments, writing learnedly on Bach and Shakespeare as well as contemporary figures; but he felt that "in Russia many things are bad, but everything together is good; in Europe many things are good, but everything together is bad."44 He was particularly haunted by the writings of Malthus and wrote a sketch, "The Last Suicide," showing humanity lighting a fire to relieve overpopulation, then trying in vain to check it in order to save some vestige of life on earth.45

Much of his thought was devoted in the thirties to an historical trilogy designed to set forth the nature and destiny of Russia. He thought of writing

on the impact of Asia on Russia but soon decided on a more ambitious conception. He planned to write one volume on the past, one on the present, and one on the future of Russia; and his attention was soon focused on the tantalizing third volume.

He published first in 1835 and then, more fully, in 1839 his picture of the future in a remarkable fantasy, The Year 4338. Appearing under the pseudonym "the voiceless one," the story purports to be a series of letters written from Russia by a visiting Chinese student from "the chief school in Peking" in "the year 4338." The world has been divided between Russia and China. The historical calendar is now divided into three parts: from the creation of the world to the birth of Christ, from thence to the division of the world between these two powers, and from that time till the present. Little is even remembered of other countries or of history preceding the Russo-Chinese era. No one can read the few surviving lines of Goethe. The English long ago went bankrupt, and saw their island sold to Russia at a public auction.

Russia is the cultural center of the world. Great new cities have been built, the weather transformed throughout the north, special aerial platforms, aerial hotels, and balloons fill the sky. The supreme sovereign of Russia is now a poet, who is aided by a "minister of reconciliation" and "philosophers of the first and second rank." Artificial lights are made from electricity; hostile impulses are deadened by "magnetic baths," in the course of which all secrets are revealed; communication is by magnetic telegraph; and marvelous, pliable synthetic products have been devised to provide every possible form of physical comfort. Love of humanity has become so great that all tragedy has been eliminated from literature. A month is set aside for rest and relaxation at the beginning and middle of each year. There is a "continuous congress of the learned" to aid artists and scientists, and the capital is full of museums and gardens containing extinct curiosities, such as paper and animals. China is not quite so advanced but is busy learning from Russia and has progressed rapidly in the five hundred years since "the great Khun-Gin awoke China at last from its long slumber, or rather, deathly stagnation." Without his leadership, China

would have been made over by now in the likeness of those unsociable Americans, who for the lack of other speculative ventures, sell their cities on the public market, then come to us to expropriate. [They are] the only people in the whole world against whom we must maintain troops.46

The only drawback to the picture as presented is that the subsidized scientists of this super-state have calculated that Halley's comet is about to hit the earth; and although people have already begun to move to the moon

to help relieve overpopulation, no one seems able to devise a means of preventing this catastrophe.

This blend of science fiction with Utopian prophecies of future comfort and Russian pre-eminence went largely unnoticed in pre-Revolutionary Russia. Far more attention was paid to the famous historical debate of the 1840's between Slavophiles and Westernizers. Each of these grew out of the romantic idealism of the day; each was opposed to both Nicholaevan bureaucrats and Western entrepreneurs; each sought to borrow Western ideas without Western practices, so that Russia could assume leadership in the revival of European civilization.