The Icon and the Axe

After Saint-Simon's death in 1825, Prospere Enfantin, one of his French followers who had begun his study of philosophy and economics in Russia, established a new Saint-Simonian religion. One of its adepts linked himself with Moses, Zoroaster, and Mohammed and darkly hinted that he might even be a reincarnation of Christ in modern dress. The Russians were fascinated by this strange, semi-sectarian movement and read its journal, The Globe, with great interest. Herzen's early followers can be considered a kind of splinter group within this "new Christianity"; for, although they were neither industrialists nor cultists in the manner of Enfantin's group, they were inspired by the Saint-Simonian view of history. By 1833 Herzen subscribed to the view that history moves in a three-stage progression from medieval Catholicism to philosophic Protestantism to the "new Christianity." This last phase was the "truly human" phase, a "renovation" rather than a revolution of society, designed to abolish poverty and war by the systematic application of scientific method to social and economic problems.59 A new elite of social managers and organizers must give man a modern, practical form of Christianity. The three-stage theory of history of Saint-Simon's

protege Auguste Comte enjoyed even greater popularity among the radical Westernizers in Russia after being mtroduced by Valerian Maikov in the forties. Comte's idea that everything must progress from a theological through a metaphysical into a "positive" or scientific stage became the reigning theory of history among populist intellectuals.60

At first the difference between Westernizers and Slavophiles was not great. Both believed in some new form of Christianized society and were opposed to revolution and egalitarian excess. The tendency to idealize the peasant commune and narodnosf, or "spirit of the people," as a regenerative life force in history was particularly characteristic of Slavophilism but also to be found among Polish revolutionaries and radical Westernizers. Narodnosf for all of these visionary reformers meant neither nationality as it did for Uvarov nor popularity in the Western electoral sense. It meant the unspoiled wisdom of the noble savage as revealed in the newly collected popular proverbs of Vladimir Dal or the folk songs and poems of Alexis Kol'tsov. Almost all the great social theorists had philological or ethnographic interests and rejoiced that a writer of their generation had written a History of the Russian People in answer to Karamzin's History of the Russian State.91

The man who dispelled the euphoria of friendly agreement and romantic fancy from Russian historical thinking was Georg Hegel, the last of the German idealistic philosophers to cast his spell over Russia. More than any other single man, he changed the course of Russian intellectual history during the "remarkable decade" from 1838 to 1848. He offered the Russians a seemingly rational and all-encompassing philosophy of history and led the restless Westernizers-for the first time-to entertain serious thoughts of revolution.

The introduction of Hegelian thought into Russia followed a pattern that had become virtually institutionalized. The seed was planted in a new philosophic circle formed around a suitably handsome and brooding figure (Stankevich) with some intense younger members (Belinsky and Bakunin) and a new foreign center for pilgrimage and study (Berlin). The new prophet was hailed as "the Columbus of philosophy and humanity" and became identified with a new intellectual generation. Stankevich, Belinsky, Bakunin, and Herzen-unlike Chaadaev, Odoevsky, and Khomiakov-had no memories of the war against Napoleon and the mystical hopes of the Alexandrian era. They were nurtured on the frustrations of Nicholas' reign, and Hegelian philosophy became their weapon of revenge.

As with the preceding Schellingian generation, the young Hegelians were inspired by a series of new professors: Redkin in law with his constant reminder that "you are priests of truth"; Rul'e in zoology, tracing Hegel's

dialectic in the animal world; and above all, Granovsky in history. Like earlier circles, Stankevich's followers called one another "brother" and engaged in group readings and group confessions.