The Czechoslovak Review/Volume 4/Masaryk's "The Spirit of Russia"

by Šárka B. Hrbková

Masaryk’s “The Spirit of Russia”

By PROF. ŠÁRKA B. HRBKOVA.

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
Masaryk Delivers Independence Day Message to National Assembly, October 28. stand forth as models of “the correct and genuine incorporation of nihilism”, influenced the Russian reading public and through it the masses. The so-called national Russian disease “Oblomovstchina” is spoken of in connection with Dobroljubov who writing of Gončarov’s “Oblomov”, describes Oblomovism as “the issue of the old Russian darkness, but the errors were those of one already struggling towards the light.” Oblomov was the representative of the liberal nobles, inactive but longing for activity, “superfluous persons”.

Černyševskii who was a consistent fighter for the liberation of Russian women from “the yoke of so-called patriarchalism” in order to make them into “thinking beings” makes his hero answer Věra’s reproach of him for his theory of national egoism thus “The hand that holds the lancet must not flinch, for mere sympathy will not do the patient any good. This theory is prosaic, but it reveals the true motive of life, and only in the truth of life is poesy found.” In this quotation which Masaryk approves, he reveals his own convictions. One involuntarily recalls how Masaryk courageously and unflinchingly took a stand against the authenticity of the Queenscourt Manuscripts and, so to speak, cut out the cancer of a lie which would have gnawed at the very vitals of Czech literature had the “Question of the Manuscripts” remained unchallenged.

Again and again in commenting on the lives and principles of the Russian theorists, the author reveals his own ideas unreservedly and we get his philosophy with a vividness that explains, why Masaryk is himself the key to an understanding of the Czechoslovaks, just as he indicates that Dostoevskii is the key to Russia.

His comment is noteworthy with respects to Herzen’s theory, that society, like the individual, can overleap one or several stages of development, and that Russia need not develop organically, need not, that is to say, traverse all the stages of European development. Russia can take over as a heritage all the desirable acquirements of European evolution, just as Russia has introduced railways, though she did not herself discover them. Of these theories Masaryk disposes briefly thus, “It must be admitted that the analogy is a lame one, and that it displays the mir in a light which makes that institution seem anything but suitable to the socialism of the future.”

Bělinskii, too, had declared that “Russia often found it necessary to do in five years what the West had taken fifty years to accomplish.”

To this Masaryk replies “The truth of the assertion is questionable; and in so far as it is true, it merely indicates a lack of steadfastness and diligence.” That the “grasping at the summits” or any other method will make it possible for Russia to “skip certain stages of historical development; to pass without transition from a low stage to a much higher one,” Masaryk denies. He says, “Against the original sin of passivity it is contimually necessary to guard by the encouragement of activity, steadfastness and diligence. The task for the critical Russian thinker is, starting from what actually exists, to promote the attainment of the desirable aims by a process of organic development.”

When Marx discarded ethics, Černyševskii did not abandon morality, desiring rather to give ethics a “serious scientific foundation.”

Masaryk’s own prodigious energy and unexampled diligence is indirectly communicated to his readers in his indictment of Černyševskii for not accomplishing more in a literary way while incarcerated in Siberia, where he had the time and the facilities for valuable work, being constantly furnished with books and publications by his friends in Russia and Europe.

One of the Americans in the Czechoslovak Legion which fought in France related to the writer that when he was transferred to Prague, he was delegated to stand as night sentry near the building in which resided President Masaryk of the new Republic. It was not unusual, he said, to see the President at work until two or three o’clock into the morning. The immensity and permanence of the work accomplished by this rightly chosen leader of the Czechoslovak people is a challenge not only to his brother Slavs, the Russians, but to all nations to encourage “activity, steadfastness, diligence.”

From the last page of his remarkably clarifying study of the philosophy peculiar to the Russians who are always agitating the questions “Whither? and What is to be done?” we make this quotation. “The study of the Europeanisation of Russia, expanding as it does into a study of reciprocal cultural influence, suggests numerous and extremely interesting problems. The study of Russia will give the sociologist a clearer insight into the problem of cultural mutuality and cultural unification, a problem that is of such profound importance to human evolution.”

When one considers that Masaryk’s deductions and foreshadowings from the treasure house of rich literary and historical material which he has assembled in the thousand odd pages of this work were made previous to the beginning of the World War, the book having been published originally in 1912, we marvel, though we should not, knowing his keen penetrative method, at the accuracy and completeness of his diagnosis of Russia’s condition. For the reader who wishes a liberal education not only in things Russian, but in the progressive thought of the world, there is no work more fit for unqualified endorsement than Masaryk’s “The Spirit of Russia.”

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The Spirit of Russia, studies in History, Literature and Philosophy, By Thomas Garrigue Masaryk, First President of the Czechoslovak Republic. Translated by Eden and Cedar Paul. Two Volumes 1919. The Macmillan Company, New York.