Introduction

...The unfortunate outcome of the Crimean War compelled the Government to make a few concessions to educated society and effect at least the more pressing reforms that had long since become indispensable. Soon the problem of freeing the peasants was placed on the order

of the day, a problem plainly affecting the inter- ests of all social-estates. Needless to say, Niko- lai Gavrilovich eagerly set about elaborating the problem. His excellent articles on the peasants’

cause were written in 1857 and 1858. The mutual relations of our social forces in the epoch of the abolition of serfdom are now fairly well known. We shall, therefore, mention them only in passing,

only insofar as it may be necessary to elucidate the role adopted in this matter by our advanced publi- cists, chief of whom then was N. G. Chernyshevsky. It is well known that these writers zealously defended the interests of the peasants. Our author wrote one article after another, advocating the emancipation of the peasants and giving them land, and maintaining that the Government would find no difficulty whatever in redeeming the lands allotted to the peasants. He supported his thesis both with general theoretical considerations and with the most detailed estimates. “Indeed, in what way can the redemption of land prove dif ficult? How can it be too much for the people to hear? That is improbable,” he wrote in the article “Is Land Redemption Difficult?” “It runs counter to the fundamental concepts of economics. Political economy teaches clearly that all the material capital which a certain generation takes over from previous generations is not too considerable in value compared with the mass of values produced by the labour of that generation. For example, all of the land belonging to the French people, together with all the buildings and their contents, together with all the ships and cargoes, all the livestock and money and other riches belonging to that country, is hardly worth a hundred thou- sand million francs, while the labour of the French people produces fifteen or more thousand million francs’ worth of values annually, i.e., in no more than seven years the French people produce a mass of values equal to that of the whole of France from the Channel to the Pyrenees. Consequently, if the French had to redeem all France, they could do so in the lifetime of one generation, using only one-fifth of their revenue for the purpose. And what is the point at issue in our country? Is it the whole of Russia that we must redeem with all her riches? No, only the land. And is it to be all the Russian land? No, the redemption would affect only those gubernias of European Russia alone where serfdom is deep-rooted,” etc. After showing that the lands to be redeemed would constitute no more than one-sixth of the area of European Russia, he puts forward as many as eight plans for carrying out redemption. According to him, if the Government were to accept any one of these plans, it could redeem the allotted lands not only without burdening the peasants, but also to the great advantage of the state treasury. Chernyshevsky’s plans were all based on the con- cept that it is “necessary to fix the most moderate prices possible in determining the amount of redemption payments.” We know now how much consideration the Government gave to the interests of the peasantry in the abolition of serfdom and how much it heeded Chernyshevsky’s advice regarding moderation in fixing redemption payments. Whereas our government, in freeing the peasants, never for a moment forgot the bene- fits to the state treasury, it thought very little about the interests of the peasants. In the re- demption operations fiscal and landlord interests were exclusively borne in mind.

... It was not on economic problems alone that Chernyshevsky had to wage a fierce polemic. Neither were his opponents only liberal econo-

mists. As the influence of the Sovremennik circle in Russian literature grew, the greater were the number of attacks launched from the most varied

quarters both on that circle in general and on our author in particular. The contributors to Sovremennik were regarded as dangerous people who were prepared to destroy all the notorious “foundations.” Some of “Belinsky’s friends,” who at first considered it possible to go along with Cherny-

shevsky and those holding his views, repudiated the Sovremennik as an organ of the “Nihilists,” and began to exclaim that Belinsky would never

have approved of its trend. Such was I. S. Turge- nev’s attitude. Even Herzen grumbled at the “clowns,” in his Kolokol. He warned them that:

“while exhausting all their ridicule over the litera- ture of exposures, our dear clowns forget that on this slippery path they may not merely ‘whistle’ themselves into becoming like Bulgarin and Grech, but even into being decorated with the Stanislav Order.” Herzen affirmed that there were excellent things in the “literature of exposures” that the “clowns” were ridiculing. “Do you imagine that all the tales of Shchedrin and others can just be hurled into the water together with Oblomov on their necks? You indulge yourselves too much, gentlemen!”.... The reference to Shchedrin was extremely unfortunate since Chernyshevsky him-

self was well able to appreciate his works. In gen- eral, everything shows that Herzen was misled by his liberal friends, such as Kavelin. The

“clowns”—or “whistlers,” as they were called in Russia—were not ridiculing the exposures, but the naive people who could not or would not go beyond innocent exposures, forgetting the moral of Krylov’s fable The Cat and the Cook....

Herzen himself was to see very soon how bad in a political sense were those liberal friends who

kept questioning his relations with Chernyshevsky. When he had to break with K. D. Kavelin, he perhaps told himself that the “jaundiced ones” were not entirely wrong.

Incidentally, the majority of the articles in

Svistok which evoked the especial dissatisfaction of the well-bred liberals did not belong to the

pen of N. G. Chernyshevsky. Only rarely did he contribute to it, as he was overwhelmed with other work. In the closing years of his literary activity he contributed regularly to every issue of Sovremennik; what is more, every issue usually contained several articles by him. As a general rule, his articles were distributed among the various sections of the journal as follows: first of all, be contributed an article on some general theoretical problem, then he wrote a political survey, reviewed several new books, and, lastly, by way of relaxation and diversion, as it were, he made polemical sorties against his opponents. The Sovremennik of 1861 was particularly rich in polemical articles written by him. It was at that time that he wrote his well-known “Polemical Gems,” “National Tactlessness” (attacking Slovo of Lvov), “Popular Muddleheadedness” (attacking Aksakov’s Den; we shall speak of this article later), and numerous other polemical notes in the section of Russian and foreign literature.

What is now especially interesting in “Polemi- cal Gems” is our author’s views on his own literary activity. We shall cite them here. Chernyshevsky was very well aware that he held a prominent place in Russian literature, His opponents dreaded him, and occasionally even paid him compliments. But his growing renown did not make him happy in the least. He had too low an opinion of Russian literature to consider the prominent place he occupied in it to be honourable. He was “com- pletely cold to his literary reputation.” The only thing he was interested in was whether he would be able to preserve the freshness of his thought and feeling till those better days when our litera- ture would become really useful to society. “I know that better times will come for literary activity, when it will be of real benefit to society, and when he who possesses talent will really earn a good name. And so I am wondering whether when the time comes I shall still be able to serve society properly. Fresh strength and fresh convictions are needed for this. But I see that I am beginning to join the company of ‘respected’ writers, that is to say, of those writers who have been wrung dry, who lag behind the movement of social require- ments. This rouses a feeling of bitterness. But what is there to be done? Age takes its toll. Youth does not come twice, I can’t help envying those who are younger and fresher than I....”

Meanwhile, feelings were rising, at least in a section of Russian “society.” The student youth were filled with unrest and secret revolu- tionary organisations were springing up which printed their own manifestoes and programmes and awaited an imminent peasant uprising. We already know that Chernyshevsky fully recognised the possibility of impending “troubled times”

in Russia and we shall yet see how strongly the rise of the social mood was reflected in his activity as a publicist. But was he in any way connected

with the secret societies? It is not yet possible to reply with certainty to this question, and who knows whether we shall ever have the facts to answer it. In the opinion of M. Lemke, who made an excellent study of the N. G. Chernyshevsky case, “it can be presumed (his italics) that he was the author of the proclamation ‘To the Manorial Peasants,’ which the court found him guilty of having written.” Mr. Lemke supports his conjecture by pointing to the style and content of the procla- mation. We find these arguments not without foundation. But we hasten to repeat with Mr. Lem- ke that “all these are more or less probable consider- ations, and no more.” We also consider fairly well founded Mr. Lemke’s opinion that the famous paper Velikoruss was, in part, the work of Cherny- shevsky. Mr. Lemke supports his hypothesis by quoting Mr. Stakhevich, who for several years lived with Chernyshevsky in Siberia: “I noticed that Chernyshevsky was obviously sympathetically inclined towards the paper which appeared at irregular intervals under the title of Velikoruss; I recall three issues coming out. As I listened to Nikolai Gavrilovich’s conversation, I sometimes noticed that both his thoughts and the way he expressed them strongly reminded me of the paper Velikoruss, and I decided in my own mind that he was either the author or, at least, co- author of the paper which advocated the need for constitutional reforms.” We are in full agreement

with Mr. Stakhevich: the style and content of Velikoruss are indeed very reminiscent of Cherny- shevsky’s journalistic articles. And if Cherny-

shevsky was in fact the author, then that, of course, explains the circumstance that Velikoruss was far wiser and more tactful than other such papers of the time.

Simultaneously with the rise of the extreme party in Russia, there was a growth of the rev- olutionary movement in Poland. Had Cherny- shevsky any formal relations with the Polish revolutionaries of whom there were not a few in St. Petersburg at that time? Again, there are no data on this point. Not wishing to indulge in conjectures, we shall limit ourselves, in clarifying Chernyshevsky’s general sympathies towards the Polish cause, to data obtainable from his writings; however, even such data are not numerous.

We know that the Slavophils very much approved of the struggle of the Galician Ruthen- ians against the Poles. Chernyshevsky was always sympathetically inclined towards the Little Rus-

sians. He regarded Belinsky’s negative attitude to the emerging Little Russian literature to be a great mistake. In the January issue of Sovremen- nik for 1864 he published a very sympathetic article on the occasion of the appearance of Osnova, the organ of the Little Russians. But his attitude towards the struggle of the Galician Ruthenians against the Poles could not be one of unconditional approval. First of all, he did not like the fact that the Ruthenians sought the support of the Viennese Government. Neither did he like the influential role of the clergy in the movement of the Galician Ruthenians. “Lay affairs,” he wrote, “should be the concern of laymen.” Finally, Cherny- shevsky did not like the exiusively national formulation of this question, which he regarded as primarily an economic one. In an article entitled “National Tactlessness” (Sovremennik, July 1861) attacking the Lvov Slovo, Cherny- shevsky sharply criticised the excessive nation- alism of that organ. “It is very possible that a careful examination of existing relations,” he wrote, “would show the Lvov Slovo that at the basis of the matter there is a question that is far removed from the racial question—the question of social-estates. It is very possible that it would see Ruthenians and Poles on each of the two sides— people differing in race, but of the same social position. We do not believe that the Polish peasant should be hostile to the alleviation of the obliga- tions and, in general, of the living conditions of the Ruthenian settlers. We do not believe that the sentiments of the Ruthenian landowners should differ very much in this matter from the sentiments of the Polish landowners. If we are not mistaken, the root of the Galician question lies not in rela- tions of race, but of social-estate.”

The mutual hostility of the peoples composing Austria ought to have appeared even more tactless to Chernyshevsky, in that the Viennese Govern- ment then, as previously, derived great advantages from it. “When one reflects carefully, one is not surprised at the many years of existence of the Austrian Empire,” he wrote in a political review in the same issue of Sovremennik that published the article “National Tactlessness”; “and why should it not maintain itself when there is such ‘excellent’ political tact on the part of the nationa- lities embraced within its borders.” To Cherny- shevsky the Austrian Germans, Czechs, Croats and, as we have seen, Ruthenians seemed equally “slow-witted”. He was afraid that the Slav “slow- wittedness” which was particularly evident in 1848-49 would again go very far. At the beginning of the sixties Hungary was waging a stubborn struggle against the Viennese reactionary central- ists. The discontent of the Hungarians was running so high that at one time it could have been expected that there would be a revolutionary outburst in their country. In his political reviews, our author repeatedly expressed the fear that, in the event of a revolutionary movement in Hungary, the Austrian Slavs would again become obedient tools of reaction. The tactics of many Slav races in Austria at that time could only strengthen such fears, since the Austrian Slavs even ventured to boast of the disgraceful role they had played in the 1848-49 events. Chernysheysky strongly condemned these tactics and showed that it would have been more to their advantage if, on the contrary, they had supported the enemies of the Viennese Government, enemies from whom they could have obtained substantial concessions. He said this concerning the attitude of the Croats to the Hungarians , and repeated this to the Ruthenians. “The social-estate party, hostile to the Ruthenians,” we read in his article “National Tactlessness,” “is now ready for concessions.... It would do no harm for the Lvov Slovo to give this some thought; perhaps the concessions which people who seem to it to be enemies are sincerely prepared to make, perhaps these concessions are so great that they would thoroughly satisfy the

Ruthenian settlers; in any event these concessions are without doubt far greater and far more impor- tant than the concessions the Ruthenian settlers can get from the Austrians....”

...Finally, the first part of the novel Prologue depicts the friendly attitude of Volgin to Sokolovsky (Sierakowski). Volgin likes Sokolovsky’s utter devotion to his convictions, the absence of conceited pettiness, his self-control, combined with the passionate zeal of the true agitator.

Volgin calls him a real man and thinks that our liberals could learn a great deal from him. All this is very interesting, but it too in no way

explains Chernyshevsky’s practical relations with the Polish affair.

At that time Chernyshevsky was about 34 years of age. He was in the prime of his mental powers, and who knows to what heights he might not have risen in his development! But he had not long to live in freedom. He was the recognised leader of the extreme party, a highly influential exponent of materialism and socialism. He was considered the “ringleader” of the revolutionary youth, and was blamed for all their outbursts and agitation. As always happens in such cases, rumour exagger- ated the affair and ascribed to Chernyshevsky intentions and actions which were foreign to him. In “Prologue to a Prologue,” Chernyshevsky

himself describes the liberal sympathetic gossip spread in St. Petersburg concerning Volgin’s (i.e., his own) alleged relations with the London circle of Russian exiles. The gossip was occa- sioned by the most insignificant incidents that had absolutely nothing to do with politics. And, as usual, things did not stop at mere gossip. The police-inspired press had long been engaged in literary denunciations of Chernyshevsky. In 1862, Sovremennik was suspended for some time. Then came non-literary denunciations as well. “The Director of the Third Department of His Imperial Majesty’s Own Chancellery,” said the indictment of Chernyshevsky, “has received an anonymous letter warning the Government against Cherny- shevsky, ‘that youth ringleader and wily socialist’; ‘he himself has said that he will never be convict- ed’; he is said to be a pernicious agitator, and people ask to be spared from such a man; ‘all of Chernyshevsky’s former friends, seeing that his tendencies were finding expression in deeds and not merely in words, liberal-minded people... have dissociated themselves from him. Unless you remove Chernyshevsky, writes the author of the letter , there will be trouble and bloodshed; they are a band of rabid demagogues, of reckless people.... Perhaps they will eventually be eliminat- ed, but just think how much innocent blood will be shed because of them.... There are committees of such socialists in Voronezh, Saratov, Tambov and elsewhere, and everywhere they inflame the youth.... Send Chernyshevsky away wherever you like, but be quick to deprive him of the opportunity to act.... Deliver us from Chernyshevsky for the sake of public peace”....

... What is the secret of the extraordinary success of What Is To Be Done? It is the same as is generally responsible for the success of literary works, the fact that this novel gave a living and universally understood answer to questions in which a considerable section of the reading public was keenly interested. In themselves, the thoughts expressed in it were not new; Chernyshevsky had taken them wholly from West-European literature. In France, George Sand had much earlier advocat- ed free and, most important, sincere and honest relations in the love of a man for a woman. As re- gards the moral demands she puts on love, Lucrezia Floriani differs in no way from Vera Pavlovna Lopukhova-Kirsanova. And as for the novel Jacques , it would be simple to copy out a fairly large number of passages from it to show that in the novel What Is To Be Done? the thoughts and reasonings of George Sand’s freedom-loving, selfless hero are at times reproduced almost in their entirety. And George Sand was not the only one to advocate freedom in relations of this kind. It is well known that they were also advocated by Robert Owen and Fourier, who had a decisive influence on Chernyshevsky’s outlook. And as early as the forties all these ideas met with warm sympathy in our country. In his articles Belinsky often called passionately for freedom and sincerity in relations of love. The reader will recall, of course, how bitterly the “impetuous Vissarion” reproached Pushkin’s Tatyana because, while loving Onegin, she did not follow the dictates of her heart; she belonged to “another,” her aged husband, whom she did not love but continued to live with. In their attitude to women, the best people of the “forties” adhered to the same principles as those of Lopukhov and Kirsanov. However, prior to the appearance of the novel What Is To Be Done?, these principles were shared only by a “select” handful; the mass of the reading public

did not understand them at all. Even Herzen hesitated to expound them fully and clearly in his novel Who Is To Blame? A. Druzhinin handles the question more resolutely in his story Polenka Saks. But this story is too colourless, and its characters, belonging to so-called high

society—officials and titled personages—did not

at all appeal to the non-gentry, who, after the

fall of Nicholas’ regime, formed the left wing of the reading public. With the appearance of

What Is To Be Done? everything changed, every- thing became clear, precise and definite. There was no more room left for doubt. Thinking people were faced with the alternative of being guided in love by the principles of Lopukhov and Kirsa- nov, or of bowing to the sanctity of marriage and resorting, should a new sentiment arise, to the old, tested method of secret amorous adventures, or else completely subduing all affection in their hearts in view of the fact that they belonged to a marriage partner, whom they no longer loved. And the choice had to be made quite consciously. Chernyshevsky dealt with the issue in such a way that what had been natural instinctiveness and sincerity in love relations became utterly impos- sible. Mind control extended to love, and the gener- al public adopted a conscious view of the relations between man and woman. And this was particu- larly important in our country in the sixties. The reforms which Russia had undergone turned upside down both our social and family relations. A ray of light reached into recesses that had been in complete darkness. Russian people were com- pelled to examine themselves, to take a sober view of their relation to their kin, to society and family. A new element came to play a big role in family relations, in love and friendship: viz., convictions, which formerly only the very smallest handful of “idealists” had possessed. Differences of conviction led to unexpected ruptures. A woman “given in marriage” to a certain man often discov- ered with honor that her lawful “lord” was an obscurantist,, a bribe-taker, a flatterer grovelling before his superiors. A man who had enjoyed the “possession” of his beautiful wife, and unexpectedly was affected by the current of new ideas, often realised in dismay that what his charming play- thing was interested in was not at all “new people” or “new views,” but new dresses and dances, and also the title and salary of her husband....

...In Vera Pavlovna’s dreams we see that side of Chernyshevsky’s socialist views to which, unfortunately, Russian socialists up to now have not paid sufficient attention. That which attracts us in these dreams is the fact that Chernyshevsky fully realised that the socialist system can only

be based on the broad application to production of the technical forces developed by the bourgeois period. In Vera Pavlovna’s dreams huge armies of labour are jointly engaged in production, pass- ing from Central Asia to Russia, from hot climate

countries to the cold countries. All this, of course, could have been conceived with the aid of Fourier as well, but it is evident even from the subsequent history of so-called Russian socialism that the Russian reading public was not aware of this. In their ideas of socialist society our revolution- aries frequently went so far as to conceive it in

the form of a federation of peasant communities, cultivating their fields with the same antiquated plough as that used to scrape the soil in the time

of Basil the Blind. But obviously such “socialism” cannot be recognised as socialism. The emancipa- tion of the proletariat can come about only through

the emancipation of man from the “power of the land” and nature in general. And this

emancipation has made absolutely indispensable those armies of labour and that extensive application of modern productive forces to produc- tion which Chernyshevsky spoke of in Vera Pav- lovna’s dreams and which we have completely forgotten in our desire to be “practical.”

Chernyshevsky was present at the birth of the

1 new type of “new people” in our country. He has drawn this type in the shape of Rakhmetov. Our author joyfully welcomed the emergence of this new type and could not deny himself the satisfac- tion of depicting at least a vague profile of him.

At the same time he foresaw with sorrow how many trials and sufferings there were in store for the Russian revolutionary whose life must be one of severe struggle and great self-sacrifice. And so, in Rakhmetov, Chernyshevsky presents us with the true ascetic. Rakhmetov positively tortures himself. He is completely “merciless towards him- self,” as his landlady says. He even decides to test whether he can bear torture by spending a whole night lying on a length of felt with nails sticking through it. Many people, including Pisa- rev, regarded this as mere eccentricity. We agree that some aspects of Rakhmetov’s character could have been drawn differently. But the character as a whole nevertheless remains completely true to life. Almost every one of our prominent

2 [socialists of the sixties and seventies] possessed 3 [no small] share of the Rakhmetov spirit.

We should like to say in closing our introduc- tion that Chernyshevsky’s significance in Russian

literature has yet to be appraised properly. How much he is misunderstood in our country even by many of those who think very well of him can be seen from V. G. Korolenko’s reminiscences of him. This gifted and intelligent author portrays him as a sort of “rationalistic economist” who, moreover, believes “in the power of Comte’s orga- nising reason.” If the words about “organising reason” mean anything at all, then they mean that Chernyshevsky regarded social phenomena from an idealistic standpoint, from which they were considered by Comte himself. But he who looks on social phenomena from an ideal- stic standpoint cannot be called an econo- mist for the simple reason that this name is ap- plied, even if not very properly, to those who, while not believing in the power of organising reason, do believe in the organising power of eco- nomics. An “economist” who believed in the power of organising reason would be like a Darwinist who accepted the cosmogony of Moses. But this is not the most important thing here. What is most important is the fact that Mr. Korolenko counter- poses the sociological views of our “subjectivists”

to the “economism” of Chernyshevsky. “We, too, did not stand still when we ceased to be ‘rationalis- tic economists.’ Instead of purely economic patterns, the literary trend, represented chiefly by N. K. Mi- khailovsky, has opened to us a veritable vista of laws and parallels of a biological character, while

the play of economic interests was assigned a sub- ordinate role.”

“Did not stand still,” indeed! The “vista of laws and parallels of a biological char- acter,” revealed by Mikhailovsky, was an enormous step backwards in com- parison with Chernyshevsky’s social views. N. K. Mikhailovsky was a disciple of P. L. Lavrov, whose views on the course of social development corresponded to those of Bruno Bauer, as we have shown in the book The Development of the Monist View of History. Hence whoever would like to understand the relation between N. G. Cherny- shevsky’s world outlook and that of our “subjectiv- ists” should first of all try to understand the rela- tion between Feuerbach’s philosophy, to which Chernyshevsky adhered, and Bruno Bauer’s views. And this is clear and simple: Feuerbach is far ahead of Bruno Bauer.

As an epigraph to our first article on Cherny- shevsky, written while the news of his death was still fresh in mind, and completely revised in the present edition, we have taken the following

words from Chernyshevsky’s letter to his wife: “My life and yours belong to history; hundreds of years will pass and our names will still be dear to people who will recall them with gratitude when those who lived with us are no more.” This letter was written on October 5, 1862, i.e., when the author was already incarcerated.