=Ivan Turgenev and Fyodor Dostoyevsky: Nihilism and Its Rejection=
In his helpful introduction to the Modern Library edition of _Fathers
and Sons_, Herbert Muller writes that Ivan Turgenev’s _A Sportsman’s
Sketches_, which appeared in 1852, had created an effect similar to
_Uncle Tom’s Cabin_ in America. _Fathers and Sons_ (1862), treating
revolutionaries like most of Turgenev’s books, had an even more lasting
effect. Although both the uproar and the Nihilist movement died
down, Muller declares that the novel “helped to form the mentality
of the later revolutionaries who established the Soviet Union.” The
story deals with the return from college of Arkady Kirsanov and his
friend Yevgeny Bazarov. Nihilist Bazarov dominates his disciple
Arkady. Conflict quickly erupts. Arkady’s father Nikolai is hurt by
the distance between them, and his uncle Pavel seizes upon a pretext
for a duel in which Bazarov wounds him. Bazarov’s father Vassily,
pathetically eager to be close to his son, finds the gulf between
them even greater than that separating Arkady and Nikolai. The two
generations--one giving allegiance to religion and the old regime,
the other to science and revolutionary Nihilism--have lost almost all
rapport with each other. Turgenev treats the perennial aspect of this
theme, yet he particularizes it to mid-nineteenth century Russia.
Eventually the gap between the Kirsanovs is narrowed as Arkady marries
and returns to administer the estate with his father. But before
Bazarov leaves he lashes out at Arkady:
You’re not made for our bitter, rough, lonely existence.... Our
dust would get into your eyes ... you’re admiring yourselves
unconsciously, you like to abuse yourselves; but we’re sick of
that--we want something else! we want to smash people!
It may be, as Muller says, that Turgenev’s mind was with the sons and
his heart with the fathers, that he tried to be fair. Here is a case
in which, regardless of intent, a novelist helped to shape a movement
which disrupted a world.
Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky reacted violently to Turgenev’s work. The
former challenged him to a duel and the latter attacked and caricatured
him mercilessly as Karamazinov in _The Possessed_ (1872), a violent
attack upon Nihilism. In his introduction to the Modern Library
edition, Avrahm Yarmolinsky declares that
Dostoyevsky’s avowed intention in writing it was to drive home
certain convictions of his, regardless of whether or not he met
the requirements of the art of fiction. He wanted to deal a body
blow to the rebels who threatened what he considered to be the
foundations of Russian life. Originally he conceived his novel as a
political lampoon, a pamphlet against the revolution.
In the massive book which he produced, Dostoyevsky fulfilled his
purpose by showing the effect upon a provincial capital of a group of
revolutionaries guided by a demoniac leader. Conspiracy, mob violence,
arson, and murder temporarily disrupt government. Pyotr Verhovensky
returns from revolutionary activity abroad to set up groups throughout
Russia. He seeks to knit together this particular group by making all
of them participate in the murder of a dissident member. Before he has
fled and his group has been caught, three more people have been killed.
Nikolay Stavrogin, the book’s perverted central figure, is meant to be
the messiah of Pyotr’s movement. The ruin of the whole structure is
complete when, on the last page, Nikolay dangles from his own silken
noose. Recurring in the book and linked to its title is the image of
the biblical Gadarene swine. Pyotr’s father, estranged from his abusive
son, is dying partly because of a chain of events set in motion by him.
He asks that this passage be read to him and then exclaims:
Those devils that come out of the sick man and enter into the
swine. They are all the sores, all the foul contagions, all the
impurities, all the devils great and small that have multiplied in
that great invalid, our beloved Russia, in the course of ages and
ages.
The swine had plunged into the sea and destroyed themselves.
Dostoyevsky wanted to insure that his countrymen would not, like
lemmings, follow each other to destruction.
=André Malraux: Pro-Communism=
An index of changing times is the contrast between _The Possessed_ and
André Malraux’s _Man’s Fate_. This novel represented the opposite pole
of political thought. Published in 1934, Malraux’s book sympathetically
followed the abortive Communist attempt to capture Shanghai in 1927.
Under the leadership of half-French Kyo Gisors and others like him,
the Chinese Communists wage a losing battle against the Kuomintang
party of Chiang Kai-shek. This time the gallery of revolutionary
types--theorists, assassins, hard-core Party workers--is presented in
a different light. They are heroes. The professional revolutionists
and disinherited peasants are following a vision. Even when they
receive the coup de grâce or await death in the boiler of a locomotive,
eventual victory is seen transcending temporary defeat. Having given
his cyanide to wounded comrades, the Russian Katov is still able to
reflect as he awaits his horrible end that “he had fought for what in
his time was charged with the deepest meaning and the greatest hope; he
was dying among those with whom he had wanted to live; he was dying,
like each of these men, because he had given a meaning to his life.”
These words are something like Robert Jordan’s valedictory to life. But
Jordan fought to preserve Spanish democracy and Katov died to establish
Chinese Communism. The novel serves all causes.
=Ignazio Silone: Disillusionment on the Left=
The first of a remarkable group of modern political novels appeared in
the same year as _Man’s Fate_. It was Ignazio Silone’s _Fontamara_.
“The poorest and most backward village of Marsica,” Fontamara is
the scene of progressive encroachments of Fascism upon the life of
its people. Exploited by The Promoter--a builder, banker, and local
tycoon--the uneducated peasants successively lose most of their water
supply, the profits from their hard-raised crops, and their right to
talk about politics. When the protests of some of its people make
it appear that Fontamara is resisting the Mussolini regime, Black
Shirt thugs raid the village, abusing its people and wrecking houses.
Goaded by the need for work, Berardo Viola and the son of the nameless
narrator go to Rome to seek it. Fleeced of their money, they finally
obtain the necessary certificates of moral character. But The Promoter
has written upon them that the men are politically unreliable. Thrown
into jail upon suspicion of distributing copies of _The Unknown Hand_,
they meet the editor of this resistance leaflet. To save him, Berardo
assumes responsibility for the paper and is beaten to death by the
police. The editor succeeds in delivering a small press to Fontamara,
where the villagers begin their secret paper, which they call _What
Shall We Do?_ This phrase is not only the title; it is printed at the
end of each story of Fascist atrocity. At the book’s end, the nameless
narrator and his family are in hiding with Silone. The village has been
wiped out by the Fascists. The book’s last line--not in quotes and
therefore Silone’s question as well as the narrator’s--is, of course,
What Shall We Do?
Three years later, in 1937, the next of Silone’s fine political
novels was published. _Bread and Wine_ marks the beginning of the
disillusionment of Silone’s heroes with Communism which culminates in
_A Handful of Blackberries_ (1953). Pietro Spina, the central figure of
_Bread and Wine_, returns to Italy although hunted there as a Communist
agitator. Ill and perplexed, he goes into hiding in the poor mountain
village of Pietrasecca disguised as a priest, Don Paolo Spada. His
disguise evolves into another self, reviving and intensifying the inner
conflict he has always felt through a dual attraction to Christianity
and Marxism. Before he returns to political action he achieves a sort
of synthesis of what he thinks are the best elements of both beliefs,
necessarily rejecting Russian Communism. Don Paolo tries to give his
old teacher Don Benedetto the essence of his belief:
If a poor man, alone in his village, gets up at night and takes a
piece of chalk or charcoal and writes on the village walls: “Down
with the war! Long live the brotherhood of all peoples! Long live
liberty!” behind that poor man there is the Lord.
In _A Handful of Blackberries_ Rocco de Donatis returns to the village
of San Luca at the end of World War II. Formerly a fanatical Communist,
he breaks with the Party. The novel describes the Party’s attempt to
ruin his life and his fiancée’s. Figuring in the story is an ancient
trumpet traditionally used to call the peasants to action “when we just
can’t stand things any longer.” Rocco’s survival and the inability of
the Communists to seize the symbolic trumpet to pervert it to their own
uses signalize a sort of victory. In their total effect these novels
are an indictment of both Fascism and Communism. Simply written yet
powerful, they display a deep sympathy for the poor and oppressed.
=Arthur Koestler: The Bolshevik on Trial=
Like Orwell and Huxley, Arthur Koestler wrote a novel which, without
one plea or exhortation, is a political instrument through the strong
emotional and intellectual response which it can create. _Darkness at
Noon_ (1941) tells the story of Nicolas Rubashov, an old Bolshevik
once second only to “No. 1” in what is unquestionably Russia. But now
this legendary hero of the Revolution lies in a small isolation cell
awaiting the ordeal which is to lead to confession and abnegation at
a public treason trial. Through the use of flashbacks, this stark
and powerful novel traces Rubashov’s career. All the usual elements
are there--the devotion to the Party, the cold betrayals, the blind
obedience. Eventually the repressed questions had risen to the surface.
In attempting to work them out Rubashov had arrived at disillusionment
and “political divergencies.” Eventually he concludes that the mistake
was that “we are sailing without ethical ballast.” The trial over, he
is led down a dark corridor deep within the prison. He reflects that
Moses was allowed to see the Promised Land. “He, Nicolas Salmanovitch
Rubashov, had not been taken to the top of a mountain, and wherever
his eye looked, he saw nothing but desert and the darkness of night.”
An instant later the bullet crashes into the back of his head. One is
appalled not only at his career and those of the thousands of Rubashovs
who have helped to create the Soviet state, but at the whole process
which creates a Rubashov--and a No. 1.