Dostoevsky on the Eastern question

February 1877
Saint Petersburg, Russia

One of my friends who recently came back from Moscow told me this. Amongst the Slavic refugee children brought from the Balkans there is a little girl, about 8 or 9 years of age, who keeps fainting and needs extra care. The reason she keeps fainting is this: last summer she watched Circassians flay her father alive. This memory is always with her and will probably stay with her for the rest of her life. It might perhaps fade and soften with age, albeit I am not sure that is even possible here.

O civilisation! O Europe, whose interests would be oh so terribly impaired if we were serious about preventing Turks from flaying fathers alive in front of their children. These supreme interests of the European civilisation, such as commerce, seafaring and manufacturing! What could be more important to Europe than this? No one would dare to even come close to questioning those interests, but 'to hell with the interests of the European civilisation!'. It was not me who said this first, that was the newspaper Moskovskiye Vedomosti; but I shall gladly join them. To hell with civilisational interests, even civilisation itself, if you need to have people flayed alive to preserve it. Yet this is a fact: you do presently need to have those people flayed alive!

III. On flaying alive in general and various aberrations of mind in particular

People? Oh, please. What people? It is just a tiny fraction of people somewhere far, far away, of the Turkish rayah, that nobody would ever hear anything about if it was not for the Russians. What matters is the rest of the nation is thriving, happy and well-to-do!

That one morning I heard about the Bulgarian girl who kept fainting, and later that day I was taking a stroll down Nevsky Prospekt^[1]. It was four past noon, mothers and nannies were walking around with their children, and that was where an unsettling thought suddenly crept into my mind.

‘Civilisation! Who would dare say anything against civilisation? No, civilisation has to mean something. At least these children enjoying their walks down Nevsky Prospekt will not have to watch their fathers being flayed alive, and their mothers will not have to see them thrown into the air and caught on bayonets, as it was in Bulgaria. At least that is what we have thanks to civilisation!’

‘It is true that this only applies to Europe—that is, just one small corner of the world (how scary to realise!). Yes, it is just our small corner. Yes, perhaps we only get to enjoy this at the cost of our brothers being flayed alive somewhere far away in their own small corner; and yet it is our reality. To think that previously—and not that long ego—this was not exactly well-established, even in Europe! In fact, it is the first time in this planet’s history. No, it is now secured and there is surely no way back to the way things were, even though this world is a great mystery. Our Lord alone knows what it has in store for us and what could happen next, even in the nearest future.

Just as I was about to joyously exclaim to myself: ‘Glory to civilisation!’, I suddenly felt uneasy and doubtful. But have we really achieved that at all, even here, on Nevsky Prospekt? Could it be that it is just a mirage even for us here, and everyone simply chooses to look the other way?

I ended up concluding it was, in fact, a mirage—or, to put it a bit more softly, almost a mirage. If no one is flaying fathers alive in front of their children here on Nevsky Prospekt, that is only by chance; due to circumstances beyond the public’s control. That must also be because there are policemen standing right there.

Make no mistake, I am not presenting some sort of witty metaphor. I am not hinting at the suffering of the working class in our times, or some hypothetical parent who might be telling their 7-year-old child that stealing just a bit is detestable but stealing a fortune is praiseworthy. No, I am speaking quite literally. I am speaking about people being flayed alive, the kind of flaying alive that took place in Bulgaria this past summer and that those triumphant Turks seem to enjoy so much.

And speaking about this very flaying, I am saying that it is only by chance we are not seeing it happen on Nevsky Prospekt. Mainly because it is still illegal here, but if it was not, who knows what we would be doing despite all our civilisation.

Should someone competent prove that flaying a person or two alive would do a lot for the common good, that it might be abhorrent but the ends justify the means—should someone talk about this, competently and under competent enough circumstances, trust me, we would have the eager executors reveal themselves at once. Let this be my funniest paradox! We have this civilisation, civilisation has laws, and we might even have some faith in them. Yet should a new system of thought become vogue, many people would change accordingly. Not everyone, of course, but there would be left a fraction so small that even you and I, dear reader, would be surprised. It is not even clear where we would wound up between the flayers and the flayed. Everyone will, of course, say that all of this is nonsense; that nothing of this sort could ever happen, for at least that has surely been secured by civilisation.

Do you still think this is funny? But did not this so readily establish in France in 1793 (just so that we do not have to look anywhere closer)? And that is after Rousseau and Voltaire! You might say this was not the same and was also long ago, but notice how I am only resorting to history to avoid discussing current events.

The worst kind of aberration of mind and heart is always possible for a man. For us and in our times it might even be inevitable, given the way things are. Just look at how many agree on what is good and what is evil—not even in terms of various abstract truths, but with the smallest everyday questions. And just how fast can everything change? Say, what are the Jacks of Hearts^[2] in Moscow? I think that it is merely the part of the Russian nobility that never managed to bring themselves to accept the emancipation reform^[3]. They might not be landowners themselves, but their parents were. It is not even just that reform that caused this, they were simply unable to tolerate any of the 'novel ideas'. 'If everything we were ever taught turned out to be mere prejudice, why would we stick to any of it? If all of it means nothing, then everything is permitted, now that is a real idea!'. You might notice how that approach is quite common; 9 out of 10 followers of novel ideas will heartily agree with it. In other words, 9 out of 10 progressives in this country cannot approach novel ideas in any other way.

For example, we instantly turned Darwin into a pickpocket^[4]; that is what a Jack of Hearts is as well. Of course, over the centuries mankind has devised a variety of humanistic rules and laws, plenty of which are considered unshakeable by some. Yet all I want to say is that despite those rules, ideas and civilisations there is just a tiny fraction of mankind that can be saved by them; even though that is usually the fraction that wins in the end. At the present moment, however, most people have no conception of duty or honour; should a new fad idea arise, they will readily and gleefully go run around naked. There are laws, yet the people are not prepared for them at all. They will say there is no need to prepare; all we need is to find the right laws and rules! Is that true, and will those laws—no matter what they are—hold for long if everyone wants to run around naked?

I believe one thing to be true: it is possible to understand a new law overnight, yet you cannot become a person overnight, for that takes discipline and hard work. That is precisely what some of our modern thinkers protest against: too much despotism, we need more freedom! Yet this freedom leads most to being subservient lackeys to someone else's thought; for a man loves everything that is brought to him on a silver platter. What’s more, those thinkers are now trying to dictate new laws, believing that everyone would be happy (and need no discipline) if only we could enact those specific rules. Even if that was possible, uncultivated people would not benefit from any kind of rules, whether those are basic common sense or not. Our citizen could benefit a lot from tireless discipline and incessant attempts to better himself. That is what one should start with.

Is that so? But we do not know good from evil. We lost all common sense when it comes to this. We abandoned all previous authorities and enacted new ones; yet those who are a bit smarter refuse to put their trust in those new authorities, and those who are brave enough end up a Jack of Heart. Indeed, give them some time and they will start flaying people alive, all while explaining how that is a sacred sacrifice for the common good. How would you even begin to work on yourself if you do not know good from evil?

<...>

Let us return to the issue at hand. Indeed, we are not flaying people alive. In fact, we do not even like doing such things; those who do usually stay quiet until the right circumstances arise. Yet if we are not doing that ourselves, we should not be tolerating it from others. Forget not tolerating, we simply should not let them! Yet what are we actually doing? The most outraged of us are nowhere near outraged enough. If we claim to be so compassionate, we ought to act decisively, doing everything we can instead of just trying to throw some money at the problem. You might say we cannot give away everything we have, and I might agree, though I do not quite know why. Indeed, why should we not give away everything? That is the point: we cannot even understand our own nature, yet talk so haughtily and arrogantly about 'civilisational interests'!

They are now posing the question openly and directly. 'Civilisational interests' comprise manufacturing, wealth and stability that capital so desperately needs. Production must be large, incessant and progressive—at reduced costs and with an ever-expanding working class. As long as we are paying the working class, we are also supplying it with goods at lower prices. The more stability in Europe, the lower these prices will be. Therefore that is all Europe needs: stability. The clamour of war would scare the manufacturers away. Capital is cowardly; it fears war and would readily retreat into hiding.

If we were to limit the Turks' right to flay the rayah alive, that would take a war. Should we start a war (which is where Russia steps in), it could quickly engulf the entire world. Once that happens, we can wave goodbye to production, and the working class will flood the streets; and the working class is dangerous in the streets. They are now openly admitting in their speeches that the working class is dangerous and susceptible to socialist ideas. No, it would surely be much better to have someone flayed alive far away somewhere. Turkish rights must be protected at all costs. We need the Eastern question resolved, so we will let them flay people alive if that is what it takes. What is it about those people anyway? When the stability and peace of all Europe are at stake, should we be worrying about two or three people somewhere? Or twenty, or thirty thousand? We can just close our ears if we want, and then we will not even hear them scream.

Here is Europe's opinion—or decision, perhaps. Here are the civilisational interests; again, to hell with them! Even more so that we are about to see horrific aberrations of mind (mostly Russian minds). They are now asking directly: would it be better for a few dozen million workers to take to the streets or a few million members of the rayah to suffer Turkish atrocities? They are dangling the numbers in front of us and trying to scare us with them. We also have our sage politicians eagerly sharing their wisdom with us. You see, there is this rule, this teaching, this well-known axiom, that the morality of one person, a citizen, is one thing, and the morality of the state is another! So therefore, what would be despicable if done by a citizen could be the highest wisdom when done by a state. This teaching is very old and common, but to hell with it!

<...>

No, we must ensure political organisms adhere to the same truth that every Christian follows, the truth of Christ. Someone must preserve this truth, or else we will drown in cynicism. Without it, how can we uphold individual morality? And if we lose that, how will the entire nation survive? There must be an authority, a guiding light, a sun to shine on all. The sun rises in the East, and so a new day begins for us all. Once it finally truly shines, we will understand what true and proper 'civilisational interests' are; otherwise all we are ever getting is après nous le déluge. Could it be possible that this glorious 'civilisation' would lead Europeans to this motto and end there? Yet that is where we are headed.

Footnotes

1. The main street in Saint Petersburg; the commercial and cultural centre of the city.
2. The Jacks of Hearts Club was an organised crime group active in the Russian Empire in 1871-1875. Most members came from the highest echelons of Russian nobility.
3. The 1861 Russian reform that abolished serfdom in the Empire.
4. When Dostoevsky was writing this, Darwin's new theory of evolution was very in vogue amongst Russian youth who readily accepted it as an axiom, even whilst it was still treated as a hypothesis in Europe. Cf. Brothers Karamazov: 'And I will not go through all the axioms laid down by Russian boys on that subject, all derived from European hypotheses; for what's a hypothesis there, is an axiom with the Russian boy'. In a different journal article Dostoevsky says: 'We never know where to draw the line. In the West, Darwin's theory is just a brilliant hypothesis, whilst we've long been treating it as an axiom. In the West the idea that a crime is often a disease has a profound meaning, for there's a lot of nuance to it. We however use it for everything, and thus everyone readily calls any petty crime—even if committed by a Jack of Hearts—a disease. Some will go as far as try to present that as liberalism!'.