622

p In his philosophy of history Dobrolyubov, like Feuerbach and" Chernyshevsky, was an idealist.  He thought that "opinion rules the world”, that social consciousness determines social being. But historical idealism was an inconsistency, a dissonance in the world outlook of Dobrolyubov, Chernyshevsky and Feuerbach. Basically this world outlook was materialist.  No less materialist were all our enlighteners’ “anthropological” discussions. Chernyshevsky and Dobrolyubov fully shared Robert Owen’s teaching on the formation of human character. They frequently said that people’s aspirations and views were determined by the features of their social environment. This is equivalent to the premise of historical materialism according to which social consciousness is determined by social being. And as long as Dobrolyubov remembered that consciousness was determined by being he thought as a materialist. Obduracy is the result of had social organisation. If you wish to eliminate it, you must eliminate the "artificial social combination" which creates it. It was this idea that turned the summons to fight against obduracy into a summons for radical social reform. In analysing the characters of individual obdurates, Dobrolyubov tries to show that the elements which make up these characters are not bad in themselves, and are sometimes even very good, but deformed by the influence of bad social organisation. Here his 623 preaching reminds one of Chernyshevsky’s words to the effect that when a person behaves badly, it is not so much his fault as his misfortune.  Here too this preaching acquires a profoundly humane character, which those gentlemen who accuse our progressive "people of the sixties" of being heartless and cruel forget too easily.

p But these obdurates are bound to oppose the creation of rational social relations, which is necessary to eradicate obduracy. Therefore their opposition will have to be overcome. Who will overcome it? Dobrolyubov replies: those who suffer from obduracy. Who are they? Those who have no power or money. Dobrolyubov is pleased to point out that Ostrovsky was well aware where the source of the obdurates’ strength and power lay: in a full wallet. The direct and most logical conclusion from this is that the fight against obduracy must be waged by the class exploited by capital. But Dobrolyubov had not yet adopted a class viewpoint. He loved the people and believed in it profoundly. He was convinced that the people would produce the most reliable fighters against obduracy. But in his articles he addressed himself—as he was compelled to in Russia’s social relations at that time—not to the people, but to the intelligentsia. He frequently portrayed the struggle of forces in our society as a struggle between arbitrariness, on the one hand, and education, on the other. Here our materialist again went over to the idealist viewpoint; here we again see in him the contradiction that one finds in Chernyshevsky, Feuerbach and the French materialists of the eighteenth century.

p Let us proceed further. Why does society suffer obdurates? asks Dobrolyubov. In his opinion, there are two reasons for this: firstly, the need for material security, secondly, a feeling of legitimacy. Let us examine these two causes.

p The heroine of The Storm, Katerina Kabanova, falls in love with a well-educated, as Ostrovsky himself says, young man, Boris Grigoryevich, the nephew of the merchant Dikoi. Boris is not an obdurate. He has himself suffered greatly from the obduracy of his uncle, but finds it necessary to submit. His grandmother has left a will according to which Dikoi must give him a certain sum of money at a later date if he, Horis, obeys his uncle. This is why he submits. When his relations with Katerina are discovered and Dikoi sends him off to Kyakhta for three years, he goes obediently, afraid of losing his legacy. When Katerina says to him: "Take me with you,” he refuses: "I should be happy to take you, but it is not for me to decide.” Who is to decide then? His uncle. Boris bows to his uncle’s decision for the sake of his own material security. Dobrolyubov cites a few more similar examples, thereby saying to his readers: you will not rebel against obduracy until you decide to renounce the good things that il can give you. But let’us take 624 Boris, for example. Why could he receive something good from Dikoi? Because of his grandmother’s will. What do we find then? That he is linked by bonds of kinship to the possessors of full wallets. He himself belongs to their class. In order to rebel against this class, he would naturally have to renounce the advantages connected with membership of it. What could prompt him to such self-sacrifice? Only the power of education. This is why Dobrolyubov appeals to it. We must agree that the educated person who belongs to the privileged class can become a protester only when he is not afraid of risking his material security. Thus, we can now understand fully the first of the two reasons which, according to Dobrolyubov, explains the stability of our obduracy.

p In addressing the intelligentsia, i.e., those who could have occupied a privileged position—if they did not yet occupy one,—our enlighteners of the sixties were acting perfectly logically in urging them to be indifferent to material security. Chernyshevsky’s Rakhmetov^^197^^ is a real ascetic, it is interesting to compare this preaching of our enlighteners with the eloquent attacks on the "cursed lack of needs" that we find in Lassalle’s speeches, which also belong to the sixties. Lassaile did not preach indifference to material security, but, on the contrary, advised his audience to strive hard for it. Me was addressing not the intelligentsia, however, but the proletariat. The German period of the sixties was not the same as ours.

p The second reason why our society suffers obduracy is a feeling of legality. This means that the unfortunate victims of obduracy regard the law that strengthens its rule as everlasting, sacred and immutable. But all laws are of conventional significance only. In saying this, Dobrolyubov was preaching the same thing as the French Enlighteners of the eighteenth century: he, like them, was revolutionising the minds of his contemporaries.

p In the articles "The Realm of Darkness" Dobrolyubov says that in depicting the unattractive aspects of this realm, Ostrovsky does not point to a way oat of this difficult position. But after the appearance of The Storm our critic expresses a different view in the famous article "A Ray of Light in the Realm of Darkness".

p “It is clear,” he writes, "that the life which provided material for the comic situations in which Ostrovsky’s obdurates often find themselves, the life that has also given them a good name, has not been completely devoured by their influence, but contains within it tho seeds of a more rational, legitimate, proper order of things."  [624•* 

p With the noble optimism characteristic of all our progressive enlighteners of the great period of the sixties, Dobrolyubov finds these seeds everywhere.

625

“Wherever you look, you can see the individual awakening, laying claim to his legitimate rights, and protesting against violence and arbitrariness, a protest which is for the most part still timid, indefinite and ready to hide, but which nevertheless makes its existence felt."  [625•*