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p We already know that Mr. Ivanov-Razumnik regards Herzen as the father of Narodism. Herzen’s views in this respect are described by him as follows:

p “Herzen’s Narodism is. first and foremost, his negative attitude to the contemporary politico-economic development of Western Europe, and hence the demand that social reforms should take precedence over political ones, in order to avoid the philistine path of development of the West. Then, Narodism is belief in the possibility of a special path o£ development for Russia, based in turn on the conviction that the ’peasant sheepskin coat’ is anti-philistine and non-bourgeois and on recognition of the communal system as the corner-stone of Russian life; therefore Narodism is a negative attitude to the bourgeoisie, a strict distinction between the concepts of the ’nation’ and the ’people’ and a bitter struggle against economic liberalism. At the same lime Narodism is the inevitable placing of this or that ’utopia’ at the basis of sociological conceptions which are equally remote from both sociological idealism and sociological ultra-nominalism. These are the main threads of Herzen’s Narodism, which he works into a complex but harmonically woven fabric, characteristic of the whole of Russian Narodism in general" (I, 374).

_p That Herzen appealed to a “utopia” and that he could not have done otherwise is true, and we shall now examine the extent to which this fact affected the logic of his sociological reasoning. But first I should like to consider what Mr. Ivanov-Razumnik 515 calls the strict distinction between the concepts of the “nation” and the “people”.

p He has the following to say about this distinction:

p “Herzen did not commit the basic error of Slavophilism, he did not confuse the ’people’ with the ’nation’, but, on the contrary, was the first to attempt to distinguish between them; following Marx, but quite independently of him, Herzen shows that the progressive increase in the ’national’ wealth of England is leading the English people to more and more starvation “(Robert Owen”). Thus Herzen was already aware not only of the lack of identity, but often also of the mutual opposition of the interests of the nation and the people. Later Chernyshevsky and Mikhailovsky developed in detail and substantiated this main thesis of Narodism, which we lind even in Radishchev and the Decembrists^^155^^; in Herzen it was only a passing expression of the conviction that it was possible for Russia to have a special path of development" (I, 370).

p In the chapter on Chernyshevsky we read: "In West European socialism the concepts of the nation and the people were first distinguished by Engels, and after him by Marx; in Russian socialism Chernyshevsky (“Radishchev” perhaps?—G.P.) arrived at this idea quite independently" (II, 9).

For Mr. Ivanov-Razumnik the distinction between the concepts of the nation and the people means an awareness of the truth that a growth of national wealth is by no means equivalent to an increase in the well-being of the people. And this truth in West European socialism was understood for the first time, he assures us, by Engels. But only someone with no idea whatsoever about the history of West European socialism could believe him. As early as 1805 there appeared in England a book entitled The Effects of Civilisation on the People in European States the author of which, Charles Hall, set himself the aim of proving that the well-being of the people diminishes with the growth of national wealth. And from that time onwards this idea has been, one might say, a universally recognised truth among English socialists. With the appearance in 1814 of Patrick Colquhoun’s work on the wealth, power and subsidiary means of the British Empire, this truth acquired, incidentally, statistical confirmation also. In Owen’s reasoning it plays the part of one of the most important economic arguments, and from Owen it passes on to Herzen, who, according to our highly knowledgeable author, was the first to attempt to distinguish the people from the nation. I shall not expatiate on the fact that this idea is given a most important place by Sismondi in his Nouveaux principes d’economie politique, ou de la richesse dans ses rapports avec la population (the first edition came out in 1819); I shall not recall Fourier who distinguished the concept of the nation from that of the people so well

33*

516 that he realised most clearly how in “civilisation” poverty is engendered hy wealth and why industrial crises are "crises of plenty". I shall say one thing only: anyone who takes it upon himself to discuss Russian socialism and does not have the slightest idea about the history of socialism in Western Europe is bound to make the gravest errors. This is in the order of things.

p Let us now return to Herzen’s “utopia”. In what did it consist?

_p “Mikhailovsky once said that sociology should begin with a certain utopia. Her/en, too, began with a Utopia, believing that not all the rivers of history flow into the mire of philistinism—It was a belief in the virginal powers of the Russian people, unsullied by philistinism, a belief in the ’peasant sheepskin coat’, as

p Turgenev said, and after him imitators of Westernism also__

p Herzen did indeed believe in Russia’s bright future as strongly as he was convinced of the inevitable and imminent collapse of the West European world—The future of Russia lies in the fact that it has avoided being infected by the poison of philistinism, for ’philistinism is the last word of a civilisation based on the unconditional autocracy of property’, but in Russia it is not private, but communal property that is typical. Herzen believed in the inborn anti-philistinism of the Russian people and all the Slavonic peoples in general; he was sustained by the hope that there would never be a bourgeoisie in Russia or at least that it would be a quantite negligeable.  [516•*  Hence the two characteristic aspects of his Narodism: the negative one being the struggle against liberal doctrinairism, and the positive, preaching the emancipation of the peasants with the land that is in communal use; in the first case Herzen disagreed categorically with young Westernism, in the second he drew equally close to Slavophilism" (I, 350).

p Herzen believed in the anti-philistinism of the Russian people and all the Slavonic peoples in general. That is so; but there is no need whatsoever to talk about this now. because it is highly unlikely that anyone would now wish to defend the theory on which this belief was based. This theory, which amounts to the conviction that the historical destinies of peoples are determined by qualities of popular spirit, and that the spirit of each people possesses special qualities, is one of the varieties of idealism the invalidity of which has long since been noted and ridiculed even by people who, generally speaking, incline to the idealist explanation of history.  [516•**  But it will do no harm to take a closer look at Herzen’s view of the significance of the commune.

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p In his letter to Michelet “(The Russian People and Socialism”) he says: "The Russian peasant has no morality except that which proceeds naturally, instinctively from his communism; this morality is deeply popular; the little that he knows from Ihe Gospels supports it; the blatant injustice of the landowners makes him even more attached to his rights and to the communal system.

p ’The commune has saved the Russian people from Mongolian barbarity and from imperial civilisation, from landowners of the European dye and from German bureaucracy. The communal organisation, although it has been badly shaken, has withstood interference by authority; it has survived intact up to the development of socialism in Europe.

p “This circumstance is of infinite importance for Russia."  [517•* 

In another passage of the same letter Herzen remarks, after pointing out that the party of movement, of “progress” (the letter appeared for the first time in 1851) demands the emancipation of the peasants with the land: "From all this you can see how fortunate it is for Russia that the village commune did not collapse, that personal property did not break up communal property; how fortunate it is for the Russian people that it remained outside all political movements, outside European civilisation, which would have undermined the commune, without a doubt, and which has today itself arrived in socialism at selfnegation."  [517•**