Psycho Killer, The Russian Edition

[Sancho]

That was a good essay, bounty. Thanks. It explained a lot. And as a bonus, there were no spoilers. The essayist seemed to think that Dostoevsky’s faith got him through his time as a political prisoner, or at least he didn’t loose his faith while there:

His exile had been a sort of brutal ‘retreat’ but from it he emerged with his faith in Christ strengthened and without any feeling of bitterness. His description of convict life in The House of the Dead is remarkably mild and forgiving.

I don’t know how much of that is attributable to his faith and how much of it is attributable to his nature.

His crime was membership in the Petrashevsky Circle, a literary group that discussed philosophy, social reform, and occasionally read dangerous books. His sentence was death by firing squad. He and his compadres were hauled out to the square, hooded, and tied to a post. The rifles were raised, but before the order to fire was given, a message from the Tzar was delivered commuting their executions to prison time. The mock execution was all planned out in advance, but the prisoners didn’t know that. They all thought they were going to die. That’s gotta leave a mark. I wish I could remember where I saw it, but in some of web-surfing on this subject I found the comment that at least one of the prisoners went insane and another went on to write Crime and Punishment.

[bounty]

I have heard that story about him before.

i think the question where and how the overlapping circles of genetics, socialization, and environment occur is an interesting one.

I mentioned earlier, and its worth repeating---the subversive potential of literature is also an interesting thing. I have to recommend reading Lolita in Tehran again.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/...lita_in_Tehran

[hellsapoppin]

One thing that we often overlook was the so called woman question that existed in that milieu:


The Woman Question, as it developed in the 1860s, also had a performative aspect. Male radicals
played the parts of knights rescuing women, while women often dressed and acted as nihilists, who violated
the norms of high society. They cut their hair short, wore black dresses, smoked cigarettes, used coarse
language, addressed everyone as equals (using “ty,” the familiar form), lived in communal apartments.
Scholars have often interpreted this latter behavior as part of the rise of the people of mixed rank
[raznochintsy] in Russia in this period [6:215-22, 29:17-20]. While this is an important part of the story, it
also has very much to do with a wholesale rejection of “civility,” “high society,” and “femininity”
[zhenstvennost’], which was perceived as being linked to the alienation of the superfluous man. Women
wanted to have their own autonomy, their own “personality” [37, 38]



https://history.mit.edu/wp-content/u...stion-2008.pdf



Such issues often appear in these books but have generally been given scant attention by modern readers.

[Sancho]

I wonder what Russia would look like today if the Decembrists had been successful in 1825. I wonder what the US of A would look like if George McClelland would’ve defeated Abraham Lincoln in the 1864 presidential election.

I enjoyed that paper, hellsapoppin, and I can’t help but to compare their history ours:

Emancipation of the serfs (Russia) 1861
Emancipation Proclamation (USA) 1862
National women’s suffrage (Russia) 1917
National women’s suffrage (USA) 1920

Also as I was reading up on Dostoevsky’s life and times, I noted that the Decembrist Women helped the members of the Petrashevsky Circle with clothing and supplies as they arrived in Siberia.

This from the paper you linked:

The Decembrist wives represented an important link in the chain of ideas leading up to the celebrated Woman Question of the 1860s precisely because they demonstrated the importance of nineteenth century men’s ideals for women. The core notion associated with the Decembrist wives was one of self-sacrifice, an ideal aspired to by both men and women in the generation of repentant noblemen (the 1830s and ‘40s). Egotism in the Woman Question, i.e., trying to emancipate women for their own sake, was considered unacceptable, but women taking actions that would benefit the larger collective were lauded, especially when they were perceived as martyrs.

So to the casual observer it probably seems like a crazy-harsh sentence the members of the Petrashevsky Circle received, but of course it was a direct result of the Decembrist revolt as Nicolas I took over as emperor. Stuff like that tends to make your average Tsar a tad jumpy, paranoid even. And again, it makes me wonder how history would have changed if the Decembrists had been successful.

[hellsapoppin]

Sancho,

The core notion associated with the Decembrist wives was one of self-sacrifice, an ideal aspired to by both men and women in the generation of repentant noblemen (the 1830s and ‘40s)

~self-sacrifice~







~repentent noblemen~







Mother and Resurrection embodied both themes even though they were written decades after the period mentioned in the quote above. Indeed, it does make you wonder what Russia's fate would have been if the Decembrists had succeeded. It is highly likely that the Bolshevik cataclysm would not have taken place and millions of lives could have been spared.

[Sancho]

I'm slowly starting to get sense for it. Russia has always had one foot in the east and one in the west and has leaned on one leg or the other over the course of her history. After the Decembrist Revolt, during the reign of Nicholas I, the literati fell broadly into two camps — Slavophiles and Westernizers.

From Encyclopedia Brittanica:

The difference between Westernizers and Slavophiles was essentially that between radicals and conservatives, a familiar theme in the history of most European nations. It was the difference between those who wished to pull the whole political structure down and replace it with a new building, according to their own admirable blueprints, and those who preferred to knock down some parts and repair and refurnish others, bit by bit. Another basic difference was that the Slavophiles were Orthodox Christians and the Westernizers either atheists or, like the historian T.N. Granovsky, Deists with their own personal faith.

It seems to me Dostoevsky had a foot in each camp. He was jailed and exiled for reading banned literature (Belinsky) and yet he was a man of the Russian Orthodox Christian faith. Interestingly, according to the World Wide Web, his writing explores ideas on both sides of that divide.

Also interesting is what the movers and shakers (Kings, Popes, Tsars, Bishops, Generals, Dukes, and such) were doing, but what I want to know is — what was life like for average, 19th century, Russian Joe. What was the peasantry doing? What was their life like? That was one of the great pleasures of reading Don Quixote. Cervantes was really good at depicting day-to-day life on the Iberian Peninsula in the 16th century. A chubby little guy who rides a donkey was liable to get tossed in blanket by young rapscallions at the local inn. At any rate, despite their differences, it looks like the Slavophiles and the Westernizers were in agreement that serfdom needed to end.

I don't know, but it could be that Dostoevsky was good at writing about the man on the street. We'll see. He sort of straddled the divide here too. Where most of the young poets and writers of his time were nobles; he was not.

I'm looking forward to getting started.

[hellsapoppin]

Sancho,

Slavophiles and Westernizers

Years ago I read a long book written by Tomas Masaryk (Czechoslovakia, Russian scholar, polymath, later became Democratic President and said to be the only man who could have averted World War II but died before he could do so) on this subject with particular emphasis on Dostoyevsky*. Masaryk believed that the church was so entrenched in the Russian character and exerted such a great influence that it stifled intellectual inquiry. This distinguished Russians from most Westerners. It led to unequivocal acceptance of doctrine, rigid conformity, and ultimately to Russia's isolation from the West.

It is a well established historical fact that the Orthodox church strongly supported the Tsar and his repressive ways: The Church reinforced his authority: Official Church doctrine stated that the Tsar was appointed by God. Any challenge to the Tsar - the 'Little Father' - was said to be an insult to God. The Church was very influential among the largely peasant population.

source = https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guide...y9q/revision/3

Then came the changes -- Russian scholars saw how much the West (in particular, Germany) had advanced so much because of science and intellectual inquiry, that the church descended in social regard and that Westernizers now had the means to advance Russia through Marxist reform which sought to end financial disparities, education especially in the sciences, the importing of scholars to teach at their academies, and by increasing literacy. Church corruption much of which seemed like headlines we see today also contributed to the decline of the religious institutions.


Bottom line is that the Westernizers won out.






*IIRC the name was rendered Dostoyevskii in those days.

[Sancho]

Yeah, from what I’m reading, the ROC was essentially a department of the state, which of course places way too much power on the one side with no counterbalance. But eventually something’s gotta give. Always does. Somebody’s going to push back. It’s happened in a lot of countries (and colonies) — slave revolts, wars for independence, revolutions, abolitionist movements, even hippies burning their draft cards. As you said, the Westernizers won in Russia. Although I’m thinking they apparently took the full-credit course on Karl Marx, but they must’ve audited the class on Adam Smith.

Anyway I’m thinking of reading Notes From the Underground before I start Crime and Punishment. Thoughts? Also does anyone know a good book on the Japanese Shogunate? Has anyone read James Clavelle’s Shōgun?

[Sancho]

Whoops. Freudian slip there. It's Notes From Underground not The Underground. Duh.

[Danik 2016]

I think "Notes From the Underground" is a good preparation for "Crime and Punishment". It shows Dostoevsky at his grumpiest and one has a view of the main character from his inside.

[bounty]

I only have Clavell's book (and haven't read it yet) so im out of my depth there.

not to take away from what danik just said, but im only ~40 pages away from finishing house of sand and fog. ive found myself recently skimming lots as opposed to reading carefully and ive gotten through it much faster than what I would have expected.

if you wanna start crime and punishment say sunday, that works for me.

poppin, did you find a suitable copy for yourself?

[Sancho]

Ya know, Notes from Underground is a pretty quick read. It's broken into 2 basic sections, and I read the first section last night.

I am a sick man…I am a wicked man. An unattractive man. I think my liver hurts. However, I don’t know a fig about my sickness, and am not sure what it is that hurts me.

I was prepared for, as Danik mentioned, "Dostoevsky at his grumpiest," but I wasn't prepared for Dostoevsky at his funniest. Underground man is totally relatable to our current times...and wryly hilarious. On a superficial level he reminds me of the protagonist in Diary of an Oxygen Thief, by Anonymous.

[bounty]

well i'll shoot for being done with my book by sunday and will be ready for crime and punishment anytime afterwards. I might even go ahead and start it to build a little buffer...

[Danik 2016]

Lol! You are absolutely right, Sancho, he is funny, though I suspect it's not intentional.

[hellsapoppin]

Yeah, from what I’m reading, the ROC was essentially a department of the state, which of course places way too much power on the one side with no counterbalance. But eventually something’s gotta give. Always does. Somebody’s going to push back. It’s happened in a lot of countries (and colonies) — slave revolts, wars for independence, revolutions, abolitionist movements, even hippies burning their draft cards. As you said, the Westernizers won in Russia. Although I’m thinking they apparently took the full-credit course on Karl Marx, but they must’ve audited the class on Adam Smith.

Anyway I’m thinking of reading Notes From the Underground before I start Crime and Punishment. Thoughts? Also does anyone know a good book on the Japanese Shogunate? Has anyone read James Clavelle’s Shōgun?

I've read both Notes From Underground and Clavell's Shogun. Both are truly excellent reads. I believe I can re-read the former but the latter is far too long for my puny and ever weakening eyes. However, I might be able to exchange a few ideas on it as well as for Notes.