XII

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Philosophy of History

DURING THE FIRST two decades of his adult life, Pobedonostsev was a devoted, competent, and productive historian of Russian law and institutions. His scholarship and his teaching were so impressive that he could surely have achieved a satisfying and distinguished career as a university professor, if he had chosen to do so. His interest in learning and in research remained high throughout his life, not only because he was by nature an avid reader, but also because he was convinced that no one could understand the present who did not possess a profound knowledge of the past.

On the other hand, he thought that systematic philosophy and general, abstract ideas were among the curses of the nineteenth century. He read Comte, Marx, Carlyle, Emerson, Spenser, Darwin, and Fourier, among other nineteenth century philosophers, and he had a proper appreciation of their intellectual achievements. At the same time, he thought that the Russian Orthodox Church possessed the truth and that a determined intellectual search for truth was both wasteful and dangerous. His own political and social philosophy was itself an eclectic hodge-podge, never systematically put together and even today somewhat difficult to unravel. However, at the core of his thoughts and actions lay a coherent political position, which remained fundamentally consistent throughout his life.

He had a genuine interest in the history of his native land, which is reflected in the spirit and the quantity of his historical scholarship. He had been raised with a strong sense of history and tradition, and he loved to visit old churches, museums, archives, and monuments. His most pleasant hours were spent reading and writing history, which he considered “the teacher and tutor of a people.” He thought that revealed history and accepted tradition were the two greatest authorities, more illuminating and reliable than the minds and ideas of even the most intelligent critics. “For a person, for a people, for a society, the whole value of history consists of represented selfconsciousness.” In fact, “there is no better school than the dead.”¹

As an historian, he thought that his greatest goal, and that of any conscientious scholar, was to discover and relate “how it actually happened.” His knowledge of his time and his research in the tangled thickets of Russian legal history persuaded him that providing a clear and accurate description of an event or of the changing character of an institution was itself a remarkable achievement. His research on serfdom and on the history of Russian civil law convinced him that institutions, social concepts, and values “grew” organically in Russia, and therefore presumably elsewhere, in an extremely complicated way, about which it was impossible to create succinct conclusions or crisp theories. He was certain that no straight or simple explanation could describe the labyrinthian histories he had sought to explain. In fact, he came to believe that any effort to create a general theory which could explain these institutions and ideas was ludicrous. He was, therefore, as contemptuous of philosophies of history as he was of other general theories or abstract conceptions.²

He naturally would have ridiculed Comte’s belief that there are “general laws governing the course of events which it was history’s business to recount.” He would also have considered preposterous the proposal that one could create “a conception or picture of the whole course of human events as a continuous unitary play in which successive eras or generations play distinctive parts.” He would have urged that no effort “to sum up past history, to grasp it as a whole, and to decipher its ultimate meaning” could possibly succeed because of the very nature of man and of the historical process.³

Indeed, he was not interested in the philosophy of history and would perhaps have been surprised to learn that he had put one together. For example, while he read and enjoyed the great Russian historians of his times, such as Soloviev and Kliuchevsky, and foreign scholars, such as Ranke and Taine and Macaulay, he did not comment upon the philosophical views they held. Similarly, he did not discuss the views of Chaadaiev or Mikhailovsky or Lavrov, whose views concerning the nature and destiny of Russia were important in the last two-thirds of the nineteenth century. Neither the doctrines of the Slavophils nor the later ones of the panslavs affected him significantly, even though he shared some of the basic ideas of the Slavophils and became a fervent panslav during the Balkan crisis from 1875 to 1878. Thus, he did not join the Slavophils in describing Russia’s golden past or bright future. Even the ideas of Professor Nicholas J. Danilevsky, which emphasized the decay of the West and the youthfulness and vitality of the Orthodox Slavic East, failed to impress him, although these general concepts were closely related to some of his own.

He was equally remote from a Christian philosophy of history, in which the work of God explained and summarized past history and deciphered its ultimate meaning. In fact, it is striking how little significance moral or ethical considerations played in his view of historical developments. Finally, the idea of progress, with the victory of reason the highest goal for humanity, annoyed and frightened him. His father had believed in progress, accepted unwittingly the Enlightenment and its main concepts, and devoted his life to uplifting and improving those near him, but Pobedonostsev vigorously rejected this liberal view of history. Man was weak, if not evil; survival, not progress, was the attainable goal. A critical study of history revealed that the more things changed, the more likely they were to remain the same.

Even so, Pobedonostsev himself created a coherent philosophy of history, analysis of which helps illumine his entire philosophy and the age in which he lived. This was as home-made and composed of as many ill-fitting, assorted parts acquired from many sources as was his political philosophy. It was a natural extension of his political philosophy, which it served to support. First of all, his views concerning government reflect both his concept of man and his ideas concerning the nature and character of societies and the differences between societies. He equated society and religion, and he would have accepted Professor Toynbee’s thesis that the great religions have created the different characteristics which make one “civilization” distinct from another. He would also have agreed with Carlyle, whom he warmly admired: “Every society, every Polity, has a spiritual principle, which is the embodiment, tentative or more or less complete of an Idea; all its tendencies of endeavor are prescribed by an Idea and flow naturally from it, as movements from the living source of motion.”⁴ The most important single fact about Russia, that which made it unique and impervious to external influences, was Orthodoxy, which shaped the political system and bound Russia into a united body, saturated and permeated by love.

He believed that each society or state possessed distinctive political and social beliefs and institutions which helped to shape its character. Each nation’s development represented an organic process based on immutable laws. Each state was thus a “mysterious organism” and a prisoner of history, which determined that the various states had different philosophies and institutions. Thus, he explained that some states, such as Russia, had highly centralized, authoritarian governments because the necessary emphasis in their distant past had been upon communal life and upon firm control over the family by the father or by the patriarch; consequently, each person remained dependent, political power was respected and became ever more highly concentrated, and strong central government inevitably developed.

Several particular historical developments explained Russia’s political and social system. The first, which appeared constantly in his conversation and in his writing from 1859 until his death, was the character of the population, inert, lazy, primitive, and often barbaric. The qualities of the Russian people, of course, reflected the national history. They also enforced restrictions upon policy which he believed binding upon Russia’s reformers and critics as well as upon its rulers. He explained in 1858, for example, that Russia could not at that time adopt Western judicial institutions because “all law must conform to the basic needs of a given society,” which derived from specific local conditions. The characteristics of Russian national life, the economy, the level of education, and the customs were such that any new institutions planned would have to reflect those qualities. In 1880, he described the Russian economy as “in many places primitive and in other places extremely undeveloped.” The feeble state of local institutions and the basic inability of the population to supply local needs made centralized power a necessity. This was strengthened by the absence of a sound educational system, the large number of nationalities and of interest groups sprinkled throughout the huge country, and the constant external pressures. Russian backwardness cut it off, too, from the capacity to borrow Western ideas and institutions and thereby to overcome “our history, our life, the poverty of our science and education.”⁵

When pressed by hostile critics to defend widely unpopular government measures, such as those directed against the Baltic Germans in the 1880’s, Pobedonostsev also asserted that the critical role Russia had played in world history helped to explain the political system and the state’s evolution. Thus, Christianity in the West had been lured into active political life and power, with the Papacy seeking ever unsuccessfully to fasten its rule and its language upon all Christians. This caused conflict, revolt, and the collapse of Christianity in the West. At the same time, the isolated Russian Orthodox Church maintained the true and pure faith it had received and brought all members into one communion in one language. Moreover, Providence had placed Russia to guard the passage against migrant groups from Asia “so that Christian Europe could devote itself in peace to the work of a new civilization, a Christian civilization.” Only “its fidelity to the immutable principles of its national spirit” enabled Russia and its Church to prevent Europe from being overrun. At the same time, the state and the Church together had to fight the Poles and the Germans in the West. These pressures above all explained the backward but pristine nature of Russian society, the character of its government, and its place in world history.⁶

On the other hand, “the Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian states” had decentralized, democratic governments with an independent judiciary and an effective jury system because the emphasis throughout their long history had been upon individualism. The father had not acquired absolute power in the family; consequently, local government developed, and the central authority remained comparatively weak. From this base came an educated and self-disciplined citizenry. These human qualities and the institutions established in the long run produced a different “national soul” in England and in Scandinavia than in Russia.

He emphasized that democratic institutions were a consequence of historical developments more than a cause of them. Late in life, he wrote approvingly that parliament in England “thus consists of active representatives of local interests, closely tied to the land; that is why their voice can be considered exactly as the voice of the land and as the organ of the national interest.” At that time, he came to believe that Belgium might succeed in adopting democratic institutions which had their roots in England, because the size of the country and the quality of the population made this possible.

He included the United States in the “Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian” world and thought it would survive and prosper as a democratic country with free institutions because it was building upon English stock and upon English models in particularly fruitful soil. Indeed, he considered the United States a “dreamland.” Such institutions for France and the other states of continental Europe, though, were poisonous. He interpreted the French revolution in 1789 and the later revolutions and efforts inevitably doomed to failure because they sought to implant a foreign institution in a soil unprepared for it. Similarly, he interpreted the Decembrist revolt of 1825 as “an insane attempt of aristocratic dreamers who knew neither their own people nor their own history” to attain British ideals on Russian soul. All other efforts to borrow foreign institutions were likewise foolish and fatal. In short, he was convinced that constitutional and democratic government would flourish in those states in which it developed from historical roots. Thus, all systems were consecrated by history. The principal problem rose when a state such as France or Russia sought to graft an alien institution upon its ancient foundations.⁷

Throughout the last fifteen or twenty years of his life in particular, he saw Western political ideas as the principal threat to Russia. However, he was not resistant to economic change within Russia. In fact, throughout his adult life and increasingly as he grew older, he welcomed the gradual, directed transformation of the Russian economy by modernizing ideas and techniques introduced from western Europe. However, the autocracy and Orthodoxy were to remain unaffected foundations surrounded by a world of change. He was never asked to explain this anomaly, perhaps because his critics did not appreciate or understand his relaxed attitude toward controlled economic innovation. Perhaps he himself did not realize the strangeness of his view of the permanent and unchanging character of the state system and of the role of the Church in a society inevitably in flux. In any case, the political system was permanent and indelible. In an undramatic and inglorious fashion, for he saw neither a glorious past nor a magnificent future for Russia, it had provided and should continue to assure harmony, unity, and homogeneity for a satisfied Russia. So long as the state and Church remained fixed stars, “Naught shall make us rue, if ‘Russia’ to itself do rest but true.”⁸

With these exceptions, he recognized change in history and assumed it would continue, whether or not any individuals, groups, or states opposed. However, historical developments within a particular state, such as Russia, were shaped and controlled by the institutions and values of the past, which insured the preeminence of a sort of manifest destiny. Thus, the history of a country ran like a slow-flowing river, between banks which determined the course of the channel so that the flow could not be diverted by will or chance. “Man makes history but it is not less true and perhaps it is still more important to realize that history makes man.” Change in established societies was and should remain slow, organic, conditioned by history and the character of life, because “nature does not produce results quickly.” The history of a country was therefore created in layers and inevitably was characterized by a kind of incoherence.

This view of course reflects his political philosophy, but it also represents his work as an historian of institutions. He often repeated that the historian must remember that customs and beliefs of historical ages and of countries differed and that he errs grievously who criticizes the acts of one age or country according to the standards of another. He was a resolute critic of the moralistic interpretation of history:

The moral feeling is insulted by violence, but moral feeling alone cannot serve as a guide and instrument for the historian studying the political activity of an historical person; otherwise, the historian would judge and declare pernicious a government measure simply because it was accompanied by violence. This would be unjust. It is true that the greatest transformations in the soul of man have been effected by peaceful means, by people strong in soul but lowly and even base in social position. But these were exceptional occurrences. The rulers of the world usually act through material force, by external and internal authority. It has always been so, and it will always be so, at least as long as moral force does not acquire decisive rule over material force in the rules of all society.⁹

His ideas concerning the nature of change in history can perhaps best be explained through an analysis of his fear of subversive ideas and forces, which led him to create a kind of “plot theory” of history; of the role which Peter the Great and other outstanding individuals had played; of the way in which serfdom has been fastened upon and then removed from the backs of the Russian people; of the history of various forms of property ownership in Russia; and finally, in most detail, of his conception of the role of modern economic forces.

Convinced that history unfolds in a slow, organic way, unaffected by the theories of intellectuals or by foreign values, Pobedonostsev, like most reactionaries, was fearful lest this inevitable, stately process be upset by chance or by the ideas or actions of a handful of skillful, malevolent men. Curiously, he was not alarmed by the work of particular Russian radical and revolutionary individuals or groups. He never even noticed the views of the various kinds of socialists which appeared in Russia in the last third of the nineteenth century, and he devoted far more attention to the work of western European liberals and radicals than he did to their Russian counterparts. At the same time, he continually expressed alarm concerning the supposed threat to his society posed by hostile concepts. Superstitious, generally fearful, he thought that the Jews, the Old Believers, and the Stundists were conspiring against the regime and were acquiring economic power in order to mount an insidious attack. The main dangers, though, were Western ideas and the soft-headed professors, journalists, and amateur politicians who had swallowed them. The great threat, then, was internal and intellectual. “We are betrayed by what is false within.” As Professor Morris Cohen noted, “It is curious that those who insist that human ideas cannot influence the course of history are almost continually complaining of how people are misled by false views.”¹⁰

The history of Russia for him resembled somewhat a slow, majestic, dignified advance, on occasion achieving a higher rate of speed when challenge and outstanding leadership occurred at the same time. His father was an enthusiastic admirer of Peter the Great, Catherine the Great, and Alexander I, and Pobedonostsev grew up in a household which had great reverence for the state and for its most vigorous rulers. When still a young scholar, he remarked that “the great ruler of the Russian land had to take the clumsy Russian people” in hand to lead them to significant achievements. As a believer in a strong central government, in firm rule, and in a powerful state, he expressed great admiration for Peter the Great in particular.

He wrote favorably of Peter because Peter had placed the interests of the state first, “collected all the power around one center and directed it toward one goal,” and made Russia a larger, stronger, and more industrial power. His appraisal was sharply critical of those who believed that Russia had enjoyed a golden age before Peter. He was particularly critical of the Slavophils (although he never mentioned them as a group) because in their attacks on Peter the Great they were “carried away by their historical ideal, the features of which they find in the ancient history of Russia before Peter.” He was also critical of the Westerners, whom he denounced for interpreting Peter’s age and actions according to their own preconceived ideas and for asserting that Peter wanted to make Russia a Western state.

According to Pobedonostsev, Peter did not wish to give Russia new institutions and was not opposed to the old ones. He strengthened the power of the pomestchik only when it was to the interest of the state. He was personally opposed to serfdom, but recognized that he could not eliminate it or even reduce its significance. On the one hand, he made more severe the decrees concerning runaway serfs and tightened internal passport regulations. On the other hand, he eliminated abuses when he could. He was a great man because he saw the needs of his age clearly and undertook nothing which was in sharp contradiction with the concepts then generally held. He was unaffected by moral or philosophical principles. He simply acted in the interest of the state, using the established institutions when possible to increase the state’s power and authority and revising the established institutions when necessary.

Frederick the Great was acclaimed for precisely the same reasons, although he too “must answer for every outrage he committed.” Both were properly national heroes. Alexander I, on the other hand, was as patriotic as they, “but his education had not furnished him the means for understanding the history of his country or of his people.” Alexander scorned the narod, was dazzled by the Enlightenment and preferred its charms to those of the Russian Orthodox Church, and did not have the national interest as his highest ideal. He even dreamed of the restoration of Poland, “knowing nothing of history, which would have told him that the existence of the Polish kingdom would mean slavery and oppression for all the Russian nation.”

In short, even when discussing Russia’s leaders, he saw the history of Russia as the history of the state as it was affected by blind, organic historical forces. He saw all Russian institutions and leaders as the unconscious instruments or even weapons of the state. “History is explained not by chance alone, nor by personal arbitrary power alone, but by the whole course of history.” No Russian ruler emerges from his writings as a giant causing sharp breaks in the continuity of Russian history, which flows on eternally as the history of the state, its course determined by the “law of historical and political necessity.”¹¹

His analysis of the origins and establishment of serfdom, as well as of the process which led finally to its abolition in 1861, serves as a most clear illustration of his views concerning the nature of the historical process and change in history. In fact, he noted that the study of institutions such as serfdom was both natural and essential for anyone who sought to understand Russia and who realized that history was more than a chronological collection of political facts. He also admitted that his own way of viewing Russian history had been powerfully affected by his research on serfdom and other institutions.

Serfdom, in fact, grew; it “was formed little by little.” It filled a political, economic, and social vacuum. It was not an evil or an obstacle to the material and spiritual growth of the narod. It was instead a sign that full personal development then was impossible. The Code of 1649 was not significant in fastening serfdom upon Russia, for juristic principles were not valued then and were understood only late in the eighteenth and in the nineteenth century. Neither Peter the Great nor any other Russian ruler was an important abettor of serfdom, because the rulers only recognized and accepted the conditions of life in which they had to live. Serfdom did bring misfortunes and even evils to many Russians, but these were inevitable. Moreover, one should not project nineteenth century standards of conduct into earlier periods or assume either that laws were always vigorously enforced. He even argued that there were few protests against serfdom until late in the eighteenth century, because no one in the seventeenth century thought of himself as a citizen or had any “sense of independent civic personality” or “personal freedom.” Abstract ideas, notions of complex juridical problems, and economic and spiritual criticisms of serfdom also appeared much later. Even the Church failed to resist or criticize the establishment of serfdom, in part because slavery and serfdom were not explicitly condemned in the Bible or in Orthodox doctrine and in part because the Church leaders, inevitably imbued with the ideals of the age, accepted its institutions and concentrated upon spreading love and peace throughout society and upon keeping alive for better days the ideas of personal independence.

The state had played a very important role in establishing serfdom. Its main interest was in “order and organization.” It utilized and strengthened serfdom because it wanted the landowner to serve the state, it sought to prevent vagabondage to assist the landowner, and it wanted assurance concerning state finances. In fact, in the conditions of that time, it had no alternatives. Similarly, the state in the nineteenth century participated in the dismantling of serfdom because its interests remained the same at a time when conditions of life had changed. Thus, “that same law of historical and political necessity, according to which serfdom was formed, has led to its abolition. . . .” The barge of history moves on, relatively unaffected by heads of state or philosophers or accident.¹²

His analysis of the historical career of serfdom in Russia was paralleled exactly and in even greater detail in his more complicated study of the history of the various forms of property ownership, to which he naturally devoted a great deal of time and energy in his works on the history of Russian civil law. His review of propertyholding was remarkably disinterested and practical. He apparently was concerned only with its legal aspects. Even though he was writing at a time of quiet revolutionary change in the fortunes of the large landowners, he failed to comment on the political significance of that important development. Although he was intensely conservative, he recognized the values of banking and of new credit institutions. He even approved the introduction in Russia of joint stock companies, although he recognized the fundamental impact they would surely have. This characteristic of his approach toward one of his country’s most central problems illuminates his entire political philosophy.

Thus, throughout his career as a scholar and conservative statesman, he identified private property as “a clear expression of the human personality” and “the most definite and absolute of civil rights.” He saw the human record, including that of the Russian people, as “the uninterrupted striving for personal ownership” and as part of “the natural struggle of the individual for freedom.” After reviewing the political history of Russia, he explained that the civil history of private property began, and could begin to grow, only with Catherine the Great, when the internal political system and Russia’s place in the European state system began to change. The position of private property therefore depended upon the political fate of the era and the special history of the various parts of Russia, where the systems of land ownership and control inevitably differed from each other. Change came so rapidly in his own lifetime that in 1883 he defined private property as “among the most rooted and fundamental institutions of our time.”¹³

His knowledge of the economic changes taking place in western Europe and in Russia as well was not substantial or systematic, but it was greater than one would assume and it was superior to his knowledge concerning rural Russia. He lived throughout his life in Moscow and St. Petersburg, Russia’s two largest and most important cities and those most visibly affected by economic change. His several trips throughout European Russia with the young grand dukes took him into workshops, factories, and mines, gave him some understanding of the importance of improved transportation facilities, and introduced him to a large number of merchants and manufacturers and their views. He was made aware of the impact industrialization was having upon transportation in Europe and Russia by his travelling.¹⁴

Similarly, his years of service as director of the Volunteer Fleet were an education in transportation, commerce, and international trade. In addition, in his years in the Senate, the Council of State, and the Council of Ministers, he participated in many discussions concerning state policies on economic problems of national importance. He had a deep interest in his own financial situation and prospects, and his personal concerns no doubt led him to place special emphasis in his work in civil law upon financial issues. Indeed, it is obvious that his knowledge of civil law, particularly of its history in more advanced countries, enormously multiplied his interest in and knowledge of modern economic developments and problems. He wrote a great deal concerning property ownership and rights, taxes, rent, contracts, insurance, interest, credit, bills of exchange, and various forms of commercial and industrial organization, so he acquired considerable knowledge concerning the labyrinths of the growing capitalist economy.

Finally, some of the Western scholars who especially impressed him, such as Emerson, Spencer, and Carlyle, were particularly concerned with industrialization and effects it had produced and was likely to produce. Frederick Le Play, the French sociologist he so admired, was an engineer, wrote at considerable length concerning the changes he saw taking place in various parts of Europe, and created a philosophy of history which had the bases for a rudimentary theory of development or modernization and which Pobedonostsev absorbed and made his own.

In short, he was both knowledgeable about and interested in the Russian economy. In fact, he came to believe that the principal motor behind the gradual changes visible in history was economic. By 1890, he became convinced that the system of landholding in Russia must be changed, that Russia must become an industrialized state, that the state must assume responsibility for the direction and pace of this change, and that the pattern of Russian history was and should be such that the state could be transformed into a modern industrial power without modification of the political system. Thus, the course of the stream should continue within the banks long established and consecrated by history, the ship or barge of state should maintain its progress through the established channel, the pilot of the ship and the administrative and spiritual arrangements should remain unchanged, and only the motive power should be altered. His philosophy of history was therefore blended with his political philosophy in such a way as to enable him to reject all change in Russia except that brought on by economic forces and to propose direction of that change in such a way as to maintain the cherished political system.

Throughout his life he was acutely aware that the Russian economy was primitive and backward. On occasion he referred to it as “extremely underdeveloped” and “even medieval.” He was convinced that the gap which separated Russia from France, Germany, and England was much greater in 1900 than it had been when he first began to write forty years earlier. The capital and the institutions for making Russia more fruitful were both absent. The Russian people lacked skills and ambition, and there was no visible means for educating or training them to work as Western peoples did. Trade was primitive, transport was feeble, and social institutions reflected a premodern society. The country possessed no economic unity, and the authorities could not even hope to acquire the information necessary for sensible national economic policies. Most important, because of their history, the Russians lacked a concept of personal responsibility and any interest in or ambition for improvement.¹⁵

However, throughout his life Pobedonostsev believed that the economic transformation of Russia was both inevitable and fruitful. He saw that industrial growth was necessary if Russia was to remain a European power. As a young man, he was impressed by the instruments of modernization, such as the telegraph and the railroad. He approved of limited liability companies, and he was interested in expanding credit facilities so that economic growth could be stimulated. After visiting a mine near Kostroma in 1863, he wrote, “Please God that the time will come soon when the wealth in the womb of our dear country will be brought into the light and when our capital will eagerly put itself to work.” Above all, he saw economic change as inevitable. He often quoted Le Play and Emerson on the nature of the new historical era into which France and the United States were entering, and he clearly believed that Russia would and should follow the same path.¹⁶

At the same time, like the Western philosophers he studied and admired, he regretted the withering away of cherished values and institutions and resented the crudities and ugly flaws of economic change. He had little genuine affection for “old Russia,” and he was heartily in favor of railroads, but he did deplore that railroads would end the isolation of cities such as Kostroma and Kazan and thereby reduce their virtues as lovely centers of old culture. He thought “the new aristocracy” excessively avid in its search for wealth and honor. He was savagely critical of speculators and “usurers,” and he was dismayed by the moral dissolution which he thought factory life introduced for many Russians lured from their rural homes and parishes into industrial centers. In 1903, he exulted concerning the benefits the machine was bringing his country, but was depressed by the way it was “exhausting and dissolving the strength of the national soul and drying up the living sources of life.” Even so, he was far less critical and concerned than Emerson or Carlyle about similar developments in their countries.¹⁷

The most impressive illustration of his views concerning the economic transformation of Russia is provided by the gradual change in his policy toward the commune or mir and his advocacy after 1889 of its replacement in the Russian countryside by family farms similar to the American homesteads. He did not participate at any time in the debate between the Westerners and the Slavophils concerning whether or not the commune was unique to the Slavic peoples, and he never demonstrated either admiration or contempt for the peasants. He noted that the factual data necessary for a decision were not available and that the dispute between “political doctrinaires” on one hand and “dreamers” on the other was therefore senseless. The role the commune should play was simply a practical problem. It did possess unquestioned advantages, but it also suffered from serious flaws. The essential fact about the commune was that it could not be separated “from the temporary economic conditions in which it grew and by which it has been supported.”

Thus, he kept the commune’s role under observation, always emphasizing that national interest must be the decisive consideration and that economic forces and trends, not men, would make the final judgment. Even in the 1870’s, he wrote that all rural collectives were ultimately doomed because they “did not provide sufficient strength and scope for enterprise and for the production of new value and new capital.” His historical analyses of the various forms of landholding which had prevailed at one time or another in Russia and in western Europe led him to conclude that “natural causes” had led to the gradual disappearance of each system. In 1883, he judged that the time had not yet come for the withering away of the commune, but he added:

This time will come by itself, with the natural development of productive forces and with the change of economic conditions. The experience visible in the history of all other people will not escape us, because all have proceeded through the same stages of economic life and through the same forms of landholding, even though in different climatic, geographical, and political conditions of economic development. The growth of all was not identical, but it would have been a serious error, although unfortunately a very common one, to imagine that it is possible to stop or to quicken growth by artificial measures of legislation without violating the physical conditions of growth.¹⁸

In short, he valued the commune as the framework for the rural family, but saw that it was being undermined by powerful economic forces which were going to eliminate it as they had other institutions in other countries. No individual should tamper with this ineluctable process, the impact of which would be so tremendous that only the state should seek to influence the flow of events. Even state intervention should be directed with great caution and only after economic conditions themselves had changed. Above all, the state in its actions should recognize that the future interest of the entire nation should be its central concern. By 1889, he came to believe that the historical forces which operated everywhere had so influenced the structure of the Russian economy that he urged the state to hasten the dismantling of the commune and the creation of a large peasant proprietor class. This was philosophy of history in action.

The blending of his philosophy of history and his political philosophy is reflected also in other policies he recommended concerning the Russian economy and economic development. From the very beginning, the core of his interest in economic growth was a nationalistic approach toward the economy and toward economic relations with other states. He considered the economic transformation of both the city and countryside not only unavoidable, but also necessary to enable Russia to resist the pressures exerted by the more advanced economies of England and Germany. One of the reasons he admired Peter the Great was the tsar’s actions to advance the economic strengthening of Russia and to expand its frontiers in the west and in the south. His 1863 tour helped make him understand the importance of machines and machine tools. From that time forward, he was a strong believer in tariffs for Russian industries, for the merchants and industrialists he met then and later demonstrated to him the need for protecting their infant industries against competition from foreigners, especially Germans. He therefore urged that foreigners be prohibited from building and operating grain elevators, oil wells, pipe lines, coastal shipping concerns, and banks. He proposed that foreign capital be allowed only under strict supervision.¹⁹

Similarly, while he clearly lacked the understanding and interest of men such as Witte in industrialization, he was active in supporting the economic transformation of the country, with the constant insistence that this be directed and controlled by the state, which should remain the supreme and unquestioned authority. In fact, he urged that the state consider the economic strength of the country more important than the army. As the “guardian of the highest interest,” he believed it should promote the construction of railroads and of a network of roads to strengthen the country. It should maintain firm control over credit and currency to insure a flow of beneficent resources at controlled interest rates into the main stream of the economy. It should restrict the influence of “Jewish usurers” and assure opportunities and aid for small businesses.²⁰

His statist policy was also reflected in his view of the position and role of the working class, which he first noticed in his 1863 tour of European Russia. Throughout his life, his attitudes remained traditionally patriarchal. He was appalled by the conditions in which some workers lived and worked. He was convinced that the crowding of masses of Russians into ugly cities—removed from their homes and parishes, provided occasional empty holidays, and offered no hope—was a national danger which the government should act to eliminate. At the same time, he supported the passport or workbook system and opposed workers’ organizations. When he chaired a committee in 1897 to review a report critical of conditions in which workers lived, he opposed the eight-hour day, recognition of May Day as a holiday, and state inspection of factories. In short, while on occasion he recognized the evils and the hazards, he believed that the solution lay in submission to the forces of history, as they might be directed or influenced by the state. “Whatever will be, will be.”²¹