MARC RAEFF

Russian Youth on the Eve of Romanticism:
Andrei I. Turgenev and His Circle

Ibo ne redko v izobrazheniiakh umershago naidesh cherty v zhivykh eshche sushchago. [For often you will find in the representation of a dead person the traits of the living.] A. Radishchev, Zhitie Fedora Vasilevicha Ushakova.

The accession of Alexander I not only overlapped very nearly with the beginning of a new century, it also coincided with the coming of age of a new generation in Russia’s intellectual life. The new youth differed more sharply than is usually the case from the ways and traditions of their parents. Within the closed framework of seminal and dynamic small groups (or secret organizations), they gave currency and first rank importance to those cultural and ideological elements which, as a rule, are contrasted to the rationalism of the Enlightenment and associated with Romanticism. In the following pages we shall try to come to grips with this phenomenon with the help of the evidence provided by the activities and ideas of Andrei Ivanovich Turgenev and the circle of his close friends in the Druzheskoe literaturnoe obshchestvo (Friendly Literary Society). ¹

Andrei Turgenev’s life was extremely short—he died suddenly from a chill and fever at the age of twenty-two—and in fact quite unremarkable, its outward events differing little from the existence of other young members of the Russian nobility. He was exceptional, however, in his discerning literary taste, his genuine (albeit minor) poetic talent, and the intensity of his friendships. For these reasons his brief existence throws much light on the social and cultural dimensions of the emotional and intellectual development of educated Russians at the dawn of the nineteenth century.²

Turgenev was born in 1781 to Ivan Petrovich Turgenev, a friend and associate of N. Novikov, V. Lopukhin, and other prominent freemasons and mystics in the reign of Catherine II. The elder Turgenev had had an ordinary, lustreless career in the military and civil services.³ In 1792, in connection with Catherine’s closing of the masonic lodges and persecution of their leaders, he was exiled to his estate. In 1796 Paul I allowed him to return to Moscow where he became Director of the University. Thus, part of Andrei Turgenev’s formative years was spent on the family estate near Simbirsk, in close contact with and under the supervision of his father, a situation that was far from typical of the eighteenth century pattern of noble upbringing. He later entered the University of Moscow (1799), where he found himself close to such major figures of Russia’s cultural life as the writers Karamzin, Dmitriev, and Izmailov. After a few years’ study at the University Andrei entered state service in the College of Foreign Affairs, and “worked” first at the College’s archives in Moscow. In 1801 he became a translator and junior secretary at the College’s chancellery in St. Petersburg. He served as courier to Vienna where he spent several months in the winter of 1802-1803. He died in St. Petersburg in early spring, 1803, soon after returning from his Viennese mission. Even if allowance is made for the earlier maturation of young people a century and a half ago, the short life of Andrei Turgenev could hardly have been more than a token of what he might have done and become. To his friends and contemporaries his short existence seemed exemplary of their own aspirations and dreams, and thus for young Muscovites he became both symbol and legend of the unfulfilled promise of the first decade of the nineteenth century. Hence, it is important to consider the details of his emotional and intellectual development. Fortunately we are in a position to do this, since his papers—diaries, drafts, letters—have been largely preserved.⁴

In fashion characteristic of a member of the educated nobility, Andrei Turgenev was raised with the conviction that he had a task to perform on earth. To this end he received a careful and well-supervised western education, first at home, then at the Noblemen’s Pension, and later at the University of Moscow. More important still was his own feeling that his life had to be meaningful, by assisting others to rise to a higher moral and cultural level. This consciousness of a duty to lead a socially useful active life went hand in hand with an equally strong sense of personal accomplishment. Realizing that his interests and ability lay in the realm of literature, he wanted to make his contribution as writer, critic, and poet.⁵ This striving, the ambition to leave a mark on contemporaries and posterity, was perhaps the paramount avowed concern of all the young men around him.⁶

What were the driving forces behind this attitude? The old-fashioned orientation toward state service helped create the psychological and mental climate in which the educated and progressive nobility grew up in the eighteenth century. The Turgenev family stressed, as did families of nobility, social utility as the goal of education.⁷ The children’s readings and first writing exercises were full of didactic tirades on duty and work, on the obligation to devote one’s life to the service of others,⁸ and particularly on the ethical values implicit in these precepts. Injustice, misery, and evil caused by man to man were not only to be condemned completely but also to be redressed through charity and philanthropy. Horror seized Andrei Turgenev at the sight of brutality and abuse of authority. How much he would have liked to have helped remedy the evil, console the afflicted and the wronged! But awareness of moral and physical evil seemed to paralyze his energies and he could only express sympathy in the form of literary reminiscences.⁹

At the same time Andrei Turgenev’s philanthropic attitude and moral concern involved a curious paradox; his commitment to serve was not only an end of the vita activa, it was also an instrument of the vita contemplativa. Indeed, like the freemasons of his father’s generation, Andrei believed that it was his duty to give maximum development to his inner moral sense. Thus, the improvement of each individual’s mind and soul demanded constant dedicated effort. Such purpose, however, implies quite a strong streak of selfishness. At the least clash with an outer barrier, the cultivation of the “inner garden” could easily turn into the cultivation of one’s own garden tout court, an escape from personal sacrifice and a withdrawal into the private sphere. Andrei Turgenev and his friends asserted that to be merely a good pater familias also meant to be a good citizen and a worthy individual.¹⁰ To be sure, the warm family atmosphere prevailing in the Turgenev household was an inspiration. But withdrawal into private family happiness meant giving up striving and accepting oneself and one’s present condition. But could one? Did one even know oneself? Fulfillment of the ideal set forth by Andrei’s educated young friends meant finding the person whom one was sure of and with whom one could contentedly share one’s condition. This required a decision to cease the pursuit of unfulfilled expectations and to accept the daily drudgery of “small deeds” and responsibility. For such an act of will Andrei Turgenev lacked courage.¹¹ He feared that present actuality was but a mirage of what was possible; would not the realization of the possible be foreclosed if the present were seriously and fully accepted? He was not unaware of the weakness of character that this hesitation implied, but his complaints and regrets about it were self-pitying and not devoid of a touch of narcissism. In a sense Turgenev was escaping the finality of the present and fleeing into the safety of the “open” future. This was quite an understandable reaction, since his moral premise was the selfish enhancement of his own spiritual and moral being, without recourse to any transcendental values or hierarchies. Hence his hesitations, the alternations of desires and expectations, and the fear of fulfillment.¹² The result was a romantic stance of unremitting grief about lost possibilities, the regret of past time, and the ever recurring accent on future hope.¹³

The history of Andrei Turgenev’s one love, Catherine Sokovnin, is characteristically revealing in this respect. It was a rather banal story of infatuation and sentimental correspondence, ending in his withdrawal. It would not deserve particular mention were it not for the insight it provides into his character. The romantic involvement, quite short lived, may be told in a few words:¹⁴ Andrei Turgenev met the sisters Sokovnin at a theater party in the Noblemen’s Pension. His younger brother Alexander was in love with one of the sisters, Anna Mikhailovna, and at first Andrei fell in love with her too. In the beginning he felt a little guilty vis-à-vis his brother, but then consoled himself with the hope for a kind of ménage à trois. But finally, after some hesitation, he turned his attention to another sister, Catherine. The involvement grew deeper, although it always was hesitant and filled with much sentimental daydreaming and regret, spiced with appropriate reminiscences of La Nouvelle Héloise and Werther. When Andrei left for St. Petersburg the connection continued by mail. At this point Catherine openly declared her love for Andrei and pledged to be his alone. Catherine’s avowal frightened him; he trembled for his liberty and for the future of his literary hopes and career. He withdrew, albeit hesitatingly and without breaking the relationship; but when he left for Vienna, his letters became rare and finally stopped altogether.

In letters to his brother Alexander and his friend Andrei S. Kaisarov, both in Goettingen, he was full of regrets, sentimental épanchements, and selfjustificatory tirades.¹⁵ The next time we hear of his amours, it is a passing affair in Vienna, but this was a purely physical involvement which left his emotions free and unaffected.¹⁶

In view of Turgenev’s pretensions at moral elevation and purity, the selfishness of the rationalizations that he proffers to justify his shying away from genuine personal commitment is revealing. He makes two points which deserve brief mention. He says that he is not worthy of Catherine Sokovnin’s pure, devoted, self-abnegating love. Objectively, of course, he was not; but the point is that it was not only an excuse for escaping but an expression of his genuine conviction that he was spiritually and intellectually still incomplete, that he had achieved nothing to give him a sense of genuine identity; this was the course of the malaise experienced by Andrei Turgenev and his generation. The other point emphasized by Turgenev in the letters to his friends is the fear of losing his liberty. To be sure, it is a fear common among men, especially those still close to adolescence, when faced with the finality that the marriage commitment (church sanctioned, of course) entails. But it is also the fear of jeopardizing one’s ability to strike out in new directions, to be creative, and actively to pursue the ideal of the vita contemplativa. In this sense the fear of losing one’s liberty is but another aspect of the feeling of not yet having found one’s identity. The struggle for identity was hard on Andrei Turgenev’s generation and personal emotions were made to pay the price.

Why was this search for identity, especially in the intellectual and spiritual realms, so difficult? Why did it present special problems to the young men in Moscow around 1800? This question leads us to ask also why did Andrei Turgenev and his friends feel so different or “alienated” from their elders. In view of the fact that Andrei Turgenev and his circle shared the characteristic traits of the early Sturm und Drang forms of Romanticism, we may further ask why the acute sense of a break with the older generation and the search for identity were such powerful forces in this Russian generation (as they had been in its German prototypes personified by Schiller’s dramatic heroes)?

It seems to us that the answer is to be sought in a fundamental contradiction in the system of values and ideas of the generation of Andrei Turgenev’s parents.¹⁷ By the last quarter of the eighteenth century, educated Russians had fully assimilated the basic notions of Enlightenment thought. They had acquired a secular view of progress, especially with respect to the economic, social, and cultural welfare of the nation. They had accepted and internalized the Petrine belief that the goals and norms of the state took precedence over all, and that, by virtue of their leadership function, the monarch and the government brought glory and modernity to Russia. They had also developed a virtually “Protestant” bourgeois sense of duty and service to society. In other words, the transcendental values and goals of medieval society had given way to secular and rational interests and concerns. The Russian Church, captive of the state since the establishment of the Holy Synod, had declined as a source of moral authority, inspiration, and spiritual guidance and had shriveled to the mere policing of ritual conformity. It is true that these aspects of secularism were accompanied by a revival of personal religious life and a genuine concern for the moral and spiritual welfare of the people. It was “philanthropy” (but not Christian charity!) in the best meaning of the word that was associated with the activities of Novikov. But the interesting thing about philanthropy, whatever its spiritual and religious fount, is that it aims at the improvement of the condition of man in this world, not at preparing his salvation in the hereafter. In short, the emphasis is on the material and intellectual progress of the individual, in terms of rational judgment, rather than on a transcendental system of values justified sub specie aeternitatis with reference to the historical drama of salvation. It was this orientation that found repeated expression in the didactic and juvenile literature which Andrei Turgenev and his friends read and absorbed in their childhood. ¹⁸

At the same time, and in conflict with this secular, rational and individualistic outlook, the traditional insistence on complete submission and obedience to authority—the monarch and parents-was not abandoned. Both the ruler and the family-head were endowed with a God-given aura of authority, borrowed heavily from Lutheran precepts and behavior, that made their orders and directives the object of unquestionable obedience.¹⁹ What had been easy to accept in a traditional society became a source of unresolved conflicts in values in a rationalistic and welfare-oriented civilization. If the goals of human activity were to be based on nothing but rational and utilitarian considerations, why then insist on unquestioned obedience not even justified by a transcendental view of history and society? As long as the ruler (or parent) fulfilled a visible function of leadership in the country’s (or family’s) cultural progress and modernization, his authority could be accepted. But by the end of the eighteenth century this ceased to be the case.²⁰ Particularly striking to Andrei Turgenev’s generation was the fact that most of their elders served only pro forma and did little, if anything, to justify the obedience that they demanded.²¹ It is little wonder that Turgenev and his friends felt that they were being asked to act contrary to the social and intellectual values of their culture when unquestioned submission to authority was demanded of them.

The value conflict helped to shape the young generation’s relationship to their parents and to their service obligations. Andrei Turgenev, like all young nobles of his day, entered state service as a matter of course. But it did not take much experience to realize how insignificant his service obligations were. It is clear from many remarks scattered throughout his papers that his official work was neither absorbing nor meaningful. The young men’s knowledge and talents, in languages for example, were not put to good use. It was merely a way to pass time; obviously the important tasks were performed either by experienced clerks or a very few high dignitaries. In some ways the offices to which they were attached served as a kind of “postgraduate” educational institution.²²

In the literature on Andrei Turgenev and his brothers much stress is laid on the warm and genuinely good atmosphere that prevailed in their family. Credit for this is usually given to the mildness and kindness of their father, Ivan Petrovich, to his genuinely humane interest in his children as well as to his religious and philanthropic concerns. From all the evidence, Ivan Petrovich was indeed a benevolent, kind, affectionate man whose sincere love for his children (and for mankind in general) cannot be doubted. Yet this same man was a serf owner, who apparently allowed his wife and stewards to treat the domestics harshly, and who also constantly preached complete submission and obedience, even to evil. In part this reflected his timidity, for he was not a courageous or forceful individual and did all he could to avoid clashes with authority. When he did get into trouble with Catherine II for his masonic activities, he not only submitted to his fate but plaintively tried to deny any responsibility for his actions.²³ As Director of the University he was a gentle and understanding but not forceful supervisor; one has the impression that he performed his duties conscientiously, but without much energy or display of initiative.

Not surprisingly, therefore, his son’s attitude to him was somewhat mixed. He had learned to obey him and there is little doubt of the genuine feeling he had for his father. Ivan Petrovich returned Andrei’s affection in full. Yet Andrei’s does not seem to have been an affection based on genuine respect. Andrei felt sorry for his father, he loved him, but he did not identify with him.²⁴ It is very reminiscent of the relationship which Karl Moor, in Schiller’s Die Räuber, had to his own father, and not the least reason for the enthusiasm of Andrei Turgenev’s generation for Schiller’s early works. Perhaps Andrei also saw a good illustration of this unfulfilled yearning for identification with his father in Goethe’s poem Mahomets Gesang which he tried to translate.²⁵ We note manifestations of this ambivalence when, in his middle teens, Andrei was faced with the choice of obeying his father or following his inclination to be with his good friend A. S. Kaisarov. He obeyed, but his obedience did not come from within, it was not derived from a felt sense of right or a recognition of his father’s moral or intellectual superiority.²⁶ We see similar instances of ambivalence later in connection with his service and questions of his health and personal future.²⁷

Naturally, the mother’s personality, too, played an important role in the relationship between a son and his family. As was true in the case of A. Kaisarov (and there are many more examples to be found in this period) the mother was stronger and more domineering than the father. Yet she was barely literate and did not share her husband’s and children’s cultural interests. She was concerned only about her sons’ prospects in service, and the management of the family estate, and she was not easy to please. She was also a person of great temper, strong willed and irascible, which in the context of serfdom easily led to capricious and cruel treatment of servants and serfs. Obedience to such a woman was hard to justify on rational or moral grounds; it could only be a matter of injunction and outward submission.²⁸ Characteristically, Andrei’s letters home sound contrived and formal in their expressions of obedience and respect; they reveal little of the interests which he willingly shared with his friends.

The young men of Andrei’s generation, as has been noted earlier, were educated to obey, but not told why; they were also taught to rely on reason, to think in terms of social utility, and to promote their own spiritual growth and intellectual independence. Submission or revolt seemed the only alternatives, the former implying the acceptance of a vegetating life. This was an impossible choice, if only because their service-oriented upbringing had been directed at a constructively active life and career. But for this Russian reality offered little scope; activity in service seemed artificial, useless, unrewarding, and ill-directed. They were forced to escape into literature and intellectualism. All this created an all-pervading feeling of discontent and a sense of futility.²⁹ They were dreaming of what they could and should accomplish, of what might happen in the future or could have occurred in the past. Hope and regret were the leitmotifs of their existence-and they were forever failing to cope with the present. But identification in terms of a distorted past or a future hoped for meant an identification forever incomplete; they remained perpetual adolescents.

The first overt goal of the friendship that linked Andrei Turgenev and the members of his circle was to help them to further their individual development and become useful to society. Clearly the bonds of friendship were much stronger and tighter than those resting merely on personal sympathy; each partner expected to gain in spiritual stature from the friendship. We also note the extremely heightened emotional tone of these friendships. A friend exists and is chosen, they felt, to make one better, to help in one’s moral growth and spiritual development. Quite naturally the friendship, or association, was formed to study together, to discover new mental horizons, to become acquainted with new books and writers, to help each other in drawing out the full meaning of these discoveries.³⁰

The emotional quality of their friendship was so strong that it is best described by the French phrase, amitié amoureuse. It is unlikely that it had overt homosexual aspects, but we may not be quite certain in view of that generation’s great reticence about matters sexual.³¹ Naturally, there is an element of unfulfillment-sexually speaking-in this kind of relationship. As we shall have occasion to observe, this feature fits in with the major intellectual and spiritual characteristics of this generation. It was a passionate involvement that required constant presence, or at least daily epistolary contact; it also had to be confirmed and strengthened by tangible evidences which we associate with sentimental girlish crushes.³² It is also very noteworthy that this kind of friendship imposed an obligation on both partners to be better, to improve morally so as to prove worthy of the affection of the friend. It was a stroke of luck to gain a friend, it created a moral and spiritual debt that could not easily be paid.³³ As a result, the relationship was fraught with tensions, with constant questioning of one’s own worthiness. It was in a sense a substitute for the lack of an older object of identification as well as a manifestation of an inadequate sense of identity, of a lack of certitude with respect to one’s own worth and role in life.³⁴ We also detect an urge to remain pure vis-à-vis one’s friends, a purity that was interpreted not only in spiritual and moral, but in physical and sexual terms as well, underlining the amorous element and latent homosexuality of the bond. Sexual promiscuity and emotional experiences that lacked purity and ethereal idealism were seen as a betrayal and a sullying of one’s friends.³⁵

A friend was either someone to look up to, to identify with, or someone for whose sake one had to be particularly good and worthy. This might also explain why goodness, a good heart (dobryi, dobroe serdtse), was the most valued trait.³⁶ It implied the ability to feel for the friend, to be understanding and, what is more, to be forgiving. Hence the interest in small instances of benefaction and charity, the happiness produced by cases of simple and heartfelt piety.³⁷ It was not so much sentimental admiration for the alleged simple virtues of the people, as had been the case with Karamzin and his imitators, but rather a genuine personal involvement in the fate of specific individuals. To be sure, some amount of sentimental idealization was not lacking, but instead of leading to lachrymose moralizing it provoked an urge to do something about redressing the wrong. Literary models for their standards of judgment were readily available. Schiller’s dramas gave their feelings the additional dimension of universality and also supplied the young men with a comprehensive ethical and psychological outlook.³⁸

We have seen that the older generation did not provide adequate objects for identification or models for emulation. It was, therefore, the friend and the circle of friends that had to serve as the framework for the process of identification. There was no possibility of breaking away, since it was this youthful generation that had “created” the identity of its members for the remainder of their lives; it is little wonder that there was always a touch of adolescence in the Russian intelligentsia. One left this group and its ethos only at the price of suicide or surrender to the Establishment. The lesson had been made clear by their great literary hero, Karl Moor. In order to be himself, he had to identify with his brigand friends and sacrifice to them his personal love and happiness. As they had “made” him (and he them) he could not turn from them except through death. Sacrifice to friends and friendship became a binding cement, and it is quite easy to see how the fate of those who had left the circle early and young could be interpreted in sacrificial terms. It was not an accident that the source of inspiration and the model to be emulated should have been those who had been torn away from the circle, either through early death, like Andrei Turgenev or N. Stankevich, or through arrest and imprisonment, as was to be the case of later generations.

Not only did friendship play a major part in the personal lives of Russian youth in the 1800s, it was the setting for their literary and cultural activities as well.³⁹

In 1801, Andrei Turgenev and his friends A. F. Merzliakov and A. S. Kaisarov, along with Andrei’s younger brother Alexander and V. Zhukovskii, who were still pupils at the Noblemen’s Pension, decided to organize their own literary circle. Unlike the associations founded by their fathers’ generation, their society— Druzheskoe literaturnoe obshchestvo- did not have a public purpose. It was a friendly society for the promotion of the literary culture and taste of its members. True, literature was defined broadly and, as we shall see, was considered in its relation to other general topics. Essentially, it was as a study group, based on a cult of friendship, whose members wanted to be better individuals and more worthwhile citizens. To be useful to the fatherland and to be friends, such was their purpose. ⁴⁰

The society proved to be shortlived. It met for only about half a year, in the course of which twenty-three papers were read at its sessions.⁴¹ The public impact of its activities at the time was practically nil. But memory of it was profound in the minds of its surviving members and this secured it a seminal place in the intellectual history of nineteenth century Russia. Scholars have tried in recent years to situate the group with reference to the literary factions of the time and to draw ideological implications for its role in the pre-history of the Decembrist movement. But it seems to us that this is stretching the evidence. The speeches read at the society’s meetings are rather formalized statements of general ideas for purposes of discussion. Let us examine some of these ideas and their implications for the members of the group, so as to obtain a clearer picture of the mental and emotional climate in which this generation came to maturity.

Quite naturally, the theme of friendship occurred repeatedly in the speeches addressed to the group. In an early speech which he delivered in January, 1801, A. F. Merzliakov (the society’s main organizational figure) stressed the role of the bonds of friendship for the moral and intellectual development of each member; he also remarked that thanks to these bonds they could cope with the harsh cold world outside.⁴² But, Merzliakov maintained, friendship had a still higher function, namely that of endowing the sciences and arts with an emotional quality, making them reflect the life of the heart. Under the impact of friendship and the emotional side of life, science would no longer be cold pseudo-knowledge but a truth relevant to man. That was also the reason that the friendly society was a good preparation for its members’ future public role as true sons of the fatherland. This basic point was repeated by V. Zhukovskii in a later speech.⁴³ But Zhukovskii also stressed the importance of those qualities of the heart that made a friend more worthwhile to others and to himself. In short, what we noted earlier in Andrei Turgenev’s correspondence is now repeated in the group more comprehensively and within a broader context. The primary historical contribution of the friendly society was to have emphasized the intimate connection between the emotional bonds uniting several individuals and their potential public utility. No wonder that Schiller’s An die Freude was their ever recurring source of inspiration!

The role assigned to emotional involvement and friendship in an individual’s progress was closely related to the views of psychology and epistemology held by Turgenev’s circle. Mikhail Kaisarov postulated the innate quality of basic moral reactions and values⁴⁴ although he admitted that they might become conscious only through man’s ability to make comparative and analogical judgments. Thus he departed from eighteenth century Lockean empiricism, even though he accepted the utilitarian teleology of the Enlightenment. This could be further proven, argued his brother Andrei Kaisarov,⁴⁵ by recognizing that even misanthropy had at its origin the innate good heart of man. Finally, Alexander Turgenev insisted that the world is the way we look at it.⁴⁶ Our predisposition and will, he maintained, form our perception and experiences, Zhukovskii echoed these beliefs by saying that our happiness and unhappiness are exclusively within us. In typical rejection of eighteenth century optimism, he added that both are necessary if we want to experience happiness, for we know it only by contrast.⁴⁷ All in all, we have here the elements of the “romantic” view of man and of his relation to the outside world. This was not a novel discovery, to be sure— Pascal’s writings alone testify to the prior existence of the “romantic” outlook. But this insight had been pushed into the background in the eighteenth century, especially in Russia, where there had been much stress on the rationality and uniformity of human cognition and behavior in order to bridge the gap that still separated the Russians from their Western European models.

We find again an affirmation of the individual aspect of dignity and liberty in the curious encomium to Peter III pronounced by A. F. Voeikov.⁴⁸ In praising Peter III for freeing the nobles from compulsory state service, Voeikov gives an unexpected twist to the most fundamental belief held by his entire generation, that the educated individual must be free spiritually and allowed to do his duty voluntarily. Peter III is further praised for freeing millions of serfs from the darkness of Church rule (more precisely from the monasteries), by transferring them to the status of state peasants. Besides the obvious political implications (which, however, Voeikov’s subsequent life and career would belie), one may note the emphasis on the necessity for individual enlightenment and culture.

It was not only the desire to keep up with and imitate the most recent developments in Western Europe that accounted for the circle’s enthusiasm for German literature.⁴⁹ In the writers of the Sturm und Drang (later also in early English romanticism and in Shakespeare) they found expressions of personal liberation, of the ambivalent relationship to their elders, of the human emotions, basically simple, yet complicated in their manifestations, which corresponded best to their own needs and moods. Although they had been nurtured on sentimental literature—and they went on reading and even translating it—they were not carried away by it in the way their fathers had been. Their own preference went to the moralizing dramas and stories of writers like August von Kotzebue. In them they found nourishment for their sense of outrage at the sight of moral wrongs and of pity for the poor and downtrodden. Of course, the subject matter of some of these works reminded them directly of Russian social reality (and of their ambiguous position in it), for example Kotzebue’s Die Negersclaven, which Andrei Turgenev and A. S. Kaisarov set out to translate.⁵⁰ Werther, naturally, was a livre de chevet; the hero’s hopeless and unfulfilled love seemed to them an accurate image of genuine love, which existed only as a remote ideal. In the long run this highly charged emotional diet proved to be unsatisfying, and our young critics and littérateurs perceived the need for greater formal discipline and tougher intellectual fare. They turned again to the French classics, especially Racine, whom they rediscovered as a truly great master. Here again, however, it was the poet of individual experience and of the fatal consequences of emotion which appealed to them. ⁵¹

This is not the place to analyze in detail Andrei Turgenev’s literary criticism. But a few words should be said about two of his speeches to the society in which he dealt with the state and task of Russian literature.⁵² In essence he made two major points. He attacked the misuse of literature and he deplored the absence of a truly national literature in Russia. The work of Karamzin had become the main focus of literary debate in the early nineteenth century and, not surprisingly, Andrei Turgenev turned his argument to Karamzin’s role in Russian literature. He had, we know, liked and respected Karamzin mainly as editor of the children’s readings on which he had been raised, and also as a friend of his family. In his speech, he further acknowledged Karamzin’s contribution in introducing Western sentimentalism; this had helped to turn the Russian reader’s attention to the inner life, to the moral and spiritual qualities of the common people. Karamzin thus widened the horizon of Russian spiritual experience. But this positive contribution had to be balanced against one important negative consequence of Karamzin’s writings. Sentimentalism, especially in the hands of Karamzin’s many imitators, had resulted in shallowness of feeling, the drowning of genuine psychological and emotional traits beneath an accumulation of vapid sentimentality. Thus the moral and emotional value of literature had been debased. It was, of course, taken for granted by Andrei Turgenev and his friends that literature had a moral function, that it served to improve man, society, and culture. By lowering the demand he made on his readers, Karamzin had diverted Russian literature into the by-ways of mere entertainment for the semieducated. Quite consistent with his elevated view of literature, Turgenev leveled a similar criticism at Lomonosov. Besides his incontestable merits as the founder of modern Russian literature, this “Peter the Great” of the modern Russian language had also done much to debase literature by writing verse on command for every imperial anniversary, birthday, and court occasion. To laud great men of the past, and on occasion even the living ruler, was perfectly consonant with the high calling of the poet. But to lavish indiscriminate and extravagant praise on sundry members of the imperial house was to betray the high calling of literature. In the eyes of Andrei Turgenev and his generation, literature no longer had the didactic cultural function it had had for eighteenth century writers; a high moral and national role had been conferred on it.⁵³

His ideas on the exalted function of literature were related to Turgenev’s second point, namely that Russian literature was not as yet a truly national one. This was because it did not portray real Russian characters and heroes, but only foreigners with Russian names or costumes. Even those works that claimed to follow the Russian popular and epic tradition were nothing more than imitations of Western European prototypes with pseudo-national trappings. This criticism was quite valid, as a perusal of contemporary journals and popular literature will readily show. The demand for a truly national, folk-inspired literature was not merely a parroting of western romanticism and historicism; it had Russian roots going back at least to the second half of the eighteenth century. But the generation we are describing had been raised in the ideas of cosmopolitanism. Their early ideal had been not only to become Russians but to merge in a broader family of nations, become truly European, cosmopolitan citizens.⁵⁴ Of course, this had also been their fathers’ aim. Now, however, in the first decade of the nineteenth century, educated youth felt that cosmopolitanism was a mere construct of the mind, that it had no emotional, historical, or social reality.

To the young men of the 1800s, to be consciously Russian meant to acquire an identity of their own, different from that of their parents and related to their nation. They did not feel that they were complete individuals as long as they were floating in mid-air, outside the human context of Russia. This was their way of overcoming the sense of alienation from land and people that had been characteristic of the Russian educated nobility in the previous century. Their fathers and grandfathers had tried to overcome their alienation by identifying with the West, something outside themselves, and by attempting to create a new type of Russian man who was an European. But already Radishchev and Novikov had shown this way to be sterile, leading only to further oppression of the serfs and a drawing away from the people. It was natural, therefore, to return to a reassertion of the national element. It was less a feeling, or even a consciousness (to borrow Hans Rogger’s term), of nationalism than a genuine and fully conscious patriotism. It was love of the fatherland, otechestvo, in the direct physical sense of love of one’s land, as Karamzin had understood it; but it was also a means of self-fulfillment in the service of a wider community, of dedication to the welfare of one’s country and nation.⁵⁵ This was the kind of patriotism that found its fullest expression during the Napoleonic wars: “we are ourselves, we are Russians and we need not be ashamed of it, on the contrary!” This is what Alexander Turgenev noted in Goettingen upon hearing Schloezer’s praise of Russian history and comparing his own national consciousness to the bored indifference of his German fellow students.⁵⁶ This was how Andrei Turgenev felt when, on his trip to Vienna, he attended a play about Peter the Great and visited a Czech scholar (whose efforts to promote national literature he approved with quite a touch of patronizing superiority and condescension).⁵⁷ It was this very sentiment that made A. S. Kaisarov volunteer for military service and meet his early death in battle near Görlitz in May, 1813. Love of country and sacrifice for the common good was the legacy of the Turgenev circle which inspired the Decembrists as well.

It is not only the personalities and ideas of Andrei Turgenev and his friends that are of interest to us. Equally important is the historical memory of the circle and of its young hero and spiritus rector, for this memory provides a link to the first generation of the Russian intelligentsia, sensu stricto, and foreshadows some features of its subsequent “organization” in circles.

The Friendly Literary Society existed for only a few months; Andrei Turgenev died barely twenty-two years old. Other members of the circle not only survived but participated actively in the cultural life of the two capitals. A. F. Merzliakov moved to St. Petersburg and became a known littérateur and professor of rhetoric; he also joined another important literary-cultural society, Vol’noe obshchestvo liubitelei slovesnosti, nauk i khudozhestv, where the new “romantic” mood combined with enlightenment traditions. Many members of this society were later closely associated with the Decembrists.⁵⁸ A. F. Voeikov, too, became associated with this society. A. S. Kaisarov made a name for himself in scholarship and became professor of Russian literature and language at the University of Dorpat. During the campaign of 1812-13, he organized and directed the publication of proclamations and political pamphlets in Kutuzov’s headquarters, thus helping to give an ideological and intellectual dimension to the war against Napoleon. His personal contacts in the army and his brother Paisii’s (also a friend of Andrei Turgenev) command of partisan units point to connections with the future Decembrists.⁵⁹

Historically and literarily, the most influential member of the group turned out to be V. A. Zhukovskii. He was the mainstay of the prominent literary society Arzamas (where young Pushkin was a shining light). Even though he was close to the imperial court, Zhukovskii kept up a friendship with the Decembrists, as well as with all prominent personalities in mid-century intellectual and literary life for whom he often acted as petitioner. Finally, Alexander Turgenev (also a member of Arzamas) kept in close touch with all things cultural despite his own literary and scholarly sterility, official position, and lengthy absences from Russia. He was the colporteur of literary and philosophical news, a collector of books and documents pertaining to Russian history, and a petitioner for his fellow littérateurs. All these men kept alive the memory and interests of the Friendly Literary Society with which they had been associated in their youth.

But these are only tenuous personal links. More significant is the fact that the kruzhok (circle) became and remained the framework for the development and education of every generation of the intelligentsia and, later, revolutionary youth. Indeed, only the kruzhok provided the means to still the craving for the kind of vital “existential” knowledge not to be obtained either at home or in the universities. The young people thus turned to each other for guidance in their reading and discussion of the ideas discovered. The Friendly Literary Society and Turgenev’s circle of friends were prototypes whose example was followed throughout the nineteenth century.

The psychological and intellectual success of the kruzhok depended very much on its members’ finding a figure to follow and emulate, someone who would inspire and guide them, someone with whom to identify. Under the conditions prevailing in nineteenth century Russia, the older generation was excluded from this role; nor could the object of identification be men of recognized accomplishment. Indeed, the very fact of a successful career (or public reputation) meant acceptance of the Establishment and, by implication, betrayal of the hopes, ideals, and aspirations of their youth. The hero of the circle had to be someone whose promise had remained unfulfilled—be it because of early death or political persecution. It also had to be someone capable of inspiring enthusiasm and worship by his character and example. Finally, the hero had to be a “whole” (tsel’nyi) personality, that is, someone whose identity was perceived strongly enough to be the source of unquestionable moral authority. In other words, it had to be someone who was convinced of possessing the moral truth, yet kind enough to overlook the weaknesses of his friends and to help them obtain the same insight. Such was the light in which N. Stankevich was seen by the intelligentsia of the 1830s and 1840s, and he is often cited as the model hero of the kruzhok;⁶⁰ no doubt he best personified these traits. But he was far from being first or alone in this role in the history of the Russian intelligentsia. We may mention D. Venevitinov, N. Ogarev, and M. Butashevich-Petrashevskii. This is the role in which Andrei Turgenev was cast by his friends.

The “canonization” of Andrei Turgenev started immediately upon his unexpected death —here was a classical case of unfulfilled promise. His brother Alexander Turgenev and his close friends A. Kaisarov and V. Zhukovskii were most active in creating the “myth” of his life and role.⁶¹ Like everyone who holds the memory of someone dear, they overlooked the blemishes and remembered only the good. Andrei, as we have seen, was far from perfect and far from truly having found his identity at the time of his death. His friends turned his expectation of identification into actuality, and thus the promise of his existence became the myth of his life.

Another element in the process of mythologizing the inspirational leader of a kruzhok was the glorification of his role in introducing new ideas, styles, and philosophical interests. In this respect Andrei Turgenev’s contribution was quite characteristic and very significant. He played a major part in introducing the literature and ideas of the German Sturm und Drang and in paving the way for the powerful impact of Schiller on Russian intellectual history. He thus helped lay the ground for the reception of German philosophic idealism. It is not altogether accidental that the “heroes” of later kruzhki also were carriers of new philosophic and aesthetic revelations: Venevitinov propagandized Schelling’s Naturphilosophie, Stankevich, Hegel’s metaphysics; Ogarev, Christian socialism; Petrashevskii, Fourierism. It is important to repeat that mere literary and philosophical contributions—such as they were—were not enough to confer the aura of spiritual leadership in the kruzhok. What was needed was an emotional and moral commitment that could serve as inspiration. This is what Andrei Turgenev offered his friends, and what Odoevskii or Khomiakov or Herzen did not.

Were there no antecedents for this phenomenon of the kruzhok hero? What about the “circle” of Radishchev and his fellow students in Leipzig and the “myth” about their friend Fedor Ushakov? In reading Radishchev’s life of Ushakov (characteristically called zhitie, i.e., life of a saint), we are struck first of all by the fact that Ushakov was actually the senior, energetic, practical leader of a group whose members had come together accidentally, at imperial command, and who found themselves disoriented in a foreign environment, at the mercy of their supervisor. In the second place, Radishchev and his friends seem to have had no problem about identification. They clearly belonged to Russian society, they had a concrete task to perform, and their future existence was both clearly mapped out and accepted by them. Radishchev’s subsequent writing of the Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow was occasioned by a crise de conscience, not a crisis of identity. I would suggest that Radishchev’s generation had no more than the universal adolescent problem of identity; consequently the societies and associations that they founded had quite a different character and function from those of the early 1800s.

The features we have noted in Turgenev’s circle stemmed from a feeling of disorientation, largely motivated by a sense of uselessness, futility, and alienation from a social and political world that was spiritually and morally unacceptable, and by the strong urge to discover new truths for themselves. The fateful thing was that the basic condition which engendered this feeling among Russia’s youth did not change materially to the end of the nineteenth century, and even to the eve of the 1917 Revolution.⁶² That is why the kruzhok-with its blend of intellectual and psychological traits, emotional needs, and moral demands—remained the institutional framework for the intellectual, moral, and ideological development of every generation of the Russian intelligentsia. For similar reasons, the kruzhok also played a seminal role in the history of the revolutionary movement. It is not surprising that the revolutionary study and propaganda circles owed many of their basic traits to the experience and tradition which had originated in the circle of Andrei I. Turgenev.

Boris Nicolaevsky, whose memory we honor in the present volume, was in many ways—albeit under the special conditions of his time and life—a representative of this tradition, a tradition which has contributed so much to the glories, as well as the sorrows, of modern Russia’s cultural and political history.

____________

The research for this article was carried out under the auspices of the USSR Academy of Sciences-American Council of Learned Societies scholarly exchange program, and with the additional support of the American Philosophical Society. I wish to thank the staff and officers of these organizations, as well as the librarians of the Institute for the History of Russian Literature (Pushkinskii Dom), for their kind and efficient help. Because of the delay in publication, a somewhat different version of this study has appeared in French in Cahiers du Monde russe et soviétique, 8, No. 4 (1967), pp. 560-86.