MARGINAL COMMENT
By HAROLD NICOLSON
THE discussions which have taken place at the Security Council of the United Nations as a result of the appeals made.by, or
on behalf of, Persia, Greece, Indonesia, Syria arid the Lebanon have not unnaturally caused much bewilderment to the peoples of this and other countries. The policy and methods of the Russian Government appear both so unaccountable and so alarming that we are tempted to attribute to the U.S.S.R. motives and purposes which are often fantastic and sometimes demonstrably incorrect. There are those who believe that the Soviet Government, realising that many of the smaller Powers are critical of Russian methods of expansion and infiltration, desired to demonstrate at the very out- set that the United Nations was not a world Parliament legislating by majority votes, but a system depending for its very life upon the assent of the strong. There are those who seek to explain the challenging attitude adopted by the Soviet Delegation by contend- ing that the Kremlin has inherited the imperialistic ambitions of Tsarist days and is now embarking upon a policy'of Near Eastern, Middle Eastern and Far Eastern conquest. There are those who take it for granted that the new course which Moscow now appears to be following represents a reversion to Trotzkyism and is inspired by the old Bolshevik theory of world revolution. And there are those, again, who argue that Russia today is guided only by motives of strategic defence, that the determinist conception of history obliges her to regard as inevitable a clash between the capitalist and the communist systems, and that she is striving, therefore, while still mobilised and powerful, to secure those defensive areas which will enable her to resist, and perhaps even to forestall, the impending attack. It is possible that many Russians are inspired by one or other of these ideas, and that some Russians have devised for them- selves a curious amalgam of all four. Yet none of these theories provides a dependable explanation, since Russian policy, like British policy, is determined, not so much by definable motives, purposes or intentions, as by undefinable attitudes.
Most students of history would agree that there does exist such a thing as "national character," by which is meant a prevailing temperament or climate of the mind. The fact that the Russian attitude towards life has, Lnder the Soviet system, been given an extremely doctrinal shape may blind us to the fact that the Marxist dialectic is something alien and, as it were, artificial. Beneath the surface of this most emphatic, reiterant and seemingly logical formula there flows the tide of the Slav character, a tide which is fed by many various and often hidden springs and streams. Climate, religion, race, history and tradition have all made their contribution, and if we try to explain the Russian attitude solely in terms of their recent or present interpretations of the gospels of Marx and Lenin, we may reach conclusions which are not only unsympathetic, but actually misleading. I have been reading this week an illuminating little volume entitled La Russie face a l'Occident, which was published in 1945 by the Editions La Concorde at Lausanne. It represents a series of articles written by Dostoievsky between 1861 and 1877, and published in the Vremya, the Grajdanine and the Journal d'un Ecrivain ; these articles have been selected and well translated by Monsieur Andre Chedel. They were written at a time when edu- cated opinion in Russia was divided between two schools. On the one hand there were the "Westerners," who believed that the only hope for Russia was for her to Europeanise herself by absorbing the liberal and scientific teachings of the western world. On the other hand, there were the " Panslavs," who believed that the only hope for Europe was to allow herself to be permeated by the great white soul of Russia. Dostoievsky himself belonged to the latter school. His ideas, in that they illumine our present darkness, are well worthy
of examination. * * * Dostoievsky was a sentimental nationalist. He believed that Russian culture was not only different from, but superior to, Euro- pean culture. He urged his compatriots to dismiss from their hearts all feelings of inferiority, to regard the Russian idea as some new revelation, and to remain aloof from all the contests and com- plexities in which " decadent " Europe had become involved. Why were the Russian people so different from the peoples of the west?
They had a thirst for suffering, such as the timid, complacent Euro- pean could not imitate or understand: they did not attach to human life that immense importance attributed to it by the western democracies, and this in itself gave to them a more elevated spiritual tone. From their history and their experience they had derived a width of view for which no parallel could be found, either in ancient or in modern times. The liberal democracies of the West had achieved no more than a weak and often selfish individualism ; to the Russians alone it had been given to develop "a high synthetic faculty, a gift for conciliating everything, a gift of being universally human." They had acquired this faculty by the unrelenting, if un- conscious, perseverance with which they surrendered themselves to ideas and by the "subtle and tenacious" resistance with which they opposed anything which might contradict those ideas. Every Russian was in his heart an extremist ; he hated compromise, he loathed the middle way, it was with anguish and delight that he was prepared to cast himself into the abyss. It was for this reason that the Russian mentality was alien to the compromises and half- tones of European liberalism : the Russian was a revolutionary from personal necessity, and under the pressure of some impulse "the nature of which we do not know."
* * * To Dostoievsky, Holy Russia was invincible and eternal ; the day would come when she would be the only colossus in Europe. "And who among you," he wrote in 1861, "who among you, gentlemen of Europe, realises that Russia may well be waiting until you have finished? ... That one day she may assume some new and immense task, hitherto unknown to history, by beginning at the point where you left off and by forcing all of you to follow in her wake?" Inevitably, such a belief induced in Dostoievsky moods of self- righteousness (as when he claims that Russia alone possesses "the gift of sublimity ") and moods of actual arrogance. "If we wish it," he wrote in 1877, "there will be no one who can make us do what we do not wish to do ; there will not exist in all the world a Power equal to us." But underneath it all is a deep and wholly sincere conviction of Russia's mission. She alone regards all other nations as her natural brothers ; she alone has acquired the true conception of universal humanity. From Russia will come "a new element, a new force, to penetrate the world . . . something which implies the end of all European history such as we have known it until today." Russia, protected by her vast territory, fortified by the patience of her people, inspired by her own conception of sublimity, could afford to wait until the West exhausted itself. And then would come the day when "humanity, having achieved the pacific union of all peoples, having become a single unity, would, like some magnificent tree, gather the nations of the world under the shadow of her branches." As an element in this sublime mission, as a symbol of this instinct for universalism and brotherly affection, it was a "foregone conclusion" that Russia must take Constantinople from the Turks. This, to Dostoievsky, would bear no relation at all to western imperialism ; on the contrary, it would be "the authentic installation of the Truth of Christ. . . the last word of Orthodoxy."
* * * * It may well be that the determinism and logic of Karl Marx have provided modern Russia with the formula which Dostoievsky felt but could not find. But the mysticism which inspired Dostoievsky and the Panslavs is not in essence different from that which illumines today the Council of the Kremlin. Underneath the tangle of dogma there flows the Russian tide, unseen, impenetrable, but not maleficent. The faith in Russia's mission which throbs through Dostoievsky's political writings is humane and true ; a little imagination enables us to recognise that faith as an honourable component of Russian policy today; if we ignore or misinterpret that component we are lacking in sympathy.
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