Conclusion

In conclusion I would like to bring together the strands of dis-

cussion in the preceding chapters and point out the important
underlying tendencies, concentrating on the areas of investi-
gation suggested in the Introduction.
The background to nineteenth-century Russia contrasts with
that of the more advanced, industrialised countries of Western
Europe, in that most major writers came from the aristocracy or
higher gentry. The century saw a rapid decline in the impor-
tance of the aristocracy (particularly after 1861), but their hold
on the culture of the period remained strong, even in the period
we have covered. One contributory cause of aristocratic domin-
ance was the relative weakness of the class which in the West
had become the chief patrons and consumers of art, the bour-
geoisie. Only in the last two decades of the century did this
class become socially and politically important in Russia, and
only then did it begin to play a prominent part in the arts. In
turn, most artists of the period were opposed to or uninterested
in bourgeois culture, and it finds little reflection in the litera-
ture of the period, with the exception of the work of Chekhov.
And so, all the authors who had come to prominence by the
middle of the century, such as Dostoevsky, Turgenev and Tol-
stoy, belonged to the landowning class, even if as is the case of
Dostoevsky, some were no longer of the highest rank. After
1861, it is true, the artistocracy's hold on literature declined,
and Chekhov's lowly origins did not prevent him from emerging
as a major writer. Gorky is an even more striking instance. In
the second half of the century, then, the raznochintsy became
the dominant 'class' of the intelligentsia and of writers. Even so,
it should be noted that the 'Silver Age' of Russian literature of
the last two decades still had a very marked aristocratic, anti-
bourgeois character, in ideology even if not in actual social
origins.
Closely connected with this social background is the edu-

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© Joe Andrew 1982
 Conclusion 195

cation of the writers we have considered. The typical pattern of

the first half of the century - expensive private tutors, followed
by a period at an exclusive school - was continued in the
careers of Turgenev and Tolstoy. Those whose families could
not afford such expense suffered intellectually in one way or
another. Dostoevsky and Chekhov, whose families were much
poorer than those of the higher nobility, both had poor school-
ing. Even the wealthier writers, however, were somewhat de-
prived educationally, which is not surprising given the level of
pedagogy in the period. In every case, their own reading and
contact with their intellectual peers served as the most fruitful
source of ideas. Even those who attended universities, such as
Turgenev and Tolstoy, derived little from the formal education
offered there: Tolstoy even saw it as an obstacle to true edu-
cation. Chekhov is the significant exception, but even then, he
regarded his studies at Moscow University from a practical,
scientific point of view.
However, if they suffered from the inadequacies of the
official educational system, they gained enormously in terms of
the wider influences on them: the ideas which inspired them in
their formative period tended, perforce, to be 'unofficial' and
very often foreign. By one of the strange paradoxes of the nine-
teenth century in Russia, the very repression within official
channels of learning bred precisely what the authorities tried to
suppress - alternative ideas and ways of looking at the world.
And so we find in the writers we have covered that in turning
elsewhere for intellectual sustenance, they encountered ideas
which were generally hostile to the status quo. The tendency
was especially important in the 1830s and 1840s. With philos-
ophy severely censored in official academic institutions the
intellectuals of the period established their own 'universities',
the kruzhki, where German Romantic thinkers, in particular
Schiller, Schelling and Hegel, were subjected to intense study
and examination, to be followed by the even more 'dangerous'
French Utopian Socialists. Turgenev and Dostoevsky (as well as
many others, such as Herzen, Ogarev and Bakunin) developed
their hostility to the reactionary regime in these underground
academies. Tolstoy, who was a little younger, took no part in
these particular adventures. But in the same way he developed
many of his anarchistic ideas from his own reading, again of
foreign masters, in this case Montesquieu and especially Rous-