In his 1938 work, Out of Revolution, Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy spends nearly 100 pages on Russia, Marx, Lenin, and the Russian Revolution. Tucked in between his discussion of Marxism and his introduction of Lenin, he diverges into a brief aside about the importance of Fyodor Dostoevski (1821-1881) and Leo Tolstoi (1828-1910.) For your Saturday morning reading pleasure, here’s his summary:
“Tolstoi–not exiled to Siberia like Dostoevski, but living as a voluntary hermit in the social prison of his environment, Tolstoi, the wizard of Yasnaya Polyana–became the centre of enlightenment for the Eastern nations. His letters, published by Paul Biriukov, are full of political counsel for the emancipation of Asia. The importance of the Russian revolution for Asia is well illustrated by Tolstoi’s influence.
Leo Tolstoi
He too offers no solution of the social question. Less orthodox than Dostoevski, he even taunts the church which he detests. The Sermon on the Mount, the sermon to the masses, is all he keeps of the Christian tradition, dropping as he does all that Jesus taught in the inner circle of the disciples. Tolstoi, who is a saint in Russia even today, [written in 1938, M.H.], prepared the way for the Revolution by his song of the majesty of the people. Dostoevski revealed the individual. Tolstoi’s theme is the majesty of the people, not the nation in the Western sense of the word. The people’s face is like that of the simple Moujik. As long as it is not corrupted by consciousness, as long as it does not ask for a constitution, the people in its pre-Adamitic stage that lies before all political volition opens like a door so that the higher power may enter and take possession of the soul.
To be sure, Tolstoi has no solutions to offer. But by his assertion he destroys everything superimposed upon his genuine layer of “the people.” Tolstoi and Dostoevski together composed a new creed. One gave to it his doctrine of the weak and trembling individual, the other enriched it by his faith in the majesty of the people, which reacts like the ocean, the cornfield, the forest, because it is patient, passive, obedient.
Fyodor Dostoevski
The Revolution itself practically abolished literature. The statistician superceded the novelist. The poet was a man, “in the air,” as the term is. One of the better novels of post-war Russia is called Concrete. Concrete took the place of the air, economy the place of poetry.”<>
