V. G. Belinskii, excerpt from Letter To Gogol

The Ukrainian-born writer Nikolai Gogol became Russia's most famous author in the 1830s. Vissarion Belinskii, the most influential literary critic of that era, praised Gogol's prose extravagantly. Belinskii interpreted such darkly satirical works as The Inspector General and Dead Souls as exposés of Russia's social and political ills and thus as blows struck for liberal reform. However Gogol's personal views were actually quite conservative. He made them plain in a small book called Selected Excerpts From Correspondence With Friends, in which he praised autocracy and orthodoxy and instructed serfholders how to run their estates. Though Belinskii's published review of Selected Excerpts was unfavorable, it pulled its punches thanks to the pressure of censorship. Nonetheless Gogol was moved to complain. Belinskii then wrote this scathing personal letter in reply. It was circulated in hundreds of manuscript copies and is one of the fundamental texts of nineteenth-century Russian radicalism. It could be published in Russia only in 1906.

1. What is Belinskii's main criticism of Gogol?

2. How does Belinskii view the role of Orthodoxy in Russia?

3. What does Belinskii say Russia needs instead of Orthodox mysticism, asceticism, and/or pietism?

4. What does he suggest Gogol do by way of atonement for writing Selected Excerpts?

...You [have] failed to realize that Russia sees her salvation not in mysticism or asceticism or pietism, but in the successes of civilization, enlightenment, and humanity. What she needs is not sermons (she has heard enough of them!) or prayers (she has repeated them too often!), but the awakening in the people of a sense of their human dignity lost for so many centuries amid dirt and refuse. She needs rights and laws conforming not to the preaching of the church but to common sense and justice, and their strictest possible observance. Instead she presents the dire spectacle of a country where men traffic in men, without even having the excuse -- so insidiously exploited -- of the American plantation owners who claim that the Negro is not a man; a country where people call themselves not by names but by nicknames such as Vanka, Vaska, Steshka, Palashka; a country where there are not only no guarantees for individuality, honor and property, but even no police order, and where there is nothing but vast corporations of official thieves and robbers of various descriptions. The most vital national problems in Russia today are the abolition of serfdom and corporal punishment, and the strictest possible observance of at least those laws that already exist. This is even realized by the government itself (which is well aware of how the landowners treat their peasants and how many of the former are annually done away with by the latter), as is proved by its timid and abortive half-measures for the relief of [our] "white Negroes" and the comical replacement of the single-lash knout by a cat-o-three tails.

Such are the problems that prey on the mind of Russia in her apathetic slumber! And at such a time a great writer, whose astonishingly artistic and deeply truthful works have so powerfully contributed toward Russia's awareness of herself, enabling her as they did to take a look at herself as though in a mirror—publishes a book in which he teaches the barbarian landowner to make still greater profits out of the peasants and to abuse them still more in the name of Christ and Church.... And would you expect me not to become indignant?... Why, if you had made an attempt on my life I could not have hated you more than I do for these disgraceful lines.... And after this, you expect people to believe the sincerity of your book's intent! No! Had you really been inspired by the truth of Christ and not by the teaching of the devil you would certainly have written something entirely different in your new book. You would have told the landowner that since his peasants are his brethren in Christ, and since a brother cannot be a slave to his brother, he should either give them their freedom or, at least, allow them to enjoy the fruits of their own labor to their greatest possible benefit, realizing, as he does, in the depths of his own conscience, the false relationship in which he stands toward them.

...Proponent of the knout, apostle of ignorance, champion of obscurantism and Stygian darkness, panegyrist of Tartar morals -- what are you about! Look beneath your feet -- you are standing on the brink of an abyss!... That you base such teaching on the Orthodox Church I can understand. It has always served as the prop of the knout and the servant of despotism; but why have you mixed Christ up in it? What have you found in common between Him and any church, least of all the Orthodox Church? He was the first to bring to people the teaching of freedom, equality, and brotherhood and to set the seal of truth to that teaching by martyrdom. And this teaching was men's salvation only until it became organized in the Church and took the principle of Orthodoxy for its foundation. The Church, on the other hand, was a hierarchy, consequently a champion of inequality, a flatterer of authority, an enemy and persecutor of brotherhood among men -- and so it has remained to this day. But the meaning of Christ's message has been revealed by the philosophical movement of the preceding century. And that is why a man like Voltaire who stamped out the fires of fanaticism and ignorance in Europe by ridicule, is, of course, more the son of Christ, flesh of his flesh and bone of his bone, than all your priests, bishops, metropolitans, and patriarchs -- Eastern or Western. Do you really mean to say you do not know that! Now it is not even news to a schoolboy.

Hence, can it be that you, the author of The Inspector General and Dead Souls, have in all sincerity, from the bottom of your heart, sung a hymn to the nefarious Russian clergy whom you rank immeasurably higher than the Catholic clergy? Let us assume that you do not know that the latter had once been something, while the former had never been anything but a servant and slave of the secular powers. Do you really mean to say you do not know that our clergy is held in universal contempt by Russian society and the Russian people? About whom do the Russian people tell dirty stories? The priest, the priest's wife, the priest's daughter, and the priest's farm hand. Does not the priest in Russia represent the embodiment of gluttony, avarice, servility, and shamelessness for all Russians? Do you mean to say that you do not know all this? Strange! According to you the Russian people is the most religious in the world. That is a lie! Whereas the bases of religiousness are pietism, reverence, fear of God, the Russian man utters the name of the Lord while scratching himself somewhere. He says of the icon: If it works, pray to it; if it doesn't, it's good for covering pots.

Take a closer look and you will see that [Russians are] by nature a profoundly atheistic people. [We] still retain a good deal of superstition, but not a trace of religiousness. Superstition passes with the advances of civilization, but religiousness often keeps company with them too. We have a living example of this in France, where even today there are many sincere Catholics among enlightened and educated men, and where many people who have rejected Christianity still cling stubbornly to some sort of god. The Russian nation is different. Mystic exaltation is not in its nature; it has too much common sense, a too lucid and positive mind, and therein, perhaps, lies the vastness of its historic destinies in the future. Religiousness has not even taken root among the clergy in it, since a few isolated and exceptional personalities distinguished for such cold ascetic contemplation prove nothing. But the majority of our clergy has always been distinguished for its fat bellies, scholastic pedantry, and savage ignorance. It is a shame to accuse it of religious intolerance and fanaticism. Instead it could be praised for exemplary indifference in matters of faith. Religiosity among us appeared only in the schismatic sects, who formed such a contrast in spirit to the mass of the people and who were numerically so insignificant in comparison with it.

...As far as I can see, you do not properly understand the Russian public. Its character is determined by the condition of Russian society in which fresh forces are seething and struggling for expression; but weighed down by heavy oppression, and finding no outlet, they induce merely dejection, weariness, and apathy. Only literature, despite the Tartar censorship, shows signs of life and progressive movement. That is why the title of writer is held in such esteem among us. That is why literary success is easy among us even for a writer of little talent. The titles of poet and writer have long since eclipsed the tinsel of epaulets and gaudy uniforms. And that especially explains why every so-called liberal tendency, however poor in talent, is rewarded by universal notice, and why the popularity of great talents that sincerely or insincerely give themselves to the service of orthodoxy, autocracy, and nationality declines so quickly. A striking example is Pushkin, who had merely to write two or three verses in a loyal strain and don the kammeriunker's [courtier's] livery to forfeit popular affection immediately! You are greatly mistaken if you believe in all earnest that your book has come to grief not because of its bad trend, but because of the harsh truths alleged to have been expressed by you about all and sundry. Maybe you could think that of the writing fraternity, but how then do you account for the public? Did you tell it less bitter domestic truths less harshly and with less truth and talent in The Inspector General and Dead Souls? Indeed, the old school worked itself up to a furious pitch of anger against you, but The Inspector General and Dead Souls were not affected by it, whereas your latest book has been an utter and disgraceful failure. Here the public is right, for it looks upon Russian writers as its only leaders, defenders, and saviors against Russian autocracy, orthodoxy, and nationality. Therefore, while always prepared to forgive a writer a bad book, it will never forgive him a pernicious book. This shows how much fresh and healthy intuition, albeit still in embryo, is latent in our society. Likewise, this proves that our society has a future. If you love Russia, rejoice with me at the failure of your book!

..Were I to give free rein to my feelings, this letter would probably grow into a voluminous notebook. I never thought of writing you on this subject, though I longed to do so and though you gave all and sundry printed permission to write you without ceremony with an eye to the truth alone. Were I in Russia I would not be able to do it, for the local “Shpekins” open other people's letters not merely for their own pleasure but as a matter of official duty, for the sake of informing. This summer incipient tuberculosis has driven me abroad. [The poet] Nekrasov has forwarded me your letter to Salzbrunn, which I am leaving today with Annenkov for Paris via Frankfurt-on-Main. The unexpected receipt of your letter has enabled me to unburden my soul of what has accumulated there against you on account of your book. I cannot express myself by halves, I cannot prevaricate; it is not in my nature. Let you or time itself prove to me that I am mistaken in my conclusions. I shall be the first to rejoice in it, but I shall not repent what I have told you. This is not a question of your or my personality. It concerns a matter that is of greater importance than myself or even you. It is a matter that concerns the truth, Russian society, and Russia.... This is my last concluding word. If you have had the misfortune of disowning with proud humility your truly great works, you should now disown with sincere humility your last book, and atone for the dire sin of its publication by new creations that would be reminiscent of your old ones.

Salzbrunn [Austria], July 15, 1847

Original Translation and Annotations by Daniel Field. Syntax simplifications and other emendations Jon Bone.