Oken's popularity as a professor and author of scientific 

 and popular books, and also as the publisher of the scientific- 

 philosophical journal ISIS, was very great. 



The passion for Schelling's work, especially his Natur- 

 philosophie, also attracted Russians travelling to study in 

 the German universities, or those sent to Germany "for 

 advancement" after their completion of high school. The 

 young followers of idealistic German philosophy and its 

 abstract presentations on the good and the beautiful, on 

 the unity of all the phenomena of the world, soul, body, God 

 and nature, were met on their return by a reality very 

 different from "the harmony" which Schelling taught. His 

 ideas necessarily clash with the most gloomy ideological and 

 political reactions of the landlord government guided by 

 Golitsyn, Magnitskii, Runich and others, "in whose dirty 

 hands," according to Pushkin, "the unfortunate sciences 

 were flung." 10 A section of Russian society resisted this 

 reaction, the section from which the great Pleiadic Decembrists 

 came. Although the latter grew up on the philosophical and 

 social opinions of A. N. Radishchev and the ideas of the 

 French Revolution and could not oppose Schelling's followers 

 with a completed system, the majority retained deistic and 

 even materialistic (atheistic) ideas. It is sufficient to 

 remember the anti-religious poems of Pushkin, the closest to 

 the Decembrists, and his feelings about Radishchev' s atheism. 

 Free-thinking was particularly spread among the members of the 

 more radical Southern Secret Society, where the most decisive 

 judgments in this regard were stated by A. P. Baryatinskii. 

 (40) 



The followers of German philosophy in Russia did not 

 represent an entirely homogenous group. Among them were 

 people who later actually participated in the December revolt, 

 such as V. K. Kyukhel 'beker, and people of liberal opinions 

 such as D. V. Venevitinov. However, the majority of them 

 voluntarily or involuntarily played a reactionary role, and 

 these latter displayed an inclination to mysticism 

 (V. F. Odoevskii, P. Ya. Chaadoev) , or to political reaction 

 (I. V. Kireevskii, S. P. Shevyrev, M. P. Pogodin, and others). 



10. "Second Message to the Censor." 

 148 



