August 2, 1917 
LAND & WATER 
43 
The Russian Revolution 
Its Religious Aspect 
By Sir Paul VinagradoflF 
THE political an J military aspects of the Russian 
Revolution have been, for obvious reasons, very 
much to the fore. The British public has heard 
a good deal about the Provisional Government 
and Soldiers and Workmen's delegates, about Maximalists 
and Minimahsts, and other important matters. And 
undoubtedly, this influx of political news corresponds to the 
prevailing interests of the moment among Russians them- 
selves. At the same time, it must not be forgotten ' ' that man 
does not live on bread alone, but also on the word of God." 
There is a stream of spiritual life running on, as it were, in 
the subconscious existence of society. The riddle of the world 
is not likely to be solved by the German onslaught ; problems 
of morals and rehgion still present themselves to the human 
m'.nd amidst the distracting confusion of national and 
social struggles. In Russia particularly there is a wide 
scope for ethical and religious movements. It is one 
of the most characteristic national traits that, in spite of 
all personal sins and failings, there is a deep-rooted conscious- 
ness of moral responsibility among the uneducated as well 
as among educated people in Russia. This practical idealism, 
if one may use the expression, does not allow any one to escape 
from the troublesome inquiry into the aims and reasons of 
human existence. Some cling to the mystic traditions of 
the Church, others seek satisfaction in social work, others, 
again, devote their lives to a struggle against injustice and 
oppression. Even the worst, those who give way to the 
temptations of cupidity or sensuality, often display sudden 
revulsions of feeling. Tolstoy's Nehludoff is as typical 
a representative of Russian psychology as Dostojevsky's 
Raskolnikoff. 
We may be sure that before long Russian society will turn 
with intense interest to the problems of life's inward signifi- 
cance. The religious impulses have never been entirely thrown 
into the background in the thoughts of the people. A pro- 
found fermentation has got hold of the immense masses in 
the domain of religion, and the process is likely to be the 
more momentous because the established Church is unable 
to satisfy the spiritual cravings of the nation. Now that the 
links between the State and the Orthodox confession have 
been broken, the conditions of religious life have to be resettled 
on a new basis, and no one can predict what shape this re- 
settlement is likely to take. The other day, one of the liberal 
Bishops, Andrew of Ufa, made an appeal to the Old Ritualists 
for a reunion of the Synodal Church with the Old Believers, 
but the latter refused to entertain such an appeal, because, 
as they said, they had nothing to seek or to change : they 
had kept up their freedom of creed and ecclesiastical inde- 
pendence tnrough centuries of persecution. This proud 
reply makes it necessary for the established Church to achieve 
its own salvation, and this can lurdly be done without a 
great reformatory movement. Of the various heterodox 
sects, rationalistic like the Stundists, or mystical hke the 
Chlysti (Christs), it is needless to speak : they were kept 
down in old days by the power of the secular arm ; pubUc 
prosecutors and tribunals had to apply to them rules of criminal 
legislation. They are sure to prosper and to spread under 
the regime of Uberty. 
Intellectualism and Mysticism 
Apart from that, there is one fundamental difficulty to be 
overcome by modern Russia, a difficulty which has faced 
Russian intellectuals from the very time when Western civilisa- 
tion was introduced into Muscovy by Czar Peter. How are 
Western methods of science and civic life to be reconciled 
with a traditional folk-lore which has grown in the atmosphere 
of Old Russia ? When the eighteenth century with its ration- 
aUstic conceptions of philosophical despotism had passed 
away, the leaders of Russian thought became conscious 
of the necessity of arriving at some synthesis of discordant 
elements. Hence the struggle between Slavophiles and 
Westerners, a struggle which is still going on in a sense, 
in spite of the fact that the original formulse of the con- 
tending parties have been worn out and cast aside. 
A most important aspect of that struggle was concerned 
with the different attitudes of the two groups in regard to 
religion. The Westerners were to a great extent carried 
away by the agnostic tendencies of European civilisation ; 
they sided with the materialists, positivists, sceptics, pessimists. 
The Slavophiles reproached their opponents with neglect 
of the one thing that matters — of faith in a wise and just 
God, and they saw in this fundamental error the natural 
punishment for national apostasy. Here is a passage from 
a letter written by a prominent Slavophile, Y. Samarin, to 
a great leader of Westerners, A. Herzen. 
" If there i.s no spiritual freedom in the sense of a free deter- 
mination, there can be no talk of civil or of political liberty 
■ — if man is not able to emancipate himself from the yoke 
of miterial necessity — every form of external constraint, 
every kind of despotism, every triumph of the strong over 
the weak may be justified." 
From a scientific point of view the argument is not cogent : 
the parties were talking of different things. Herzen was 
trying to explain consciousness, and to reduce it to its natural 
causes, while Samarin was connecting consciousness with 
mgral responsibility. One was considering causes, the other 
considering aims. But this difference of point of view is 
certainly significant. 
Dostoievsky's Gospel 
Dostojevsky in the Brothers Karamasoff takes up a 
similar thread. He makes his great inquirer, John 
Karamasoff, characterise in the following way the interde- 
pendence of religious faith and of morality. " There exists 
nothing in the world to make men love their neighbours; 
if there has been love on earth, it is not the result of a law 
of nature, but of a belief in immortality. Destroy in man the 
belief in his immortal existence and not only love, but vitality 
itself, the striving to continue the world's life, will be dried 
up. For every individual who does not believe in God and 
in future life, moral law is bound to be converted into the 
opposite of the former, religious law. Selfishness and wicked- 
ness will not only be permissible to man, but actually become 
the necessary, reasonable and noblest outcome of his situation." 
The stumbling block for all such attempts lies in the fact 
that it is easier to feel the sting of spiritual hunger than to 
satisfy it nowadays. In the eighties Tchekhov came forward 
with his tales of disappointment and demoralisation. His 
neurasthenic personages seem, at first sight, to be distracted 
by the numberless minutiae of every-day existence, carried 
away by contemptible appetites, contemptible indolence, 
contemptible dreams. But there is more than lack of 
character and of purpose in the aimless movements of this 
unhappy throng. 
At the back of all their weaknesses looms the despair of 
men who have outgrow.i the guidance of a traditional ideal 
but have not the strength to discover a new guiding star 
and to devote their lives to it. 
In the Didl Story, a famous professor, a prominent scientist, 
who has led a successful and useful life, and has been in com- 
munion with many generations of pupils, finds himself powerless 
and speechless in front of the simple problems of his daughter's 
and his adoptive daughter's lives. He notes in his diary, in 
view of approaching death : " there was no ruling idea in all 
my work," and without such a ruling idea, all the pieces of 
painfully collected knowledge are fragments lacking a central 
shaft. Such confessions of disillusionment may have been 
suggested by personal failures, but their bearing is in truth 
much deeper. 
I am not sure that a lurking horror of the same kind has 
not overshadowed the mind of many a Western thinker — it 
has certainly been felt by Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. 
Well regulated, successfully active Western life affords greater 
possibilities for diverting human attention : the Western middle 
class is clinging to every day business, sport, light hterature, 
journalism politics . . . In the East the problem remains 
the same, but it takes a more powerful hold on men's 
imaginations. What is the meaning of this dance of genera- 
tions ? Can nature, or history, or divinity answer the query ? 
■The highly-strung Russian intellectual often loses his head 
over it. As Tchekhov's " Ivanov " expresses it : it is a 
curse to be a Hamlet on a small scale. With Tolstoy the 
quest for a spiritual meaning and for a life in harmony with 
it, assumed the shape of a reaction against science, art, 
artificial culture of all kinds. To quote only one among his 
many invectives, let me remind my readers of the following 
passage : " Science and art in our days are not the reasonable 
activity of mankind as a whole, dedicating its best strength 
to the service of science and art, but the activity of a small 
circle of men who have made a monojjoly of this occupation : 
Ccill themselves scientists and artists, and have perverted 
the meaning of science and art and are merely using them 
