Dostoyevsky’s Critique of the West: The Quest for the Earthly Paradise

DOSTOYEVSKY’S CRITIQUE

OF THE WEST

THE QUEST FOR THE EARTHLY

PARADISE

BRUCE K. WARD

While most commentators reflect on the spiritual side of Dostoyevsky’s writings, not as much attention has been given to his concern with the crisis of the modern West. His allusions to almost every aspect of Western civilization—including the political, economic, and social dimensions—are present in his literary works and abound in his secondary writings.

This book points the way to a proper understanding of the apparent contradiction between Dostoyevsky’s concern with the highest reaches of human spirituality and at the same time with the most detailed developments in domestic and international politics. It posits that the apparent polarization of religious thought and political analysis of the West are held together for Dostoyevsky in his search for the best human order. Ward demonstrates not only that Dostoyevsky’s observations about the West constitute a coherent critique intimately related to the deepest aspects of his thought, but also that these can be rendered more systematic and explicit and thus more accessible to those who are interested.

What results is an incisive and intriguing account of both the religious and the political thought of Dostoyevsky. It also fulfills the purpose of helping to clarify what Dostoyevsky can teach us about the modern situation of the Western world and about the problem of human order in general, for, as the author states, it was Dostoyevsky’s great virtue as a thinker always to see the pressing issues of his particular time and place in the light of the ‘everlasting’ problems.

Bruce K. Ward teaches in the Department of Religious Studies at Thorneloe College of Laurentian University, Sudbury, Ontario.

DOSTOYEVSKY’S

CRITIQUE

OF THE WEST

The Quest for the

Earthly Paradise

Bruce K. Ward

Wilfrid Laurier University Press

Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data

Ward, Bruce Kinsey.

         Dostoyevsky’s critique of the West

Bibliography: p.

Includes index.

ISBN 0-88920-190-0

1. Dostoyevsky, Fyodor, 1821-1881 - Criticism

and interpretation. I. Title.

PG3328.W37 1986              891.73’3             C86-094610-X

Copyright © 1986

WILFRID LAURIER UNIVERSITY PRESS

Waterloo, Ontario, Canada N2L 3C5

86 87 88 89 4 3 2 1

Cover design by David Antscherl

Printed in Canada

No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system, translated or reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, microfiche, or any other means, without written permission from the publisher.

for

Norma

Il ne nous reste plus d’ailleurs qu’à renaître ou à mourir.

—Albert Camus, L’Homme révolté

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

NOTES ON TRANSLATION, TRANSLITERATION, AND REFERENCES

INTRODUCTION

ONE RUSSIAN WESTERNISM: ITS HISTORICAL

DEVELOPMENT

The Early History of Russian Westernism

Dostoyevsky and the Russian Westernism of the

1830s and 1840s

Russian Romanticism

The Influence of Furious Vissarion

TWO THE THEORY AND PRACTICE OF THE

GREAT IDEA OF ORDER

Uprootedness and Human Order

The Great Idea: The Westernism of the 1840s

The Geneva Idea: Freedom

The Geneva Idea: Equality and Brotherhood

Further Development of the Great Idea:

The Westernism of the 1860s

From the Critique of Russian Westernism to the

Critique of the West

THREE THE GREAT IDEA IN THE MODERN WEST

The Breakdown of Traditional Western Order

The New Order and the Western Peoples

France

The English-Speaking World: England and

the United States

Germany

Towards a New World Order

Bourgeois Liberal Democracy

Socialism

The Crisis of Order and the Future of the West

FOUR THE FINAL WESTERN SOCIAL FORMULA

The Grand Inquisitor

The First Temptation

The Second Temptation

The Third Temptation

The Goal of the Final Western Social Formula

Reason and Love of Humanity

The Man-God

FIVE DOSTOYEVSKY’S JUDGMENT OF THE

FINAL WESTERN SOCIAL FORMULA

The Silence of Christ

Dostoyevsky’s Critique of Reason

The Self-Betrayal of the Man-God

The Breaking of Christ’s Silence

The Appeal to Eternal Justice

The God-Man: The Bridging of the Gulf

between Heaven and Earth

The Church Idea

Freedom

Equality

Brotherhood

SIX RUSSIAN SOCIALISM AND THE WESTERN CRISIS

Dostoyevsky’s Philosophy of History

The History of Church and State in the West

The History of Church and State in Russia

Russian Socialism

Russia and the Modern Western Crisis

Concluding Remarks

APPENDIX

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

INDEX

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Contrary to the usual impression, the writing of a book is not a solitary enterprise. This is especially evident to me when I consider all those who have helped to bring my study of Dostoyevsky to fruition, first as a doctoral dissertation in Religious Studies, and now as a book. I would like to acknowledge, first, my debt to Dr. George Grant, who encouraged me to read Dostoyevsky in the light of the perennial problems. I am grateful also for the assistance provided by the following people at McMaster University: Dr. John Robertson, Dr. Louis Shein, and Dr. Ian Weeks, in the early stages of the work; Dr. Robert Johnston, who offered helpful advice concerning its publication; Dr. Louis Greenspan, who read a later version of the manuscript and made suggestions for its improvement; and Dr. George Thomas, who kindly consented to check the manuscript for accuracy of translation and transliteration. The book owes much as well to the comments made by the anonymous readers for the Canadian Federation for the Humanities. I extend my thanks also to Mrs. Ruth Mac Donald, who typed various revisions of this book with unfailing good humour and accuracy. Any errors of fact, omissions, or doubtful judgments that remain are of course my responsibility alone.

This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Canadian Federation for the Humanities, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. I gratefully acknowledge this assistance. I am grateful also to Thorneloe College of Laurentian University for the financial assistance it has provided for travel when required in the final

NOTES ON TRANSLATION,

TRANSLITERATION, AND

REFERENCES

Dostoyevsky’s novels, stories, and articles are now largely available in English translation, as are most of his rough notebooks. Since this book is intended to make his thought about the West more accessible to Westerners, including those who might not be expert in the Russian language, I have referred throughout to the English translations of his writings where these exist. (There is no English translation of Dostoyevsky’s complete correspondence, and my references to his letters are therefore by date. In addition to the Russian edition of his complete correspondence there is, however, a reliable French edition about which information is provided in the bibliography). The interested reader will therefore be able to find most quotations or references within the context of a translated work. The translations have been checked against the original Russian, and altered where necessary for the sake of accuracy. For those readers who wish to consult the original Russian texts (or other translations), I have provided the following information in parentheses: for passages from the novels and stories—uppercase roman and arabic, and lowercase roman numerals for part, chapter, and section respectively; and for passages from The Diary of a Writer—the month and year. All quotations from Russian or other foreign texts are my own translations, unless otherwise indicated.

There is no one universally accepted system of transliterating Russian words. I have followed the system used by D. S. Mirsky in his History of Russian Literature. This system seems most effectively to convey the proper pronunciation of Russian words to those unacquainted with the language. I have departed from it only in two instances: where Mirsky would use ë, I use yo (as in Alyosha), and where Russian words have a generally accepted English spelling (e.g., troika), I retain the usual spelling.

For the sake of convenience, Dostoyevsky’s writings are referred to by title alone. Complete bibliographic information concerning these works is provided in the bibliography. Those titles containing more than two words are abbreviated in the following manner:

INTRODUCTION

The apprehension of a fundamental crisis in Western civilization has become pervasive in our century of war, terror, and tyranny. Anxiety for the health and even the existence of Western civilization is no longer limited, as it was in the previous century, to those rare voices which we now consider prophetic. Indeed the pervasive sense of crisis becomes itself an ingredient of the crisis as the modern West increasingly betrays a lack of belief in its own future, despite its apparently boundless technological power. Yet the general recognition of a Western crisis—a crisis which is also global, insofar as Western civilization has spread throughout the world—does not entail consensus concerning its nature. There is even little agreement about whether the crisis is fundamentally outward—a question of the political, economic, social, and ecological dislocations besetting modern technological society—or whether it must be understood as an inward crisis. For those who adopt the latter view, the material problems which threaten modern civilization are really symptomatic of a more fundamental problem of the spirit. This approach assumes that the diverse elements of a civilization are bound together into an ultimate unity, and that this unity is to be perceived in the light of what is prior in human life. The recognition among more thoughtful observers of a crisis of the spirit does not, however, entail agreement concerning the reasons for it. Still less does this recognition entail agreement about the means or even the possibility of bringing about a renaissance of the West. The lack of clarity concerning these questions presents a formidable task, a task which requires close attention to those thinkers who might be able to illuminate the crisis of Western modernity. One such thinker is Fyodor Dostoyevsky.

Dostoyevsky’s concern with the West is evident throughout his writings. The most cursory reading of his major novels yields an abundance of allusions to almost every aspect of Western civilization. And in his secondary writings—his journalistic articles, unpublished notebooks, and correspondence—the question of the West figures prominently and more completely than in his art. According to his own testimony, his preoccupation with the West commenced when, as a child in Moscow, he listened agape with ecstasy and terror to his mother’s readings of the Gothic horror tales of Hoffman and Radcliffe.¹ It was still evident in his last public address, a speech in commemoration of the Russian poet Pushkin, which he delivered in 1880. Dostoyevsky’s concern with the West was not a mere whim incidental to his more fundamental work as a literary artist, but occupied a place at the very heart of his life and his writings. The centrality of his interest in the question of the West is demonstrated, if somewhat negatively, by the fact that this interest sometimes impelled him to contravene the strict aesthetic requirements of his art. Prince Myshkin’s speech about the Western crisis, at one of the most critical moments in The Idiot,² must be regarded as an aesthetic impropriety. Yet one of the perfect achievements of Dostoyevsky’s art—The Grand Inquisitor in The Brothers Karamazov—is inextricably associated with the question of the West.

The basis of Dostoyeysky’s preoccupation with the fate of Western civilization was his avowed conviction that the West was his second fatherland.³ This avowal implies two things: first, that as a son of Western civilization he knows this civilization intimately, and this knowledge is bound up with a certain reverence and love; second, that he is not completely a part of the West, that he is sufficiently detached to be a clear-sighted observer of Western civilization. Dostoyevsky thought that he could both understand the fundamental aspirations of the West and separate himself from these aspirations. It is this claim that underlies his contemplation of the Western crisis.

The same claim has been made by some modern Western thinkers (most notably Nietzsche). In Dostoyevsky’s case, however, there is less doubt that there really is a significant distance between himself and the West which he observes. Because of the Westernizing reforms of Peter the Great, this distance is not as great as that centuries-old distance between Muscovite Russia and Europe and, more profoundly, between the Greek East and the Latin West. It is great enough, however, that Dostoyevsky was to repeat emphatically, and probably with justification, that a Russian is not a European. Is, then, the distance between Russia and the West so great that Dostoyevsky would have been incapable of grasping the Western crisis in all its depth? This raises the questions of the validity of his observations about the West and the acceptability of these observations to Westerners. Yet these questions are premature, for the observations themselves have yet to receive serious consideration in the West. Despite Dostoyevsky’s evident preoccupation with the meaning and destiny of Western civilization, his critique of the West has not yet been adequately elucidated.

This is not to say that Dostoyevsky’s engrossed encounter with the civilization of the West has been ignored. His knowledge of the Western cultural heritage, particularly its literature, and the influence of this knowledge upon his own art have been explored at length. Yet this thorough examination of Dostoyevsky’s relation as an artist to the culture of the West has coincided with a general disregard for his enucleation of the crisis of that culture. This disregard is certainly not attributable to any reluctance to consider Dostoyevsky a serious thinker. The novel was in nineteenth-century Russia far more than literature; it was the primary vehicle for the expression of philosophical, religious, political, and even economic teachings. The early Russian assessment of Dostoyevsky as a pre-eminent thinker has long been accepted in the West. The scholarly analysis of his artistic technique has thus proceeded in conjunction with expositions of his religious thought. The Western acknowledgment of Dostoyevsky’s religious thought has not, however, been extended to his critique of the West. Where the two are found together, which they often are, the religious thought is separated from the associated observations about the Western crisis. The Grand Inquisitor, for example, is generally acclaimed as writing of the highest intellectual and artistic order, but this acclaim generally disregards the fact that it is set in the West and its principal character is a Westerner. Even when this fact is recognized, it is not considered integral to our understanding of the more profound themes of The Grand Inquisitor. Although Dostoyevsky is regarded as a teacher of the first order about the crisis of the human spirit, this does not apply to his teaching about the crisis of the human spirit in the West.⁴

There appear to be two primary obstacles to serious consideration of Dostoyevsky’s observations about the West. First, there is the suspected possibility that his knowledge of Western civilization is limited to its aesthetic phenomena, that his grasp of Western art is not matched by his grasp of the more fundamental bases of Western civilization. Apart from the dubiousness of thus divorcing Western art from Western civilization as a whole, it must be emphasized that Dostoyevsky’s knowledge of the West was not restricted to its artistic heritage. There is evidence that from his youth his reading included Western works of history, politics, philosophy, theology, and even economics. (These were generally read in the original French or German.)⁵ The modern West was indeed opened up to him by the art of Schiller, Beethoven, Hugo, Balzac, and Dickens; but he also came to know it through his study of Rousseau, Kant, and Hegel. He was in close touch as well with some of the greatest nineteenth-century Russian interpreters of Western thought.⁶ This knowledge of Western thought was supplemented by a remarkably detailed acquaintance with Western practice. Dostoyevsky’s occupation as an editor of various journals—which were as much political as literary in content—gave him occasion to familiarize himself with the most minute developments in Western politics, domestic and international. And this familiarity was made more tangible by prolonged travel and residence in Europe itself.⁷ Any final judgment concerning the quality of Dostoyevsky’s grasp of the significant constituents of modern Western civilization presupposes the adequate exposition of his critique of the West. The available biographical evidence permits the assertion here, however, that his acquaintance with the non-artistic aspects of Western civilization was not merely a scanty and superficial one gleaned from inferior sources.

The second obstacle to serious consideration of Dostoyevsky’s teaching about the West is the suspicion that this teaching is incompatible with his best thought. Insofar as his observations about the crisis of the West are political, they would appear to bear no genuine relation to his more profound religious thought. His teaching about the West thus tends to be related to the political prejudice which characterized him as a nineteenth-century Russian nationalist rather than to the religious thought which speaks to all people.⁸ Once again, such a view can finally be judged only after thoughtful consideration of what Dostoyevsky has to say about the West. Yet it can be remarked here that this distinction, which he never made, between his political observations about the West and his religious thought presumes a clearer understanding of his writings than he himself possessed. It presumes also that his penetrating insight into the most difficult questions of human life did not extend to the relatively simpler matter of his own Russian chauvinism. Presumptions such as these may well constitute an obstacle to the complete understanding of his whole thought.

Vladimir Solovyov, a close friend of Dostoyevsky and one of Russia’s most important philosophers, wrote: The general meaning of Dostoyevsky’s entire activity, the meaning of Dostoyevsky, as a social figure consists in the resolution of this two-fold question: about the highest ideal of social order and the genuine way to the actualization of this ideal.⁹ This expression of the fundamental meaning of Dostoyevsky has not received sufficient attention in the West. Yet it may point the way to a proper understanding of the apparent contradiction between Dostoyevsky’s concern with the highest reaches of human spirituality and at the same time with the most detailed developments in domestic and international politics. This study is informed above all by the idea that the two poles of this contradiction between Dostoyevsky’s religious thought and his political analysis of the West are held together in the question of the best human order. It is this question that informs both his elucidation of the Western crisis and his recommendation for overcoming it.

In understanding the problem of the best human order as both a political and a religious problem, Dostoyevsky is in accord with those whose thought has most decisively shaped Western modernity. He is in accord, for instance, with Hobbes, who felt the necessity of justifying his resolution of the problem of order not only on the basis of the scientifically verifiable ius naturale, but also according to a novel interpretation of Scripture; with Rousseau, who declared that the true statesman must admire the order established by Judaic law, and who himself wished to guarantee the sanctity of the social contract with the dogmas of civil religion; and with Nietzsche, for whom the struggle against liberal-socialist decadence entailed an attack on the Judaeo-Christian religious heritage of the West.¹⁰ Yet Dostoyevsky cannot easily be located within the modern Western intellectual tradition defined by thinkers such as these. As we shall see, he is at one with Rousseau in his rejection of that English-speaking liberalism rooted in Hobbes which encourages the politicians of the modern world to speak of nothing but commerce and money. Yet he is also at one with Nietzsche in his interpretation of the continental liberal-socialist tradition fathered by Rousseau as an attempt to bring heaven down to earth, which inconsistently wants to retain Christian moral principles (such as equality) while doing away with the transcendent basis of these principles.¹¹ Such a tendency towards the immanentization of the Christian faith culminated for Dostoyevsky, as for Nietzsche, in the philosophy of Hegel.¹² It is a mistake, however, to identify Dostoyevsky with that European reaction against Hegelian liberal-socialism which found its definitive expression in Nietzsche, for Nietzsche’s rejection of the concept of equality and indeed his thought as a whole is, from Dostoyevsky’s perspective, already implicit within Hegel. (On one of the most pressing issues of contemporary political philosophy, then, Dostoyevsky would be with those who fear that the realization of the Hegelian universal and socially homogeneous state would imply the realization of a global tyranny.)¹³

But it would also be wrong to place Dostoyevsky too hastily with those who reject Hegel’s attempt to reconcile heaven and earth by affirming the unqualified transcendence of heaven. Dostoyevsky felt himself very close to those who hunger and thirst for justice on earth. His rejection of the universal and homogeneous state does not entail the rejection of the aspiration to a universal order of freedom, equality, and brotherhood. The problem of human order is, for him, not encompassed within the mutually exclusive choices of either the immanentization of the summum bonum of biblical revelation and Greek philosophy or the emphatic assertion of its utter transcendence. Perhaps Dostoyevsky’s most significant contribution to the thoughtful consideration of the Western crisis of order is his observation that this misconceived either-or arises out of a distortion of the religious teaching originally bequeathed to the West, and that for the same reason the resolution of the dichotomy must be sought within the original teaching. This is not to claim that Dostoyevsky himself does more than point the way towards this resolution.

A proper assessment of Dostoyevsky’s contribution presupposes clarity about his analysis of the crisis of modernity. The primary intention of this study is to expound as clearly as possible Dostoyevsky’s teaching concerning the West, demonstrating that his observations constitute a coherent critique which is intertwined with the deepest aspects of his thought. This intention is not based on any assumption of a capacity to express his critique of the West better than he himself expressed it. It is assumed, however, that his teaching about the West can be rendered more systematic and explicit, and hence more accessible to those who are interested—for this critique is only implicit in Dostoyevsky’s own work. Indeed his many observations about the West are scattered in a seemingly random and unconnected fashion throughout his writings. Perhaps the requirements of art made a more systematic presentation extremely difficult, if not impossible. Even the prose articles directly concerned with the West, which appear in the various journals edited by him, are characterized by a feuilletonistic style quite unlike the more orderly style of a treatise or essay. My attempt to render Dostoyevsky’s critique of the West more accessible will therefore employ a mode of organization and style which was not his own (although there is evidence that he himself was interested in giving his critique a more systematic form).¹⁴

This exposition will not constitute merely a judicious rearrangement of the observations about the West scattered throughout Dostoyevsky’s writings. Such a passive approach to his thought is precluded by the medium in which it is expressed. Although much of his teaching about the West is present in his journalistic prose, the height of this teaching is expressed in his art. It is expressed through fictional characters, none of whom is obviously his spokesman. Indeed his art as a whole can be regarded as an arena in which different teachings come into conflict, without the presence of a final arbiter.¹⁵ The elucidation of his critique of the West therefore requires an active interpretation of his writings, an interpretation which must be careful, however, not to ascribe to Dostoyevsky teachings which do not belong to him.¹⁶ It is hoped that the fulfillment of the primary intention of this study will serve the larger purpose of helping to clarify what Dostoyevsky can teach us about the situation in which the modern West finds itself and, beyond this, about the permanent problem of human order—for it was Dostoyevsky’s great virtue as a thinker always to see the pressing issues of his particular time and place in the light of the everlasting problems.¹⁷ The crisis of the West first appeared to Dostoyevsky through the mediation of Russian Westernism. His enucleation of Russian Westernism determines his approach to the West itself, and is therefore the most appropriate introduction to his critique of the West. Our subsequent examination of this critique will take us from his consideration of the problem of order in the modern West, to his exposure of the inner meaning of the final Western social formula, and finally to his judgment of the foundations of Western civilization.

1 WNSI, p. 36 (1).

2 See The Idiot, pp. 585-88 (IV,7).

3 DW, p. 581 (Jan. 1877).

4 See, for instance, H. de Lubac, The Drama of Atheist Humanism (New York, 1963), pp. 227, 230; Andre Gide, Dostoevsky (Norfolk, Conn., 1949), pp. 87-98; A. de Jonge, Dos-toevsky and the Age of Intensity (London, 1975), p. 69.

5 This evidence is provided implicitly by the allusions to such works which abound throughout Dostoyevsky’s writings. It is provided explicitly by his correspondence and the testimony of his wife, friends, and acquaintances. Two studies of Dostoyevsky which consider this question in detail are J. Frank, Dostoevsky, the Seeds of Revolt 1821-1849 (Princeton, 1976); L. Grossman, Dostoevsky (London, 1974). This question is treated at some length in the first chapter of the present study.

6 These included Alexander Herzen, Vissarion Belinsky, Vladimir Solovyov, and Nicholas Strakhov.

7 For a detailed account of the itinerary of Dostoyevsky’s travels in Europe, see G. Aucouturier and C. Menuet, Album Dostoïevski (Paris, 1975). For a detailed account of his years in Europe, see the reminiscences of his wife, Anna Dostoyevsky, Reminiscences (New York, 1975), chap. 4.

8 For the most extreme expression of this view, see I. Howe, Politics and the Novel (London, 1961), pp. 54-55. But essentially the same view of Dostoyevsky’s observations about the West is expressed by commentators who are much more sympathetic to his thought as a whole. See, for instance, H. de Lubac, The Drama of Atheist Humanism (New York, (1963), p. 184; A. de Jonge, Dostoevsky and the Age of Intensity (London, 1975), p. 64; V. Ivanov, Freedom and the Tragic Life, a Study in Dostoevsky (New York, 1971), p. 155.

9 V. Solovyov, Tri rechi v pamyat Dostoyevskago, Sobranie sochinenii (Brussels, 1966), III-IV, p. 193.

10 See T. Hobbes, Leviathan (New York, 1962), part III; J-J. Rousseau, Du Control social et autres oeuvres politiques (Paris, 1975), pp. 263, 334-35; F. Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil (New York, 1966), 202.

11 BK, p. 27 (1,5).

12 For my use of the term immanentization here, see E. Voegelin, Science, Politics and Gnosticism (Chicago, 1968), pp. 88-92.

13 See L. Strauss, On Tyranny (New York, 1968); G. Grant, Technology and Empire (Toronto, 1969), Tyranny and Wisdom.

14 See, for instance, his letter of 16 Aug. 1880 to K. P. Pbbedonostsev: I am always compelled to express certain thoughts only in the basic idea, which always greatly needs a further development and argumentation. This study undertakes to provide such further development and argumentation.

15 For an illuminating discussion of Dostoyevsky’s polyphonic artistry, see M. Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics (Ann Arbor, 1973), chap. 3.

16 It can, fortunately, be ascertained from the careful study of Dostoyevsky’s correspondence, prose articles, and rough notes what he himself thought about the diverse teachings present in his art. Therefore it is possible to know his ultimate intentions (although the question must still be left open whether the art always faithfully reflects the intentions of the artist).

17 See BK, p. 295 (V,5).

ONE

RUSSIAN WESTERNISM: ITS

HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT

The problem of Russia and the West is rooted, according to Dostoyevsky, in the peculiar historical evolution of Russian society. His own consuming interest in Russian history was directed towards the manner in which Europe has been reflected in us at different times, and, together with its civilization, has gradually imposed itself on us as a guest....¹ Although his consideration of Russian Westernism as an historical phenomenon never achieved the systematic form which he once intended for it,² observations about the history of Europe’s reflection in Russia are present throughout his writings. These observations constitute the basis of this chapter’s historical introduction to Russian Westernism, an introduction which reflects Dostoyevsky’s own idea of what should be known about the history of this movement.

The Early History of Russian Westernism

Russian Westernism had its effective beginning in the reign of Peter the Great (1696-1725); it was, according to Dostoyevsky, the consequence of Peter the Great.³ To Westerners Peter has been a compelling but ambiguous figure; boundlessly energetic, endowed with a versatile practical talent amounting to genius, deeply appreciative of Western technology, he was at the same time given to unpredictable, even grotesque behaviour, a semi-barbarian who never learned to write properly, a tyrant who obsessively strove to impose Western forms of life on his subjects with results that appeared highly dubious to Westerners. While for Westerners Peter represents a somewhat outlandish though important figure in Russian history, for Russians he has always constituted an overbearing problem imperiously demanding a solution. Dostoyevsky’s abiding concern with the meaning of Peter is evident from the regularity with which references to him appear throughout his writings. He thought that Peter was a genius of immense will and boundless openness to new ideas, but he also regarded him as a monster. He did