"Russian Lessons from 1917" - Gary Saul Morson

[Music] well welcome everyone this is the last of the lectures in the signature lecture series so after this you'll just have to make do somehow until the fall leave it back better than ever well it cannot be actually better than our final lecture this is as you probably all know the centenary year of the Russian Revolution and hence I think some time to reflect on the significance of that revolution and what lessons can be learned not only from the revolution itself but from the cultural milieu out of which it emerged and that is going to be the core topic of today's lecture the course subject of today's lecture our lecturer is unusually distinguished a leading light not only of russian language study but in literary criticism as well he is Gary soul Morrison who holds the Lawrence speed Duma professor of Arts and Humanities professorship of Arts and Humanities at Northwestern University in Chicago he's a man whose scholarly work ranges over a wide variety of topics including literary criticism the great culture of high russian literary art embodied by people like dusty FC and Tolstoy and most recently the connections between literary theory and economics he has a book that has just come out co-authored with the president of his institution is it Morten Shapiro which is entitled and you'll sort of get its drift from the title I probably have spelled out it's called sense C II n t f and Sensibility and Sensibility as in Jane Austen so you have on the one hand supply and demand chart and on the other you have a country estate somewhere in which fashionable ladies and gentlemen are maneuvering for social position that it all comes together and make sense so without further ado let me turn over the podium to our guest who is enjoying our very lovely climate I have a great day for him and I know that you'll give him an equally great reception professor Gary so this working that's a real pleasure and honor to be here well since I've gotten captive I'll just say that the subtitle of that book is what economics can learn from the humanities so that really tells you what it is my present talk is entitled Russian lessons from 1917 and it is in ten parts I tell you that so that you will always know how much more you have to sit through in February 19 first part is called grouse and sturgeons in February 1917 the Romanov dynasty fell and the Russian parliament of the Duma claimed power nine months later the Bolsheviks staged a coup d'etat called by its followers the October Revolution and so some 10,000 people took over an empire covering 1/6 of the Earth's land area regimes claiming to adhere to Marxism Leninism would eventually rule some 18 countries depending on how you count them with about 40% of the world's population the most conservative estimates of people deliberately killed by these regimes most conservative estimates total 100 million the most authoritative study of Stalin's collectivization of Agriculture in the early 1930s estimates for that event 14 million lives taken a figure subsequently accepted by the post-soviet Russian government notably of that 14 million some 7 million were from a deliberate campaign of starvation mostly in Ukraine in which Bolshevik agents seized all food and prevented anyone any food from getting in since that hundred million figure counts only half the authoritative figure for the collectivization it counts seven an instant instead of 14 the total is undoubtedly much higher than 100 in note of the discrepancy in estimates for the collectivization alone are about the same size as the conventional estimate of Jews killed by the Nazis that's the magnitude of what we're dealing with here in 1999 Time magazine proclaimed Einstein the man of the century the person who quote for better or worse most influenced the last 100 years unquote but Einstein did not remotely affect so many lives as Lenin as some 18 countries ruling hundreds of billions of people came to profess marches and Leninism which of course has also exercised enormous influence on Western intellectuals Bolshevism was based on the idea that the party's philosophy explained literally everything so that for instance the resonance theory of chemistry which holds that a simple diagram of some molecules cannot be drawn because the molecule resonates between formations that theory was rejected as contrary to the Marxist Leninist doctrine that everything is knowable famously genetics was banned as suggesting a limit to the ability to redesign human nature a key tenet of the regime with perfect knowledge there would be no limits this doctrine referred to technically as the leap from the kingdom of necessity to the kingdom of freedom the phrases angles did not mean freedom for individuals but for the party it would create a whole new human being as Trotsky explained man will quote master his own feelings rendering them perfectly transparent and at last create a higher biological type a Superman unquote trotsky's book concludes with a promise that quote the average human type will rise to the heights of an Aristotle of goethe or marx and above this Ridge new peaks will rise unquote nature too will be completely redesigned again Trotsky quote the present distribution of mountains and rivers of fields of meadows of steps of forests and of sea Shores cannot be considered final unquote people again I quote will command nature in its entirety with its grouse and sturgeons unquote the speech came to be known as the grouse and Surgeons speech it is not that the party was supremely capable not even that it never made mistakes what the party did was right by definition because it is the agent of history with a capital H itself voicing what became the Orthodox opinion Trotsky concluded quote one cannot be right against the party it is only possible to be right with the party and through the party the history has not created other ways for the realization of what is right unquote whence comes this enormous faith in intellectuals with the right theory it reflects a debate did I take to define classical Russian culture the debate between the great writers and the intelligentsia with only slight exaggeration the philosopher Michael yield Gershon son declared in 1909 that quote the surest gauge of the greatness of a Russian writer is the extent of his hatred for the intelligencia unquote think of the century before the Revolution as Trotsky vs. Tolstoy Lenin vs. Dostoevsky Bakunin vs. Chekhov part two is called slavery romantics Russian appreciation of literature has no rival I can compare it only to the way the Hebrew Bible Mustard's seeing when books could still be added to the canon for Russians the Canon was and pretty much is sacred when Tolstoy's Anna Karenina was being serialized dostoevsky's enthused that at last the existence of the Russian people had been justified no Frenchman supposed of the existence of the French people required justification or if he did that he would find him in literature when the writer Kirilenko who was half Ukrainian was asked his nationality he replied my homeland is Russian literature in her recent Nobel Prize acceptance speech the Atlanta Alekseyevich echoed this comment by claiming three home lands her father's delarue's her mother's Ukraine and Russian literature she thought of literature as a people's equivalent of an individual's memory quote flow Barre called himself a human pen I would say that I am a human ear when I walk down the street and catch words phrases and exclamations I always think how many novels disappear without a trace unquote like the great novelists he thought of life as the secret thoughts and feelings of individual souls which live in literature so it's life a matter of grand politics or of individual souls and cannot be captured in a theory or is there always what russian philosopher mikhail bakhtin called a surplus exceeding the grasp of any theory the intelligentsia believed in theories and crises the novelists in the complexities of prosaic experience the intelligence he was ready to sacrifice or enslave individuals to achieve their utopia Alexeyevich refers to such people as quote slavery romantics slaves of utopia let's see if it's quote valincia llama the Gulag second most famous chronicler quote from sure llama I was a participant in a colossal battle a battle that was lost for the genuine renewal of humanity unquote Alexeyevich explains in turn quote and I reconstruct the history of that battle its victories and its defeats the history of how people wanted to build a heavenly kingdom on earth paradise the city of the Sun in the end all that remained was a sea of blood millions of ruined lives I'm still quoting there was a time however when no political idea of the 20th century was comparable to communism or the October Revolution as its symbols of time when nothing attracted Western intellectuals and people all around the world more powerfully and emotionally Raymond Aaron called the Russian Revolution the opium of the intellectuals can end up quote now let's say which insists we must not forget what socialism meant in practice quote because arguments about socialism have not died down a new generation has grown up with a different picture of the world but many young people are reading Marx and Lenin again unquote on American campuses there's no need to say again part three is called why Tolstoy did not belong to the intelligentsia we get the word intelligentsia from Russian where it was coined about 1860 unlike the word in English the Russian term in its strict sense was not synonymous with intellectuals with well-educated people or those who value independent thought in any given society well-educated people might or might not resemble an intelligentsia in the Russian sense to be an intelligent that was the word for a member of the intelligentsia one have to satisfy three criteria which most educated people including the great novelists did not first and intelligent had to share a set of radical beliefs there was no such thing as a moderate intelligent required believes vary from generation to generation but in the classic period they always included materialism atheism some form of socialism or anarchism and revolution ISM by which was meant not a belief in revolution as a means but as something valuable in itself the terrorist Sergei achieves catechism of a revolutionary as he called it explains that one is not a true revolutionary quote if he feels compassion for something in this world unquote note the language here catechism this world revolution ISM was a substitute religion dust is key once observed that Russians do not become atheists they convert to atheism the prototypical until again was in fact either the child of a priest or a former student in the russian orthodox seminary x seminarians included the ages most influential figure Nikolas journey chefs key and later Joseph Stalin Tolstoy a believer in God could not for that very reason be considered and until again second and intelligent had to identify primarily as and until again if you thought of yourself as a nobleman a doctor or a family man who happened to be well-educated you were not intelligent had to be your primal team identity again no one would have called Tolstoy who used his title of count and until again Chekhov particularly hated this quote artificial overall solidarity unquote as he called it because it entailed not thinking but just repeating orthodoxies quote yes our young ladies and political bows are pure Souls but nine-tenths of their pure souls aren't worth a damn all they're inactive sanctity and purity are based on hazy and naive sympathies and antipathies to individuals and labels not the facts it's easy to be pure when you hate the devil you don't know and love the God you wouldn't have brains enough to doubt unquote sound familiar third and intelligent embraced a particular lifestyle in the 1860s and 70s this entailed a rigid code of anting manners prescribing behavior formerly regarded as sorted dirty fingernail census journey chef's key came by his lower-class manners honestly but they became a model aristocrats took lessons in anti refinement I'm not making that up women simply had to smoke when does say s he was looking to get remarried he had trouble finding a woman who was well educated but not a radical to satisfy a deadline for producing a novel he in desperation hired a graduate of Russia's new stenography school to dictate a novel as it occurred to him at their first meeting the stenographer refused a cigarette Dostoyevsky thought if she doesn't smoke perhaps she believes in God in fact she did and that is how desta is he met his second wife you can't make these stories on part 4 is called little Napoleon's behind these criteria lay a set of assumptions too obvious to be articulated one had to argue for one or another theory but not for theory meaning theory of everything not the theory itself that was a given one reason Marxism proves so appealing was ambitious claim to resolve all contradictions think of Marx's assertion that quote communism is the solution of the riddle of history and knows itself to be the solution unquote no Theory claiming much less could appeal to Russians or if it did it was habitually transformed into something all explanatory a habit that does say s he called the Russian aspect of Westerners doctrines quote it consists of those inferences from those doctrines which in the form of unshakable axioms are drawn only in Russia whereas in Europe the possibility of such deductions is not even suspected unquote or is the CSKA remark elsewhere a Russian intelligent is someone who can read Darwin and promptly resolve to become a pickpocket a pickpocket well you know if it's survival the fittest Wykeham you know if giri rules and then theorists must rule the intelligence shared what Thomas Sol has called the vision of the anointed the key criterion for a group to be in intelligentsia in the Russian sense let every other intelligentsia belief change does the S key insisted but the belief in themselves as saviours would remain raw Skolnick oh the hero of crime and punishment invokes several theories to justify the murder he plans strangely enough take on sadistic Joseph first he invokes utilitarianism just calculated on one side as an old woman shorter die soon anyway whose life is worth quote no more than a cockroach unquote less cockroaches play a big role in Russian literature less in fact since less than a cockroach and she does positive harm and on the other side hundreds of lives it might be saved by her money one death and a hundred lives in exchange it's simple arithmetic not only is it moral to kill her will be immoral not to the or Skolnick oh it also invokes radical relativism which unlike utilitarianism denied any foundation for morality morality is he says quote all artificial terrors and there are no barriers and it's all as it should be unquote it's all as it should be because the world understood naturalistically has only is not ought what's more like a voice is still more justifications for murder but the one underlying them all isn't a poliana theory the world is divided into two sorts of people the many ordinary and the few extraordinary ordinary people are conservative they uphold tradition and the ancient law they are people of the present quote mere material that serve only to reproduce its kind unquote extraordinary people like like urges Solon and Napoleon our men of the future who bring a new word they have the right indeed the obligation to do whatever their idea requires quote I maintain this discoveries of Kepler and Newton could not have been made no and except by sacrificing the lives of one a dozen a hundred or more people would have had the right would indeed have been duty-bound to eliminate the dozen 400 people unquote the Bolsheviks also regarded murder as not just permitted but morally required for a Skolnick oath quote even people a little out of the common must be criminals in this way this point is crucial because it allows for a group of special people not just one like Napoleon the group called the intelligentsia to appreciate how long live is the idea of most people as mere material think of their frequently frequent reference among Western intellectuals to the Soviet experiment a tacit justification of the Revolution as some sort of social science experiment even though it did not turn out as hoped one experiments on their material not human beings like themself a true social scientist Raskolnikov maintains that the exact number of extraordinary people is governed by an ascertainable natural law quote there certainly is and must be a definite law it cannot be a matter of chance unquote the reason it cannot be a matter of chance is that for the social scientists nothing as a matter of chance anymore there can be such a thing as free will if something is governed by law than everything is Raskolnikov sister replies with horror quote what is really original in all this is that you sanctioned bloodshed in the name of conscience and excuse my saying so with such fanaticism that sanction of bloodshed by conscience is to my mind more terrible than the official legal sanction of bloodshed unquote why more terrible bloodshed is bloodshed isn't it well look ahead to Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago where he asks why it was that macbeth killed only a few people while Lenin and Stalin murdered millions the answer he says is that Shakespeare's villains had no ideology and I quote from Solzhenitsyn ideology that is what gives the evildoer the necessary steadfastness and determination that is a social theory which helps to make his act seem good instead of bad in his own and other eyes so that he won't hear approaches and curses and will receive praises and honors unquote if ideology applies everywhere then the quote Nechayev quote everything that promotes the revolution is moral everything that hinders it is immoral unquote the Bolshevik idea that a party cannot make mistakes is already present here it followed that compassion to class enemies must be immoral we teach children to overcome natural selfishness but the Soviets taught them to overcome natural compassion which might stay their hand from killing a class enemy one valued not the bushwa notion of human rights which includes everyone but class interests as a novelist Vasily Grossman explained what race was to the Nazis class meaning the one you were born into was to the Soviets to refrain from torture Trotsky declared was quote the most pathetic and miserable liberal prejudice unquote in 1918 the founder of the Soviet secret police Felix Kaczynski published an article in the journal red terror I didn't make that title up read terror in which he instructed I quote we are not waging a war against individual persons we are exterminating the bushwa Z as a class during the investigation do not look for evidence that the accused acted in deed or word against Soviet power the first questions that you ought to put are to us class to see below what is its origin what is educational profession and is these questions that ought to determine the fate of the accused unquote Bolshevism derives in part from Marxism of course but I think it o is still more to what might be called intelligentsia lism to believe that the Intelligencia should have all power and you don't need Marxism to have intelligentsia lism rather Lawrence ISM appeals because it readily lends itself intelligentsia listen you know you have an intelligentsia Marxism when the followers are mostly not workers but intellectuals to the extent that a group of intellectuals resembles intelligentsia in Russian sense to that extent is totalitarianism on the horizon should that Greek gain power is that what is happening here my scientist friends tells me that we on the verge of reading people's thoughts from the outside that would make 1984 into a libertarian paradise part 5 is called equality and now for the pessimistic part of my paper so far as I know the only nineteenth-century thinker to foresee totalitarianism was dust is key the reason he could I think is that he deeply understood the mentality of the intelligentsia and what it would do Biggi with power unlike Tolstoy he had been condemned to death as a revolutionary himself and recognized what he himself might have been willing to do in one article he refuted the idea common among conservatives that young radicals are simply quote idle and undeveloped people as one journal put it I guess today we'd say snowflakes on the contrary does the S key declares quote I am myself an old Nechayev Asst I myself stood on the scaffold condemned to death and I assure you that I stood in the company of educated people and herein lies the real horror that in Russia one can commit the foul lowest and most villainous act without being in the least a villain the possibility of considering oneself and sometimes even being in fact an honorable person while committing obvious and undeniable villainy that is our whole affliction the villain industrious Kees novel the possessed purist upon which who was marveled easily on the child outlines his plans which come amazingly close to what happened either in Russia China or Cambodia he endorses a theories of one shugayev who declares quote i am perplexed by my own data and my conclusion is a direct contradiction of the original idea with which i start starting from unlimited freedom I arrived at unlimited despotism a line however there can be no solution to the social problem but mine unquote again it if you realize that by freedom is meant freedom for the party to do anything the leap to the kingdom of freedom then it makes perfect sense why that would be perfectly compatible with indeed demand absolute despotism sugar law of demands quote the division of mankind into two unequal parts 1/10 enjoys unbounded power over the other nine-tenths the others have to give up all individuality and become so to speak a heard and through boundless submission will by a series of regeneration zitane primeval innocence you'll have to work however unquote another revolutionary objection we better to take to 9/10 and quote blow them up in the air instead of putting image of paradise I believe a handful of educating people who would live happily ever after on scientific principles unquote at last participant of its endorses a proposal to cut off quote a hundred million heads unquote at that time that figure sounded like sheer absurdity but remember the estimate I gave you at the beginning is it any wonder Russian writers are considered prophets Peters upon of its promises quote a system of spying every member of society spies on every other and it's his duty to inform against them unquote that was just what Stalin required the boy Pavel Morozov was made a national hero for turning in his parents the key principle is to be absolute equality which requires a complete suppression of individuality or great talent quote peers respond of it says Cicero will have his tongue cut out Copernicus will have his eyes put out Shakespeare will be stoned unquote the tall pot no this novel you know when I first read that passage and I was it it was just when the Chinese Cultural Revolution was going on and they had just taken their Chopin Piano Competition winner and broken his hands again on the grounds of equality even before achieving power the inteligencia offended great writers because it restricted art to political propaganda assuming art should exist at all boots are more important than Pushkin became a slogan art was suspect because it claimed to reveal the human soul but the very idea of the soul was retrograde everyone knew the materialist saying that quote the brain secretes thought the way the liver secretes bile unquote in the early 1860s the physiologist Ivonne cetera that's Pavlov's mentor by the way publishes influential book reflexes of the brain which outlines a neurological explanation of consciousness this is in early 1860s Dmitri Karamazov paraphrased the theory well what people used to call the soul is really so many neurons with their tail quivering with the smallest change in wording that theory is of course prevalent today but I'm sorry to lose God Dimitri's concludes part 6 is called the pursuit of happiness the russian novel is known above all for psychology what is less often appreciate is that in showing the complexity of the psyche the novelists were making a polemical point the intelligentsia denied that people were complex and all human complexity was an idea we'd call that idea essentialism hindering radical action like Jeremy Bentham and mainstream economists today Turner chefs key insisted in what is to be done a book that became the intelligences Bible that everyone always does and should act to achieve the greatest advantage Dostoevsky's notes from underground parodies Turner shamsky's book by reen aerating its incidents as they might actually happen to people with real psychology the underground man also appeals to empiricism which presumably a scientist should respect no one actually observing human behavior could deem it simple for rational what is more people unlike molecules can know the laws that supposedly govern them and act to thwart them a possibility that I think forever rules out a Newtonian account of human beings what a person values most of all is that her action should be her own that she is not just a piano key or an organ stuff played upon by impersonal laws that her choices could have differed and therefore matter rather give up that sense of self the underground man insists that people will act even against their self-interest just to prove they are not piano keys or organ stops if Erasmus utopia could ever be achieved if everything were provided for one without effort and if the laws of nature society could actually show the future then life would become pointless as the stay actually observes in one of his sketches quote people would see that they had no more life left that they had no freedom of spirit no will no personality people would realize that there is no happiness in inactivity that it is not possible to love ones neighbor without sacrificing something to him of one's labour and that and this is the famous phrase happiness lies not in happiness that only in the attempt to achieve it unquote part seven is called the surplus of humanists all the great realists not just the Russians were master psychologists from Jane Austen to Henry James the realist novel as a genre depicts people as individuals who cannot be reduced to abstract categories I begin where all categories social or even psychological that could account for me end bakhtin who argued that genres embody implicit philosophical assumptions concluded that novels presuppose the irreducibility of individuals to abstractions or as he put it people have a surplus and here's a famous quote from him an individual cannot be completely incarnated into the flesh of existing socio-historical categories there is no mere form that would be able to incarnate once and forever all his human possibilities no form that he could fill to the very brim and yet at the same time not splash over the brim there always remains an unrealized surplus of humaneness unquote the difference between Russian and European novels is that Russian novels make this assumption explicit Russians regard novels as another and superior form of philosophy Westerners typically regard novelists illustrating truths learn from some philosopher or social scientist and so Proust is read as applied Bergson and Jane Austen as illustrated Thomas Reid but all one has to do was to compare the philosophers psychological theory with a George Eliot character and it is claimed that she must have known something escaping the philosophers otherwise she could you know the philosophers would have produced portraits as believable as George Eliot's Dorothea Brooke but none has ever come close no philosopher or social scientist when this becomes obvious Westerners typically resort to the idea of Freud use in his essay on Dostoevsky with condescending indulgence he presented the author of Karamazov as grasping intuitively deep truths that only superior thinkers like Freud himself could articulate explicitly but this is even more absurd does the s Keys characters not just the underground man but even the brawling Dmitri Karamazov deliver long speeches about the mind so that one could more readily fault us Tedeschi for too much explicit articulation Russians view their novelists not as illustrators but as discoverers with the philosophers lagging after to provide what bakhtin calls a partial but always inadequate transcription of novelistic wisdom for Bakhtin that is the proper role of the critic which is one reason so many Russian philosophers including Bakhtin himself presented their ideas as expectations of great writers bakhtin understood the ideas he transcribed from Dostoyevsky continues his argument with intelligentsia ideologues now when he was writing represented by the Bolshevik regime part eight is called Jones so here is one lesson of Russian literature there can never be a social science if we mean by that a discipline modeled on the hard sciences the Russian writers were reviving a tradition in a clip since the 17th century when the idea took hold that any respectable discipline must resemble Euclidean geometry or after Newton physics for the great rationalist in their heirs real knowledge was theoretical ideally mathematical and all specific events with a mere consequence of the laws that theory discovers to the extent you need a narrative rather than laws to explain things to that extent you fall short of scientific status real Sciences the view goes don't tell stories by the 19th century this moral Etonian as the young historian le Halevy famously called it became a mania and not just with Marxists before Auguste Comte coined the term sociology he planned to call his new discipline social physics and lien Volvos the founder of modern economics basic idea of equilibrium on the stability of the solar system and sought the endorsement of mathematician already plonker II even Freud adopted hydraulic model fours of the mind and claimed not that some errors are intentional but that all are since what sort of natural law admits of exceptions but there's another tradition fulham extending from Aristotle to Montaigne until stoy which holds that reality demands two types of reasoning theoretical when Aristotle calls episteme and practical what he calls furnaces like geometry theory offers truths that are universal precise without exception and timeless one reasons from the theory down to the specific examples that subsumes for the alternative tradition some questions demand reasoning up from particular cases Aristotle strikes clinical disciplines like medicine one does not want a physician whose only interest in one's illness is its potential contribution to science no good doctor is just an applied biologist he uses all he knows theory and under eyes experience general and about that particular person to devise a treatment for this patient at this moment timeliness matters have accepted the Veterans Administration as it doesn't in geometry the same holds true for ethical issues if one reasons down from general rules one will often wind up with monstrous answers Aristotle notes because rules are formulated with a paradigm case in mind but real situations may differ in significant ways that cannot be foreseen then one must use judgment which by definition cannot be formalized good judgment grows out of experience mistakes and reflection upon mistakes a process yielding not theoretical knowledge but practical wisdom that is why as Aristotle observes young people can be good at math but not good at ethics which requires long experienced practical wisdom yields answers that are true as Aristotle says on the whole and for the most part one of his favorite phrases now anyone who described the Pythagorean theorem as true on the whole and for the most part would demonstrate he did not grasp even what mathematical reasoning is but anyone who sought quays a mathematical to ethical problems would be just as wrong headed the answer is given by practical reasoning our tentative and always open to revision one never gives final power to anyone committed to a single answer but allows for critics to point out failures the ethical tradition reasoning up from cases is called technically casuistry and the fact that the term casuistry is now pejorative suggests how thoroughly the theoretical view triumphed casuist use rules in the sense of rules of thumb which serve as mere reminders of particular sorts of cases the beginning but not the end of argument when the theoretical tradition triumphed casuistry was banished from philosophy but it found a home in a novel Daniel Defoe began his career writing casuist achill advice columns you know dear Abby I have had this problem and the cases he invented gradually grew in length to become now like mole Flanders the realist novel is a casuist achill genre it teaches how to derive wisdom from careful consideration of particular richly described cases philosophers still present ethical problems by briefly sketching a dilemma that might occur to Jones who is given no biography lives in no society and chooses at no particular time role theory of justice is based on a person would even fewer characteristics than this Jones contrast that with the dilemmas facing Anna Karenina or Dorothea Brooke take this as a novelistic dictum no one is ever Jones not even Jones again the difference between the Russians and other novelists is that the Russians especially Tolstoy make the genres casuist achill assumptions explicit at the end of Anna Karenina Levin learns to make wise ethical choices not by applying rules but by acquiring wisdom from particular cases sensitively observed Bakhtin's early treatises on ethics also explored the ethical limitations of what he calls theory tizen part 9 is called a good night's sleep Tolstoy's heroes begin believing in theory but learn its limitations in war in peace Prince Andrei at first admires the generals who have purportedly discovered a hard science of warfare which in this novel represents any conceivable social science before Austerlitz these generals even mathematically certain that napoleon will be defeated since quote every contingency has been foreseen unquote when the generals lose as they do so spectacularly at Austerlitz napoleon's greatest victory they explain that their instructions were not precisely carried out but that is always the case of battle they behave just like some economists today who when predictions fail say II that the recommendations were applied too cautiously or that even though they were proven wrong they've adjusted their theory so it now accounts for what happened like Paul Krugman they are never wrong of course even astrologers can adjust a theory to predict what has already happened Prince Andrei learns that the science of human affairs is impossible I quote from him in the novel what science can there be in a matter as in every practical matter nothing can be determined and everything depends on innumerable conditions the significance of which becomes manifest at a particular moment and no one can tell when that moment will come we face a hundred million chances which will be determined only instant but whether we run or they run whether this man or that man will be killed unquote irreducible chance matters no one can tell whether a bullet will hit a brave man or a coward capable of infecting others and timeliness matters things are decided armed the instant an instant that is not just the automatic derivative of permeance and what is true a battle is true quote in every practical matter unquote Tolstoy's wise general Kutuzov who falls asleep in the council of war before Austerlitz at last calls a halt to the discussion quote gentlemen the disposition for tomorrow cannot be changed and the most important thing before a battle is a good night's sleep why a good night's sleep because in a world of radical contingency where unforeseeable situations arise and opportunities must be seized instantly or lost what matters is not theoretical knowledge but alert the 10th of November last section is called prosaic and indoor socialism what Andre fails to learn but his friend Pierre does is the inside for which of now let's see about 35 years ago I coined the term prosaic an idea central to numerous writers most obviously Chekhov radicals and romantic picture life in terms of dramatic events the ordinary incidents between crises are viewed as trivial or despised as bushwa Tolstoy believed exactly the opposite life is lived at ordinary moments and what is most real is what is barely noticeable like the tiniest movements of consciousness cal SOI observes the russian painter of the laws once corrected a student sketch why you only touched it a tiny bit the student remark what is quite a different thing rule of replied art begins where that tiny bit begins Tolstoy comments that saying is strikingly true not only of art but of all of life true life begins where the tiny bit begins where would seem to us my newt and infinitely small alterations take place true life is not lived with great external changes take place where people move about clash fight and slay one another it has lived only where these tiny tiny infinitesimally small changes occur unquote Tolstoy's novels describe the infinitesimal movements of consciousness our smallest choices and the mistakes we instantaneously forget that is one reason they are so long in our brief lives every instant matters the Russian novel is so long because life is so short Tolstoy's wisest heroes learn to see the richness right in front of them hidden in plain view learning mr. Pierre comes to resemble my quote famous passage a man who after straining his eyes to peer into the remote distance finds what he was seeking at his very feet in everything near incomprehensible he had seen only what was limited Petty and meaningless but now he discarded the mental telescope to which he had been gazing over the heads of men and joyfully surveyed his ever-changing eternally great unfathomable and infinite life around him unquote in this spirit Lana Alekseyevich his books orchestrate the voices of countless ordinary people responding microscopically real people to events that historians treat macroscopically she captures what she describes as quote the history of domestic indoor socialism the history of how it played out in the human soul I am drawn to that small space called a human being a single individual in reality that is where everything happens she is keenly aware of her debt to the great novelists and their dislike of grand theoretical systems I quote from her noble speech again it always troubled me that the truth doesn't fit into one mind that truth is splintered there's a lot of it it is varied and it is strewn about the world thus tsq thought that humanity knows much much more about itself than it has recorded in literature so what is it that I do I collect the everyday life of feelings thoughts and words the everyday life of the soul the things that the big picture of history usually Oh myths or distain these novelistic insights the existence of sheer contingency true life has lived in the tiny bit the openness of time that makes our choices really matter and the importance of the individual soul all these insights are closely linked the ideologues who look down on ordinary people as boars and rednecks and in put their faith in abstractions they alone master will never understand them they see the world if you to the right lens as ultimately simple unlike the air who comes to appreciate quote the endless variety of men's minds which prevents a truth from ever appearing exactly the same to any two persons unquote by the novel's end quote the legitimate individuality of each person's views now became the basis of the sympathy Pierre felt for other people and the interest that he took in them unquote the Russian example implies we face a choice between the violent theory based uniformity of the intelligentsia and the wise perspective on life espoused by classic Russian literature pray for Chekhov thank you you have to call people I could talk to me to see I recently read about Richard Chilean quote said the problem right here is it's not there communists the problems after Russia okay and he said and I guess acted upon a Leafman asked the question what is it about Russian society of Russian culture or the Russian because that led me to the breeding ground for Bolshevism well I think it is um when I'm describing the particular stratum of society called the intelligence it wasn't a working class or the presence of a Bolshevism it was intelligentsia and they took over with approximately 10,000 people the entire fight I mean Lenin was probably the greatest tactician with a dietitian with a very small amount of force you can take over and watering them it's the mentality of this group you know that doesn't mature um I guess you would like something to Russian culture that favor the development of this group the fact that that's saying you can cite the fact that the book of the apocalypse is a lot more important in Russian orthodoxy Tolleson and so actually the millinery apocalyptic view history it's entirely lost and so many of those levers intelligence use started out I mean finally when I'm reading these memoirs ago to women terrorists a lot of them started out by saying when I was a little girl I wanted to be okay wonders of the debate and then when I lost God I decided to be a martyr for the religion so I mean here I was amazing how frequently absolutely and very interesting it was sometimes they say we didn't know anything or care anything about the common people who exact person is also the point was to be a martyr now that's a very particular mentality over them that you get in terrorists it was important is as I mentioned revolution isn't right the revolution is a goal in itself the sheer excitement is real the sense that way if you look at it rationally all the revolution it is is some people go around killing other people and seize power and decide to do what they want why is it right not just what it is the idea that somehow that by calling it the word revolution you can believe that it will somehow change all of human nature the limiting call you will forever where does that come from certainly not from the description what a revolution actually is the revolution is kind of mystical magic for you but I still think it is we proceedings you know on these beautiful posters of Che Guevara you know that students have kind of have in their rooms students have this without knowing who Che Guevara was or what he did what's the doctor into it it's just the aura of revolution is that somehow becomes magical and once it's magic you believe up they'll do anything I think that that's the mentality did you know are you dealing with I I wish you could say it was uniquely Russian then we wouldn't have to worry about but I think we do look I mean you know Paul pop was not Russian my question is deals work a definition of inclusion you're lecturing here today sponsored by Institute for study of Western civilization given that Russia self isolated itself assumed itself to be the third Rome succeeding the mantium Kiev and Moscow would be in the third Rome turning themselves off in the West for decades or centuries would you then classify Russia and people to dominate as part Western civilization if not how would you labels they grew people went to remember significant Russians have an argument that one long one of the Western law you know for a few centuries the people who made the revolution who were boxes or socialists also a Devon Western civilization in Marxism Leninism was considered to be important on the west and that's what they did whether you want to go to Russia that is part of Western civilization I don't know what I guess part of the problem is that when we speak of Western civilization we have all these wonderful things in mind like honey the Magna Carta and the founding fathers and democracy in the rule of law and that is of course mark Western civilization but so is the third writer and so was the Soviet government so sponsor the one in the West I lament democracy it represented invented totalitarianism it's a sentimental view the West Steve put in a desert the West have not only met the good things right in other okay good right I you know and you know from Mussolini's in that even if you're thinking about you be Russia as the third prong happening is the air of Byzantium which was the Roman Empire Byzantium simply was you know the Byzantines didn't call themselves men indeed that was a term invented the 18th century they call themselves Romans and they were these Roman Empire they golden children it Russians are the air in the Roman Empire in that respect which is finally West you know as we get back as we adopt the durability Val's a pejorative term invented by century historians could loot you as a scholar you include them or not profess my question I'm so yes I guess I did I guess I do mean Samuel Huntington you know I get the sting civilizations in world class like that we didn't suppose I should need a reason Eliza their own sort of thing Orthodox civilization equal to yes I would think it's the mere fact that it is you know was converted to Christianity in the 10th century you have to think it responded the West the fact that it did not build threw it away Reformation and Renaissance discourse with Greece but it was invented the one rule right so it in missed it well I'd rather say two West's different parts to it that's not part of the last the West is a very varied sort of thing maybe because I studied Russian that you know I yeah we think about that's called the history of the novel and it's the English know where we'll be being just French novel or you know the history of Western thought and you know all children it goes in roamed Paris to London and it is you know Europe and the West recipients tiny little strip of land of course at it's kind of cultural centers in there which you begin with that and then all kinds of other forms of communication doesn't follow from that we divide less than we'd like humanity and you do it unconsciously but if you used to seeing difference well is it really is the Western this way isn't it also you don't want to say that you but said if you define in the America totally in terms of its treatment of Native Americans or slavery but surely you don't want to say that you can leave that out you don't want to assume what education I had tell identity we just talked about the glorious founding fathers a democracy time and that clearly is also false one it's part of the story but it certainly isn't the whole story leaving out Russia I guess is sort of like we have very light and Russia sort of like leaving out that and you really eat any sense that blonde review and see things of other perspectives which i think is what the study of the humanities is good for object to give it an accurate explanation [Music] [Music] you view Putin in a Russian perspective and he doesn't seem so bad I mean things along freer more open in Russia today and they are in almost any period of Russian system certainly in the last 8 80 90 years I mean by Russian standards isn't as good as it gets curious how using the land provided the stairs into the video if you want wise views on foreign policy and Russia's international situation Dostoyevsky is not his views are silly at best and awful at worst you know he had this deep sense that Russia's vision what did they do bring more phenoxy to the world to make the world truly Christian and straighten up get us enough visit very humane in what Christianity is and he wanted to spread it by using armies okay it's a very peculiar his articles are farm policy and you know cultural policy of view political judgments in that sense in a way for to be done they range from really insightful to absolutely absurd and you can use him to I pick out the best a toast asking but I've written also about the worst of the scarcity which you know is can easily be used by extreme nationalists anti-semites you can find all I understand is it would be really nice if all the wise and smart people in the world only had good ideas and never had bad ideas and people were all go to all bad but there aren't too many people you could really you know find out just ask you certainly one of tortured souls exist if I can make you a nice anthology of I'm not just us there's I'm aspect about this that ecology will try to open one of these passages they want to celebrate their hero you know but I think we're a scholar should respect most of all the truth if it doesn't cut the way you wanted to that's what you did with us BST unfortunately that it gave me too much imagine was now love it and I'm not sure they're misleading in either maybe some extent but basically I think they drop that builds parts of necessity right just that's not all great yeah no yeah I just wonder what you cross agency or that DNR time Russia is not exactly where that Russia is considered a country like and deeply interested mind in many ways whether we are talking about for music or we're talking about ecology another areas would you agree about the statement even though the West is when scholars on the site to be staged emotions under freedom not being outside of personality but they have very very deeply into at the Western one yeah you know it's denim only always is David and in mind beginning in the 20th century when sorry back roughly eighty ninety of the weather and 1930 all the great Russian classes began to be translated into English and Russian literature to the west by storm a very popular kind of article to write was let us list the 10 greatest elements in the world and the point was all 10 would be Russian the idea to read you know the disciples of Henry James imitates itself you know it will be like you know Virginia Woolf talking about a novel they are all good and great novelists of the world I can talk about but of course infinitely above all of them is called so it just to accommodate as if she's asserting it thank you for granted that everybody knows this but Russian literature comes you know has such an important I have to think about it when I would learn by first swelled up studying Russian when I could be a physicist at one time and and that was right after rush at once the first day satellite the school make and the idea took hold of the Russian team if you want to study exciting to happen in Russia at 131 courses nonsense but the idea that the Russians were into the heroes of science and I was a really great Russian scientist even Dostoyevsky time it was Mendeleev David graded mathematics you know Don including geometry back in the stairs diamond I know when Northwestern math department wasn't becoming first class math department they took advantage of the vault so in Union and they hired all these Russians so now requested more Russian spoken the math department Russia and but why why are Russians so amazingly good at math well we really regret and see that's next time I've heard is it is the only discipline that neon bazaars of the Soviets was so clean and bad political implications we talk about physics and you inside you know well you know what quantum mechanics was very bad facilities when I saw the chemistry there you know obviously genetic history in all sorts of ways nobody ever found any political content to math so you can always always be saved there I guess chess minutes what happened yeah yeah well it just on the caption Street left rushing - ultimatum as you know the first real intelligentsia described in philosophy with public players in college area which was similarly fertilising in and controlling and I think the world like ignoring the Bolsheviks use not only model because you know the poor guy hundred marks they listed me as brokers the first book I wrote was about calm utility emerging and I came across I mean in world literature and I came across a series of books published in Russian translations of great utopias beginning we play as a poet and the title of the whole series was forerunners of scientific social and so that's how plated yes the Republic is a good player of course it's my eating because he didn't understand social classes and by the way you probably really probably could have benefited from some works nights later I won even giving you the classes but I didn't take very public isn't even a serious statement a social plan I just I take that as an analogy but I would take it as a the possibility of development because they're going to be seeking really know who can save everyone else again tomorrow malaria knowledge about you last week he was probably my again then he of the ancient world interesting you're something there there are models much more follow I would think it is much more fun anything he won't collect all the existing Constitution we have a huge collection system never without divisions and I thought wait state understanding knowledge right or as goodbye later those days a little bit sometimes rule good theoretical knowledge and then far into the Soviet history we stopped the revolution but there's been a common place that Stalin destroyed it wipe it out there is a lot of horsemen say that these days how does that fit his ears here understand well that's because the war intelligent it can mean different things the intelligence he was inside describing didn't disappear after a classical their God if he tried to be very good shot right away all the other social were either executed or sent abroad some of the Liberals so what was meant by intelligentsia by the time Stalin was there was not the great thinkers was not people to sort of describe it meant people who understood some technical specialties engineers and glue factory people of some culture and yes don't death for war expose people can cause they had to Authority heated them but only dead earlier to the proletarian intelligence now so so it doesn't they made the resolution I'll get one out but they like themselves out absolutely then who like that last one Lenin no seriously I mean the constitutional Democratic Party which is a socialist party despite its name it was a socialist oriented didn't work they have always been on philosophy of no enemies to the left all the socialist the socialist revolutionaries who were the anarchists and the anarchism who would provide the principal terrorists soon they thought this revolution was going if he dares runs not going to allow it all before the first thing he did was turn his power on them eliminate as for they to a political intellectuals you know they but several hundred remove famous steamer and sent emotional to France and eggs are watching one good idea these revolutionaries added somehow when the revolution comes we are going to be in charge only if you were one of Lenin's people we wouldn't be in charge and then in Stalin of course the covert he got rid of lenss people because they so where are we now there were people and there were others and not revolutionary jingilator revolution because somebody has been killed and again blend until marking happened that sounds of the Bolshevik seek on the other rebel there were many many more than a thousand of socialists of radicals I have to just ten thousand Bolsheviks like I mean the socialist revolutionary part was modest larger dimensions with the other Marxist party were much more during the vulture but then once looks organized and they have to be done very very rapidly so I guess I say this done some other for teleology intellectual some other term then other lecture on it that's it ok you have a couple ten thousand very organized via the people organizing much Chicago secret believes they can get rid and you know everybody of those violent of course they are of course they are giving the little s laugh at me two thousand people I didn't say there were no intellectuals left they killed because they love no more didn't think we know what delectables letter i said you can't use the word intelligentsia it ceases to have that meaning after because it's not possible that within a few years being one of these sorts of people so an educated person you look at the result when the Russians today speak of our intelligence they're not thinking with people like Lenin Stalin they're thinking of a world less sensitive people we would take it was intellectuals but that would have been the case you know in 1940 I mean some of the little excells existed certainly they were a lot of cover but they weren't thought of as the core the intelligence is eliminated exist yeah look I just been reading Oh some of the radical historians at the time and then what one most common genres essay was what is it like the title would be what is the intelligence what is the true definition and of course they weren't really designing things in what we think it should be it has to be this that this bill yeah and other common I didn't came across one essay whose title could be translated and one of them after all is they'd intelligencia but all the students of the particles you know they're I mean it was such a common you said what you know just like you would say if you were an article what its brushable part-time description you trying to say what you think or should you be the same be to ignore it so everybody was trying to describe mine is the way it should be gathered Eric in nineteen century it could be used to mean educated people but then he would distinguish between the intelligence here and the intelligence here in the strict sense of the word which would be if people expect use that distinction right in the search sense of the water again I mean for example on me if an actor the most leading journal of having taught courses extremely conservative [Music] advisor to the throne no one would have thought it was a whim of inteligencia but he was extremely literate externally because writings were you know quite literate and tells an influential though of course he's number until SOI totally know how could this count two believes in God and has utter contempt all these scribblers in the capital like us happy the party's automatic intelligence you know he thinks it's as a nobleman which he did it exactly could be when you call yourself capitals Floyd you automatically exclude yourself from and he really did have you know one of his mom late novels he has you know a whole but people in prison he counters very scarred various revolutionaries and he doesn't you know hero listens to them isn't angered by what they're saying he just needs that from all the garbage that is still their brains we can't talk about theoretical terminology and abstraction that was my full story so on he didn't see the black duster he's dangerous he saw them it's pathetic because they have no understanding of life ya know there were obviously non-radical fingers honey and protect there's a book published in 1909 by totally non radical thinkers donated X boxes called landmarks electricity must meet rose women's capacity grade stickers with time you're driving both Anka and although our packaging intelligence and describing this life there it's a negative you been today instead of and preventing the Russians would have intellectuals in the westerns and that's how they were phrasing I mean totally intelligence you know this or I guess into roughly translated intelligence comes out science television is I guess well thank you very much I'm not sure [Applause]

Channel: Western Civilization, Texas Tech University

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Id: tPpsgn4wbbE

Length: 84min 34sec (5074 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 06 2017