Panoptimist
29th November 2011, 08:56 PM
Note: I am going to consolidate here the quotes and excerpts that I've extracted from Dostoievsky's Diary of a Writer, translated by Boris Brasol. I plan on adding more in the future, so I'm dedicating this to Dostoievsky material and discussion. - Panop
June 1876 Diary entry titled "My Paradox [p. 355]":
Now Jews are becoming landowners--and everywhere people write and shout that Jews are draining the soil of Russia; that a Jew, after having invested a certain amount of capital in the purchase of an estate, in order to retrieve the capital plus interest, promptly exhausts all productive forces of the purchased land. Yet try to say something against this and people will immediately start vociferating about the violation of the principle of economic freedom and civil equality. But what kind of equality is this if we have here an obvious Talmudic status in statu--above all and in the first place; if this is not only the exhaustion of the soil but also the future exhaustion of our peasant, who, having been liberated from the landowners, unquestionably and very soon will be driven--as a commune in corpore--into a much worse slavery of far more pernicious landowners--those same landowners who have already rained the sap out of the peasant in Western Russia; those who are now purchasing not only estates and peasants, but who have begun to buy liberal opinion, and who continue to do so quite successfully.Forget which entry these are from:
But let us leave the Westerners alone, and let us suppose that with money everything may be accomplished ; that time itself may be purchaed, and that even independence of life may somehow be steamed up and re-enacted. The question is: where is such money to be found?--Almost half of our present budget is paid for by vodka; in other words, this means that, judging by the present, the whole future of the people is dependent upon national drunkenness and popular depravity. We are paying, so to speak, with our future for our stately budget of a great European power. We are cutting the tree at its very root, in order to get the fruit as quickly as possible. And who sought this?--It happened involuntarily, of its own accord, as a result of the strict logic of historical events. Our people, liberated by the great word of the Monarch, are inexperienced in the new ways of life ; as yet, they have not lived independently, and they are merely taking their first strides along the new road : this is an enormous and extraordinary break ; it is almost wholly unexpected, almost unheard of in history by reason of its completeness and character. These first, and now independent, steps of the liberated giant along the new path, fraught with great peril, require extraordinary caution. And yet, what did our people encounter at these first steps?--Vacillation among the upper strata of society; the alienation from the people of our intelligentsia which, for centuries, has been in existence (this is the principal thing), and on top of these--trash and the Jew. The people began revelling and drinking--first, from joy; and later, from force of habit. Were they shown anything better than trashiness? Were they diverted, were they taught anything?--At present in some, even in many, localities, pot-houses are so numerous that they exist in the proportion of not only one to hundreds but even to dozens of inhabitants--moreover, to only a few dozens. There are localities with some fifty dwellers, or less, and yet that have a pot-house of their own.
Genuine, sound capital accumulates in a country in no other way than by being based upon a general labor prosperity; otherwise only capital owned by kulaks and Jews can come into existence. And thus it shall be if the people will not come to their senses and the intelligentsia will not help them. If the people should fail to come to their senses, they, as a whole, will find themselves in a very short time in the hands of all sorts of Jews, and in such an event no commune is going to save them : there will be merely uniformly equal paupers, mortgaged and enslaved as a whole commune, while, in their stead, Jews and kulaks will be providing the money for the budget. There will emerge petty, depraved and mean little bourgeois, and a countless number of paupers enslaved by them--such will be the picture! Yiddishers will be soaking up the blood of the people and subsisting on their debauch and humiliation; inasmuch, however, as they--these Yiddishers--will provide money for the budget, they will have to be supported. This is a bad, horrible dream and, praised be the Lord, it is merely a fancy! On the universal habit of regularly lying/exaggerating in speech without knowing anything but to make a better impression to the listener, The Citizen No. 35, 1873:
But take, for instance, natural sciences ! Did you not discuss natural sciences or bankruptcy cases and escapes over the border by different Petersburg, and other, Jews, understanding nothing about them and not knowing the A B C of natural sciences? ... Briefly, if to all this anyone should answer me with a nay, namely, that he did not relate the anecdotes, did not touch upon Botkin, did not lie about Jews, did not shout on the staircase about auntie's health, and that nothing of the kind ever happened to him--I would simply not believe it.Forget which entry:
And the sages and ringleaders merely cater to them--some of them for fear of the Jews (why not, they argue, let him go to America?--isn't it liberal to run away to America?); others--simply to make money on them. And thus fresh energies perish. I may be told that these are but two or three facts which mean nothing, and that, on the contrary, everything is consolidating itself and uniting even closer than hitherto; that banks, companies and associations are being formed. But, would you really, and in truth, point at this mob of triumphant Jews and Yiddishers who have sprung upon Russia?--Triumphant and enraptured--for in our day there have appeared even enraptured Jews of Hebrew and Orthodox faiths. And imagine, even about them, it is stated in our newspapers that they go into retirement and that, for instance, the foreign press is making great fun of the conventions of representatives of our Russian agricultural banks, on account of "the secret meetings of the first two conventions, asking not without irony : how and by what right have the Russian agricultural credit institutions the nerve to expect to gain public confidence if they, at secret meetings held behind the Chinese wall which carefully protects them, are concealing everything from the public, thereby hinting to it that, in fact, something suspicious is taking place..."
And, note a general trait: our whole problem resolves itself into the first step--to practice--whereas everybody, to the last man, is shouting and busying himself about principles; and practice, willy-nilly, has slipped into the hands of Jews alone.Note: I had planned on extracting all passages of relevance to this subject, but I stopped doing it consistently even as I kept reading. I think I left physical markers on pages though, so when I have the time or energy I will put them down. I was also going to transcribe his entire entry "The Jewish Question" as I haven't seen the text of it anywhere online, but I just don't have the time or energy to do it now. Maybe I'll do it in the coming months.
Excerpt from entry titled "About The Same" (previous entry titled "Best Men") [Beginning on pg. 484, Book I of my edition]:
Meanwhile, a new storm was coming up, a new calamity was arising--"the gold bag!" In lieu of the former "conditional" best men, a new contingency ensued which, in Russia, all of a sudden has acquired an awful significance. It goes without saying that "the gold bag" existed also in the past: it always existed, in the form of the merchant-millionaire; however, at no time in the past has it been placed so high--never has such a significance been attributed to it as in our day. Our former merchant, notwithstanding the role which everywhere in Europe capital and the millionaires have played, in Russia, comparatively speaking, occupied a rather insignificant place in the social hierarchy. To tell the truth--he did not deserve anything better. I will say in advance: I am speaking only about rich merchants, while the majority of them, who had not yet been corrupted by wealth, were living in the fashion of Ostrovsky's characters. Perhaps they were not worse than many others, again speaking comparatively, while the lowest and most numerous merchants virtually merged with the people. But the richer the former merchant grew, the worse he became. Essentially, he was nothing but a peasant--merely a corrupted peasant.
The former millionaire-merchants were divided into two classes: some of them continued to wear beards, despite their millions, and, in spite of the mirrors and inlaid floors in their huge mansions, lived somewhat swinishly--both in a moral and in a physical sense. The best that there was in them was their love of church bells and of vociferous deacons. However, notwithstanding this love, morally they were already detached from the people. It is difficult to conceive anything morally more contrasting than the people, on the one hand, and certain merchant-manufacturers on the other. It is said that Ovsiannikov, when he was recently transported through Kazan to Siberia, kicked out with his feet the donated copper coins which the people naively threw into his carriage: this is the ultimate degree of the moral alienation from the people--a complete loss of the least understanding of the people's thought and spirit. And never have the people been in a worse bondage than in the factories owned by some of these gentlemen!
The other class of our millionaire-merchants was characterized by dresscoats and shaven chins; by the gorgeous European furnishings of their houses; by the upbringing of their daughters with the French and English languages, with pianos, and--not infrequently--by some badge acquired as a result of substantial donations; by intolerable scorn for everyone lower than they; by contempt for an ordinary "dinner"-general, and, at the same time, by the most servile humiliation before a high dignitary, especially whenever that merchant succeeded--God only knows through what intrigues and by what devices--in enticing such a dignitary to a ball or dinner which, needless to say, was given for him. This preoccupation with the problem of giving a dinner for a dignitary became the program of life. This was anxiously looked for: it was virtually for this alone that the millionaire lived on earth. It stands to reason that this former rich merchant worshipped his million as God: in his view the million was everything; the million had extricated him out of nothingness and had made him impressive. In the vulgar soul of this "corrupted peasant" (he continued to be that, despite all his dress-coats) there never could be conceived a single thought, a single feeling, which, though for a second, would raise him in his consciousness above that million of his. Naturally, despite the outward polish, the family of such a merchant grew up without any education. The million not only was not conducive to education but, on the contrary, it used to constitute in such cases the principal cause of ignorance: why should the son of such a millionaire study in a university if, without any study, he could have everything, especially since these millionaires, upon acquiring their million, quite often acquired the rights of nobility. Aside from debauch since the earliest youthful years, and the most distorted conceptions of the world, the fatherland, honor and duty, wealth contributed nothing to the souls of that carnivorous and arrogant youth. And the distortion of the world outlook was monstrous since, above all, there prevailed the conviction which assumed the form of an axiom: "With money I can buy everything, every distinction, every valor; I can bribe everybody and I can bail myself out of everything." It is difficult to imagine the extent of the aridness of heart in youths who grew up in those rich families. From a boastfulness and a desire not to lag behind others, such a millionaire, at times, donated enormous sums for the benefit of the fatherland--for instance, in the case when it was threatened with danger (although this occurred but once, in 1872)--yet he made these donations in anticipation of rewards, while was always ready, any minute of his existence, to join the first stray Jew, in order to betray everybody and everything, provided this yielded profit: patriotism, the feeling of civic duty, is almost non-existent in these hearts.
Oh, of course, I am speaking of our Russian commercial millionaire merely as a class. There are exceptions always and everywhere. In Russia, too, merchants can be pointed out who possessed European education and who distinguished themselves with worthy civic deeds. However, of such there are very few among our millionaires; every one of them is known by name. Because of exceptions, a class does not lose its character.
Now, the former limits of the merchant of days gone by were suddenly, in our day, widely set asunder. Suddenly he became affiliated with the European speculator, hitherto unknown in Russia, and the stock-exchange gambler. The contemporaneous merchant no longer needs to entice to his "dinner party" a "dignitary" or to give balls in his honor. He affiliates himself and fraternizes with the dignitary at the stock exchange, at a shareholders' meeting, in a bank which he establishes together with the dignitary. Nowadays he himself is somebody; he himself is a dignitary. The main point is that all of a sudden he found himself decidedly in one of the highest places in society, which in Europe has already long ago been officially and sincerely assigned to the millionaire. And, of course, he did not doubt that he was actually worthy of the place.
Briefly, he becomes more and more wholeheartedly convinced that it is precisely he who nowadays is "the best" man on earth, in lieu of all the former ones. But the bending calamity is not that he entertains such nonsense, but the fact that others, also, it would seem (and already quite a few), begin to reason in the same way. In our day, the bag is unquestionably conceived by a dreadful majority to be the best of everything. Of course, these fears will be disputed. However, our present-day factual veneration of the bad is not only indisputable, but, by reason of the proportions it has assumed, it is also unprecedented. I repeat: also in the past the power of the bag was understood in Russia by everybody, but never until now has the bag been regarded as the loftiest thing on earth. In the official classification of Russians--in the social hierarchy--the former merchant's bag could not outweigh even a bureaucrat. At present, however, even the former hierarchy, without any coercion from the outside, seems to be ready to remove itself to the second place, ceding its place to the lovely and beautiful novel "condition" of the best man "who for so long a time and so erroneously did not assume his true rights." The present-day stock-exchange gambler enlists in his service litterateurs; the advocate pays court to him. "That young school turning out shrewd minds and dry hearts--a school distorting every sure feeling, whenever occasion calls for such distortion; a school of all sorts of challenges, fearless and irresponsible; a continual and incessant training, based on offer and demand"--this youthful school already has fallen in line with the stock-exchange gambler and begun to sing hymns of praise in his honor. Please do not think that I am hinting at "the Strusberg case"; advocates in that case who proclaimed their "pinched" clients as ideal men, who sang hymns to them as "the best men in all Moscow" (precisely, something of the kind)--these advocates have missed their mark. They have proved that they themselves are men devoid of the least serious conviction and even of poise, men with no sense of measure; and if they are playing in our midst the role of "European talents," it is solely because in the kingdom of the blind the one-eyed is king.
In fact, even as diplomats, they have charged the highest possible fee in order to obtain the maximum for the minimum: "Not only are they not guilty--they are holy!" It is rumored that at pone point the public even began to hiss. However, an advocate, to begin with, is not a diplomat: the comparison is essentially erroneous. It would have been more correct, far more correct, to ask--pointing at the client--the question propounded in the Gospel: "Gentlemen of the jury, who among you is 'he that is without sin'?"--Oh, I am not criticizing the verdict; the verdict is just--and I bow before it; it had to be rendered if it were only against the bank. Precisely this case was of such a nature that to convict by "public conscience" this "pinched," ill-starred Moscow Loan Bank meant to convict at the same time all our banks, the whole stock exchange, all stock-exchange gamblers, even though they had not yet been caught--what difference does it make? Who is without sin, without that same sin?--Honestly, who? Somebody has already said in print that they were leniently punished.--I must explain that I am not referring to Landau: he is really guilty of something extraordinary which I have no intention of even discussing. But, in all conscience, Danila Schumacher, convicted of "swindling," got a terrible punishment. Let us look into our hearts: are there many among us who would not have committed the same thing?--One needn't confess aloud, but let him tacitly admit it. However, long live justice!--All the same, they were jailed!--"Take that, for our stock exchange and depraved times; take that, as a reward for the fact that we are all egoists, that we all profess such villainous materialistic views on happiness in life and its delights; for our arid and treacherous feeling of self-preservation!" Nay, it is useful to convict even one bank for our own sins….
My God! Whither have I wandered? Is it possible that I, too, am writing "about the Strusberg case"? Enough! I hasten to cut this short. For I was speaking about "the best man," and I merely meant to draw the conclusion that in Russia the ideal of the real best man, even of the "natural" pattern, is in great danger of growing muddy. The old has either been destroyed or is worn out; the new is still borne on the wings of fantasy, whereas in actual life we behold something abominable which has reached unheard-of proportions. The fascination which is being attributed to this new force--the gold bag--even beings to inspire fear in some hearts, which are all too suspicious, for instance, as regards the people. Indeed, even though we--the upper stratum of society--might be seduced by the new idol, nevertheless we should not vanish without leaving a trace: not in vain has the torch of education been shining for us throughout two centuries. We are armed with enlightenment, and we should be able to repel the monster. At a moment of most filthy debauch, didn't we convict the Moscow Loan Bank? But our people--that "inert, corrupt, insensible mass"--into which the Jew has thrust himself, what are they going to set against the monster of materialism, in the guise of the gold bag, marching on them?--Their misery? Their rags? Their taxes and their bad harvests? Their vices? Liquor? Flogging? We were afraid that the people would forthwith fall prostrate before the increasing power of the gold bag, and that before even one generation should pass they would be enslaved worse than ever before--and that they would be driven into submission not only through coercion, but that they would submit morally, with their whole will. We were afraid that it is precisely they, before anyone else, who would say: "This is the main thing; here is where power, tranquility and happiness reside! This is what we shall worship and follow!"
Forget which entry this short quote is from:
Ideals are humbug, poesy, verses! And it is true that once more the Jew has enthroned himself everywhere! Why, not only has he "enthroned himself," but he never ceased to reign!
June 1876 Diary entry titled "My Paradox [p. 355]":
Now Jews are becoming landowners--and everywhere people write and shout that Jews are draining the soil of Russia; that a Jew, after having invested a certain amount of capital in the purchase of an estate, in order to retrieve the capital plus interest, promptly exhausts all productive forces of the purchased land. Yet try to say something against this and people will immediately start vociferating about the violation of the principle of economic freedom and civil equality. But what kind of equality is this if we have here an obvious Talmudic status in statu--above all and in the first place; if this is not only the exhaustion of the soil but also the future exhaustion of our peasant, who, having been liberated from the landowners, unquestionably and very soon will be driven--as a commune in corpore--into a much worse slavery of far more pernicious landowners--those same landowners who have already rained the sap out of the peasant in Western Russia; those who are now purchasing not only estates and peasants, but who have begun to buy liberal opinion, and who continue to do so quite successfully.Forget which entry these are from:
But let us leave the Westerners alone, and let us suppose that with money everything may be accomplished ; that time itself may be purchaed, and that even independence of life may somehow be steamed up and re-enacted. The question is: where is such money to be found?--Almost half of our present budget is paid for by vodka; in other words, this means that, judging by the present, the whole future of the people is dependent upon national drunkenness and popular depravity. We are paying, so to speak, with our future for our stately budget of a great European power. We are cutting the tree at its very root, in order to get the fruit as quickly as possible. And who sought this?--It happened involuntarily, of its own accord, as a result of the strict logic of historical events. Our people, liberated by the great word of the Monarch, are inexperienced in the new ways of life ; as yet, they have not lived independently, and they are merely taking their first strides along the new road : this is an enormous and extraordinary break ; it is almost wholly unexpected, almost unheard of in history by reason of its completeness and character. These first, and now independent, steps of the liberated giant along the new path, fraught with great peril, require extraordinary caution. And yet, what did our people encounter at these first steps?--Vacillation among the upper strata of society; the alienation from the people of our intelligentsia which, for centuries, has been in existence (this is the principal thing), and on top of these--trash and the Jew. The people began revelling and drinking--first, from joy; and later, from force of habit. Were they shown anything better than trashiness? Were they diverted, were they taught anything?--At present in some, even in many, localities, pot-houses are so numerous that they exist in the proportion of not only one to hundreds but even to dozens of inhabitants--moreover, to only a few dozens. There are localities with some fifty dwellers, or less, and yet that have a pot-house of their own.
Genuine, sound capital accumulates in a country in no other way than by being based upon a general labor prosperity; otherwise only capital owned by kulaks and Jews can come into existence. And thus it shall be if the people will not come to their senses and the intelligentsia will not help them. If the people should fail to come to their senses, they, as a whole, will find themselves in a very short time in the hands of all sorts of Jews, and in such an event no commune is going to save them : there will be merely uniformly equal paupers, mortgaged and enslaved as a whole commune, while, in their stead, Jews and kulaks will be providing the money for the budget. There will emerge petty, depraved and mean little bourgeois, and a countless number of paupers enslaved by them--such will be the picture! Yiddishers will be soaking up the blood of the people and subsisting on their debauch and humiliation; inasmuch, however, as they--these Yiddishers--will provide money for the budget, they will have to be supported. This is a bad, horrible dream and, praised be the Lord, it is merely a fancy! On the universal habit of regularly lying/exaggerating in speech without knowing anything but to make a better impression to the listener, The Citizen No. 35, 1873:
But take, for instance, natural sciences ! Did you not discuss natural sciences or bankruptcy cases and escapes over the border by different Petersburg, and other, Jews, understanding nothing about them and not knowing the A B C of natural sciences? ... Briefly, if to all this anyone should answer me with a nay, namely, that he did not relate the anecdotes, did not touch upon Botkin, did not lie about Jews, did not shout on the staircase about auntie's health, and that nothing of the kind ever happened to him--I would simply not believe it.Forget which entry:
And the sages and ringleaders merely cater to them--some of them for fear of the Jews (why not, they argue, let him go to America?--isn't it liberal to run away to America?); others--simply to make money on them. And thus fresh energies perish. I may be told that these are but two or three facts which mean nothing, and that, on the contrary, everything is consolidating itself and uniting even closer than hitherto; that banks, companies and associations are being formed. But, would you really, and in truth, point at this mob of triumphant Jews and Yiddishers who have sprung upon Russia?--Triumphant and enraptured--for in our day there have appeared even enraptured Jews of Hebrew and Orthodox faiths. And imagine, even about them, it is stated in our newspapers that they go into retirement and that, for instance, the foreign press is making great fun of the conventions of representatives of our Russian agricultural banks, on account of "the secret meetings of the first two conventions, asking not without irony : how and by what right have the Russian agricultural credit institutions the nerve to expect to gain public confidence if they, at secret meetings held behind the Chinese wall which carefully protects them, are concealing everything from the public, thereby hinting to it that, in fact, something suspicious is taking place..."
And, note a general trait: our whole problem resolves itself into the first step--to practice--whereas everybody, to the last man, is shouting and busying himself about principles; and practice, willy-nilly, has slipped into the hands of Jews alone.Note: I had planned on extracting all passages of relevance to this subject, but I stopped doing it consistently even as I kept reading. I think I left physical markers on pages though, so when I have the time or energy I will put them down. I was also going to transcribe his entire entry "The Jewish Question" as I haven't seen the text of it anywhere online, but I just don't have the time or energy to do it now. Maybe I'll do it in the coming months.
Excerpt from entry titled "About The Same" (previous entry titled "Best Men") [Beginning on pg. 484, Book I of my edition]:
Meanwhile, a new storm was coming up, a new calamity was arising--"the gold bag!" In lieu of the former "conditional" best men, a new contingency ensued which, in Russia, all of a sudden has acquired an awful significance. It goes without saying that "the gold bag" existed also in the past: it always existed, in the form of the merchant-millionaire; however, at no time in the past has it been placed so high--never has such a significance been attributed to it as in our day. Our former merchant, notwithstanding the role which everywhere in Europe capital and the millionaires have played, in Russia, comparatively speaking, occupied a rather insignificant place in the social hierarchy. To tell the truth--he did not deserve anything better. I will say in advance: I am speaking only about rich merchants, while the majority of them, who had not yet been corrupted by wealth, were living in the fashion of Ostrovsky's characters. Perhaps they were not worse than many others, again speaking comparatively, while the lowest and most numerous merchants virtually merged with the people. But the richer the former merchant grew, the worse he became. Essentially, he was nothing but a peasant--merely a corrupted peasant.
The former millionaire-merchants were divided into two classes: some of them continued to wear beards, despite their millions, and, in spite of the mirrors and inlaid floors in their huge mansions, lived somewhat swinishly--both in a moral and in a physical sense. The best that there was in them was their love of church bells and of vociferous deacons. However, notwithstanding this love, morally they were already detached from the people. It is difficult to conceive anything morally more contrasting than the people, on the one hand, and certain merchant-manufacturers on the other. It is said that Ovsiannikov, when he was recently transported through Kazan to Siberia, kicked out with his feet the donated copper coins which the people naively threw into his carriage: this is the ultimate degree of the moral alienation from the people--a complete loss of the least understanding of the people's thought and spirit. And never have the people been in a worse bondage than in the factories owned by some of these gentlemen!
The other class of our millionaire-merchants was characterized by dresscoats and shaven chins; by the gorgeous European furnishings of their houses; by the upbringing of their daughters with the French and English languages, with pianos, and--not infrequently--by some badge acquired as a result of substantial donations; by intolerable scorn for everyone lower than they; by contempt for an ordinary "dinner"-general, and, at the same time, by the most servile humiliation before a high dignitary, especially whenever that merchant succeeded--God only knows through what intrigues and by what devices--in enticing such a dignitary to a ball or dinner which, needless to say, was given for him. This preoccupation with the problem of giving a dinner for a dignitary became the program of life. This was anxiously looked for: it was virtually for this alone that the millionaire lived on earth. It stands to reason that this former rich merchant worshipped his million as God: in his view the million was everything; the million had extricated him out of nothingness and had made him impressive. In the vulgar soul of this "corrupted peasant" (he continued to be that, despite all his dress-coats) there never could be conceived a single thought, a single feeling, which, though for a second, would raise him in his consciousness above that million of his. Naturally, despite the outward polish, the family of such a merchant grew up without any education. The million not only was not conducive to education but, on the contrary, it used to constitute in such cases the principal cause of ignorance: why should the son of such a millionaire study in a university if, without any study, he could have everything, especially since these millionaires, upon acquiring their million, quite often acquired the rights of nobility. Aside from debauch since the earliest youthful years, and the most distorted conceptions of the world, the fatherland, honor and duty, wealth contributed nothing to the souls of that carnivorous and arrogant youth. And the distortion of the world outlook was monstrous since, above all, there prevailed the conviction which assumed the form of an axiom: "With money I can buy everything, every distinction, every valor; I can bribe everybody and I can bail myself out of everything." It is difficult to imagine the extent of the aridness of heart in youths who grew up in those rich families. From a boastfulness and a desire not to lag behind others, such a millionaire, at times, donated enormous sums for the benefit of the fatherland--for instance, in the case when it was threatened with danger (although this occurred but once, in 1872)--yet he made these donations in anticipation of rewards, while was always ready, any minute of his existence, to join the first stray Jew, in order to betray everybody and everything, provided this yielded profit: patriotism, the feeling of civic duty, is almost non-existent in these hearts.
Oh, of course, I am speaking of our Russian commercial millionaire merely as a class. There are exceptions always and everywhere. In Russia, too, merchants can be pointed out who possessed European education and who distinguished themselves with worthy civic deeds. However, of such there are very few among our millionaires; every one of them is known by name. Because of exceptions, a class does not lose its character.
Now, the former limits of the merchant of days gone by were suddenly, in our day, widely set asunder. Suddenly he became affiliated with the European speculator, hitherto unknown in Russia, and the stock-exchange gambler. The contemporaneous merchant no longer needs to entice to his "dinner party" a "dignitary" or to give balls in his honor. He affiliates himself and fraternizes with the dignitary at the stock exchange, at a shareholders' meeting, in a bank which he establishes together with the dignitary. Nowadays he himself is somebody; he himself is a dignitary. The main point is that all of a sudden he found himself decidedly in one of the highest places in society, which in Europe has already long ago been officially and sincerely assigned to the millionaire. And, of course, he did not doubt that he was actually worthy of the place.
Briefly, he becomes more and more wholeheartedly convinced that it is precisely he who nowadays is "the best" man on earth, in lieu of all the former ones. But the bending calamity is not that he entertains such nonsense, but the fact that others, also, it would seem (and already quite a few), begin to reason in the same way. In our day, the bag is unquestionably conceived by a dreadful majority to be the best of everything. Of course, these fears will be disputed. However, our present-day factual veneration of the bad is not only indisputable, but, by reason of the proportions it has assumed, it is also unprecedented. I repeat: also in the past the power of the bag was understood in Russia by everybody, but never until now has the bag been regarded as the loftiest thing on earth. In the official classification of Russians--in the social hierarchy--the former merchant's bag could not outweigh even a bureaucrat. At present, however, even the former hierarchy, without any coercion from the outside, seems to be ready to remove itself to the second place, ceding its place to the lovely and beautiful novel "condition" of the best man "who for so long a time and so erroneously did not assume his true rights." The present-day stock-exchange gambler enlists in his service litterateurs; the advocate pays court to him. "That young school turning out shrewd minds and dry hearts--a school distorting every sure feeling, whenever occasion calls for such distortion; a school of all sorts of challenges, fearless and irresponsible; a continual and incessant training, based on offer and demand"--this youthful school already has fallen in line with the stock-exchange gambler and begun to sing hymns of praise in his honor. Please do not think that I am hinting at "the Strusberg case"; advocates in that case who proclaimed their "pinched" clients as ideal men, who sang hymns to them as "the best men in all Moscow" (precisely, something of the kind)--these advocates have missed their mark. They have proved that they themselves are men devoid of the least serious conviction and even of poise, men with no sense of measure; and if they are playing in our midst the role of "European talents," it is solely because in the kingdom of the blind the one-eyed is king.
In fact, even as diplomats, they have charged the highest possible fee in order to obtain the maximum for the minimum: "Not only are they not guilty--they are holy!" It is rumored that at pone point the public even began to hiss. However, an advocate, to begin with, is not a diplomat: the comparison is essentially erroneous. It would have been more correct, far more correct, to ask--pointing at the client--the question propounded in the Gospel: "Gentlemen of the jury, who among you is 'he that is without sin'?"--Oh, I am not criticizing the verdict; the verdict is just--and I bow before it; it had to be rendered if it were only against the bank. Precisely this case was of such a nature that to convict by "public conscience" this "pinched," ill-starred Moscow Loan Bank meant to convict at the same time all our banks, the whole stock exchange, all stock-exchange gamblers, even though they had not yet been caught--what difference does it make? Who is without sin, without that same sin?--Honestly, who? Somebody has already said in print that they were leniently punished.--I must explain that I am not referring to Landau: he is really guilty of something extraordinary which I have no intention of even discussing. But, in all conscience, Danila Schumacher, convicted of "swindling," got a terrible punishment. Let us look into our hearts: are there many among us who would not have committed the same thing?--One needn't confess aloud, but let him tacitly admit it. However, long live justice!--All the same, they were jailed!--"Take that, for our stock exchange and depraved times; take that, as a reward for the fact that we are all egoists, that we all profess such villainous materialistic views on happiness in life and its delights; for our arid and treacherous feeling of self-preservation!" Nay, it is useful to convict even one bank for our own sins….
My God! Whither have I wandered? Is it possible that I, too, am writing "about the Strusberg case"? Enough! I hasten to cut this short. For I was speaking about "the best man," and I merely meant to draw the conclusion that in Russia the ideal of the real best man, even of the "natural" pattern, is in great danger of growing muddy. The old has either been destroyed or is worn out; the new is still borne on the wings of fantasy, whereas in actual life we behold something abominable which has reached unheard-of proportions. The fascination which is being attributed to this new force--the gold bag--even beings to inspire fear in some hearts, which are all too suspicious, for instance, as regards the people. Indeed, even though we--the upper stratum of society--might be seduced by the new idol, nevertheless we should not vanish without leaving a trace: not in vain has the torch of education been shining for us throughout two centuries. We are armed with enlightenment, and we should be able to repel the monster. At a moment of most filthy debauch, didn't we convict the Moscow Loan Bank? But our people--that "inert, corrupt, insensible mass"--into which the Jew has thrust himself, what are they going to set against the monster of materialism, in the guise of the gold bag, marching on them?--Their misery? Their rags? Their taxes and their bad harvests? Their vices? Liquor? Flogging? We were afraid that the people would forthwith fall prostrate before the increasing power of the gold bag, and that before even one generation should pass they would be enslaved worse than ever before--and that they would be driven into submission not only through coercion, but that they would submit morally, with their whole will. We were afraid that it is precisely they, before anyone else, who would say: "This is the main thing; here is where power, tranquility and happiness reside! This is what we shall worship and follow!"
Forget which entry this short quote is from:
Ideals are humbug, poesy, verses! And it is true that once more the Jew has enthroned himself everywhere! Why, not only has he "enthroned himself," but he never ceased to reign!