Doubt, Atheism, and the Nineteenth-Century Russian Intelligentsia

2 Providence and Doubt: Alexander Herzen, Nikolai Ogarev, and Their Friends

2 Providence and Doubt Alexander Herzen, Nikolai Ogarev, and Their Friends Ihave a special demon—doubt; that is the wound of my soul.”1 In 1832, when Alexander Herzen addressed these words to his intimate friend Nikolai Ogarev, he was barely twenty, but he had already identified the trait that would delineate his remarkable life. Herzen and Ogarev were central figures among Moscow intellectuals in the 1830s and 1840s. After the 1848 revolutions in France and Italy, in which Herzen actively participated, he became a key spokesman in Europe of Russian opposition to the autocracy. Hailed by historians as the father of Russian socialism, Herzen is also regarded as having been tremendously influential in the codification of the type of friendship and commitment to ideals later identified with the intelligentsia.2 Herzen was not the sole author of those ideals, however. As he emphasized in his famous memoirs, My Past and Thoughts, his life and activities were predicated on his friendship and collaboration with Ogarev. The circle of likeminded friends they formed in the 1830s as students at Moscow University was no less important to their intellectual development: it served as the crucible for the articulation of the new ethos of doubt. Over the years, the content and nature of doubt among the group’s members would change dramatically. Doubt was part of the intellectual legacy that romantic youths of the 1830s inherited from the Wisdom Lovers. The Wisdom Lovers had described it as a temporary condition that set in as individuals struggled to solve the world’s mysteries, provoking them to continue their search. It was a sign of intellectual 54 and spiritual strength, a mark of belonging to that higher order of people who devote their lives to the service of the truth. The Wisdom Lovers also warned, however, that it could become a permanent state if an individual despaired of ever finding higher meaning. This was precisely what happened to Herzen and Ogarev in the 1840s. For them, doubt became a process that could lead to only one conclusion: there was no higher meaning or guiding principle behind events in the world. Why did this reevaluation of doubt—and faith—become necessary? How did it come about? Herzen and Ogarev were seven or eight years younger than the Wisdom Lovers and grew up in their cultural ambit. Like so many educated Moscow youths of the 1830s, they found their calling in the quest to uncover the unity that lay hidden beneath the infinite diversity of the world, and, like those others, they turned first to Schelling to help them uncover it. Herzen and Ogarev’s Schelling was not, however, the Wisdom Lovers’ Schelling. They were less attracted to the pantheist Naturphilosophie of Schelling’s early years than to his later, quasi-Catholic Geschichtsphilosophie. Schelling confirmed Herzen and Ogarev’s belief that they and their friends were prophets, chosen by God to show humanity the errors of its past and present and to point it toward a better future. These extravagant claims stood in contrast to their relatively modest social status: Herzen and Ogarev were both sons of noblemen, but unlike the Wisdom Lovers, they did not come from the highest echelons of the nobility. In these years, their heavy reliance on Christian terms and concepts also set Herzen and Ogarev apart from the Wisdom Lovers. This habit reflected changes in the cultural atmosphere in Russia during the early reign of Nicholas I. Nicholas not only introduced a more authoritarian style of government but also made effusive displays of Orthodox Christian piety the hallmark of his reign, beginning with his coronation in 1826, a ceremony filled with tears and pious rapture. As emperor, Nicholas made the preservation of his subjects’ faith and morals his primary mission. The conservative press described him as the embodiment of this Orthodox nation and a father to the Russian people, who required the merciful but firm command of an autocratic leader.3 Prelates of the Russian Orthodox Church willingly confirmed this image. Metropolitan Filaret of Moscow welcomed Nicholas I to the Kremlin during every state visit, and on these occasions, he gently pointed out the connections that united the tsar with God. In a speech he gave in 1832, for example, Filaret drew on the designation of Jesus Christ as the Providence and Doubt 55 “King of Kings” to link Nicholas I into a hierarchy that extended downward from God to...