A philosophical enquiry into the origins of the Russian Revolution

 

A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origins of the Russian Revolution                 

 

The Russian Revolution was no mere rebellion of the working class—no, indeed it was something incomprehensibly more, a revolt so significant that an entire philosophical enquiry may be based upon its foundations. Fathers and Sons and Notes from Underground both exemplify the main characteristics of the roots of the uprising, from sixty years before in the time of Russian Tsardom. In this way, both Turgenev and Dostoevsky—opposing characters in real life, as seen in various letters by both authors—are able to bring to life so much thought and circumstance, that we are able to envision the very problems a Russian of revolutionary importance my have been required to face. Indeed, corruption and poverty is seriously notable in both works, as is partisanship in life and death. We find destitution, and misery, and disbelief, all caused by the abject toils Russians were forced to deal with through the autocratic irrationality of the Tsar and rural fiefdom. Within the ageless pages of their texts, we may find some—but not all, never all—of the answers as to how the Russian Revolution actually came about, notwithstanding the standard history textbook political and military factors.

Not only do the authors show us that there were various themes to the origin of the Russian Revolution, but they also give us much to contemplate and philosophize. One must keep in mind, however, that their novels of fiction are not complete analyses of the Revolutionary origins—in fact, the authors were never alive to witness the uprising proper. Nonetheless, they may give us a clue, a hint, even, to why one of the world’s most notorious and utterly crucial milestone ever came to be.

The most vital of these clues begin with the allusions to the various political and social problems of the day, such as Turgenev’s generational divide and Dostoevsky’s ‘crystal palace’; elements of change that create the required perspective for any further scrutiny. Following the aspects of erraticism in the Russian social and political fabric comes the subsequent problem: how was it going to change? What direction was this going to take, and how would it affect the people? These questions are explored through the ardent nihilism of Barazov’s cohort, as well as the underground man’s assay into the purpose and goal of humankind, as oblique as they may initially sound in terms of any valuable dialectic. Following the problem of the future is the effects of existence on the Russian people; how should one use their life and how should one act and think to make it the most effective? Consider the main philosophies of materialism and existentialism in both works. Finally, we find ourselves thrown amidst the absurdities of conscious inertia and suffering, as well as the reality of life found in the end of both works, that could be used as pinpoints to which all of Russia, evolved from passive observers to active figures—perhaps so much so that they again became stuck in inertia—began their united advance towards a revolution.   

 

The generational divide in Fathers and Sons—that between Barazov and Pavel, for example—is a prime model for the vital societal issues that plagued Russia pre-revolution. We have already seen through the short histories of Russia in this period that the late-nineteenth century was bringing about a great schism between the younger and the older generations, particularly concerning attitudes towards the governance of Russia. The cumulative of the Russian Revolution was the Russian Civil War (1918-20); this internal struggle for dominance was mainly between the monarchists, or the White Guards (liberal in belief and traditional in manner), and the Red Guards, mainly radical Bolsheviks whose progressive, socialist tendencies demanded change—so indeed, if the abyss segregating the revolutionaries and the liberals was wide enough to instigate internal warfare, it was certainly a reigning factor of the revolution that caused the Civil War.

Dostoevsky’s theories on the ‘crystal palace’ also bring to mind the Marxist Bolsheviks, and especially Lenin himself, rallying the Great Russian proletariat together under the name of socialism, in order to bring harmony and peace to a burning Russia. What the underground man demonstrates to us is that this utopian fantasy is exactly that: a daydream, and illusion, and nothing more. We are mistaken, he insists—so could a mistaken sense of identity be a cause of factor in the Russian Revolution? Consider that the majority of revolutionaries were poor, many peasants, who wished for a better future; this gave them the incentive to initiate change, in the form of a ‘crystal palace’. However, consider the changes that were actually made: tyranny, fear, and violence ensued with the reign of Lenin and, to an exponentially greater effect, Stalin. The peasants were supposed to be the ones to gain from the crystal palace, but instead they were to suffer; they wished for change, but were mistaken in their illusory utopian castle in the air. Dostoevsky may have been before his time in expecting this melancholy outcome, but nonetheless his suspicions did end up as reasons for the Revolution to ever take place.

Philosophically, these two aspects of the great Russian debacle deal with the concept of change, and the human fallacy of taking change as one thing, and it ending up as something completely different. As explained previously, the flux of reality is imperative to change, lest we remain static concepts for the rest of eternity; but how can we ever insist that reality is something that can be ‘changed’ in the first place, if we can only change things that were once inert to begin? Time and space have never been standing still, so to claim that we can change it at all would seem to be presumptuous and impudent. In fact, we find in Dostoevsky this very idea, in his model of the crystal palace—since we are mistaken about one aspect of change, perhaps we are mistaken for all aspects of change; is this not, perhaps, the reason behind the underground man’s decision to remain in constant inertia? To fight against the barrages of time, and to transcend it—this is the underground man’s aspiration, an ultimate exertion of his free will. Since change is redundant, all we are left with is the constant flux of reality, which will always lead to simply more corporeal undulation, like the swinging back and forth of a pendulum in an ever-spinning universe.  

Then again, perhaps changes are possible—consider Turgenev’s consistent number of dualities that initiate change. In order for reality to remain as the underground man would have believed, we must believe that reality flows only in one line, like a single stream amongst a vast plain of emptiness. Perhaps this constant flux, like a river through time, consistently proposes for us a set of dualities, from which we must make an unconscious decision at every crossroad. We cannot transcend change, because we are always part of it, at every choice we instigate. This idea again envelops around another of the underground man’s theories on free will, proposing instead that we do not really have a choice per se, because we are always being bombarded with dualities, and nothing more—we do not have the option of escaping these dualities.

We can also consider these ideas from the reference point of Russia’s political backdrop prior to and after the revolution. Socialism proposes the extreme recognition and utilization of the fact that we are all equal in society, and that because of this every part of our life should be collectivized; this is the option at the utmost limit between autocracy and democracy, the most politically important of all these dualities facing the people. If we consider change a product of never-ending dualities, forcing us to make a determined choice based upon solely the options we are given, then socialism was certainly the decision of the masses, and it therefore must have been profitable. However, the underground man gives us another view on this theory, as it is certainly shown that socialism did not bring the idealistic state it was hoped to bring—the reason for this is because in true socialist theory, there are no superiors; however, in Russia’s instance, there were leaders that not only were treated as above the rest, but in their hands remained the very lives of their people. If a single person can escape the socialist utopia, then the entire theory must fall—Dostoevsky understood this, and as such determined that the proposed ‘crystal palace’ was truly nothing more than a ‘chicken coop’ provided to protect us from the rain.

So undeniably, issues of change, choice, and human fallacy were imperative to the roots of the Russian Revolution, for without them the fundamental roots would have never sprouted into a great civil movement. Its impact on the people, however, may leave a bad taste in some people’s mouths, for Russia certainly had suffered enough without dictators who, under the veil of socialism, ordained their lives for another sixty years. Unfortunately, it seems to be human nature to desire change; for hundreds of years, Russia was under feudalism, hidden from the world by antediluvian Tsars who wanted their power to remain eternal. However, soon the enlightenment was to reach the great nation, and our human nature began to initiate change. We could say that this never really was a choice, and that the Russians were simply a factor of free will, in that they chose to transcend the flux of reality into something more, something contemporary; but alas, also something detrimental—a chicken coop—and in the end contemptible of their own desires; “all human actions are equivalent, and all are on principle doomed to failure.” [1] On the other hand, we may turn to the great proletarians and declare that life’s constant changes, the constant dualities they must face, were always existent, but by route of a determined future the path had always been the same; only now, in the face of unadulterated havoc, did your course diverge in a different direction, towards something that is neither better nor worse than before, simply because socialism was where you were headed no matter what you really wanted to happen. Whether or not we implore further into this problem of change and duality, its impact is there for all to see: socialism, and a social stratification that politically changed the face of the world forever.

 

Examining the political and social factors that initially led to the revolution is helpful in analyzing the aspects of the future that was hoped for through the mass upheaval. Of course, the origins must include some hint towards the end, or else the actions of the revolutionaries would have been futile and meaningless—the immediate satisfaction for their own desires without a purpose. Therefore, we ask ourselves what the revolutionaries actually hoped for through a revolution, and through these texts, we come to two key rejoinders: the nihilists, and the underground man’s ‘goal for mankind’. The nihilists were documented as being a major force behind the initial revolutionary movements, and they certainly display the main cause behind the change being desired: the theories, and beliefs, and systems set up simply did not function, and in order to create a superior reality we must transcend these values into a higher existence, not only reverse what we already have. Nihilism was not only the backbone to change, but also an apparition of the future after the revolution, in a world where the current values and methods are superfluous. This idea also correlates to the underground man’s proposed goal of humanity, who claims that we fear the completion of our ambitions, so instead we choose to destroy whatever we create in a continuous cycle. To him, then, the future is not a predetermined moment in time, but instead an incessant destroying of what we have created—the potential of this change is more change, because we will never actually reach the goal we seem to be persistently targeting. Again, the goal of the Russian people, through a revolution, was unquestionably to create a future different from what seems to have already been in store for them, and it is in this context that we will delve into their possible impending conceptions.

    Nihilism seems a peculiar future, in the fact that it would never even support the idea of a future—only what is now. However, if we were to break nihilism down into its most core component, it would be chaos, and this is deciding factor in the revolutionaries’ minds. However, the nature of chaos is such that we cannot make, obviously, any sense out of anything; how, then, can we even determine that we are in chaos? According to the nihilists, chaos is the true essence of life, and through chaos, we may acknowledge the supreme nature of logic and being. In other words, through chaos, we will find true order; but this anarchical view of life does have its downfalls. Consider, for instance, in nature—Aristotle’s ‘golden mean’ is a prime example—where chaos is anything but evident.[2] If nature is the true example of a harmony unadulterated by man, then should it not represent what we should all follow? In addition, if this is true, then chaos is certainly not the direction we must be taking. Chaos is unpredictability, it is unknowing, it is constant flux, and this is something many could not handle. We must destroy all institutions, from the law to the family, if we are to recreate the earth into a better place; however, is it truly possible to transcend the concept of an institution? If we were to begin at year zero, as if by the reign of the Khmer Rouge, would we not only continue to progress in the same fashion as we did previously? This would be human nature, and because of this inherent sense of being, we cannot create chaos, because it is something we can never understand.

On the other hand, of course, one could argue that we are already on the brink of chaos, and that the rejection of all values and institutions would simply be a step in the right direction. The world we have created does not follow with the balance of logic and reason, and therefore must be avoided. Chaos will be profitable, as it will be the harbinger of peace. Personally, I believe that this beloved chaos is not believed to be permanent, but instead a stepping-stone to an entirely new humanity. So in this way, all the logic and reason we find in abundance in nature would instead be an example of chaos at it’s prime; there are no written laws of nature, no rulers to dictate, no theories or institutions to abide by—they simply be, and that is the essence of chaos. Dostoevsky would most certainly argue against this, instead claiming that living by the ways of logic is pure lunacy, and there is no evidence in the way of proving that reason is, in fact, the only profitable route for mankind—and this, surely, is the foundation behind the nihilist’s argument for chaos.

Nihilism also suggests that emotion is a useless human notion, conjured up by the romantics and the religious—how could one possibly attach themselves to emotion and revolt at the same time? If so, it would only be half-heartedly, for we would start to feel pity, and strife, for the situation we are in, and immediately stop the havoc we are creating. Undeniably, one could argue that it is predominately emotion that forces us to rebel in the first place; but consider, that we only rebel when we understand that our conditions could be better elsewhere—this is pervasive throughout history. Therefore, our emotions are dependant on the situation in which we live—our sense of logic is not; logic is inherent, and although there is most certainly causality from logic to emotion, it is our reason that realizes an injustice is being served, and we rebel. The causality is redundant, considering that the emotions stem from the logic itself. If the goal of nihilism is chaos, and we must revolt in order to reach that chaos, then we cannot be emotional.       

However, of course, perhaps this chaos is not the end, but the continuous means by which we survive. The underground man insists that we are destroying creatures, and that we will always fear that final end, the infamous two times two is four, from which all else would remain in pointless inertia. Because of this, we never succeed in our ambitions; instead, it is our ambition to destroy what we have created and never reach the goal we seem to be aiming for. If one were to consider nihilism from the above fashion, perhaps it is unattainable: as stated before, the goal of nihilism is chaos, and we must revolt in order to create this chaos. However, if we are constantly destroying what we have built before we ever even realize its existence, then perhaps this revolt is instead the destruction of the chaos we are trying to attain. If chaos is our goal, then we will destroy it, for it is in human nature. The nihilist will exclaim that ‘There is no human nature to begin with, so your argument is redundant’; however, could there not be something more to why we act the way we do, and why we progress—or regress—in the same manner throughout history? Indeed to many it may be so, and to others it may be ridiculous to even consider the concept—and yet, we are eternally left with that very same mystery.

The problem is as such: the Russian people, whether realizing this or not, were rising under the all-so real wings of nihilism, yet at the same time their goal was to purposely destroy what they sought—we can see that through time, this is indeed what happened, and perhaps Turgenev and Dostoevsky knew a little more about the fallacious idiosyncrasies of human existence.

 

We find much about the problem of existence in these works that it would take years to pore through every nuance of every system of belief, in order to eventually determine that existence does not—and will not—ever have a real explanation. However, mainly through the strong undercurrents of materialism and existentialism in both works, we may deduce the different ways in which we may interpret meaning in our lives and how we should live or psychologically assess the events and ideas that affect us. Materialism is a philosophy for the inherent scientist in all of us, a philosophy that adheres to all the rules of physics and chemistry, and uses these rules to explain a world that, to them, is without any metaphysical meaning. We can certainly find many of the driving forces of the revolution swayed by this physicalist philosophy, especially concerning their attitudes towards the Russian Orthodox Church and the concept of ‘divine intervention’ by the Tsar. As seen before, by observing the trends in materialist theory, emotion becomes practically useless, and this would aid in their rebellion against the injustices served. Existentialism, despite being almost the antithesis of materialism in numerous ways, could also be seen the crutch by which Russia stood amidst the havoc a revolution can bring upon a people—for existentialism promotes the idea that our physical existence precedes our spiritual existence, and that leads us to develop an infinite number of subjective ideas that make up humanity. If materialism remained the impetus behind the rallying Bolshevik Russians, then existentialism remained afterwards, helping Russia to pick up the pieces of a broken future—by promoting the idea that their world, their abject reality, may have the possibility of more insofar as they will it to be—existentialism (without the Russian people consciously acknowledging it) gave them a prospect. (Unfortunately, this prospect may have been unknowingly as dim as their present, as existentialism promotes the idea of life as despair, anguish, and suffering.)

If the world consists only of matter—as materialism points out—and all subjective ideas can be rationally reduced to one objective, universal one, then any metaphysical notions are superfluous. How can we base our lives on concepts of emotion and God when there is no physical proof of this? We base our perceptions on what we can sense, as per Kant, and therefore anything else could be considered scientific hearsay of the highest order. Take, for example, a purely physical event, such as a chair moving places. A romantic would tell you that the chair moved because our harmonious universe coincided its allowance of the chair’s movement with the physical action, and as a result, concord between the abstract and the scientific occur without conscious perception. However, saying this is like pulling a rabbit out of thin air: we are deriving something from nothing. What is to say that there is a metaphysical aspect to our universe? Matter is all we know, and all we can ever know.

However. Indeed this fearsome ‘however’ haunts every philosophical enquiry, as all ideas have a ‘however’ to contradict what has been said—here is no exception. If the world only consists of matter, and through our omniscient senses, then how is it that we continuously develop new experiences and new sensations? It is seemingly impossible for our material body to have a neuron in the brain ready to interpret every different phenomenon there is on this planet—one would fall to insanity at simply considering the boundless proportions. Therefore, there must be something more, something transcendent to materiality that allows us to feel, to understand, and to perceive. Emotion is no more redundant than logic, as both are products of the human mind the materialist so much reveres. We cannot touch our emotions, nor any sublime incorporeal being, yet if we can feel it, then surely it must be there, otherwise the argument of human subjectivity falls—claiming our emotions are false means that our mind is fallacious, and therefore is unreliable in every respect. The world we see on the outside is the mirror through which we interpret the experience of the mind.

Existentialism suggests a quality of the same, hinting at the fact that there is much more to human reality than simple physics. In fact, it goes so far as to imply that there is no truth, only human subjectivity—as a result, one could deduce that we are all fallacious by nature, and as a result all of our actions will lead to failure. We can consider failure to be the epitome of our existence, as all else will follow from failure—including, and probably limited to, more failure. This failure creates the aforementioned despair that we so admire, yet fear, because once again it is a core component of essence, which defines being. How is this so? Our consistent failure, on the same level with our detrimental habit of destroying whatever palace we are about to create, leads us to believe that no matter what we do, we will always end up at the same forlorn spot we began—and as such, the anguished cyclicality of life ensues.

Existentialism relies on subjectivity—without it, it is baseless. Yet subjectivity is an inconsistent idea, as it is—as the word suggests—idiosyncratic. It suggests a meaning that is contradictory, because if the existentialist philosophy is true, then language is also subjective. As such, the meaning for the word ‘subjectivity’ does not have any real meaning, and the ideas of our world are nothing—they are nonexistent (in fact, the words I am using at this very moment have no meaning whatsoever besides their face value, but for consistency’s sake I will continue notwithstanding). In these incessant epistemological rationales, one would again go mad for the occasion, but there is some certainty in the ideas being made. There requires truth in this uncertain world, or else nothing will ever make sense—we will like in inane absurdity.

So indeed, like the underground man, we may reach a point of consciousness, of pure and untainted reality, that we may reach the stage of conscious inertia; or we may indulge in the necessities of reason, logic, and materialism, simply because it is what we can idealize. Barazov insists that science is our only God; the underground man shows us that we only create Gods, but in the end, it is up to ourselves to reach the immaculate state of torpor and suffering. The Russian people had this dichotomy to face with, as proven before, and it proved disastrous for them—not because either of the philosophies prove to be neglectful to humankind, but instead because two very different philosophies are incompatible. By examining these ideas in multiple lights, we are able to see the pros and cons of each ideology, and also how varied the problem of existence remains—perhaps, with time, even more will develop, and our vast universe will expand to even greater unimaginable proportions.  

 

After traversing the philosophically profound depths of Russia’s social, political, and moral conditions prior to and initiating the Russian revolution of 1917, we find ourselves lost in an endless cycle of contradictories and problems and fallacies—only to find one end. This end is essential to the human condition on a universal level, and imperative to the general attitudes of the Russians pre- and post-revolution. This end is the fundamental property of reality, and the truth lies in the underground man’s dialectic on the suffering of veracity and conscious inertia—all cumulating to the final important scene of Fathers and Sons, when Barazov parts from this world in imperturbable acceptance. We must remember the individual state of the revolutionaries preceding the revolution itself: almost in a conscious inertia of their own, they suffered from an inept ruler and impoverished living conditions; they remained, as they believed, so far ahead of the ruling classes that they transpired in a dreadful torpor. This inertia soon lead to more suffering, and eventually a man like Vladimir Lenin was required in order to unleash that inertial anguish outwards onto the cruel world they were living in—together, a society of Ubersmenschs were being created to overcome the maladroitness of the aristocracy.

In addition, we find in Fathers and Sons an ending fit for a Greek drama: the antihero dies in apathy, careless to his fate, and we are left to wonder about the state of the world we live in today. Barazov’s death means that there truly is uncertainly in every aspect of our existence, and even fate on this Earth, no matter how much we may detest the concept of fate (so we may say, our finale of being) is indeed cruel—we give up. Life is a constant battle, and a constant search for truth in a sea of boundless mendacity. Even Barazov, who seemed to understand life to its fullest, falls victim to the merciless science he so admired.

The concept of conscious inertia is interesting, in the way that it implies that the world is truly, inherently evil. The more we understand, the less oblivious we are to the everyday spontaneity of life, the closer to inertia we will move, until we remain completely closed off from the rest of society because we are so deep in the consciousness we both abhor and desire. Of course, an analytical look at our society would show that we are, very possibly, a society based on suffering, which leads to conscious inertia. Why else would we force ourselves to feel such powerful emotions as anger, hate, and jealously? Why else would we create situations, such as war or love, where we will suffer no matter what in the end? It is wholly reasonable to insist that we enjoy suffering, simply because we create so much of it. The whole idea of conscious inertia, then, is to use what is most profitable to our advantage: torment. Through conscious inertia, we have not accepted the redundant and forlorn concept of two times two equals four, but instead we have accepted that we are in control of our lives, and as a result, we choose the counterpart to what is initially decided as ‘profitable’, and we end in suffering. It is our desire to be free, to create and create and destroy until the dawn of the next millennium, which brings us to conscious inertia.

Now the most glaring of problems with this argument is the supposition that human beings are hedonistic creatures. If this were guaranteed to be true, then all the underground man’s arguments would fit nicely into place like a jigsaw puzzle; however, this concept, this idea and nothing more, is his downfall—what if we are, at some times, logical, and not hedonistic, creatures? Indeed logic consists of a considerable amount of human thought, so would it not make sense that we would use it to compromise our entire being from time to time—say, when the occasion calls for such a way of thought. Free will, whether existent or not, is problematic in its own right, because it betrays the laws of nature: if we did have complete free will, it must be in harmony with the laws of gravity, and friction, and trigonometry, and every other theorem extant to logic; however, free will does not promote this. Therefore, either we accept an ideal that is impossible, or we believe in a concept that is contradictory, for it promotes free will yet survives to the whims of natural reason. It is then that this desire, this ultimate will to suffer, is just another caprice of ours. It means no more, and no less, than every other aspect does of our existence.

Do we suffer through existence? The Russian revolution was certainly based on the suffering of the people; one could argue that they had reached a conscious inertia of their own. It was both an internal force, a burning fire within every disheartened soul, and a never-ending lead of steel chain wrapped around every heart. Suffering, as you can see, is a curious element of our existence, no matter which category you may place it in: it is a passion, an utmost expression of human emotion—yet at the same time it debilitates us, and holds us pitilessly to the ground, waiting for us to scream. The underground man finally yet out an ear-piercing yell, and from the moment his anguish was heard he fell deep into the underground—the revolutionaries, and all of Russia for that matter, let out their anguished cry as well, and although they fought the merciless hand of suffering for time gone eternal, in the end they succumbed to the great caprice of all humankind: the underground.         

 

 We have reached the end of our journey, from the capacious universe down to the smallest quintessential principles of reality. We have determined that the Russian Revolution was much more than a superficial reaction to inequality and poor leadership: it was a factor of countless philosophical and societal issues that, in many cases, have yet to be resolved. First, we find Russia caught in the grips of a political crisis, with a growing generational gap between its citizens on one hand, and a menacing but faulty ‘crystal palace’ on the other. Following this appears the question of Russia’s future: with a political crisis at hand, how would Russia come to pass? The warped cyclonic winds of nihilism seemed nearby, and the realization of humanity’s constant, cyclical destructive forces brought the people to their knees. The blade that was about to take off their heads was the brutal dichotomy between materialism and existentialism: the two antithetical concepts would wage war with each other until one had passed into oblivion—and indeed, this was nearly impossible, so a war of eternity between the causes of existence menaced the Russians into suffering. It is the individual suffering that officially stabbed the fate of the Russian people in the back, for their suffering only brought them further into more anguish.

What we are left with is the final stop, the only possibility that remains within our range of sight—a very Socratic, ‘how do we know what we know?’ We find, in Barazov’s death, this very final question lingering like the final ember of a once-sweltering blaze, for we simply can never understand why we exist, and how we chose to do the things we do, and how a group of people should be organized… the list continues for perpetuity. Nonetheless, we can see the origins of the Russian revolution in plain view, after we dissect it into the tiniest of parts through the critical study of literature pertaining to this idea.

The world has never been the same since that fated year, when the world seems to have toppled upon its head. Humanity is full of these issues, concepts, and contrasts, forever in a constant debacle for dominance; but perhaps this is human nature. Perhaps, it was Russia that seized the moment where all else feared to tread, and acted against this human nature. We consistently create these problems, so that we can fix them, and create more in the process. Human nature will never let us proceed—but neither have we regressed. We have remained in inertia. The difference is, in 1917 revolutionary Russia, the inertia became intolerable—and ab absurdo, the futile progression of life continues.  

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[1] Sartre, J. P. (1943), conclusion, sect. II.

[2] ‘The Golden Mean’ is approximately 1.618, and represents what some to believe as the golden law of the universe, a proportion found in branches, leaves, chemical compounds and human bones, amongst a multiplicity of others.