Gerasim and Raskolnikov: How to Understand the Russian Intellectual
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The Russian war against Ukraine has highlighted the brutality of Russian culture
In the first weeks of the full-scale invasion, the behavior of Russian intellectuals and cultural figures came as a great surprise: their silence, their self-justification, their demand for sympathy for themselves. This behavior was so fanciful to the Ukrainian point of view that it called for key texts of Russian literature to be analyzed from this perspective. What can classical Russian literature teach us? What are the models of behavior it contains? What are the images and metaphors? How does all this determine the words and actions of modern Russian intellectuals?
Let's look at three outstanding texts of Russian literature which, in my view, carry a strong connection. We are talking about Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky, Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov, and Mumu by Ivan Turgenev. All three works are written either on behalf of, or with great sympathy for, a main character who commits a deadly crime - murder. Perhaps the most striking modern manifestation is the novel by Nabokov. If we disregard literary sophistication, the essence of his book is this: an adult man is captivated by a young girl, feeling both aesthetic and sexual attraction to her. Thus, he deceives and kills the girl's mother, obtains custody rights, thus assuming control of the child and moving on to sexual violence against her. Nabokov describes these events with great sympathy for his main character, Humbert Humbert. We see aesthetically sensitive, subtle intellectuals, engrossed in noble sensual ecstasy. The author also suggests that Humbert is a white immigrant, perhaps one of many exiles, who lost his home, heritage, and former dignified life. This arouses sympathy. On the other hand, Lolita herself, like her mother, is described as rather rude and mercantile. The contrast between the depth and aesthetic complexity of Humbert Humbert's feelings and the vulgarity of his victims also inclines the reader to sympathize with the hero, who is difficult to perceive as a rapist and murderer. As we read, we inevitably sympathize with the main character, who is deeply unhappy but simultaneously sensitive to the beautiful and able to resonate with invisible streams of sensuality (not everyone can recognize a nymphette!).
Nabokov, as is known, was a fierce critic of Dostoevsky's work. For him, there is a rhetorical question of how can one be such a great writer and write so poorly? However, Nabokov continues the moral optics of Dostoevsky himself. In the novel Crime and Punishment, all the sympathies of the author, and therefore the reader, are on the side of the murderer, and the fate of the victims is so immaterial that the book mostly talks about the murdered "pawnbroker," completely forgetting that Raskolnikov also kills her pregnant sister, who is an accidental witness to the first murder. The focus here is on complex moral doubts, creating a whimsical combination of deep kindness and cruelty. For example, Raskolnikov, himself essentially a beggar, gives all his money to the unhappy widow of another character, the drunkard minor official Marmeladov, while at the same time behaving like a cold abuser (although the author does not neglect to make us understand that this is from the highest moral considerations) toward his daughter Sonya. Finally, Marmeladov himself is like a weak emanation of Raskolnikov, demonstrating the same moral ambiguity: extreme kindness combined with extreme baseness.
What impression does this leave? In both cases - both Nabokov and Dostoevsky - the judgment of the protagonist is not a consequence of his actions. Actions are something external and secondary – a result of a catastrophic collision of exposed nerves with material reality. The essence of a human being is determined by its inner world. Raskolnikov and Humbert Humbert are people of high complexity whose personalities combine extreme opposites, with their moral or aesthetic vulnerability vibrating somewhere in the heavenly heights inaccessible to the ordinary vulgar person. It is this extraordinary elevation that determines their essence – they are the exposed nerve. The specific earthly actions of this essence do not define it, so it is inappropriate and impossible to judge these characters by their actions. This is an irrational view where concrete material reality is insignificant while the spiritual predominates over the real. This view of the criminal creates an infinite reserve of forgiveness for him. Not merely forgiveness, but just an apology, for who are we to judge and forgive?
The disposition in Ivan Turgenev's story Mumu is different: the gatekeeper Gerasim is an honest, simple, and straightforward soul. This is not a story of complexity and intricate combination of extremes. We see a good person in difficult circumstances. Disability and loneliness already make Gerasim's life joyless, but this is not his burden. A cruel and arbitrary power crushes this good man – the landowner who owns Gerasim as property orders him to get rid of the only being with whom he has a warm emotional connection, his dog. He tries to fulfill the landowner's request without harming the dear creature, but the innocent creature's attachment, the dog, brings her back to the unhappy man, as she runs away from her new owner and again attaches herself to Gerasim. All attempts to save the dog are in vain, as her love for Gerasim dooms both her and him to a terrible fate: submitting to the landowner's terrible and merciless power. Like an ancient fate, Gerasim kills the most valuable being himself. He does not rebel or save himself by running away, but instead kills the dog and morally dies with her. It is both a murder and a suicide. This double tragedy cannot leave any reader indifferent, and it points to the culprit of the crime, which is not Gerasim. He may be the one who does the killing, but the guilty party is the merciless and depersonalized power of the landowner, whose character remains somewhere beyond the story's framework, and is thus only an abstraction for us.
It seems that this is how Russian cultural and intellectual figures see their situation.
They are people of great complexity like Humbert and Raskolnikov and therefore worthy of sympathy and sincere interest. They are impressed that their Ukrainian counterparts refuse to sympathize with Gerasim and thus show wonders of cruelty. Ukrainians perceive their Russian counterparts not as Raskolnikov or Gerasim, but as Faust. That is, as someone who, for the sake of a full and fulfilling life and the realization of dreams, makes a contract with the devil. They summon evil and willingly make a deal with it. Therefore, they are subjects with their own agency and must find a way out of the circumstances they have created. The legend of Faust is about the impossibility of breaking the contract with the devil, so any such attempt would be a remarkable impudence. Such impudence is not visible on the Ukrainian stage.
The rift between the two characters, Gerasim and Faust, determines any conflict between Ukrainian and Russian intellectuals. Ukrainians expect action, especially intellectual action, and are confident that such action will be liberation for both Russians themselves and those who suffer from their inaction. In Ukraine, especially in literary and academic communities, there is great respect for the legacy of the Polish rethinking of their country, which was carried out by the circle of Jędrzej Giertych in the 1950s-1970s, and they are expecting something similar here. However, it seems that Russian intellectuals either do not know about this example or perceive even this action as a terrible prospect, because it is always the act of Gerasim.
So, what to do? I think Ukrainian influencers from the cultural and intellectual scene have nothing else left but to constantly remind and insist that Russian counterparts are not just innocent victims. That they have the power to act in the field of ideas. This is an unpleasant role for Ukrainians who, against their will, have to turn into some Erinyes, the goddesses of revenge, to perpetually pursue those who could have acted properly, but did not. But to refuse this role means to know and voluntarily transform into a Gerasim.
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