Pushkin’s Vision of the Enlightened Self: Individualism, Authority and Tradition Beyond Karamzin*

Lina Steiner

In the Memoirs of Princess Dashkova we find a curious account of one of the Princess’ conversations with Diderot concerning the socio-political conditions and the prospects of the Enlightenment in Russia. In response to Dashkova’s praise of the Russian political system, in which “the gentry serve as intermediaries between the peasants and the Crown,” Denis Diderot retorts:

But surely, Princess, you cannot deny that freedom would increase their knowledge and understanding, and that these would later give rise to abundance and riches?

To her interlocutor’s great frustration, Dashkova easily parries Diderot’s argument by stating the idea that can be called the cornerstone of Russian conservative liberalism. She says: “In stating your case you have, if you will forgive my saying so, confused cause and effect. It is knowledge and understanding that produce freedom; the latter without the former would produce nothing but anarchy and confusion.”[1]

The argument between Dashkova and Diderot represents in a nutshell the central problem at the heart of all Russian debates about the appropriateness of Enlightenment ideas in Russia and the methods of their implementation. In this debate Diderot represents the rationalist strand of the Enlightenment, defined by the belief in the unlimited and universal potential of human reason. Diderot considers personal freedom a prerequisite for socio-economic and cultural progress, which can be achieved not through wise government but through the rational autonomy of each individual. Dashkova, on the other hand, believes that education and appropriate personal upbringing must precede the acquisition of political maturity, not follow it. Her point of view is closer to the ideas of the British conservative liberal thinkers, such as for instance Edmund Burke, who believed that a traditional class society guarantees both a sense of personal dignity to each individual and moral health to the nation.[2] Dashkova fears that any sudden change of the established social and legal structure would only push Russian society into an abyss of anarchy and confusion, rather than free the dormant rational powers of the human subject.[3] Therefore, public education and liberal enlightenment must proceed before any major political or social changes can take place.

In the first two decades of the nineteenth century Dashkova’s point of view on the methodology of the Russian Enlightenment was shared by many important thinkers, including Karamzin and Pushkin. Both of these writers, fascinated in their youths with the Greek republican ideals, in their mature years embraced a more conservative political perspective. Both of them could be called conservatives in so far as they believed that the progress of consciousness and the formation of mature and responsible individuals capable of political participation had to precede political reforms. However, the project of gradual intellectual and moral enlightenment itself presented the greatest dilemma for the advocates of a slow “evolution from below.” Thus Karamzin, despite his great contribution as a historian and his indubitable achievement in the reformation of Russian literary culture, failed to offer a viable program of public enlightenment and, by doing so, to reconcile his liberal intellectual ideals with his arch-conservative politics.

The task of this article is to trace the differences between Pushkin’s and Karamzin’s views concerning the emergence of the new “enlightened” personality. I suggest that in the years following Karamzin’s death in 1826 Pushkin’s thought transcended the inherently limited and contradictory Karamzinian approach to the Enlightenment and achieved, within the framework of a conservative outlook, a more dynamic and viable understanding of the relationship between the development of individual self-consciousness and socio-political progress. While Karamzin sought to bar the individual from interfering with the political course of the nation, Pushkin came to believe that Russia’s political stability and historical destiny depended on the free choice and conscious support of each mature individual.

§

The paradox at the heart of Karamzin’s ideological position was very well summarized by one of the first American scholars to analyze Karamzin’s political thought, Richard Pipes. On the one hand, says Pipes, Karamzin upheld the republican ideal, yet, on the other hand, in his approach to the Russian socio-political situation he remained a staunch monarchist.

Being “a republican” involved a belief in the worth of virtue, justice, progress—objects, which, in Karamzin’s view, could be attained least of all by the republican system. “My heart, no less than the heart of others,” Karamzin wrote in 1802, “burns at the virtue of great republicans, but how durable were its great epochs?” In this sense, Catherine II, too, had considered herself a “republican.”[4]

Iurii Lotman’s many decades’ long study of Karamzin’s works and ideas shows that the “Columbus of Russian History” could never bridge the gap between ideals and practical politics, thus compromising his authority as one of the leaders of the Russian Enlightenment.[5] (In the short term, it was perhaps the complexity and inner contradictions of his worldview that compromised Karamzin’s candidacy for the job of Minister of Education.)[6] The intrinsic contradictions of Karamzin’s ideological position with regard to the methodology of the Russian Enlightenment are most evident in the 1811 Memoir on Ancient and New Russia.[7] In this text, written at the request of the Grand Duchess Ekaterina Pavlovna and unofficially submitted to Alexander I, Karamzin attacks the reformist plans of Speranskii and his circle and insists that Russia’s unique cultural and political history makes it unfit for these French-inspired reforms.[8] But does Karamzin’s conservative stance in the Memoir, for which he was reproached both by his more radical contemporaries and by liberal historians, signify his complete animosity toward liberal ideas and progress? Does Karamzin’s plea to Alexander I not to cede his autocratic power and to prevent liberal economic and social reforms suggest that the great historian’s political ideal was both antiquated and opposed to history?

Among Russian liberal historians A. N. Pypin was most adamant in his criticism of Karamzin. He considered the gap between the aesthetic idealism of Karamzin’s sentimental tales and the cold pragmatism and conservatism of the Memoir an outright hypocrisy.[9] Although to a modern intellectual historian Pypin’s judgment seems too quick and partisan, it is nonetheless important to recognize and analyze the tensions and contradictions in Karamzin’s thought. These problems in Karamzin’s work were to a considerable extent smoothed out by recent scholars, most notably by Iurii Lotman, whose book Sotvorenie Karamzina argues that Karamzin understood the Enlightenment primarily in terms of self-improvement and individual progress toward a moral ideal.[10] From this point of view, social and political reforms must begin by way of awakening and reforming an individual soul. Only a communion of enlightened individuals can provide for social harmony, in which individual subjects would truly enjoy and not abuse their political freedom. Yet, the problem with this way of thinking, which becomes apparent in the Memoir, is that Karamzin makes no or very few suggestions about how to bolster individual enlightenment and self-improvement. If the Memoir was supposed to provide a viable alternative to Speranskii’s projects for legal, social, and educational reforms, it had to offer a concrete program of actions that would show Alexander how to achieve the desired effect not by a forceful imposition of the new laws but rather by breeding a new generation of Russians. Considering that at the time when the Memoir was written Karamzin was not only a well-established public intellectual, but also one of the candidates for the post of Minister of Education, we might expect greater clarity and eloquence on the subject of the alternative non-reformist enlightenment. But Karamzin appears to have only few ideas about exactly how a large-scale enlightenment of individual Russians might come about. Indeed, he seems quite skeptical about this prospect.[11]

Karamzin does tackle the practical aspect of enlightenment as education toward the very end of his Memoir, where he discusses the role of the nobility as the moral and political buttress of the state. Although he does not show how dignity and virtue could be fostered in all classes of Russian society, Karamzin does have a strong opinion about the upbringing of the elite:

Природа дает ум и сердце, но воспитание образует их. Дворянин, облагодетельствованный судьбою, навыкает с самой колыбели уважать себя, любить Отечество и Государя за выгоды своего рождения, пленяться знатностью, – уделом его предков, и наградою личных будущих заслуг его. Сей образ мыслей и чувствований дает ему то благородство духа, которое сверх иных намерений, было целью при учреждении наследственного Дворянства, – преимущество важное, редко заменяемое естественными дарами простолюдина, который, в самой знатности, боится презрения, обыкновенно не любит Дворян и мыслит личною надменностью изгладить из памяти людей свое низкое происхождение. Добродетель редка. Ищите в свете боле обыкновенных, нежели превосходных душ. Мнение не мое, но всех глубокомысленных политиков есть, что твердо-основанныя права благородства в Монархии служат ей опорою.[12]

The mind and heart are furnished by nature, but they are formed by upbringing. A gentleman, favored by fortune, is accustomed from birth to feel self-respect, to love the fatherland and the sovereign for the advantages of his birth-right, and to be powerfully attracted to distinctions which his ancestors have earned and he himself will earn by his own accomplishments. These attitudes and feelings imbue him with that nobility of spirit which, among other things, was the reason for the institution of hereditary nobility. It is an important excellence which the natural gifts of a commoner can but seldom supplant, because a commoner, dreading scorn even when he enjoys an eminent status, usually dislikes the gentry, and hopes with personal arrogance to make others forget his base origin. Virtue is rare. You must seek in the world common rather than superior souls. It is not my opinion, but that of all deep-thinking statesmen, that a monarchy is buttressed by firmly established rights of the wellborn.[13]

In this extract from the Memoir the institution of hereditary nobility is shown as the stimulus for chivalry, one of Karamzin’s cherished ideas, which implies a progress of manners and morals over time and can be used successfully to support an anti-revolutionary argument. If Karamzin indeed wanted to juxtapose Speranskii’s reforms to chivalry, this would suggest that he believed in the possibility of a gradual emergence of liberal individuals and liberal political institutions in Russia. For, as Hegel has argued, European chivalry stimulated the emergence of modern individualism, which eventually led to the crisis of the patriarchal social order.[14] Hegel’s story about the development of the Spirit from the Middle Ages to the modern Romantic age suggests that the emergence of personal honor and self-judgment in the middle ages was the earliest manifestation of the drive toward moral autonomy, which became fully apparent in the age of Enlightenment.

From the standpoint of European intellectual history, Karamzin’s attempts to reconcile autocratic and patriarchal monarchy with a modern “enlightened” and independent self appear hopeless. From the standpoint of Russian political history, the fact that these two main ideals of Karamzin’s life and work were incompatible was tragically proven by the Decembrist revolt, which occurred only a few months before Karamzin’s death. Despite its failure, the Decembrist movement made it clear that the age of Enlightenment had produced a considerable number of self-conscious individuals with a developed sense of honor, moral responsibility, and independent opinion. Like Karamzin himself, these Russian “knights” considered the love of the motherland their preeminent duty. But the Decembrists understood patriotic duty quite differently from the great historian. As independent rational subjects, the Decembrists made projects to reorganize Russian government and reform its economy without any sentimental regard for the person of the monarch or the ancient institution of monarchy that Karamzin considered pivotal for Russian national identity.

I would suggest that both Karamzin’s patriotism and his view of the enlightened personality, which he links to patriotic virtue, are profoundly sentimental. In this respect, Karamzin’s approach to the Enlightenment is significantly different from the more rationalist outlook of the French philosophes and their Russian students, such as Pestel and Nikita Murav′ev. Karamzin’s sentimentalism comes across quite clearly in his attack on the idea of cosmopolitanism in the Preface to the History of the Russian State. Unlike those European Enlightenment thinkers who believed in the universality of the subject and envisioned a cosmopolitan community, Karamzin ties the idea of the self to patriotic feeling:

Истинный космополит есть существо метафизическое или столь необыкновенное явление, что нет нужды говорить об нем, ни хвалить, ни осуждать его. Мы все граждане, в Европе и в Индии, в Мексике и в Абиссинии; личность каждого крепко связана с отечеством: любим его, ибо любим себя.

A true cosmopolitan is either a metaphysical creature or such an unusual phenomenon that we need not talk about it, either to praise or disparage it. We are all citizens, in Europe and India, in Mexico and Abyssinia; everyone’s identity is closely tied to the fatherland: we love it, because we love ourselves.[15]

A sentimental nostalgia for a fatherland, from which the Russians were separated by Peter’s reforms, is also at the heart of Karamzin’s anti-reformist argument in the Memoir on Ancient and Modern Russia. In this text cosmopolitanism signifies a state of incompleteness and the lack of a proper sense of belonging, for which Karamzin reproaches Peter:

Имя Русского имеет ли теперь для нас ту силу неисповедимую, какую оно имело прежде? И весьма естественно: деды наши уже в царствование Михаила и сына его присвоивая себе многие выгоды иноземных обычаев, все еще оставались в тех мыслях, что правоверный Россиянин есть совершеннейший гражданин в мире, а Святая Русь—первое Государство. Пусть назовут то заблуждением; но как оно благоприятствовало любви к Отечеству и нравственной силе оного! […] Мы стали гражданами мира, но перестали быть, в некоторых случаях, гражданами России. Виною Петр.

Does the name of a Russian carry for us today the same inscrutable force which it had in the past? No wonder. In the reigns of Michael and his son, our ancestors, while assimilating many advantages which were to be found in foreign customs, never lost the conviction that an Orthodox Russian was the most perfect citizen and Holy Rus′ the foremost state in the world. Let this be called a delusion. Yet how much it did to strengthen patriotism and the moral fibre of the country! […] We became citizens of the world but ceased in certain respects to be the citizens of Russia. The fault is Peter’s.[16]

We can say that Karamzin’s support of autocracy is based equally on a theoretical conviction and on psychological needs. While selfhood for Karamzin is linked to the love of the fatherland, fatherland comes to be identified with a strong autocratic state (with all the ensuing patriarchal connotations). As a result, Karamzin’s attitude toward autocracy becomes so couched in sentimental rhetoric that the historical phenomenon of Russian absolute monarchy becomes indistinguishable from the utopian “Holy Rus′.”

This position, as we can readily see, contradicts the ideology of the European Enlightenment, which saw moral and intellectual maturity as the earmark of an enlightened personality. In contrast, Karamzin, by linking the formation of the individual self-consciousness to love of the autocratic fatherland, not only denies the subject’s right to actual political participation, but also “infantilizes” the self on the imaginary level.

§

On 8 September 1826, shortly after the coronation of Nicholas I, Pushkin had an audience with the emperor in Moscow. As Mark Altshuller has recently suggested, despite its dramatic beginning, the ascension of the new Tsar filled the poet with new hopes concerning the prospects of the Russian Enlightenment.[17] Perhaps his personal encounter with Nicholas increased Pushkin’s desire to give his reflections on this subject a systematic character. In any case, Pushkin’s earliest non-literary writings that address the issues of education, enlightenment, and public opinion date back to 1826. Among these mostly fragmentary writings the memoir “On Public Education” (“O narodnom vospitanii”), solicited by the government, is the most complete text. Although it would be a mistake to see the memoir as Pushkin’s fullest statement concerning the goals of the Russian Enlightenment[18] and the practical measures for their implementation, this document is an important benchmark that can help us analyze the development of Pushkin’s mature perspective in the wake of the Decembrist Revolt and Karamzin’s death.

In the second part of this article I would like to show that in the last decade of Pushkin’s life his views concerning both “Prosveshchenie,” as an epoch in European intellectual history, and “prosvetitel′stvo,” as a practical implementation of the contemporary European ideas in Russia, underwent an evolution. Although we have every reason to think that in this question Pushkin continued to see himself as Karamzin’s heir, it seems that in his mature years Pushkin arrived at an independent conception of the enlightened personality and a new understanding of the relationship between the subject’s self-consciousness and patriotism. As opposed to Karamzin, Pushkin comes to see patriotism not merely as a visceral feeling that endows one with a sense of belonging, but also as a conscious choice of a free subject who not only longs for a homeland, but actively builds and shapes it. I would argue that this new perspective, which distanced Pushkin from Karamzin’s sentimental conservatism, also provided an interesting alternative to the influential Western conception of subjectivity as striving toward autonomy and independence from all familial and patriotic pressures.

To be sure, to support these claims one must take into account the whole corpus of Pushkin’s literary, historical, and essay writings. Since a detailed analysis of such an extensive material transcends the scope of this article, I will focus only on two texts, both of which address directly the problem of the Russian Enlightenment. As a memoir written in response to the Decembrist Revolt and to Pushkin’s personal encounter with the new tsar, “On Public Education” serves as a convenient point of entry into the discussion of Pushkin’s ideological evolution. The second text that I will rely on in my argument is the historical novel of apprenticeship, The Captain’s Daughter (Kapitanskaia dochka), which was written ten years after the memoir. Pushkin’s choice of the genre of the novel of apprenticeship (or the Bildungsroman ) and of the historical setting reflect the author’s persistent attention to the questions that he inherited from his senior colleague Karamzin and his defeated friends, the Decembrists. Finished in 1836, The Captain’s Daughter is Pushkin’s only novelistic work that brings the lives of the heroes to a conclusion and therefore presents the image of a human life as a whole. Significantly, in the portrayal of the character Grinev we can observe the continuity with the theoretical statements regarding the education of a gentleman made in “On Public Education.” Therefore, I suggest that by analyzing Grinev’s “apprenticeship” in conjunction with the earlier non-fictional expression of Pushkin’s ideas we can improve our understanding of Pushkin’s ideas concerning individual enlightenment and its relation to political history.

§

In the conclusion of the memoir “On Public Education,” Pushkin pays tribute to Karamzin by suggesting that the final stage in the education of young Russian gentlemen must consist of a study of Russian history based on Karamzin’s History of the Russian State.

Изучение России должно будет преимущественно занять в окончательные годы умы молодых дворян, готовящихся служить отечеству верою и правдою, имея целью искренно и усердно соединиться с правительством в великом подвиге улучшения государственных постановлений, а не препятствовать ему, безумно упорствуя в тайном недоброжелательстве. (My emphasis—L. S.)

The study of Russia should above all occupy the minds of the young gentlemen in the final years as they prepare to serve the fatherland faithfully and honestly, aiming at a sincere and conscientious union with the government in the great deed of improving state institutions, rather than opposing the government in senselessness and stubborn ill will.[19]

If we compare this statement with the concluding paragraphs of A Memoir on Ancient and Modern Russia, we will notice a significant rhetorical shift, which, I think, indicates the beginning of Pushkin’s ideological departure from Karamzin’s perspective. Karamzin writes:

Самодержавие есть Палладиум России; целость его необходима для ея счастия; из сего не следует, чтобы Государь, единственный источник власти, имел причины унижать Дворянство, столь же древнее, как и Россия. Оно было всегда не что иное, как братство знаменитых слуг Великокняжеских, или Царских. Худо, ежели слуги овладеют слабым господином, но благоразумны господин уважает отборных слуг своих и краситься их честью. […] Дворянство есть наследственное; порядок требует, чтобы некоторые люди воспитывались для отправления некоторых должностей, и чтобы Монарх знал, где ему искать деятельных слуг отечественной пользы.

Autocracy is the Palladium of Russia; on its integrity depends Russia’s happiness. But from this it does not follow that the sovereign, in whose hands rests the plenitude of power, should degrade the gentry, who are as ancient as Russia herself. The gentry were never anything except a brotherhood of outstanding men serving the great princes or tsars. It is bad when a servant obtains mastery over a weak lord, but a prudent lord respects his choice servants, and considers their honor his own. […] The gentry are an hereditary estate. Some people must be trained to fulfill certain obligations so as to maintain order and provide the monarch with a source whence to draw the servants of the state.[20]

While Karamzin insists that gentlemen are the autocrat’s servants, and their honor is but a tributary of the monarch’s honor, Pushkin says that the young members of the gentry must prepare themselves for the service of the fatherland, the goal that they share with the tsar’s administration. That is, Pushkin clearly separates the young gentlemen on the one hand and the tsar and his government on the other. Although they must pursue a common moral goal, the good of their country, these two bodies are endowed with distinct identities and independent wills. As we can see from a close reading of the memoir, as early as 1826 Karamzin’s younger colleague already hesitates to identify the Tsar with the fatherland and allegiance to a particular Tsar with the patriotic feeling as such. It is fatherland that comes first for the author of “On Public Education.” A particular monarch, we gather, comes second.

Although Pushkin’s memoir advocates state control over education, it cannot be charged with nascent totalitarianism, for the ultimate goal of “prosvetitel′stvo” as conceived by Pushkin is to teach young Russians how to think for themselves and guard themselves from superficial ideological influences. Pushkin’s emphasis on the development of critical thinking as the pivot of education distinguishes Pushkin’s text from A Memoir on Ancient and Modern Russia, which describes even the educated elite of the country as a brotherhood of obedient servants. In contrast, Pushkin makes the democratic suggestion that the program of education in all public institutions, including military schools, seminaries, and all other professional or technical schools (uchilishcha), be revised, limiting the time dedicated to the study of Latin, Greek, and French and devoting more time to the acquisition of ideas that would acquaint students with the practical problems faced by contemporary society.

Во всех почти училищах дети занимаются литературою, составляют общества, даже печатают свои сочинения в светских журналах. Все это отвлекает от учения, приучает детей к мелочным успехам и ограничивает идеи, уже и без того слишком у нас ограниченные.
     Высшие политические науки займут окончательные годы. Преподавание прав, политическая экономия по новейшей системе Сея и Сисмонди, статистика, история.

In almost all technical schools children dabble in literature, create societies, and even publish their compositions in society magazines. All this distracts children from learning, making them accustomed to trifling successes, and limits ideas, which are already too limited in our country.
     Higher political sciences will occupy the final years of education. These will be the study of law, political economy according to the newest system of Say and Sismondi, statistics, history.[21]

Political science, law, statistics and political economy improve the students’ understanding of the world. Without such knowledge, Pushkin implies, students will remain ignorant of the political and socio-economic realities of their society and will never become capable of transforming themselves from mere instruments of the Tsar’s will into active contributors to and builders of their society. Quite strikingly, Pushkin denigrates students’ literary experiments as an activity that often inspires self-confidence without promoting maturity. Truly enlightened subjectivity, on the other hand, presupposes the ability to think independently based on extensive knowledge of history and contemporary society. The development of the critical perspective, according to Pushkin, should not distance the individual subject from his fatherland. Rather, it must contribute to one’s dutiful and faithful commitment to the fatherland, making this commitment not only a natural inclination of the heart, but also a rational judgment of the mature mind.

Pushkin’s brief and rather extemporaneous memoir points toward the interesting possibility of mediating between the sentimentalist and rationalist, traditionalist and cosmopolitan, tendencies he inherited from eighteenth-century thought. The desire to reconcile these opposed strains is apparent even in the rhetoric of the memoir: on the one hand, it stresses the importance of giving young minds a practical education and preparing them for independent maturity; on the other hand, it uses such traditional patriotic locutions as “sluzhit′ otechestvu veroiu i pravdoiu” (“to serve the fatherland faithfully and honestly”). In the years to come, Pushkin will continue to seek a balance between the two values, which were both pivotal in his own spiritual and intellectual formation and which he held in equal importance throughout his life. To use the language of his lyric poetry, the first of these values is “liubov′ k otecheskim grobam, liubov′ k rodnomu pepelishchu.”[22] The opposite of this visceral patriotic feeling is the imperative of “svobodnyi um,” or intellectual freedom, which frequently recurs in Pushkin’s poetry.[23] However, it will take Pushkin almost ten years to create a literary work in which the imperatives of the mind and heart will work jointly to bring the education of the hero to a fruitful result.

§

While Karamzin’s monolithic vision of the history of a great autocratic State eclipses the histories of concrete individuals, Pushkin makes such an individual history the subject of his last and only decidedly complete novel. I believe that The Captain’s Daughter is indeed a work of a mature talent, characterized by a high level of formal and ideological coherence. Among Pushkin’s works of the 1830s this novel offers the most comprehensive evidence of his continued interest in “Prosveshchenie” and “prosvetitel′stvo” and shows that, by the end of his career, Pushkin’s constant attention to these issues had solidified into an independent and original intellectual perspective.

In The Captain’s Daughter Pushkin uses the structural framework of the novel of apprenticeship, one of the most important genres of eighteenth-century literature, to focus a historical narrative based on the material Pushkin collected for his History of Pugachev’s Rebellion. This generic choice allows Pushkin to point to the interrelationship of the history of the individual self-consciousness and the history of the fatherland. Moreover, while many eighteenth-century novels of apprenticeship took as their subject the challenges that a young person confronted upon entering the world and learning to internalize its values, Pushkin shows that society and its values are not immutable, but historically conditioned and dependent upon the behavior of its members. For example, both in Pushkin’s History of Pugachev’s Rebellion and in his historical novel the outcome of the Pugachev rebellion is shown to be dependent on the ethical and political choices of the individual persons, who either maintain allegiance to the legitimate Empress or support the impostor.

In other words, the “society” into which Petrusha Grinev is initiated is neither the immutable “monde” of a French novel of worldliness nor a society secretly ordered by a group of enlightened conspirators, as appears to be the case in Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship.[24] The world of The Captain’s Daughter is dynamic and open to change, although we cannot say that it is human rational will alone that changes historical reality. On the contrary, both rational and more instinctual and emotional forces are at work in the living organism of social interaction. Realizing that history is shaped by the interplay between these diverse powers or drives, Pushkin comes to believe that the personal journey toward enlightened maturity must consist of bringing them into agreement with each other. Therefore the task of the hero’s education in The Captain’s Daughter is to learn what constitutes an honorable personality not only by objective reason, but also by experiencing life from a particular point of view, which Grinev inherited from his kin. Grinev is assisted in his apprenticeship by a faithful instinctual feeling that supports him in times of troubles and guides him toward sound moral choices. I will elucidate this idea by examining the dual role of patriotism in The Captain’s Daughter as at once a basic natural feeling and a rationally conceived moral duty.

Pushkin’s interest in the development of individual self-consciousness and moral awareness, which is apparent already in the memoir “On Public Education,” pushes him to rethink the idea of patriotism he inherited from Karamzin. As opposed to Karamzin’s sentimental attitude toward patriotism, Pushkin comes to see patriotic commitment as both a feeling and a free choice of a mature self. This difference in the way the two authors understand patriotic selfhood becomes apparent if we compare Pushkin’s Grinev to some of Karamzin’s characters, for instance, the noble and brave Marfa-Posadnitsa. Marfa inherits her sense of allegiance to the cause of Novgorod’s independence from her family. Similarly, Grinev inherits his idea of duty as entailing allegiance to the Tsar from his father, who sends him off to the worldly adventures with a famous precept: “Beregi plat′e snovu, a chest′ smolodu.” (“Watch over your clothes while they are new, and over your honor while you are young.”).[25] There is, however, a considerable difference between Marfa and Grinev: neither Marfa’s perspective nor her character develops. Her steadfast dedication to the cause of Novgorod is her virtue, yet, as Karamzin himself indicates, it is at the same time the cause of her tragic political shortsightedness and of her personal tragedy. Forced to choose between her hereditary cause and her political judgment, Marfa chooses the former. She remains a sentimental character, who upholds the cause of Novgorod for the sake of her love for her late husband and nostalgic longing for the glory of Novgorod.[26]

The character of Grinev unfolds in a very different manner. Unlike Marfa, he experiences the influence of opposed patriarchal powers and must learn to exercise judgment in order to choose his authority correctly. The choice between the two opposed father-figures, his own father and the charismatic impostor Pugachev,[27] and between two monarchical authorities, the Empress to whom he pledged allegiance and the Cossack rebel to whom he owes his life, becomes the test of Grinev’s free will. It is a test of the hero’s independent judgment, which requires that he detach himself from the immediacy of all feelings, whether fear, pride, or duty. Interestingly, in the most critical moment of his life, when Pugachev is about to decide his fate, Grinev appeals to the rebel’s reason. By doing so he elevates the conversation to the level of lucid self-awareness, of which Pugachev proves, surprisingly, quite capable:

Я смутился: признать бродягу государем—был я не в состоянии: это казалось мне малодушием непростительным. Назвать его в глаза обманщиком—было подвергнуть себя погибели; и то, на что был я готов под виселицею в глазах всего народа и в первом пылу негодования, теперь казалось мне бесполезной хвастливостью. Я колебался. Пугачев мрачно ждал моего ответа. Наконец (и еще ныне с самодовольствием поминаю эту минут) чувство долга восторжествовало во мне над слабостью человеческою. Я отвечал Пугачеву: Слушай, скажу тебе всю правду. Рассуди, могу ли я признать в тебе государя? Ты человек смышленый: ты сам увидел бы, что я лукавствую.[28]

I was confused. I could not acknowledge the tramp as Tsar: to do so would have displayed unpardonable faintheartedness. To call him an impostor to his face would be sentencing myself to death, and that which I was ready to do at the gallows before the eyes of all the people, in the first burst of indignation, now seemed to me as useless boasting. I hesitated. Pugachev awaited my answer in gloomy silence. Finally (and even now I remember the moment with satisfaction), feelings of duty triumphed over human weakness. I replied to Pugachev: “Listen, I’ll tell you the whole truth. Judge for yourself—how can I acknowledge you as Tsar? You are an intelligent man: you would see that I was merely being artful.”[29]

The decision to maintain his point of view regarding the impostor is shown to be the product of rational judgment, not simply an emotional inclination. While Marfa-Posadnitsa remained true to her cause because she was tied to it by strong feelings (love of her husband, her family and the glory of Novgorod), Grinev criticizes his initial, merely emotional reaction as useless boastfulness (bespoleznaia khvastlivost′). For him the feeling of duty (chuvstvo dolga) is not simply a natural emotion, but the moral sentiment of a rational subject.

But, as I said earlier, Grinev is not a rationalist. His sense of duty is not only the product of a disinterested moral judgment, but a spontaneous inclination approved by reason. Grinev’s visceral predisposition toward honorable behavior stems not simply from dogmatic obedience to his father’s precept, but reflects a deeper and truer identity that has evolved over time. The only son of a modest provincial gentry couple, he describes his childhood as a state of naïve happiness and fullness, in which the only dissonance was introduced by his French governor’s drunken mischief. Granting that Pushkin’s portrayal of Grinev’s youth is ironic and reminiscent of Mitrofanushka’s upbringing in Fonvizin’s Nedorosl', it is a gentle brand of irony, and Pushkin’s description of the Grinev family is both sympathetic and nostalgic.

Pushkin plots his hero’s upbringing in such a way that the challenges he encounters in his new independent life are countervailed by the continued influence of domestic warmth and traditional manners. Thus he becomes practically adopted as a son in the household of Captain Mironov. This turn of the plot rescues the hero from a lonely life under the command of the crusty old German, a friend of Grinev’s father, who is willing to provide protection and perhaps some affection, but no hospitality. According to Pushkin, familial warmth is necessary for the hero’s successful Bildung, for it provides a constant salutary influence that counterbalances his growing sense of independence and self-governance. In fact, even the image of faithful serf and “diad′ka” Savel′ich comes to serve a similar purpose in Pushkin’s Bildungsroman. Grinev’s constant bickering with his “diad′ka” recalls the atmosphere of his parental home, while simultaneously reminding Grinev how far he is from home and obliging him to take responsibility not only for his own life but for the life of his old “diad′ka” as well.

As for the love between Grinev and Masha, it is reminiscent of sentimental love stories in which the lovers are brought up together or come to recognize in each other kindred spirits. In these sentimental love-plots (e.g., the inserted novella about the childhood sweethearts in Goethe’s Elective Affinities) the feeling of adult sexual love is an extension of the most basic infantile attachment to the family and can restore the adults to the original state of unity that was lost when they left their parental nest. I suggest that in The Captain’s Daughter Masha and Grinev, despite their fathers’ unequal rank, display this kind of natural sentiment, which protects them from the menace of the outside world and ultimately earns the respectful approval of their parents and the Empress herself. In this light, the title of the novel seems appropriate; it is called The Captain’s Daughter not because Masha becomes a more prominent character than Grinev, but because by finding and uniting with the girl, whose own family nest has been destroyed, the hero discovers his true self and his path in life.

Even though his love for the humble Masha at first creates a conflict between Grinev and his father, it ultimately does not completely distance Grinev from his family, but allows him to practice his independent judgment and, eventually, earn his father’s respect. By uniting himself with the Captain’s daughter, Grinev becomes initiated into maturity, without severing the link to his family and fatherland. We can say that Grinev’s integrity as an individual develops alongside his sentimental attachment to Masha and her family, for at the most decisive moment of his own private history and of his fatherland’s history (under the attack from Pugachev’s rebel troops) Grinev’s sense of personal duty and the allegiance of his heart coincide. And when it falls to Grinev to rescue Masha from Shvabrin and even, potentially, from the fate of Lizaveta Kharlova,[30] he fulfills the last wish of the patriotic hero Captain Mironov, who gave Masha his blessing before dying: “Nu, Masha, bud′ schastliva. Molis′ Bogu: on tebia ne ostavit. Koli naidetsa dobryi chelovek, dai Bog vam liubov′ da sovet. Zhivite, kak zhili my s Vasilisoi Egorovnoi.” [“Well, Masha, be happy. Pray to God: He will never abandon you. If you find a good man, may God give you his love and counsel. Live as Vasilissa Yegorovna and I have lived.”][31]

That is, by saving the maiden and her virtue, Pushkin’s hero not only wins his bride, but also restores the moral equilibrium of a world shaken by the atrocities of “Pugachevshchina.” His union with Masha perpetuates the marital idyll of their respective families and symbolically compensates for the death of Masha’s parents. Therefore, when at the end of the novel Grinev’s strange association with Pugachev becomes known to Catherine’s officials, Masha finds an unassailable position from which to vindicate her beloved. She presents herself, the orphaned daughter of a faithful servant, before the matriarch Tsarina and appeals not to Catherine’s impartial judgment, but to her gracious sympathy: “Ia priekhala prosit′ milosti, a ne pravosudiia.” [“I have come to ask for mercy and not judgment.”][32] Does the sentimental ending undermine Pushkin’s Bildungsroman as a story about individual moral and intellectual maturation? Or, perhaps, does it underline once again the crucial role of the sentiments in the development of self-consciousness and in the art of living and individual decision-making? Pushkin insists that Grinev’s destiny was decided not in court or by an impartial decision of the Empress, but rather in the course of the intimate encounter between the two women. Perhaps the ending of the novel could be read as a symbolic reduplication of the moral ideal behind Grinev’s Bildung: while Grinev’s sentimental education and patriotic upbringing guide him in his intellectual and moral maturation, Catherine’s ethical and emotional instincts serve (at least in this fictional work) as a barometer for her wisdom as a ruler.

But what of Pugachev and his strange, apparently unreciprocated sentimental attachment to Grinev? Throughout the novel Grinev describes Pugachev as a “tramp” and “drunkard” (“brodiaga i p′ianitsa”). While it is the vagrant criminal who helps the youth and his “diad′ka” find their way in the snowstorm, later in the story a more mature Grinev will try to point out the right way to Pugachev by suggesting that he quit his role of impostor. Yet, unlike Grinev, Pugachev has neither a home to return to nor a hope of mercy and pardon. His paternal sympathy toward the young gentleman is the only outlet for his natural inclination toward goodness and kindness. And although Pugachev’s good will toward Grinev does not save him from his bitter end, he does earn his share in the moral economy of the novel; it is thanks to Pugachev’s intervention that Grinev manages to rescue and marry Masha.

§

Pushkin’s novel of apprenticeship provides a strong counterargument to Hegel’s criticism of the novel in Lectures on Aesthetics. Hegel argues that the formation of the hero’s individual perspective inevitably puts him in opposition to society, an opposition that can be overcome only by limiting individual striving and settling for an ordinary and uninspiring existence.[33] But, Hegel insists, the knight who gives up his quest loses his chivalric honor and becomes a boring bourgeois and potentially an enemy of the Spirit. The conflict between an inspired individual and a sluggish, materialistic society is central to the art that Hegel called Romantic and considered the final stage in the development of art. Unaware of the rapidly developing Russian intellectual and literary culture, Hegel believed that contemporary European art had reached a state of crisis. However, Pushkin believed that the novel need not constrict the progressive development of human self-consciousness and society. On the contrary, the literary form as used by Pushkin works well to mediate between the hero’s drive toward independence and originality and the society’s need for stability and reproduction. Grinev’s search for his independent, mature self sets him on a road of adventure and trial and inspires him with romantic and potentially dangerous passion. However, this risky path eventually leads him to the same place from which he started his journey: to his parental home and traditional marriage.

Grinev is very different from the hero of a quest-romance, which Hegel considers the prototype of the modern individual. The growth of his self-consciousness and independence is supported by a strong sense of belonging and traditional moral sentiments. His boldest independent deed, the liberation of Masha from the hands of Shvabrin, is inspired by love and supported by moral outrage against the traitor and the Pugachev gang.[34] But unlike in the novelistic plot discussed by Hegel, in the story narrated by Pushkin romantic feelings and familial and social bonds do not conflict but rather mutually reinforce each other, shortening the social distance between the Mironovs and the Grinevs.[35] Indeed, Masha’s parents are affectionate and forgiving toward the young officer who has just left his family nest, and the Grinevs receive Masha with sympathy, generosity, and respect.

I want to point out in conclusion that The Captain’s Daughter is not a conservative idyll, but a novel that puts on trial a hero endowed with a free will and capacity for moral judgment. Moreover, it is a historical novel, in which the hero’s choices are connected with the course and, potentially, with the outcome of historical events. In this novel the hero’s search for his path in life and his ability to make independent decisions yields a happy end, because throughout his journey the hero is supported by the spirit of familial attachment and a deep sense of tradition. On the ideological level, this work attempts to reconcile two intellectual traditions: the conservative position of Karamzin, which emphasizes the stability of a state, and the more individualistic version of the Enlightenment, concerned with personal Bildung rather than with the history of a state. The “Karamzinian” perspective informs the work with historical acumen, derived from thorough research of recent Russian history. The interest in individual Bildung directs Pushkin’s historical reflections toward the conclusion that the history of the state is made up of many individual histories and depends as much on the ethical choices and actions of private individuals as on pacts signed by monarchs. Therefore, the stability of a nation depends on the successful education and enlightenment of each individual. This idea was already clearly expressed in the memoir “On Public Education”: “Odno prosveshchenie v sostoianii uderzhat′ novye bezumstva, novye obshchestvennye bedstviia.”[36] [“Only Enlightenment can prevent new social calamities.”] In The Captain’s Daughter Pushkin gives the idea of “prosveshchenie” a more concrete artistic meaning, rendering it as a story of a single life.

University of Chicago