How does Dostoevsky provide a convincing rebuttal of Chernyshevsky’s proposed solutions to Russia’s social problems?
Nikolai Chernyshevsky’s novel What is to be Done? was published in 1863. Through the actions of two of his characters, Dmitry Lopukhov and Alexander Kirsanov, he advocates the philosophy of rational egoism, while acknowledging the natural human conflict between this impulse to uphold the interests of the individual and the competing desire to promote communal prosperity. This is most simply observed in the novel when Lopukhov perceives that his wife is in love with their friend Kirsanov, and that her love is reciprocated. Because of this, he realises that the most expedient course to take is to fake his own death and move to America to begin a new life. This is explained to his wife by the “superior man” Rakhmetov as a result of the “incompatibility of your two natures.” Chernyshevsky’s rational egoism was developed from the writing of the British utilitarian John Stuart Mill. In this way he justified the importance of the individual alongside the improvement of society as a whole. This seems to resemble a mathematical equation, as Chernyshevsky explained human behaviour as a constant subconscious calculation designed to result in the least amount of pain and the most pleasure for the individual. “New men”, as he described Kirsanov and Lopukhov, would be able to recognise that their immediate needs were secondary to those of the wider society, and that this would benefit them individually later.
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Fyodor Dostoevsky seems to parody Chernyshevsky himself in Crime and Punishment, published in 1866, with the character of Andrey Lebezyatnikov, who “really was rather stupid” and who was one of “the obstinate fools who… infallibly attach themselves to the most fashionable current idea”, in this case nihilistic utilitarianism. Lebezyatnikov claims that something that is“useful” is honourable. Dostoevsky pushes his satire to absurdity when the incensed Lebezyatnikov claims that he would “be the first to be ready to clean out any cess-pit” for a proposed commune, and is led by his own logic to exclaim that this action “may even be worth more than the activities of some Raphael and Pushkin”. In this way Dostoevsky ridicules the simplistic logic of Chernyshevsky’s brand of utilitarianism, as a mathematical equation can never fully explain or improve human nature because of its complexity. However, it is Lebezyatnikov who, through his fashionable views, defends the prostitute Sonya Marmeladova, whom he euphemistically describes as being “in that position” but also as having a “beautiful nature” and it is he who ends up supporting and protecting her from the scheme of Peter Luzhin.
He proclaims that he is “seeking the emancipation of women” and attacks Luzhin for refusing to “regard a human being in a humane light.” Therefore, the character of Lebezyatnikov presents a mixed interpretation of Chernyshevsky’s views. However, perhaps this is simply Dostoevsky’s creation of Lebezyatnikov as a believable, rounded character with the natural human impulse to protect someone he perceives as vulnerable. Dostoevsky sought to portray his characters as true to life and therefore as contradictory human beings. Lebezyatnikov may have been expected to take advantage of Sonya sexually and justify his actions with his liberal views, but Dostoevsky confounds that expectation. This is in contrast with many of Chernyshevsky’s characters in What is to be Done?, such as the superman Rakhmetov, who only represent themes that are important to the author’s agenda in writing the novel. Indeed the character of Peter Luzhin, in Crime and Punishment, may be seen as a polemical device, warning against the rather convenient process of Vera Pavlovna being ‘led out’ of her cellar, both literally and figuratively, by the enlightened Lopukhov, in What is to be Done?. She then falls in love with him, but he continues to respect her absolutely, because he is a “new man”.
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However, the wealthy Luzhin in Crime and Punishment is motivated to marry by the prospect of exercising “absolute and complete dominion” over a “virtuous maiden” who “must be poor” and for “all her life would think of him as her saviour… obey him… and admire him and him alone” as a result of their marriage. He very nearly achieves his aim. It may be observed that Lopukhov (who has a lucrative medical career ahead of him), and Luzhin share a goal. The naivety of Chernyshevsky’s optimism is exposed by Dostoevsky’s character of Luzhin, emphasising that not all people are as purely intentioned as his character Lopukhov. Chernyshevsky would reply that the “new men” of the story are not intended as “heroes” or “people of a higher nature”, but “simply standing at ground level.” Chernyshevsky supposed that the majority of his “mean, base, pitiful” readers were “sitting in some godforsaken underworld.” In other words, Lopukhov’s actions only seem outstanding because of the debased state of contemporary Russian society. Chernyshevsky exhorts his readers to “come out into the light of day”, by devoting themselves to their “own development”, like his rational egoist “new men”. Perhaps Chernyshevsky genuinely believed that in time, the selfishness of people like Luzhin would no longer exist.
Dostoevsky’s protagonist, Rodion Raskolnikov declares his view, in an essay that he reads out to Porfiry Petrovich, the examining magistrate, that “those who have the…talent of saying something new” may “wade through blood” in pursuit of their objective because they are “the lords of the future”. He murdered a pawnbroker, Alena Ivanovna, earlier in the book because he considered her a “louse”, and heard others argue the same point in a tavern. They claim that if you killed Alena Ivanovna and used her money for “the service of humanity and the common good”, then “one little, insignificant transgression” would not matter. They maintain that this is “One death, and a hundred lives in exchange…simple arithmetic”. These calculations seem to be at the heart of Chernyshevsky’s utilitarianism. He would have to agree that Raskolnikov is acting for the greater good, as he is freeing her clients from debt, and does not use her money for his own purposes. However, as Raskolnikov is forced to kill the pawnbroker’s innocent sister Lizaveta as well, to prevent her from reporting the crime, the utilitarian arithmetic is again exposed as simplistic and naive. Dostoevsky objects on Christian grounds, not only to Raskolnikov’s two murders, but also to the fact that he judges himself and the pawnbroker, and murders her accordingly.
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He believes that she is a “louse” and he “a Napoleon”. Perhaps Dostoevsky is not concerned about the judgement in itself, but only the murders that it results in. In another novel, The Idiot, published in 1869, he judges a character, Ganya Ivolgin, as unoriginal (in Raskolnikov’s words, someone who does not have the talent of saying something new) and uses him as an example of the problems faced by supposedly mediocre people aspiring to be original. In Crime and Punishment, Raskolnikov shows another problem faced by nihilistic utilitarianism: who should decide what is for the greater good of society? Who decides which people are lice and therefore deserve to be killed, which are Napoleons and so are licensed to kill them, and which people are in the middle, ordinary people like Ganya?
Chernyshevsky displays a progressive attitude to the problems faced by Russian women in What is to be Done?. The central character, Vera Pavlovna, once she has been liberated from oppression by Lopukhov, is enlightened in regard to her true purpose in life through a succession of dreams. These dreams lead to her emancipation as she becomes the ultimate “new woman”. Having founded her community-based chain of sewing establishments, she begins to study to become a doctor, a profession that remained hostile to women even throughout the more liberal Western Europe. However, perhaps it is telling that, although the French “kept woman” Julie gives Vera well-meaning advice, it is a man, Lopukhov who fully persuades her of her potential. He describes women as “pitiful” in general, because, according to him, at the time their deepest desire is “to be a man!” He quickly shares his wish for “no more poverty” and tells Vera that her “family situation is horrible”. Perhaps this is what starts Vera on her quest for “independence” that characterises her in the rest of the novel. However, perhaps the author really intended it so that independence was always her goal. This may be observed through her “resistance” to her conniving suitor Storeshnikov’s “inflamed” desire for her to be his “possession” and for her to “advance his career in society”.
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She also opposes her mother’s wish to force the marriage through. Therefore this independence was already evident; all that remained in order for it to flourish was for Lopukhov to free her from her mother by marrying her. A comparison between Lopukhov and Storeshnikov seems to be invited here. The latter, weak-willed and scheming, may represent those men still in “the underworld”, the type of man who can only aspire to enlightenment. Lopukhov, on the other hand, is intended to seem above reproach (until the introduction of Rakhmetov) especially in regard to his wife and her independence. Dostoevsky, through the narrator in Notes from the Underground, published a year after Chernyshevsky’s novel in 1864, ridicules anyone who expects men such as Storeshnikov to “immediately become good and honourable” and have their “eyes… opened”. He compares anyone who does to a “child”, or a “sweet, innocent babe”. Of course, this narrator is intended to be especially cynical, but this passage sounds like a direct attack on Chernyshevsky himself. The comparison of Chernyshevsky with a baby sounds like an attempt to reduce his credibility with the radical thinkers of the time. Even the title of this novel seems to be aimed at Chernyshevsky. By making a reference to the “Underground” that Chernyshevsky so earnestly encouraged his readership to escape, Dostoevsky emphasises the reality of the situation: that it is not always as simple and easy as the other author makes it seem.
At the heart of Chernyshevsky’s feelings about women is the statement made by the goddess who appears to Vera in her fourth dream, that “when a man acknowledges a woman’s rights as equal to his own… she loves him as he loves her, only because she wants to.” The goddess is “equal rights” the culmination in the dream of a succession of goddesses from Astarte to the Virgin Mary. Of course, if this is interpreted allegorically, then this goddess may be seen as a parallel figure to Rakhmetov, the superior man. It is she who finally realises the heroine’s full emancipation. However, if it is interpreted literally as a real dream, then Vera Pavlovna liberates herself through her subconscious mind. The goddess declares herself to be “freedom”. She echoes Lopukhov’s opinion, expressed in the early stages of his relationship with Vera, that “woman… was so pitiful” before the existence of equal rights. According to this figment of the heroine’s mind, “only among equals can one experience true joy”, and this is why no one “knew the full happiness of love” before men and women became equal. Perhaps Dostoevsky would agree with this powerfully expressed sentiment. However, he provides a very different understanding of it with the love between Raskolnikov and Sonya Marmeladova in Crime and Punishment. There is none of the clumsy idea of being exactly equal in every way that especially characterises Vera’s marriage to Lopukhov. To the modern reader, the relationship between Sonya and Raskolnikov may seem balanced heavily in favour of the latter. For example, Sonya resolves to follow Raskolnikov out to Siberia to be with him during his sentence. Despite the fact that “she and Raskolnikov had never made the slightest allusion to this” they both “knew it would be so”. Perhaps this is because Dostoevsky simply could not imagine such a conversation taking place, with the relationship between husband and wife so equally balanced.
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Although Chernyshevsky concerns himself with the mechanics of social justice, such as the restraint of rational egoism, he is not interested in portraying the human details of reality. After Vera Pavlovna has escaped her mother, she does not seem to encounter anyone with real problems. This is surprising for a writer who declared in the preface to his novel that “any merit to be found in my tale is due entirely to its truthfulness”. Maybe Chernyshevsky was trying to keep his novel as free of emotion as possible, in order to accentuate his philosophical message. Dostoevsky’s style, of writing with the moral of the novel and the fate of the characters inextricably linked and therefore of equal importance, is entirely focused on human emotion. For example, in Crime and Punishment Katerina Ivanovna’s funeral supper for her recently deceased husband Marmeladov descends into something quite different: an impassioned philosophical debate, an accusation of theft, and finally her eviction by her landlady. In this way, Dostoevsky shows that any discussion of social justice must be tempered by a strong connection to reality. This seems to be lacking in What is to be Done?, in which characters often flit from one debate to the next, and the author intervenes in order to explain that a character (Rakhmetov) only exists because the reader “would have misunderstood the main characters” if he had not been written in. However, perhaps this is to miss the point. Perhaps Chernyshevsky intended this story to be unrealistic, and therefore only meant it as something for his readership to aspire to, to help them out of the “underground”. Finally, it seems siginificant that despite Vera’s emancipation, and Sonya’s redemption, neither of the two characters achieves this without a man. Although Chernyshevsky went further in his vision of independent women than Dostoevsky, there is never even the possibility of Vera achieving her goal as a single woman without a husband to guide her.
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Kit Heren
