Dostoevsky (34 page)

9. N. A. Speshnev

Whether true or not, this rumor is enough to indicate the complexion of Speshnev’s politics. He began, under the influence of his reading of the French Romantic historians, as a political liberal. Steeping himself in the literature both of orthodox economy and its Socialist critics, he soon passed through Utopian Socialism to egalitarian communism. His contact with Polish émigré circles in Germany and France had acquainted him with the methods of underground conspiracy, and, becoming fascinated with the history of secret societies, he read everything he could find on the subject. He was familiar with Buonarotti’s
La conspiration de Babeuf
(which served as a handbook on conspiratorial tactics for all the French secret societies up to 1848), as well as with the compendious tome of the Abbé Barruel,
Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire du Jacobinisme, de l’impiété et de l’anarchie
, which described the supposed success of the Masons and Jacobins in secretly engineering the French Revolution. Everywhere he went, Speshnev moved in left-wing or (as in the case of the Poles) oppositional political circles. In Paris he became acquainted with the group around the
Revue Indépendante
and was invited to furnish articles about Russia.

Unlike Belinsky, however, Speshnev seems never to have been strongly influenced by the sentimental humanitarianism and the religious-philosophical messianism of the Sand-Leroux school. He was attracted instead by the doctrines rampant among the extreme French secret societies that preached the necessity of violence, and whose communism was combined with a philosophy of materialism, atheism, and Utilitarian self-interest. One of the most articulate spokesmen for this position, who received an approving nod from Karl Marx in
The Holy Family
, was Theodore Dézamy.
⁴
Dézamy was as committed as Cabet to a totally egalitarian and leveling communism of the crudest kind, but he believed that it could be realized only by the ruthless application of terror to crush all the enemies of the new ideal order. One of Dézamy’s books,
Le Jésuitisme vaincu par les socialistes
, was found in the search of Speshnev’s quarters after his arrest.

There is also reason to believe that Speshnev, during his sojourn in Paris, was influenced by the fathers of Marxism themselves (not yet Marxists, to be sure). In the fall of 1844, Engels wrote a letter to the
New Moral World
, an Owenite-communist journal, proudly claiming that “we are having much success among the Russians living in Paris. There are three or four Russian nobles and landowners here who are declared radical Communists and atheists.” V. I. Semevsky, a historian with an unrivaled knowledge of Russian radicalism, thinks “we can scarcely doubt that one of these Russians was Speshnev.”
⁵

What we know about Speshnev comes largely through the testimony of others and the summary of his case made for Nicholas I, as well as the drafts of two letters written by him sometime in 1847. They are presumed to have been addressed to his Polish friend, Edmond Chojecki; and they furnish striking confirmation of the qualities in Speshnev that so impressed his contemporaries. One cannot help admiring his easy erudition in philosophical and social-economic matters and the lucid, ironic, coldly incisive quality of his mind. The most important remarks are those that show how strongly he had come under the influence of Max Stirner. Rejecting all attempts to establish any sort of metaphysical system, Speshnev writes: “Anthropotheism [the position of Feuerbach] . . . divinizes a new and different object, but there is nothing new about the fact of divinization. . . . Is the difference between a God-man and a Man-god really so great?” Both, he says, are abstractions, which do not concern the existing individual of flesh-and-blood. “Am I, writing to you now, really identical with humanity or ‘the human’? . . . If not, then ‘humanity’ and ‘the human’ are . . . alien authorities.” Speshnev concludes that “such categories as beauty and ugliness, good and bad, noble and base, always were and always will remain a matter of taste.”
⁶

The affinities between Speshnev’s views and the ideas that motivate the character Stavrogin in
Demons
are striking. Speshnev lectured on religion from a “philosophical” point of view during one of the evenings at Petrashevsky’s when Dostoevsky may well have been present. But even if we assume that Dostoevsky invented the ideological motivation of Stavrogin, this merely verifies the astonishing capacity of his imagination, at what may seem to be its wildest flights, to intersect with some of the historical reality of Russian culture. For Stavrogin’s “Confession” contains the following passage, which offers the rationale for his behavior: “I have neither the feeling nor the knowledge of good and evil, and not only have I lost the sense of good and evil, but good and evil really do not exist (and this pleased me) and are but a prejudice; I can be free of all prejudices . . .” (12: 113).

Speshnev’s appearance at the Petrashevsky Fridays early in 1848 naturally stirred interest and excitement, if only because the widely traveled visitor could provide firsthand information about Socialist circles in Europe. But his striking personality also produced its effect, greatly aided by his posture of reticence and the air of mystery that he assumed—the air of a man perfectly poised, who knew much more than he was willing to disclose to the uninitiated. He rarely entered into the current of the conversations at Petrashevsky’s, spent most of his time in the host’s study consulting his library, and would only condescend now and then to drop a laconic word. From what Speshnev said about himself during the investigation, we see that he deliberately cultivated such a stance to increase his authority and prestige. He “was sometimes very sharp in speech, to prevent others from hiding from him, and succeeded in recognizing all hidden thoughts so as to know with whom he was dealing.”
⁷
The manner in which Speshnev was treated by Petrashevsky suggests that he was suspected of being the emissary of some European revolutionary organization. Speshnev was of a totally different moral temper than Petrashevsky, and the two men were, ideologically, poles apart. Petrashevsky pinned his hopes to a gradual evolution, decried precipitous political action, and rejected egalitarian communism as economic barbarism. Speshnev openly called himself a communist, believed in the nationalization of all means of production in the hands of a strong central power, and felt that the initial and most important step should be the seizure of such power by the revolutionaries at the first opportunity.

Whenever Speshnev
did
speak, he injected a new note of steely decisiveness into the desultory atmosphere of the meetings; no one had ever expressed himself there with such brutality and frankness. In the talk on religion, he remarked that in Russia, it was possible to propagandize ideas only by word of mouth.
“And therefore, gentlemen, since only the spoken word remains to us, I intend to use it without any shame or conscience, with no sense of dishonor, in order to propagandize for Socialism, atheism, terrorism, everything, everything that is good in the world. And I advise you to do the same.”
⁸

During the winter of 1848–1849, a number of incidents occurred in the Petrashevsky Circle that betrayed an increasing radicalism among some of the participants. Speshnev was either directly involved in all these incidents or was suspected by others to be working in the background, and he seized whatever possibilities he could sense to move beyond the cautiousness of Petrashevsky.

The most curious episode of this kind involved the flamboyant figure of Rafael Chernosvitov, a Siberian gold prospector who floated into the Petrashevsky orbit one day in November 1848. An ex-army officer, he had knocked about a good deal, been decorated for bravery, and was the proud possessor of a wooden leg replacing the one lost in battle. A garrulous personality, he evidently enjoyed bedazzling his young and gullible audience with portentous hints about his enormous influence over the wild and unruly population of his Siberian district and his contacts with the governor-general. Dostoevsky, who enjoyed the pithiness of Chernosvitov’s language, compared his racy Russian to that of Gogol, but he also remarked to Speshnev that the colorful newcomer was probably a police spy. Speshnev thought he was the agent of a revolutionary organization in Siberia sent to feel out the ground in the heartland of the empire; so, perhaps, did Petrashevsky. At the same time, Chernosvitov suspected
them
of being the leaders of a movement preparing an uprising in European Russia.

It is indicative of Speshnev’s status that Petrashevsky invited him to participate in a series of private conversations with Chernosvitov. Each of the three tried to feel out the other as the talk turned on the possibility of a revolution. Chernosvitov assured his interlocutors that, beyond the Urals, the free Siberian peasants all possessed arms and were ready to massacre any invading army. Speshnev pointed out that, if the bulk of the Russian Army could be decoyed into Siberia, and if this could be coordinated with uprisings in the two major cities, the fate of tsarism would be sealed. Declaring his readiness to participate in such an undertaking, Chernosvitov tried to elicit admissions from the other two that they were indeed organizing for such a revolt. Speshnev was willing to play along in the hope of extracting more information from Chernosvitov, but Petrashevsky flatly refused to participate in outright deception. The talks broke down as a result of this refusal.

Nonetheless, Chernosvitov’s speech served as a catalyst to bring into the open half-formulated thoughts that were fermenting among the group. Another person who took them up was a young army lieutenant named Nikolay Mombelli, who spoke privately to Petrashevsky about the formation of a secret mutual assistance society, with the aim of infiltrating the bureaucracy to bring about reforms and to counter the oppression of the authorities. This led to another series of private conversations, again with Speshnev and Petrashevsky as the main participants.

Mombelli, as we now know, was a member of Speshnev’s secret organization, and Speshnev immediately seized the opportunity to outline his own idea of what a secret society should be. He explained that “there are three illegal methods of action—Jesuitical [i.e., infiltration], propaganda, and revolt; that neither of these is certain, and thus there is a better chance if all three roads are taken, and for this a central committee [is] necessary whose function would be to form auxiliary ones: a committee of brotherhood to set up a school of Fourierist, Communist, and Liberal propaganda, and, finally, a committee to form, behind all this, a secret society for revolt.”
⁹
Mombelli suggested that all members of the proposed organization begin by writing their biography (perhaps for purposes of pressure and blackmail) and that traitors were to be executed. But Petrashevsky engaged in delaying tactics, constantly urged prudence, and said that, even though he did not approve of violent revolution, he still believed he would live in a phalanstery during his lifetime. Speshnev finally lost patience, refused to attend any more such futile meetings, and temporarily broke off relations with Petrashevsky sometime in December 1848.

It is against the background of these various attempts by Speshnev to form a secret society, all frustrated and thwarted by Petrashevsky, that we must place what we know of Dostoevsky at this time. For it was shortly after these abortive efforts that, one evening in January 1849, he visited the flat of Apollon Maikov and told his friend that he had been delegated to make him a proposal to join in a new secret group. “Petrashevsky,” Dostoevsky said, “well, he’s a fool, a play-actor and a chatterbox; nothing sensible would ever come out of him.” More practical people had thought up “a plan of action” without telling Petrashevsky. The idea was “to set up a secret printing press”; seven others had joined, and Maikov was invited to be the eighth. “I remember Dostoevsky,” Maikov writes, “like the dying Socrates before his friends, sitting in his nightshirt with an unbuttoned collar and lavishing all his eloquence on the sanctity of this action, on our obligation to save the fatherland, etc.—so that I finally began to laugh and crack jokes.”
¹⁰
Maikov warned Dostoevsky that he was heading for certain ruin,
but he promised not to breathe a word of the proposal to anyone, and he remained true to his pledge during Dostoevsky’s lifetime.

This attempt to enlist Maikov was first revealed in a letter written by Maikov after Dostoevsky’s death (but never sent) and published only in 1922; it contains the names of Speshnev and Pavel Filippov as two other members of this secret group (Dostoevsky listed Filippov, along with Golovinsky, as among his closest friends at this time). Maikov told the same story to a friend, who transcribed it in a diary that came to light in 1956. The other members of the secret society were Nikolay Mordvinov, Mombelli, Nikolay Grigoryev, and the economist Vladimir Milyutin, and the purpose of the organization was to produce “a revolution in Russia.”
¹¹
In his letter, Maikov also mentions having learned later that the parts for a handpress had been gathered together and assembled shortly before the arrest of all the Petrashevtsy.