University College London

The Contribution of V. V. Bervi-Flerovsky to Russian Populism

Author(s): Derek Offord
Source: The Slavonic and East European Review, Vol. 66, No. 2 (Apr., 1988), pp. 236-251
Published by: the Modern Humanities Research Association and University College London,
School of Slavonic and East European Studies
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SEER, Vol.66, No. 2, April 19&9

The
V.

Contribution

V.

of

Bervi-Flerovskyto

Russian

Populism

DEREK OFFORD
clear from the numerous memoirs on the period that the
revolutionary Populism of the i870s was not so much a coherent
doctrine, like the Marxism that eventually superseded it, but more a
complex set of ideas and attitudes that had developed over a long
period and crystallized in a distinctive form in the late i86os. At the
root of Populism, to be sure, lay firm beliefs: that the Russian nation
could follow a separate path of historical development, that the Russian
or peasant
people had a socialistic temperament, and that the obshchina,
commune, might constitute a basis for a collectivist utopia. But
Populism also provided an outlet for the idealism of the Russian
intelligentsia, its yearning for service, even self-sacrifice, in a noble
cause, for it encouraged the educated minority to discharge a moral
debt to the suffering majority, at whose expense they enjoyed their
wealth and culture, by assisting the masses to build a new, more
egalitarian social order.1These ideas and attitudes, one might say this
frame of mind, had long been cultivated in publicism and imaginative
literature by Herzen, Chernyshevsky, Dobrolyubov, Nekrasov, even
Turgenev, and lesser writers such as V. A. Sleptsov, Levitov,
Pomyalovsky and Reshetnikov. But it is with the appearance of certain
works in I868-69 - Lavrov's HistoricalLetters,Mikhaylovsky's essay
'What is Progress?' and the book The Conditionof the WorkingClass in
Russiaby V. V. Bervi, who wrote under the pseudonym N. Flerovsky
that classical Populism may be said to have been born, and of these
works Bervi's tract, which it is the purpose of this article to examine, is
arguably the most important, not only because it is known to have
IT iS

Derek Offord is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Russian Studies at Bristol

University. This paper is to be presentedat the Xth InternationalCongress of Slavists,
Sofia, I988.
1 For a more detailed description of Populism and of the phases through which it passed in
the 1870s see my book The Russian RevolutionaryMovementin the i88os, Cambridge, i986,

pp. I-35,

173-74.

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BERVI-FLEROVSKY

AND

RUSSIAN

POPULISM

237

exerciseda greatinfluenceon the revolutionaryyouthof the I 870s,2 but

also becauseit blendsintoa compellingwholeconsiderablymoreof the
diverseelementsof Populismthanthe othertwo.3
I

TheCondition
ClassinRussiais an exhaustivesurveyof the
of theWorking
nation's misery. Bervi's gaze ranges over many regions and many
examples of the Russian workingman:4the Siberianvagrant and
cultivator,the commonpeopleof the farnorthin Archangelprovince
andthe farsouthin Astrakhan'province;peasantslivingundervarious
typesof land tenurein the agriculturalheartland,fromVologdain the
northto the landsbetweenthe Volga and the Urals in the east and the
black-earthprovincesof the centreandthesouth;andthe mineworker,
seasonal labourerand factory worker,the proletariancoming into
being in the dawn of Russia'sindustrialage. Even the manynational
minorities- Kalmyks,Mordvinians,Circassians,Armenians,Letts,
Estonians,Finns,Moldaviansandothers- receiveextensiveandoften
sympathetictreatment.
The impressionleft by the workis one of unalleviateddestitution,
sufferingand squalorin a worldthatis not necessarilybarren,harshor
ugly. The tone is set at the beginning by the narrator'sshocked
discoveryof an unburiedcorpse in the beautifulSiberianlandscape
with its golden sky and trilling nightingales.The country has rich
resourcesand abundantpossibilities.In Siberia,forexample,the soilis
fertile,the meadowsprovidegood pasture,the lakesand riversarefull
of fish, the foreststeem with game, and berriesare plentiful;thereis
pine for building,and depositsof coal, ironand othermetals.And yet
2 See the accounts of the major memoirists,e.g. N. A. Charushin, 0
dalyokom
proshlom,
Moscow, I973, p. 64; P. L. Lavrov, Narodniki-propagandisty
i873-78 godov,St Petersburg,
pp. 32, 38, 44, 48-49; 0. V. Aptekman, Obshchestvo
I907,
'Zemlyai Volya'7o-kh godov,
Petrograd, I924, pp. 72ff.; M. F. Frolenko,Sobraniye
sochineniy,
2nd edn, Moscow, 1932, I,
p. I72; A. I. Kornilova-Moroz,'Perovskayai osnovaniyekruzhkachaykovtsev'(Katorgai
ssylka,22, 1926, p. I3); A. Yakimova,"'Bol'shoy protsess",ili "protsessI93-kh"' (Katorga
i
ssylka,37, 1927, p. io); V. Figner, 'MarkAndreyevichNatanson' (Katorgai ssylka,56, 1929,
p. I41).

Contemporarieswere also much affectedby Bervi's work Azbukasotsial'nykh

nauk,two
parts of which werewrittenfor and printedby the so-calledChaykovskycirclein I 871. The
censorsdid not allow this workto be publishedlegallyat the time, althoughcopiescirculated
among revolutionarygroups.The workwas publishedin London,in a fullerversion,in 1894
as issues I0-12 of the 'RussianFree Press'.
3 The works in question by Lavrov and Mikhaylovskywere primarily ethical and
sociologicaldisquisitions,and did not deal with subjectssuch as Russia'shistoricalpath, the
natureof the Russianpeopleor the questionof communallandholding(thoughboth authors
did deal with these questionselsewhere).
4Bervi uses the term rabotnik
to describeboth the industrialworkerand the peasant. Like
the Populistsin generalhe does not draw betweenthese two representativesof the working
people the fundamental distinction which Marxists perceive, although he does see the
industrialworkersas an awakeningforcemorehighly developedintellectuallyand morally
than those who remainedon the land.
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238

DEREK OFFORD

the Russian working people are the 'pitiable, poor, suffering,last

outcastlinksof the civilizedfamily'.Theydwelleverywherein grinding
povertyin conditionswhich are bound to makethe much publicized
fate of the Westernpauperseem by comparisona 'heavenlyblessing
and an unattainable[state of] well-being'.They are overburdened
with taxes, the collectionof which may be accompaniedby corporal
punishment.They subsiston a wretcheddiet (peasantswhoeat meatin
summerare as rareas 'grainsof gold amidshingle').Malnutritionand
exhaustionresultin a low level of productivityand furtherdegenerationof people,landandlivestock.Mortalityratesreachlevelsunknown
in Western Europeancountriessuch as France even in years when
choleraragesthere.Particularlywretchedis the lot of Russianwomen
who have to turn their hand to every occupation- ploughing,
harrowing,mowing, reaping, threshing,fishing - and who are so
abusedby theirhusbandsthattheymaycommitcrimesin orderto gain
the sanctuaryof prison.Industry,which Berviregardsas a sourceof
prosperityand happiness for other peoples,Sis for the Russians a
furthercause of povertyand death. Men, womenand childrenlabour
for sixteen hours a day in factories in dangerousand unhealthy
conditionswhich administratorsand capitalistsdo nothingto ameliorate.6

The causes of this human misery are numerous, and they are in
Bervi's view social and in the final analysis moral rather than natural or
climatic. One cause is an irrational trading policy which dictates the
export of agricultural produce required by the poorly-fed Russian
working man in return for products such as cotton of which he has little
need. Another is the deracination of the common people and the
destruction of the family unit that result from the departure of the male
5 A view by no means uncharacteristic of the Populists who, it has recently been argued,
were much less hostile to industrial development per se than has been commonly supposed
(see Edward Acton, 'The Russian Revolutionary Intelligentsia and Industrialisation', in
Russian Thoughtand Society,1800-I9I7: Essays in Honourof EugeneLampert,ed. Roger Bartlett,
Keele, I984, pp. 98iff.).
6 See N. Flerovsky [V. V. Bervi], Polozheniyerabochego
klassa v Rossii, St Petersburg, I869
[hereafterPolozheniye
rabochegoklassa],pp. 6, 350-51, 38-39, 352-53, 49, 40, 237, I7I, 57, 310,
399, 5'I f., 388. Bervi reworked his book for a second edition which the Chaykovsky circle
intended to print, but the authorities were successful in preventing its appearance. The I 869
edition was republished in Moscow in 1938, with an introduction by 0. Abramovich, but
with some abridgement, in particular the omission of the conclusion on the grounds that it
'reiterates the sociological views of Flerovsky, expounded by him in other parts of the book
[and provides] no new conclusions, examples, facts etc.' (p. iii). This unfortunate omission
is presumably explained by the fact that it is in the conclusion that the incompatibility of
Bervi's Populist outlook with a Marxist world-view is most vividly apparent. It is interesting
in this connection that Andrzej Walicki feels that it was in this section of Bervi's work, rather
than in its descriptive part, that Populism 'found its best and most characteristic expression'
(see his book The Controversyover Capitalism: Studies in the Social Philosophyof the Russian
Populists, Oxford, I969, p. IIon.). The latest edition of The Conditionof the WorkingClass is in
N. Flerovsky [V. V. Bervi], Izbrannyyeekonomicheskiye
proizvedeniya,2 vols, Moscow, 1958-59,
I.

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BERVI-FLEROVSKY

AND

RUSSIAN

POPULISM

239

or in searchof
fromthe householdforseasonalemployment(zarabotki),
more long-termemploymentwhich will enable him to pay his taxes.
Militaryrecruitmenthas the sameeffect.Yet moreimportantcausesof
distressare the prevalenceof large-scaleprivatelandownership- to
which Berviattributesthe povertyof wholeregionswhereit predominates - and cripplingtaxes of everydescription(poll-tax,quit-rent
and excises). Berviis convincedthat the eliminationof these last two
causesof distressin particularwouldquicklybringaboutan economic
he argues,for a nation to
transformation,for it is counterproductive,
keepits workforcein penury.Thosenationsprospermostin whichthe
burdenplacedon the workforceby thosewho do not work(Bervimay
have in mind Saint-Simon'sconceptsof les industriels
and les oisifs)is
lightest.7Beyondall the socialand economicexplanationsof hardship,
however,thereclearlylies, as we shallsee, a moralfirstcauserelatingto
the behaviourof man in society,his inhumanityto his fellows.
II
We may seek explanationsfor the extraordinarypopularityof The
Condition
ClassinRussiaon manylevels.
of theWorking
It is true that at firstsight the workhas stylisticdeficiencieswhich
may make it hard for the modernreaderto appreciateits appeal to
Bervi's contemporaries. It is prolix and sometimes opaque. These
shortcomings, however, are shared by many of the writings of Bervi's
contemporaries in the radical camp (Lavrov's works were once likened
by Saltykov-Shchedrin to forests the edges of which one might never
reach).8 Indeed such apparent defects might well have been construed
as merits by readers contemptuous of the effete man of letters and
disdainful of the literary elegance he prized. More importantly, the
form of the work makes it an ideal vehicle for the Populist message. The
Conditionof the WorkingClass in Russia is a travelogue, an account of
Bervi's personal odyssey through the length and breadth of Russia
during the periods of exile he endured in the i860S.9 Infused with a
7 Polozheniye
rabochego
klassa,pp. 207, 24I, 389, 400,409,57,
I97, 200, 58, I74-75,
2I6, 2I8.
8-See Philip Pomper, Peter Lavrov and the Russian RevolutionaryMovement,Chicago, I972,
p.ii8.
9 Bervi was born in I829, the son of a Professor of Physiology at Kazan' University (who
was himself the son of a British consul at Danzig). He studied law at Kazan' University and
then served as an official in the Ministry ofJustice (an experience that gave him first-hand
knowledge of some of the abuses he was to chronicle). In I 862 he wrote a petition to the tsar
and a letter to the British ambassador complaining about the arrest of the members of the
nobility from Tver' who had expressed dissatisfaction with the provisions of the
emancipation edict, and was temporarily confined for his pains in a lunatic asylum. There
now began the long period of exile and imprisonment in Astrakhan', Kazan', Kuznetsk,
Tomsk, Vologda and Tver' which provided much of the material for The Conditionof the
WorkingClass in Russia. In the early I 87os Bervi was close to both the Chaykovsky circle and
the Dolgushin circle. Subsequently he underwent further periods of exile in Archangel

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240

DEREK OFFORD

sense of restless movement, it describes a voyage of discovery within a

native land which still held many mysteries for an educated minority
isolated from the toiling masses. The form is one already popularized
by Radishchev in his own panoramic description of Russia's ills under
Catherine II, the Journeyfrom St Petersburg
to Moscow,and lately used
again to chronicle popular distress by Sleptsov and Nekrasov.10Like
Radishchev'sJourney(and indeed like Cobbett's RuralRidesin southern
England in the post-Napoleonic era and Engels' Condition
of theWorking
Classin Englandin the I840s), Bervi's travelogue naturally accommodates economic, social and ethical discussion, while also enabling the
author, through his first-personnarrative, his exhaustive use of graphic
detail, his reporting of life observed at first hand and of conversations
with the common people whom he encounters, to write with compelling
immediacy and authenticity.
The credibility which the work derives from Bervi's role in it as
reliable eye-witness is bolstered by his constant use of statistics as a
basis for discussion of economic and social issues. In preparing the
work Bervi drew on numerous sources, notably official statistical
surveys produced at provincial level on local population and agriculture,11 and he even makes use, for the purpose of comparison, of the
census conducted in Britain in I85I. These sources are repeatedly
invoked by Bervi in support of his conclusions. Thus he offers tables
showing the proportion of the population living on lands owned by
landlords in various provinces to support his claims about the
detrimental effects of large-scale landowning; tables compiled for the
same purpose which compare percentage increases in population over
a twelve-year period and the relative birth and death rates in different
groups of provinces; tables that compare death rates in provinces where
the people drink most with those in which they drink least, with a view
to refuting the belief that the poverty of the Russian people is
attributable to their drunkenness; and statistics on the distribution of
woodland, on livestock levels, on the relative mobility of the labour
force in various provinces, and much else besides.12 Negative reviews
of the work tended to complain that the sources of these statistics were
province, Kostroma and Tiflis. In 1893 he was allowed to go abroad and visited Geneva and
London. In I 896 he returned to Russia, where he died in I 9 I 8. The best source on Bervi's life
and activity is his autobiography, published under his own name V. V. Bervi, Tri
politicheskiyesistemy:Nikolay Iyy, AleksandrIIoy i AleksandrIIIiy, [Geneva], I 897 [hereafter Tri
politicheskiyesistemy]. See also the biography by 0. V. Aptekman, Vasiliy VasilyevichBerviFlerovskiypo materialamb. III Otdeleniyai D. G.P., Leningrad, 1925; and S. A. Vengerov,
slovar' russkikhpisateleyi uchonykh,iII, St Petersburg, I 892, pp. i6-i 7.
Kritiko-biograticheskiy
10 V. A. Sleptsov, 'Vladimirka i Klyaz'ma' (see his Izbrannyyeproizvedeniya,Leningrad,
I970, pp. 29-I51);
and N. A. Nekrasov, 'Komu na Rusi zhit' khorosho?'.
1 See Tri politicheskiyesistemy,pp. 249ff.
12
204ff.,
228ff.,
272ff.,
400ff., 4I I ff.
Polozheniyerabochegoklassa, pp. 195, 20I-02,

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BERVI-FLEROVSKY

AND RUSSIAN POPULISM

24I

not always clear, and a report drawn up in the Ministry of the Interior
predictably expressed the fear that Bervi's use of official figures could
'seduce inexperienced readers who are not aware how easy it is to play
with statistics for some preconceived purpose'.13 To Bervi's radical
contemporaries, though, the application of statistical method to social
analysis (an approach made popular in the mid-nineteenth century by
the Belgian mathematician and sociologist Quetelet among several
others) lent his work great authority. The method was indicative of an
intellectual exactitude and rigour which, Chernyshevsky had taught
the radical youth, was just as necessary in the study of social and moral
affairs as in study of the natural world. Indeed, as Bervi himself stated,
statistics were 'implacable data', 'cold' and 'dispassionate'.14
III
Both the form and the method employed by Bervi in TheCondition
of the
WorkingClass in Russia helped to ensure its success among the
readership for which it was intended, but it was doubtless the views
expressed in it that determined its fate more than any other factor. It is
as well to begin an examination of those views by pointing out that
Bervi managed to give grounds for simultaneous despondency and
optimism, self-abasement and self-congratulation, by suggesting that
Russia, in relation to the West, was both currently inferior and
potentially superior.
Comparison of conditions in Russia and the West is a constant
leitmotif in the work. In particular Bervi contrasts the fate of the
Russian worker with that of his counterpart in England, the European
country which Bervi considers the most advanced and prosperous. The
sense of comparison is heightened through the obvious parallel
suggested by Bervi's title with Engels' book TheCondition
of theWorking
Class in England in which the German socialist had presented a
disturbing and indignant picture of the plight of the proletariat in the
world's most highly industrialized state in early Victorian times.
Engels spoke of England's glaring social inequality, of the reduction of
workers to the status of machines and their demoralization, of bad
13
'Zapreshchonnyye i unichtozhennyye knigi V. V. Bervi-Flerovskogo', Literaturnoye
nasledstvo,7-8, I933, p. I79. A British reviewer, on the other hand, finds the statistics
'invaluable to one who knows what a trouble it is to get Russian statistics of any kind'
(Athenaeum,no. 2200, 25 December I869, p. 859).
14 Polozheniyerabochegoklassa, pp. 203,
350-01.
The study of statistics produced by the
zemstvawas to be an important source for economists and revolutionaries in the 88os and
I 8gos debating the question of whether the tide of capitalism in the Russian countryside was
reversible and whether the peasant commune was disintegrating under its impact. The
young Lenin's early work on 'the development of capitalism in Russia' draws on such
sources and indeed Lenin twice refers to Bervi's book (see V. I. Lenin, Polnoyesobraniye
sochineniy,5th edn, Moscow, I967-70, III, pp. 232, 574).

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242

DEREK OFFORD

factory conditions, the inadequate diet and ruined health of the

workingclass,theforcingdownof wagesthroughcompetitionandtheir
furtherreductionthroughfinesand the trucksystem,of urbansqualor
and insanitaryhousingand of the highincidenceof crime,prostitution
and drunkennessamongthe masses.Onlyamongthe Irishimmigrants
living in England'scities could Engels find an even deeper level of
povertyand degradation.
Bervi set out to provethat it was ratherin his own belovedRussia
that humanmiserywas to be foundon a scaleunparalleledin Europe.
There is in his memoirsa passage relatingto his conceptionof The
Condition
of the WorkingClassin Russiathat betrays a relish at the
discovery he thinks he has made and a zealous determinationto
broadcastit:
The more I went into this matter,the more I saw the life of the Russian
workingpeople in gloomy colours;all the optimisticassurancesthat the
workerhas a betterlife in Russiathan in the West, that we do not have a
-proletariatand so forth,went out of the window.It has becomethe habit
with us to shout about the Englishruralproletariat,about the horrifying
povertyin the cities. I became convincedthat Russia was a countryof
universalpauperism.... Unconcernabout the sufferingsof the working
people exceededanythingthat could be foundin WesternEurope.In the
West there was not a single country where people were so poor,
downtroddenandwretched.The harderI workedon thissubject,the more
enthusiasticI became;finally I gave myselfup to it entirely.I lived the
sufferingsof this people,I wantedto takeon myselfall theirdifficultiesin
order to depict them in all their reality. I rememberedwhat a strong
impressiondescriptionsof the sufferingsof the Irish peoplehad made on
me, and now I had come to believe that the tribulationsof the Russian
workerwerewithouta doubtgreater.One wouldhavehad to go to Indiato
findhis like.15

Comparisonof the conditionof the peoplein Russiawith thatof the

Englishworkingclass beginsat an earlystagein Bervi'sbook.'People
makea lot of noisein ourcountryaboutthe calamitousconditionof the
proletarianin England, Belgium and France', he writes, but if a
Russianworkingmanwereable to live for a yearlike even a beggarin
one of thosecountriesthen 'hewouldconsiderhimselfthe luckiestman
alive'. The thesisis remorselesslydeveloped.The indigentpopulation
of the Russiannorthis farhungrierandworseclad thanthe paupersof
Englandand France.The incomeof the Russianworkercouldbe more
aptlycomparedto thatof theworkerin Franceundertheancien
or
regime
the negro slave in the United States than with that of the modern
Englishworker;in Perm'province,for example,a threefoldincrease
wouldstill not bringit up to the Englishlevel. The breadeatenby the
15 Tri politicheskiyesistemy,pp.

25 1-52.

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BERVI-FLEROVSKY

AND RUSSIAN

POPULISM

243

Russian working man would seem to the Englishman fit only to be fed

to horses or swine. England supports a much more abundant

population of both humans and livestock than even relatively populous
provinces like Samara, which is on roughly the same latitude. In Russia
as many as three in every five children die before they reach the age of
five, whereas in the West the figure does not reach two in five even
among the most impoverished. And in a chapter in which Bervi records
the 'impression made by the industrial provinces and statistical data'
he gives an extended comparison of mortality rates in the Russian
provinces, on the one hand, and in groups of English counties of
comparable size and population, on the other. Out of the twelve most
industrialized provinces in Russia, ten have a mortality rate higher
than that obtaining in the worst quarters of London where only thieves
and beggars dwell.16
Bervi's analysis of the Russian economy in the immediate postreform period reveals what other Populists accept, namely that there
are in evidence the beginnings of that capitalist system that has reached
such a high point of development in Victorian England. It is significant
in this respect that as much as one third of the main body of The
Condition
of theWorkingClassin Russiashould be devoted to the lot of the
worker in what Bervi terms 'industrial Russia', that is to say the
sections of the economy in which the embryo of the new economic order
was most apparent. But a similar process is going on in the countryside
where the hiring of wage labour is supplanting the exploitation of serflabour in the post-reformperiod - and Bervi is insistent that 'hiring is
only the first step towards improvement after slavery'- and where the
concentration of land in the hands of the few is creating a landless
proletariat. He describes the insidious reduction of even the most
unified and industrious families to economic subordination to the early
rural capitalist, the miroyed.Where private landownership is the norm
the more well-to-do members of the community are able to turn the
poorer peasants off the land and knock down the price of their labour.
Even within the rural commune the detested miroyedinexorably
16
Polozheniyerabochegoklassa, pp. 55-57, io8, I70-71, 203-04, 242-43, 3i8, 40, 453, 345if.,
373-76, I41, 254, 308. One could not describe Bervi as an anglophile, for however superior
the conditions of English workers might seem to those of their Russian counterparts the
rapacity of the English bourgeoisie and the ruthlessness of Britain as a colonial power could
not be forgotten (see for example his article 'Sovremennyy Karfagen', reprinted in Izbrannyye
ekonomicheskiyeproizvedeniya,
II, pp. 37-39, 49). Nor does Bervi seem to have imbibed any love
of England from his father, with whom his relations do not appear to have been close. He
didL however, write an article on English legal procedure in which he expressed approval of
the right of English citizens to complain of official abuses directly to a court which would
examine charges in open session (see Tri politicheskiyesistemy,pp. 113-14).
And when he
visited England for the first time the free atmosphere made him realize the full extent of the
harm done in Russia by autocracy and made him feel as if he had escaped from a 'den of
criminals' to a society of honest people (ibid., pp. 528-29).

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244

DEREK

OFFORD

increaseshis wealthand power,establishinghimselfon the best land,

which comes to be seen as his inalienable property, and taking
possessionof the commune'smost prizedresources.Again, Bervisees
the consequencesof the capitalist's greed in the Caspian fishing
grounds:wherecatchesarepoorthefishermanmaybe leftin peace,but
wherethe fish areplentifulhe is a hiredworkerwho goes hungrywhile
furnishingwealthforhis employer.17
National pride, however,did not allow Bervi to be content that
Russia should continue to follow in the footsteps of the Western
nations,evenif it was evidentthat the courseon whichRussiawas now
embarkedhadled in theWestto a muchgreaterprosperitythanRussia
yet enjoyed.Russiawas in dangerof succumbingto the fateof oriental
states such as Turkeyand Chinawhich Bervi,in commonwith most
contemporariesin the radicalcamp, associatedwith stagnation.And
yet she shouldnot be cowedby her backwardness,whichhad been so
graphicallyillustratedin the CrimeanWar.Afterall, at otherperiods
in historyweaknationshad risento greatnesswhiletheirinitiallymore
powerfulcontemporarieshad declined.The fate of nationsdepended
on their'spiritualgreatness',the 'finerfeelings'in theirsoul, the 'idea'
thatunderpinnedtheircivilization.Thusthe empiresofCyrus,Chingis
Khan and Tamerlane,empiresdevoid of any great idea, had disappearedwithouttrace, whilst India, Athens, Englandand the United
Stateswould 'everbe preservedin the memoryof historyas leadersof
mankind'. Now Russia too, Bervi argues in one of the clearest
statementsof the Populistbeliefin Russia'sseparatehistoricaldestiny,
shouldcontemplatethe realizationof a new 'idea':
Europe has passed down that same path along which we are travelling, it
has lived through the same phases; if we go in its tracks we shall get
ourselves out of trouble in the same way that it has done; why should we
wring our hands and rack our brains over the laying down of a new road
when there is an old well-trodden path? Thus have we reasoned up until
now, thus have we tried to act; but even here we were constantly afraid of
taking an unnecessary step or taking a step too quickly... . If we continue
to go down the path which we have been on up until now, then we are
inevitably bound always to remain at the tail-end of the civilized world; if I
follow a person and go timidly step after step down the track he has left then
I shall without any doubt always remain behind. The national pride of
every Russian is bound to take offence at such a state of affairs,and it would
be a different matter if there really were nothing more for us to do. But that

is not so, is it? We see in moderncivilization,at the head of which stand

Europe and the United States, a fundamental defect, one of those defects
which have dug the graves of civilizations and have made it inevitable that
new leaders with fresh forces have come to take the place of the old ones. 18
17
18

Polozheniyerabochegoklassa, pp. 47, 66,

Ibid., pp. 45I-53.

242,

244, 75-76,

26.

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The great idea, the new principleas yet unfulfilledelsewhere,which

Russiahas the opportunityto realizeis thatof a reconciliationbetween
hithertocompetingclasses,and the creationof a new social harmony
basedon co-operation.
IV
The emphasis on the need for social harmonyand co-operationis
fundamentalto Bervi'swork,as it is to theworkof most(thoughnot all)
of the majorPopulistthinkers,but beforeexaminingthe expressionof
Classin Russiamorecloselywe
this idea in TheCondition
of theWorking
shouldperhapsbrieflytake accountof its WesternEuropeanintellectual context.
Populismshouldbe seen not only as an expressionof apprehension
about the economicand social conditionsof WesternEuropein the
mid-nineteenthcentury- conditionswhose furtherdevelopmentin
Russiathe Populistsearnestlywishedto abort- but alsoas a response
both to the Westerndoctrinesthat extolled more or less unbridled
competitionin the economicsphereand to the Darwinianview of the
naturalworld as the arenafor an unremittingstrugglein which the
'fittest'wouldsurvivewhiletheweakwouldperish.To thinkerssuchas
Mikhaylovsky,forexample,the triumphof the strongandthe crushing
of the weakcouldnot be equatedwithprogress.It was thereforeargued
thatwhileDarwin'stheoryof evolutionmightcorrectlydescribeman's
relationto nature,it shouldnot serveas a modelforhis relationswith
his fellowmen.19Alternativemodelsforhumansocieties,basedon cooperationand the interestsof the communityratherthan on conflict
and the self-assertionof the competitiveindividual,had alreadybeen
draftedby the earlyWesternEuropeansocialistssuch as Saint-Simon,
Fourier,Cabet, Robert Owen, and Proudhon,in whose vocabulary
termssuch as association,solidarity,unity,harmony,mutualism,and
collectivism set the key. The teachings of these utopian thinkers,
particularlyof Fourier, had percolatedinto Russia in the i 840s,
throughPetrashevsky(whosedisciplesspreadthem even in Kazan',
whereBerviwas at thattimea student),andBervi'slargedebt to them
he acknowledgedin his memoirs.20This early socialism had an
emphasisthat was not so muchpoliticalas moral,indeedit evenhad a
quasi-religiousdimension that found expressionin tracts such as
Saint-Simon'sNouveau
Christianisme,
with its plea for the enlistmentof
les sentiments
as well as intellect as a source of social progress,and
Cabet's VraiChristianisme,
whose readerswere exhortedto follow the
exampleofJesus and the earlyChristianswhofoundeda churchof the
H. Billington, MikhailovskyandRussianPopulism,Oxford, 1958,
Tri politicheskiyesistemy,pp. 8-9, 494.

19James
20

p. 29.

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DEREK OFFORD

poor.21 In Russia the equation of early Christianity with nineteenthcentury socialism was made by N. V. Sokolov in his book Renegades,
which was much admired by contemporaries.22The similarity was also
implicit in the thought of Bervi himself, who not only had a youthful
reverence for the figure of Christ,23 but who in mature years wrote a
pamphlet for the revolutionary propagandist urging his own disciples
to emulate Christ, who had gone barefoot among the poor, by
sacrificing themselves fearlessly for their brethren.24
Bervi believes that man undoubtedly does have a destructive streak
which militates against co-operation. This streak finds its strongest but
by no means exclusive expression in the deeds of men -such as Chingis
Khan and Tamerlane, men capable of destroying in hours what it had
taken thousands of humans and animals centuries to build. Modern
civilization seems to Bervi to accept these 'destructive inclinations in
man as natural attributes of his soul', and to nurture and develop them.
It also disseminates doctrines that hold that material acquisitiveness
and love of power are incentives to hard work, and encourages man,
who is keen to win society's approbation and liable to equate happiness
with enjoyment of respectability, to develop artificial needs. The
interests of the strong and the weak are viewed as antithetical to one
another, and competition and conflict are thus promoted. And yet there
is also in the human soul a 'fine and beautiful quality', an 'inclination to
live a universal life', that runs counter to this destructiveness and
acquisitiveness. Social disharmony is not a 'natural inevitability' but a
product of modern civilization with its distorted values and artificial
needs. In the light of these considerations Bervi sees it as his own task,
indeed as the 'first task of civilization', to nurture a 'solidarity' of
interests in society, or as he rather obscurely puts it in the conclusion of
his book: 'A normal civilization should foster in people concepts and
feelings which would enable them to help one another, to attain to
development and well-being, not prevent one another from doing so'.

21

See G. D. H. Cole, Socialist Thought:TheForerunners,

I789-i850, London, 1959, pp. 44, 78.
See N. V. Sokolov, Otshchepentsy.(Stoiki. Khristiane.Sekty. Utopisty. SotsialistyJ,Geneva,
I 899. The first edition was suppressed by the police in the i 86os and a second was published
in Zurich in I872.
23
Tripoliticheskiyesistemy,p. 494.
24
The pamphlet 'Kak dolzhno zhit' po zakonu prirody i pravdy' is reprinted in A. Kunkl',
Dolgushintsy,Moscow, 1932, pp. 205-12.
Bervi was, however, critical of Tolstoy's 'philanthropic and conservative religion in which power was seen as illegitimate and yet believers
were forbidden to fight it [by force]' (see Tri politicheskiyesistemy,p. 307). On the attitude of
Tolstoy towards Bervi, see chapter i of Boris Eikhenbaum, Tolstoiin the Seventies,tr. Albert
Kaspin, Michigan, I982. Bervi's example appears to have pricked Tolstoy's conscience, for
alongside Tolstoy's 'complicated life, entangled in his own passions and contradictions,
there appeared in his imagination an opposite life: simple, free of authority, of guile,
hypocrisy, and repentance' (Eikhenbaum, p. 27), and this opposite life Bervi, eccentric
almost to the point ofyurodstvo,seemed to represent.
22

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Solidarity is in any case not merely an expression of an innate quality

but also the source of the deepest happiness (as opposed to the
superficial happiness furnished by possession of wealth and social
standing). That such happiness could be derived from the leading of
what Bervi termed the 'universal life' was amply confirmed, he
believed, by the historical examples of groups of people who had
laboured absolutely 'disinterestedly' all their lives and even endured
privations, sufferings and persecution, death itself, for some goal
beyond personal satisfaction narrowly interpreted.25
How in practice the Russians were to step to the front of civilization
by putting into effect the great idea of 'solidarity' was of course highly
problematical, but Bervi confidently offered a solution. Whereas the
capitalist believes that exchange and production must yield profit,
common sense dictates, in Bervi's opinion, that profitis an indication of
an 'abnormal state of industry'. Both on the land and in the factories
the profit motive should be abolished. Wage labour must give way to
what Bervi repeatedly refers to as tovarishchestvo
between worker and
capitalist and by which he understands a form of co-operation or
'association of labour and resources'. Capitalists might continue to
exist but instead of making profits far in excess of what Bervi believes to
be really justified by the risk they take they would supply plants with
capital through interest-freecredit and mortages. Banks and insurance
societies would be set up which would pay any losses incurred by the
working people, who would themselves exercise control over industrial
production through the arteland over agricultural production through
the obshchina.Bervi claims that this 'comradely relationship between
workers and capitalists is not only feasible' but if accompanied by
appropriate legislation would also actually dispel the chaos and
disorder currently regnant in Russian industry, and would establish
between the two sides of production a trust impossible under the
present state of affairs.26

25
Polozheniyerabochegoklassa, pp. 453-57, 88-89, 465, 468, 473, 471. See also Bervi's article
'Literaturnyye liberaly' which was written in I869 in reply to critical reviewers of his book
but which was not passed by the censors ('Neizdannaya stat'ya V. V. Bervi-Flerovskogo', in
Literaturnoye
nasledstvo,
2, I932, pp. 6i if.). It is perhaps of note that when Bervi is condemning
modern society his vocabulary is reminiscent of the tradition of the Russian religious ascetics
who deplored styazhatel'stvo(which I have translated as 'material acquisitiveness'). The
themes discussed here, which are outlined at some length in the conclusion to Bervi's book,
are more fully treated in Azbuka sotsial'nykhnauk, where Bervi contends that societies have
traditionally worked against their own best interests, by elevating those of their members
who perform socially harmful acts and castigating those who perform acts of general utility,
and where he rails against the privileged minorities, bolstered by organized religion, armed
forces and bureaucracies, who have held the majority in their societies in poverty and
subjugation.
26
Polozheniyerabochegoklassa, pp. 319, 295, 245, 335, 329, 300, 326-28, 3I3.

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V

Bervi's assurances that if only people would heed his advice then things
would turn out 'in the best possible way' inevitably have a hollow
ring.27Moreover, although he undoubtedly hopes that association can
be achieved without revolutionary upheaval, through a change in
people's attitudes, he does at the same time seem to understand the
impracticability of his solution, for in one place he acknowledges that
there can be no voluntary
agreement between worker and capitalist: the
subordination of workers to the conditions of the capitalist is a
'phenomenon of nature like the subordination of a vanquished people
to its conquerors'.28 However, what helps to convince Bervi of the
plausibility of his solution, lame as it sounds when baldly stated, is his
deployment of a number of arguments which are fundamental to
Russian Populism in general and which TheCondition
of theWorkingClass
in Russiaconsiderably helped to strengthen.
In the first place, it must be said (paceMarx, who praised Bervi's
book on account of the supposed absence in it of the 'Russian optimism'
which Marx detested in Herzen's thought)29 that Bervi clearly made
out a case for viewing the Russian people as endowed with distinctive,
and laudable, qualities. In so far as the Russian working people
displayed slavishness, passivity, apathy or resignation these were
natural consequences of the condition in which they found themselves.
Bervi stoutly defended them against those detractors who branded
them as exceptionally idle, ignorant, promiscuous or sottish. In fact,
Bervi contends, they are too patient and industrious for their own good;
they are the least bellicose people in Europe; they are bold, enterprising, generously endowed with native wit and spiritual strength,
instinctively drawn to 'civilization' and quick to apprehend the 'great
ideas worked out by European science'. Most important of all, they
27

Ibid., pp. 320, 326.

Ibid., pp. 3 I 6-I 7.
Marx praised Bervi's book both in a letter to members of the Russian section of the First
Workingmen's International (see PerepiskaK. Marksa i F. Engel'sa s russkimipoliticheskimi
deyatelyami,2nd edn, Moscow, 195 I, p. 39), and in a letter to Engels (see Marx and Engels,
Sochineniya, 2nd edn, Moscow, 1955-73,
pp. 357-58). Marx's enthusiasm was
XXXII,
qualified, though: in both the letters cited he mentioned shortcomings, telling Engels for
example that the work contained 'a large dose of good-natured verbiage', and in the margins
of the copy kept in his library he wrote various critical remarks, particularly apropos of
Bervi's views on association or co-operation between workers and capitalists, which struck
Marx as 'the old illusion' reminiscent of Proudhon (see Abramovich's introduction in the
I 938 edition of Bervi's book cited in n. 6 above, p. xiv). In view of Marx's comments, taken
together with all the evidence presented here to demonstrate that Bervi's book belongs to the
mainstream of classical Populism, the claim by one Soviet scholar that the work 'objectively
promoted .. . a struggle with Populist ideology, and ... prepared the ground for the
penetration of Marxism' into Russia must be seen as fanciful (see chapter xii, written by
Podorov, of the study Istoriyarusskoyekonomicheskoy
mysli,ed. N. A. Tsagolov, 2 VOlS, Moscow,
I959, II, pt I, pp. 3I0-34).
28
29

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BERVI-FLEROVSKY

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249

bear within themselves the great principle of co-operation and a

striving for equality and justice (though this principle is not inherent in
the upperclasses who, seduced by 'prejudices, preconceived ideas and
doctrines from overseas', have introduced inequality and injustice into
Russian life). To the Russian common people, then, the relationship
between worker and capitalist, based as it is on cold calculation, is
peculiarly unsuitable, as their 'real sphere' is the life of the collective,
where financial considerations take second place to mutual respect.30
In the second place, Bervi made out a defence of the institution of
communal landholding both as an economically effective unit of
agricultural production and as an expression of the collective instincts
he so admired in the Russian people. In his attitude towards the land
the Russian peasant had shown 'incomparably greater tact and
common sense' than his Western European counterpart. The communal system he had preserved had all the advantages of private property
but was also more productive, flexible and just. Land and resources
were better looked after under this system, Bervi claimed, referring to
diverse types of cultivation, such as hemp-growing, melon-growing,
tobacco-farming, vegetable gardening and forestry. In attending to the
needs of each member of the collective and ensuring through periodic
repartitions that he had all the land he required for his purposes, the
communal system also showed its moral superiority and served as a
model of co-operation, the 'best school for weaning people from
excessive greed'. It had the furtheradvantage of assisting the peasant to
become psychologically independent and of helping him to mature
quickly in a political sense, indeed it could be seen as a 'great political
institution' which had preserved Russia from even greater afflictions
than those she currently endured.31
The third and final argument that seemed to persuade Bervi of the
feasibility of his vision of co-operation and social harmony consisted
really only in the unshakeable conviction that what he was recommending was a moral imperative. Unlike Chernyshevsky,who referred
to the objectivity of natural laws for his authority, Bervi and other
Populists appealed to the subjective conscience of the 'critically
thinking minority'- to use Lavrov's phrase- as the only factor whose
jurisdiction they would acknowledge, the only necessity in social and
ethical matters. (It is significant in this respect that Bervi was a
vehement critic of Chernyshevskyin the late i86os.)32 Like Lavrov and
Mikhaylovsky, Bervi emphasized the shortcomingsof scientific method
30
Polozheniyerabochegoklassa, pp. I8, 37, 19I, 205-o6, 256, 50, 56, 409, 483, 80-8I, 225, 482,
33I.
31 Ibid., pp. 476-81,
246, 78-79.
32 P. Vityazev, 'P. L. Lavrov v
vospominaniyakh sovremennikov' (Golosminuvshego,I915, X,
p. 117).

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as a tool for the study of human affairs, as opposed to study of the

natural world. One should never forget, he wrote, that one was dealing
'not with a mechanical apparatus but with living people'. Everything
depended here in the human sphere 'on the feelings of these people and
on their view of things'. Only in a very few cases were 'exact
calculations' possible.33 The Conditionof the WorkingClass in Russia
thereforederives its authority not only, indeed in the last analysis not so
much, from the statistics and factual revelation of the misery of the
Russian common people, but also from Bervi's moral indictment of
those whose consciences cannot be clear while such a state of affairs
continues to exist. The tone is one of moral outrage, indignation that
the capitalist 'comfortably sits at home puffing on his cigar' while the
workerlabours in harsh conditions, that the working man is treated like
a horse and that people trample on his human dignity. Like Lavrov,
Bervi detests the 'gentleman scholar' who pontificates about the
common people who live on a diet of black bread and sour kvas while
himself savouring succulent steaks and oranges. He abhors the
enjoyment of luxury which political economists have persuaded their
readers to view as an incentive to productivity and which people regard
with awe; in fact opulence is an obstacle to the achievement of the
general well-being for it sets different social strata against one another
and reduces those who are dependent on it to something less than
human, a 'rag that has been wrung out'.34Those who can share Bervi's
indignation - and it would perhaps have been inconceivable to him
that any right-minded person could not - are obliged to dedicate
themselves to the elimination of the injustice he has revealed. It is
significant that the opening sentence of the work states a moral purpose
and the second speaks of duty, and in the conclusion Bervi returns to
the need to breathe a 'fresh moral spirit' into the educated class. For at
bottom the work is an appeal to the beneficiariesof the present order to
acknowledge their responsibility as human beings to the less privileged,
a responsibility that has not come to an end with the abolition of
serfdom. Capitalists and landowners will themselves be happier, Bervi
argues, if they devote themnselvesto labour for the common welfare and
live the 'universal life', not the 'pitiable life of their ant-hill', and Bervi
invites them, as the 'repentant nobleman' Radishchev had invited his
contemporaries eighty years before and as Tolstoy too was shortly to
do, to surrender their wealth and privilege.35
33
34
35

Polozheniyerabochegoklassa, pp. I I9, 329.

Ibid., pp. 289, 330-OI, 373, 413, 470-73, 464-

Ibid., pp. 289, 473, 489. It is interestingthat Bervishoulduse the image of the ant-hill to
symbolizethe soullessand graspingsocietyhe soughtto replacewith a collectivistone, as to
the radicalsof the early i 86os that same imageevokeda pleasingrationalorder.(The image
is also used by Dostoyevsky,in a pejorativesense, to representthe godlesssocialistutopia.)
Bervi'sdifferenceswith Chernyshevsky,and the differencesof Populismin generalwith the
utilitarianand positivisticradicalthoughtof the early i 86os, are in evidencehere.

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BERVI-FLEROVSKY

AND RUSSIAN POPULISM

25I

VI
Thus we arrive at the twofold view of revolution that was characteristic
of Russian Populism. Revolution would entail an economic and social
transformation in the condition of the destitute majority, the Russian
common people, to be sure. But at the same time it would represent a
moral regeneration of the guilt-laden minority, the intelligentsia. This
latter aspect of revolution Populists tended to conceive as of no less
importance than the former aspect, and recognition of it helps to
explain both the extraordinary capacity of revolutionary Populism to
inspire action and sacrifice and the tenacity which it displayed in spite
of the stubborn refusal of the people to respond to the efforts made by
revolutionaries on their behalf or to confirm the revolutionaries'
assumptions about their nature and destiny. In the formation of this
twofold view of revolution, with its many supporting arguments, with
all its strengths and weaknesses, Bervi's now forgotten book played a
major part.

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