A Few Quotes from Dostoevsky's "The Idiot"

The Idiot ^ | Dostoevsky

[Sally II]

"I can but thank you," he said, in a tone too respectful to be sincere, "for your kindness in letting me speak, for I have often noticed that our Liberals never allow other people to have an opinion of their own, and immediately answer their opponents with abuse, if they do not have recourse to arguments of a still more unpleasant nature."

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"Excuse me," continued Evgenie Pavlovitch hotly, "I don't say a word against liberalism. Liberalism is not a sin, it is a necessary part of a great whole, which whole would collapse and fall to pieces without it. Liberalism has just as much right to exist as has the most moral conservatism; but I am attacking RUSSIAN liberalism; and I attack it for the simple reason that a Russian liberal is not a Russian liberal, he is a non-Russian liberal. Show me a real Russian liberal, and I'll kiss him before you all, with pleasure."

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"In the first place, what is liberalism, speaking generally, but an attack (whether mistaken or reasonable, is quite another question) upon the existing order of things? Is this so? Yes. Very well. Then my 'fact' consists in this, that RUSSIAN liberalism is not an attack upon the existing order of things, but an attack upon the very essence of things themselves--indeed, on the things themselves; not an attack on the Russian order of things, but on Russia itself. My Russian liberal goes so far as to reject Russia; that is, he hates and strikes his own mother. Every misfortune and mishap of the mother-country fills him with mirth, and even with ecstasy. He hates the national customs, Russian history, and everything. If he has a justification, it is that he does not know what he is doing, and believes that his hatred of Russia is the grandest and most profitable kind of liberalism. (You will often find a liberal who is applauded and esteemed by his fellows, but who is in reality the dreariest, blindest, dullest of conservatives, and is not aware of the fact.) This hatred for Russia has been mistaken by some of our 'Russian liberals' for sincere love of their country, and they boast that they see better than their neighbours what real love of one's country should consist in. But of late they have grown, more candid and are ashamed of the expression 'love of country,' and have annihilated the very spirit of the words as something injurious and petty and undignified. This is the truth, and I hold by it; but at the same time it is a phenomenon which has not been repeated at any other time or place; and therefore, though I hold to it as a fact, yet I recognize that it is an accidental phenomenon, and may likely enough pass away. There can be no such thing anywhere else as a liberal who really hates his country; and how is this fact to be explained among US? By my original statement that a Russian liberal is NOT a RUSSIAN liberal--that's the only explanation that I can see."

[Sally II]

I read this book about 7 years ago, and I remembered that Dostoevsky always had interesting things to say about the (pre-Bolshevik revolution) "liberals" of his time. Those liberals sound pretty familiar, eh?

[spodefly]

Good find. BTTT.

[moodyskeptic]

Nice. Substitute Russian with American in your mind and re-read. Hmmm.

[justshutupandtakeit]

A "liberal" at that time was one who believed in a republic, free enterprise, less state control, less church control and most of the things which modern conservatives embrace.

The "hatred" of Russia was more a hatred of Russian backwardness and idiocy than of Russia. A system which was controlled by an aristocracy so helpless that it could barely pull on its own boots but could do nothing else. Russian liberals wanted to adopt the ideals of Western Europe and America. They are not the same as the morons whom the American people gleefully re-elect year after year.

[Mark Felton]

The problem isn't classic liberalism it is the socialists who claim to be liberals (modern liberalism). It's like Democrats who get indignant when you challenge their patriotism. They may really be anti-American but they do not want to be called anti-American.

[princess leah]

You can always pick out a liberal because they are rude and interrupt and then have this "entitlement" attitude