John Stuart Mill and His Autobiography in Imperial Russia

journal of modern russian history and historiography 10 (2017) 28-70 brill.com/jmrh

John Stuart Mill and His Autobiography in Imperial Russia Julia Berest

London, Ontario, Canada [email protected]

Abstract Among Western European thinkers whose works were translated into Russian in the 19th century, John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) was one of the most influential and controversial figures. As an economist with socialist sympathies and an advocate of women’s rights, Mill enjoyed special popularity among the left intelligentsia in Russia. Ironically, Mill’s reputation proved higher and more long-lasting in Russia than in Mill’s home country. This essay examines the Russian reception of Mill’s Autobiography, the last of his works to be translated into Russian. It illustrates significant differences in the Russian and British treatments of Mill’s legacy.

Keywords Russian intellectual life – the intelligentsia – British influences in Russia – J.S. Mill – translation – censorship – autobiographic writings – reform era

I In recent years, the field of reception studies has been revitalized by a new focus on the role of translation in the dissemination of ideas and literary works across European countries and beyond.1 Closer attention to the activity of * I am very grateful to Gary H. Hamburg, Neville Thompson and Eli Nathans for their comments and suggestions. 1 See Antonella Alimento, “Translation, Reception and Enlightenment Reform: the Case of Forbonnais in Eighteenth-Century Political Economy,” History of European Ideas 40, no. 8

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2017 | doi 10.1163/22102388-01000003

John Stuart Mill And His Autobiography In Imperial Russia

29

translation has led historians to place a greater emphasis on the active role of the receiving culture. In contrast to the traditional view that receptivity to foreign influences implies the intellectual immaturity of the recipient culture, it is now widely acknowledged that reception is a transformative process that involves a complex interaction between foreign and native intellectual traditions.2 Rather than treating reception from a perspective of “influence,” many studies have adopted the concept of “cultural transfer” to highlight the fact that reception “entails transformation” and adaptation, as ideas and texts come into contact with a different intellectual milieu.3 To the extent that international reception prolongs the life of the text in question and alters its meaning within the new culture, some historians view the activity of reception as “re-creation,” each time “unique in its own way.”4 Focusing on the translation and reception of well-known texts in different countries and intellectual settings may therefore shed new light both on the receiving culture and the source culture.5 Imperial Russia presents a particularly interesting case for scholars of intellectual history because its traditions of translation and intellectual borrowing developed later than in other European countries and were heavily

2

3

4 5

(2014), 1011–12; Peter Burke and R. Po-chia Hsia, Introduction to Peter Burke and R. Po-chia Hsia, eds., Cultural Translation in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 1–4; Geoffrey P. Baldwin, “The Translation of Political Theory in Early Modern Europe,” in Burke and Po-chia Hsia, eds., Cultural Translation, 101–5. Lise Andries at al., Introduction to Lise Andries, Frederic Ogee, John Dunkley and Darch Sanfey, eds., Intellectual Journeys: the Translation of Ideas in Enlightenment England, France and Ireland (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2013), 2–3; Alimento, “Translation,” 1011; T.V. Artem’eva, B.A. Bazhanov, M.I. Mikeshin, Retseptsia Britanskoi sotsial’no-filosofskoi mysli v Rossii (St. Petersburg: Tsentr istorii idei, 2006), 7–8. Stefanie Stockhorst, “Introduction. Cultural Transfer Through Translation: A Current Perspective in Enlightenment Studies,” in Stefanie Stockhorst, ed., Cultural Transfer Through Translation: the Circulation of Enlightened Thought in Europe by Means of Translation (Amsterdam: Brill, 2010), 7–9; See also, Ann Thomson, Simon Burrows and Edmond Dziembowski, “Introduction” to Ann Thomson et al., Cultural Transfers: France and Britain in the Long Eighteenth Century (Oxford University Press, 2010), 34; Alimento, “Translation,” 1011. See, Adrian Hsia “On the Reception of Faust in Asia,” in Lorna Fitzsimmons, ed., International Faust Studies: Adaptation, Reception, Translation (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2008), 159. See, Gilbert Faccarello and Izumo Masashi, “Introduction: Ricardo’s Travels into Several Remote Nations,” in Gilbert Faccarello and Izumo Masashi, eds., The Reception of David Ricardo in Continental Europe and Japan (London: Routledge, 2014), 1–5; Eve-Marie Engels and Thomas F. Glick, “Introduction” to Eve-Marie Engels and Thomas F. Glick, eds., The Reception of Charles Darwin in Europe (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2008), 1–8.

journal of modern russian history and historiography 10 (2017) 28-70

30

Berest

influenced by the policies of the autocratic state.6 In Russia, the flow of ideas and texts reflected not only readers’ preferences and commercial considerations of the publishers, as in other European countries,7 but also government decisions concerning censorship and Russia’s contacts with the West.8 The result was a constant fluctuation in the frequency of translations and in Russia’s exposure to Western writings. Periods of “frenzied” borrowing (often stimulated by the government’s modernizing agenda)9 were followed, almost invariably, by years in which the importation and translation of foreign books were more heavily restricted. In Russia, more than elsewhere in Europe, translation could be a political act.10 Many translators and publishers were 6

7

8

9

10

Reception studies remain a relatively underdeveloped field within Russian intellectual history. (The reception of literary figures is covered somewhat better than that of political thinkers.) Paradoxically, while it is widely known that Russian thought was influenced by various Western currents, systematic studies of the reception of individual Western thinkers are rare and not yet integrated into the general history of Russian intellectual life. In the absence of in-depth analysis of how specific Western ideas were received, adapted and put to use in Russia, there persists an assumption that Russian thought did not achieve philosophical maturity until the final decades of the nineteenth century. Among the few notable exceptions to this view are the works by T. V. Artem’eva (in Russian, see note 2 above) and Gary Hamburg. Hamburg provides an important corrective to the existing interpretation of the Russian Enlightenment. By analyzing the way Western notions of justice and individual rights were accommodated within the Russian traditional concept of the ideal state, Hamburg demonstrates that the Russian Enlightenment emerged as a creative synthesis of Western and indigenous intellectual traditions. See, G.H. Hamburg, Russia’s Path Toward Enlightenment: Faith, Politics and Reason, 1500–1801 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016), 566–610, 630–33, 741–43. On European trends in translation see, “Stuart Gillespie and Penelope Wilson, “The Publishing and Readership of Translation,” in Stuart Gillespie and David Hopkins, eds., The Oxford History of Literary Translation in England, 4 vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 3: 38–9. See, Brian James Baer and Natalia Olshanskaya, “Introduction” to Brian James Baer and Natalia Olshanskaya, eds., Russian Writers on Translation: An Anthology (New York: Routledge, 2014), iii–iv. Elise Wirtschafter made this characterization in reference to the Petrine period. See, Elise Wirtschafter, Religion and Enlightenment in Catherinian Russia: The Teachings of Metropolitan Platon (Dekalb, Ill: niu Press, 2013), 125. For instance, Abbé Mably’s Observations sur l’histoire de la Grece was published by Alexander Nikolaievich Radishchev, the most radical of Russian enlighteners. As Hamburg points out, by translating Mably Radishchev “deliberately risked identifying himself as a sympathizer with republican rule over monarchy.” Hamburg, Russia’s Path, 630. For other examples, see Adrian Wanner, Baudelaire in Russia (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1996), 12–14; James Allen Rogers, “Russia: Social Sciences,” in Thomas F. Glick,



31

themselves prominent thinkers, who used translation to promote reform ideas in Russia.11 Russia’s discovery of John Stuart Mill in 1860 reflected a momentous shift in Russian intellectual life. After two decades of intense preoccupation with Hegelian philosophy among the progressive intelligentsia, the more radical generation of the 1860s turned away from German Idealism and speculative philosophy. In Russia, as in other European countries, rising interest in modern science was accompanied by growth in positivist and materialist philosophies, which offered a new vision of human history and progress.12 However, in Russia, this transition had more pronounced political implications than elsewhere, for it coincided with the start of the reform era and the emergence of the left intelligentsia, who sought in science and post-Idealist philosophy the solutions to contemporary socio-economic problems facing Russian society.13 During this period, translation played a crucial role in facilitating liberal and radical discourse: along with the transfer of new ideas and knowledge, translation served as a means for further discussion of the topics involved.14 In autocratic Russia, where public debate was handicapped by censorship and where the intelligentsia was therefore forced to acquire proficiency in Aesopian language, reviews

11

12

13

14

ed., The Comparative Reception of Darwinism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), 257–9. As Baer and Olshanskaya note, in Russia, translation was perceived “as service to the nation.” Baer and Olshanskaya, Introduction, iii. For instance, Mikhail Larionovich Mikhailov, a pioneer of the feminist movement in Russia, translated Heinrich Heine. Nikolai Konstantinovich Mikhailovskii, Russia’s leading populist thinker, undertook translations of Mill and Proudhon. In the eighteenth century, Blackstone’s Commentaries were translated into Russian (with annotation) by Semen Efimovich Desnitsky, a leading Russian legal thinker who studied under Adam Smith and John Millar at Glasgow University. See, Hamburg, Russia’s Path, 605. Andrzej Walicki, A History of Russian Thought: From the Enlightenment to Marxism (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1979), 157; Donald Treadgold compared this period to the “second Enlightenment.” See, Donald W. Treadgold, The West in Russia and China: Religious and Secular Thought in Modern Times, 2 vols.(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973), 1:181. On the radical intelligentsia see, Victoria S. Frede, “Materialism and the Radical Intelligentsia: the 1860s,” in G.M. Hamburg and Randall A. Poole, eds., A History of Russian Philosophy 1830–1930: Faith, Reason and the Defense of Human Dignity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 69–70. Vincent Barnett makes this point with regards to Russian translations of Western economic writings. See Vincent Barnett, A History of Russian Economic Thought, (London: Routledge, 2005), 21. This approach, however, extended to many other types of translated texts, including literary works and philosophical writings.


32

Berest

of translated works often presented a convenient avenue for communicating ideas that, in other contexts, might not have passed censorship.15 It is symptomatic that the first translation of Mill in Russia was made by the radical thinker, Nikolai Gavrilovich Chernyshevskii, who used Mill’s Principles of Political Economy not only to acquaint Russian readers with the latest developments in classical economics (as he stated in the introduction) but also to present his own vision of a just socio-economic order.16 This strategy was a big success, bringing recognition both to Mill and Chernyshevskii, especially among the radicals. Over the next decade, leftist intelligenty actively promoted Mill’s translations in Russia,17 often using his name in support of their own, more radical, ideas.18 Their reception of Mill’s thought, animated as it was by their socialist sympathies, was much different from the British reactions to Mill. The Autobiography, the last of Mill’s works to be published in Russia, proved a special case in point. 15

16 17

18

For instance, in 1857 Chernyshevskii reviewed the Russian translation of Jeremy Bentham’s Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation. However, the focus of his review, as Andrew Drozd has noted, was “clearly on using Bentham to argue for an end to autocratic, arbitrary rule in Russia.” See, Andrew Michael Drozd, Chernyshvskii’s What Is To Be Done?: A Reevaluation, (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 2001), 102; In 1869 Petr Nikitich Tkachev, a socialist revolutionary, translated the work by a German feminist Anton Daul, Frauenarbeit (1867). Tkachev’s introduction provided a more radical, socialist-inspired interpretation of women’s equality than did the original work. Tkachev argued that true equality could be achieved only “when the concept of labor will change radically, when labor will free itself from its slavish dependence on capital.” A. Daul, Zhenskii trud (St. Petersburg: Trubnikova i Stasova, 1869), lxv. On Tkachev’s introduction see Rose L. Glickman, Russian Factory Women, Workplace and Society, 1880–1914 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), 224–5, and Julia Berest, “The Reception of J.S. Mill’s Feminist Thought in Imperial Russia,” Russian History 43, no. 2 (2016), 113, n. 52. See, Julia Berest, “J.S. Mill’s Principles of Political Economy in Imperial Russia: Publication and Reception,” Modern Intellectual History 14, no. 1 (2017), 77–8. For instance, the 1869 edition of Mill’s Subjection of Women was published by Nikolai Konstantinovich Mikhailovskii, one of the leading theorists of the populist movement. The 1870 edition of the same work contained a lengthy introduction by the radical feminist Maria Konstantinovna Tsebrikova. Mill’s Logic, translated into Russian in 1865–67, was annotated by Peter Lavrovich Lavrov, a populist thinker who joined the revolutionary movement in the early 1860s. The second edition of Mill’s Utilitarianism and On Liberty issued in 1882 included a book-long introduction written by Evgenia Ivanovna Konradi, a radical feminist and sympathizer of socialist ideas. On Liberty was also translated and published (in abridged version) by the Marxist economist Vasilii Ivanovich Pokrovskii in the liberal journal Otechestvennye Zapiski in 1868. Berest, “J.S. Mill’s Principles,” 83–4, 92.



33

In 1874, when Mill’s Autobiography was published in Russian translation, Mill was at the peak of his popularity in Russia. His Principles of Political Economy, already issued three times, was widely known among professional economists and educated laymen, who praised the book for its clarity and accessibility.19 The Subjection of Women, published in four editions, had earned Mill a place of honor in the Russian feminist movement.20 The translation of his Autobiography, less than a year after it came out in Britain, was another indication of Mill’s fame in nineteenth-century Russia. Ironically, Mill’s reputation at his death in 1873 and for another half century was much higher in Russia than in Britain. Whereas the Russian intelligentsia, influenced by Marxist and Populist ideas, praised Mill for his socialist sympathies and advocacy of women’s rights, British liberals had become uneasy over Mill’s growing radicalism in the 1860s.21 One historian, after surveying Mill’s domestic reputation, has concluded that Mill was “more hated at the moment of his death than at any other point in his career.”22 Mill’s Autobiography, issued posthumously, further damaged his image in Britain.23 Mill’s effusive praise of Harriet Taylor was an object of ridicule to his detractors and was an embarrassment to his friends; his criticisms of the English character and of public opinion in Britain were objectionable to enemies and allies alike; even the literary style of the Autobiography was commonly viewed as dry and uninspiring.24 Not until the mid-twentieth century did Mill’s reputation in Western scholarship begin to rise. His works acquired canonical status only in recent decades, following a reassessment of Mill’s feminist ideas and his political theory.25 The A utobiography, although

19 20 21

22 23 24 25

Ibid., 69. See, Berest, “The Reception of J.S. Mill’s Feminist Thought,” 101–41. Stefan Collini, Public Moralists: Political Thought and Intellectual Life in Britain 1850–1930 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), 177, 323; Georgios Varouxakis and Paul Kelly, “John Stuart Mill’s Thought and Legacy: A Timely Reappraisal,” in Georgios Varouxakis and Paul Kelly, eds., John Stuart Mill – Thought and Influence: The Saint of Rationalism (London: Routledge, 2010), 2; For Mill’s posthumous reputation in Britain see David Stack, “The Death of John Stuart Mill,” The History Journal 54, no. 1 (2011), 167–90; Stefan Collini, “From Sectarian Radical to National Possession: John Stuart Mill in English Culture, 1873–1945,” in Michael Laine, ed., A Cultivated Mind: Essays on J.S. Mill Presented to John Robson (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991), 242–72. Stack, “The Death of John Stuart Mill,” 169. Ibid., 170. Ibid., 181–4; Harold J. Laski, Introduction to J.S. Mill, Autobiography (London: Oxford University Press 1958), ix. Varouxakis and Kelly, “John Stuart Mill’s Thought,” 2.


34

Berest

not a favorite work among Millian scholars, has also been given its due by some literary critics and intellectual historians.26 In Russia, the reception of Mill’s oeuvre was a different story. While all of Mill’s works published in Russia were read through different cultural lenses, the Autobiography received particularly contrasting treatment. Critical commentaries were few and limited primarily to Mill’s revelation of his irreligious education – a disclosure that stirred some conservative readers. Yet the criticism was outweighed by the Autobiography’s enthusiastic reception on the part of liberal intellectuals, many of them well-known figures. Not only was the Autobiography valued as a philosophical work, shedding new light on Mill’s concept of utilitarian happiness, many reviewers found Mill’s narrative of intellectual growth interesting and instructive. The book was praised for its psychological insights and for the sincerity with which Mill revealed the story of his unusual upbringing and subsequent search for meaning in life. The Autobiography attracted the attention of Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy, a master of psychological novel, who found inspiration in Mill’s critical s elf-reflection. Tolstoy’s positive reaction presented a stark contrast to Thomas Carlyle’s caustic remark that he had “never read a more uninteresting book” than Mill’s Autobiography.27 This essay offers a critical survey of the Russian responses to Mill’s Autobiography during the imperial period. While I do not seek a systematic comparison between Russian and British reactions to the Autobiography, placing Russian reviews in the context of Mill’s British reception helps illuminate the distinctive interests and political identity of Mill’s readers in Russia. As this essay demonstrates, in reading the Autobiography, the Russian audience focused on the themes that resonated with the social ideas of the Russian intelligentsia— personal autonomy, the role of education in character formation, the relationship between society and individual, as well as the equality of sexes. Published in the era of the Great Reforms, Mill’s account of his life, which he presented as a lesson in the power of education and self-improvement, struck a responsive chord in readers who sought ways of empowering the individual against the stultifying forces of Russian autocracy. In this political context lies the key to understanding the reception of Mill’s Autobiography in Russia.

26

27

See for instance, James Olney, Metaphors of Self: the Meaning of Autobiography (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1972), 232–59; A.W. Levi, “The Writing of Mill’s Autobiography,” in John Cunningham Wood, ed., John Stuart Mill: Critical Assessments (London: Taylor & Francis, 1987), 1: 165–81. Quoted in ibid., 179.



35

II Mill’s status as a philosopher and reformer was already contested during his lifetime. Having achieved fame with his Logic (1843) and The Principles of Political Economy (1848), his reputation experienced a decline with the publication in 1859 of On Liberty. The publication a decade later of The Subjection of Women ignited even bigger controversy. His admirers were now confined to radicals and feminists, whereas most responses to these recent works were critical and sometimes hostile. Somewhere in-between were those readers who retained admiration for his early works but distanced themselves from his political ideas and even more so from his public campaigns.28 He spent the last decade of his life fighting for one cause after another: in 1862, during the debate on the American Civil War, he threw his support behind the Union cause, arguing that slavery was antithetical to democracy; in 1865 he became involved in the Governor Eyre controversy when he demanded that Eyre be brought to justice for his brutal (and, in Mill’s view, illegal) suppression of the Jamaican uprising; the next year, now as an mp, he began campaigning for women’s suffrage.29 When the Reform Bill came up for debate in Parliament, he argued strongly in favor of extending working-class representation.30 In 1868, soon after losing reelection to Parliament, Mill stirred up another controversy with his pamphlet England and Ireland, in which he advocated land reform to improve the situation of Irish tenants. At this point, William Thornton, Mill’s friend and former colleague from East India Company, commented: “Mr. Mill has in his time written and said many startling and unpopular things, but nothing that he ever before said or wrote gave such general offence.”31 The book on Ireland 28

29 30 31

See, Peter Nicholson, “The Reception and Early Reputation of Mill’s Political Thought,” in John Skorupski, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Mill (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 467–8, 476; See also, Collini, Public Moralists, 137, 177; Reeves, John Stuart Mill: Victorian Firebrand (London: Atlantic, 2007), 354. On the reception of Mill’s Utilitarianism, see J.B. Schneewind, Sidgwick’s Ethics and Victorian Moral Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), 180, 178. (Schneewind notes that “published philosophical discussions of Mill’s essay during the first dozen or more years following its publication were almost entirely hostile.” Ibid., 180.) See, Collini, Public Moralists, 140–46, 150. See, Reeves, John Stuart Mill, 370–73. Quoted in Reeves, John Stuart Mill, 397; On Thornton’s relationship with Mill see ibid., 255, 258–9. The opposition to Mill’s political campaigns went far beyond strictly conservative public. As Collini noted, “many of his views were always likely to be unpopular with the majority of the educated classes.” Collini, Public Moralists, 128; Collini identified three stages in Mill’s lifetime reputation and discipleship. By the third stage, “the number


36

Berest

sealed his reputation as a “Victorian firebrand.”32 But if Thornton thought Mill had reached the upper limit of political defiance, he was mistaken. Mill immediately turned his attention to land reform in England, arguing that land was “a gift of nature to the whole human race” and demanding “special taxation” on rental income, so that “wealth which now flows into the coffers of private persons” would be “gradually … diverted from them to the whole nation.”33 This campaign alienated more of Mill’s liberal supporters and led to his symbolical exclusion from the Cobden Club a few months before his death.34 The controversy around Mill intensified within days of his death, now with a focus on his character and private life. The first few obituaries were positive, and some were even adulatory. For instance, Henry Sidgwick’s piece called Mill “the best philosophical writer … whom England has produced since Hume.”35 However, an obituary in the Times written anonymously by Mill’s old rival Abraham Hayward, amounted, in the words of Mill’s recent biographer, to “an exercise in character assassination.”36 The allegations of adultery, the longforgotten story of Mill’s arrest for disseminating birth control information in 1821, and the charge that Mill had promoted the idea of divorce promptly caused Prime Minister William Gladstone to withdraw his support for a public memorial to Mill.37 Mill’s friends and admirers valiantly tried to defend his name, but the Autobiography published by Harriet Taylor in accordance with Mill’s wishes rekindled the wave of slanderous and critical attacks. Mill’s relationship with his father, already a “hated figure,” was compared to that of Frankenstein and his monster; Mill’s attempt to explain the nature of his companionship with Harriet Taylor was met with ridicule, while his adulatory praise of her virtues was interpreted as an expression of narcissism, with Mill accused of “admiring the reflected image of his own mind in hers.”38 Even benign reviewers did not of true believers was considerably reduced… since on many practical matters Mill was thought to be the prisoner of certain theoretical ‘crochets’.” Ibid, 177; On the reaction of the British public to Mill’s political campaigns see also, Stack, “The Death of John Stuart Mill,” 169; Reeves, John Stuart Mill, 354, 379, 381, 388. 32 Ibid., 397–401; E.D. Steele, “J.S. Mill and the Irish Question: Reform and the Integrity of the Empire,” Historical Journal 13 (1970), 437–46. 33 Quoted in Reeves, John Stuart Mill, 462. 34 Ibid., 463; Collini, Public Moralists, 323. 35 Quoted in Stack, “The Death,” 171. 36 Capaldi, John Stuart Mill, 362. 37 Stack, “The Death,” 174; Capaldi, John Stuart Mill, 251. 38 Stack, “The Death,” 183.



37

concealtheir disappointment in the Autobiography: they complained that it was “jejune and dreary,” devoid of “melodramatic incidents,” and wanting in literary qualities. Summing up the effect of the book on Mill’s posthumous reputation, the British Quarterly concluded that it would have been better if Mill had never written it.39 Mill’s philosophical influence in Britain declined significantly over the next few decades.40 Very few intellectuals could call themselves his followers without any principled reservations. Stefan Collini counts Henry Fawcett, the economist and supporter of feminist movement, one of Mill’s followers, but notes that even Fawcett’s discipleship had its limits. While praising extravagantly Mill’s Principles in his Manual of Political Economy, Fawcett (a strong believer in laissez-faire) ignored or downplayed the socialist sentiments in Mill’s work.41 Another case in point was Henry Sidgwick, Britain’s foremost moral philosopher in the second half of the nineteenth century. Sidgwick admired Mill’s Logic, which he considered the most original and valuable of Mill’s works.42 When he received the news of Mill’s death in May 1873, he wrote to a friend: “I cannot go on—Mill is dead!”43 Yet Sidgwick never had a very high opinion of Mill’s ethical thought.44 As Reeves aptly put it, Sidgwick’s “gentle but relentless unpacking” of Mill’s Utilitarianism contributed to Mill’s decline.45 More damaging was Fitzjames Stephen’s critique of Mill’s On Liberty. Like Sidgwick, he had been influenced by Mill’s Logic in his early years, but Stephen’s admiration of Mill diminished progressively as he became acquainted with Mill’s moral and political philosophy. Stephen’s Liberty, Equality and Fraternity, published in 1873, delivered a serious blow to Mill’s On Liberty—the work that Mill considered the most important of his writings for posterity.46

39 Ibid., 181–2; See also Laski, Introduction, ix; Reeves, John Stuart Mill, 484. 40 Reeves, John Stuart Mill, 485; Capaldi argues that Mill’s contemporaries failed to understand his core philosophy: “In many ways, Mill was an enigma to his contemporaries, and this enigma has remained down to the present.” Capaldi, John Stuart Mill, 357. 41 Collini, Public Moralists, 179. 42 Schneewind, Sidgwick’s Ethics, 194. 43 Quoted in Collini, Public Moralists, 178. 44 Schneewind, Sidgwick’s Ethics, 194, 205, 315, 336. 45 Reeves, John Stuart Mill, 485; Collini adds that Sidgwick was “constantly apologizing for so briskly pinning his former master to the floor.” Collini, Public Moralists, 178. 46 See, Reeves, John Stuart Mill, 484; Nicholson, “Reception,”475–83; See also, John Gray, “John Stuart Mill: Traditional and Revisionist Interpretations,” in Literature of Liberty (1979), no. 2, 7–12.


38

Berest

III In Russia, the news of Mill’s death was announced in summer 1873 by the liberal journal Delo, which four years earlier had published a laudatory article on Mill’s feminist ideas.47 The anonymous author was up to date on the controversy over Mill in the British press. He cited in a footnote all of Mill’s obituaries in major British journals and newspapers, as well as the collection of essays John Stuart Mill: His Life and Work, written by Mill’s supporters and published in 1873 by H. R. Fox Bourne as a way of countering the backlash generated by Hayward.48 Ostensibly, the article in Delo was a first attempt at writing Mill’s biography in Russian. It carried the same title as, and was structured similarly to, Bourne’s publication, but it was more forthright than its English counterpart in taking on Mill’s British critics. The article sounded much like a preemptive retort to those Russian readers who had also read the Times and who might have been swayed by the Times’ low assessment of Mill. To the Russian author, the obituary in the Times – a newspaper he apparently held in high regard – had been a surprise. “[The] Times,” he wrote, “has forgotten its usual tactfulness and … has tried, very unconvincingly, to argue that Mill was far from a great person and that most of his opinions have earned general disapproval.”49 The Russian writer assured his readers that most British publications, “like the press in Germany and France,” had responded to the news of Mill’s death with “sympathy.” However, a eulogistic quotation that he provided in support of his words was taken from a French rather than a British magazine. The assessment he cited praised Mill in such exalted language that even Bourne’s appreciative essays paled in comparison. Nevertheless, the author went on to assert that the article in question was “representative of European public opinion.”50 The first Russian edition of the Autobiography appeared in 1874, only half a year after the publication of the original. As with most of Mill’s works published in Russia, the Autobiography endured the censor’s scrutiny. Some of the cuts concerned Mill’s account of his growing acceptance of socialist ideas, and even more innocuously, his assertion that the history of the French Revolution had produced a deep impression on him in his early years. Mill’s words that “the subject took an immense hold of my feelings” were omitted, as was 47

48 49 50

[anon] “Dzhon Stuart Mill’, ego zhizn’ i trudy,” Delo, no. 10 (1873), 1–24; N.I., “Na chto nam nuzhny zhenschiny (J.S. Mill, The Subjection of Women. London, 1869.),” Delo, no. 7 (1869), 1–17. On the Fox Bourne edition see, Stack, “The Death of John Stuart Mill,” 178–9. [anon] “Dzhon Stuart Mill’,” 2–3. Ibid., 4.



39

his statement that the knowledge of the revolution made him “a democratic champion.” The censor also altered the passage in which Mill talked about the “principles of democracy… born … in France.” By inserting the words “have no future” into the original text, the censor altered Mill’s message, making it sound as if the legacy of the revolution was no longer relevant to other nations.51 Another topic that drew the censor’s attention was religion. Russian readers learned from Mill’s Autobiography that he “had never acquired any religious education” (rather than “religious belief,” as in the original), and that his father, having passed to the young Mill his religious skepticism, thought it wise for the son to keep his religious views to himself. What censors removed was a long passage in which Mill wrote that his father had lost his faith not only for intellectual but also for moral reasons, being unable to reconcile the existence of evil with the image of God as presented by Christianity. In the original version, the passage opened with the sentence: “My Father, educated in the creed of Scotch Presbyterianism, had by his own studies and reflections been early led to reject not only the belief in Revelation, but the foundations of what is commonly called Natural religion.”52 The censor kept (with minor stylistic changes) the first part of the sentence but not the second, which he replaced with a few words of his own, leaving Russian readers with the impression that the old Mill had renounced “the narrow doctrines” of the Presbyterian Church, but not religion as a whole. This sentence was then linked to another one (lifted from the concluding part of the omitted passage), which in the original version read: “He [James Mill] impressed upon me… that the manner in which the world came into existence was a subject on which nothing was known.”53 The censor replaced the word “nothing” with one that in this context meant ‘nobody,’ thereby softening Mill’s statement about the degree of his father’s religious skepticism. The Russian version thus read: “My father was educated in the creed of Scottish Presbyterian Church, but after some studies and reflections, he came to reject its narrow doctrines. My father would have acted against his notion of duty if he had allowed me to be influenced by those narrow dogmas that were contrary to his beliefs and feelings. From the beginning, he impressed upon me that the origin of the world and mankind is a matter that remains unknown to anyone.”54 Mill’s next comment that the question “Who made me?” inevitably leads to another conundrum – “Who made God?” – was also removed from the Russian translation. 51 Mill’, Avtobiografiia, 53. 52 Ibid., 32. 53 Ibid., 36. 54 Ibid.; Cf. Mill, Autobiography, 32, 36.


40

Berest

A year before the Autobiography appeared in Russian translation, the journal Delo carried a two-part article that provided lengthy excerpts from the English edition of the Autobiography. The précis was accompanied by the translator’s sympathetic comments, but his name was once again concealed, as was common in the liberal press in Russia. Here the cuts to the original text were even more severe, with almost every statement of a political nature, including Mill’s references to the Owenites and his critique of the English aristocracy, removed from the article. The editing of the passage on religion was equally merciless, resulting in a short statement (culled from two different places in the Autobiography), which read as follows: “I did not receive religious education in the ordinary sense of the word, but the moral education provided by my father was of distinguished nature shaped by the ideas of Greek philosophers, especially Socrates and Plato.”55 The severity of these cuts is not surprising given the fact that in Russia, journal articles were censored more closely than the books, especially when it came to the journals that had already fallen under suspicion.56 In this case, however, it is possible that at least some of the deletions had been made by the translator, who sought to spare Mill the damage that the uncensored discussion of his religious views could inflict on his image in Russia. IV Mill’s irreligious upbringing was indeed the issue (the only one in Mill’s Autobiography) that drew criticism from some Russian reviewers. Despite censorship cuts, the degree of Mill’s indifference to religion was difficult to conceal from perceptive readers. In 1874, a review published in the official journal of the Ministry of Education concluded: “Mill’s attitude towards all positive religions was apparently one of hatred.”57 The reviewer, a philosophy professor from St. Petersburg University Mikhail Ivanovich Vladislavlev, lamented that Mill’s education prevented Mill from getting to know the “ethical ideals” and “the emotional side of Christianity” (serdechnaia storona), which had “inspired and strengthened millions of people.”58 At the same time, Vladislavlev saw Mill’s 55 [Anon.] “Iz Avtobiografii Dzhona Stuarta Millia,” Delo (1873), no. 10, 151. 56 Marx’s Capital and Chernyshevskii’s What is to be Done? had famously passed censorship before the authorities realized their mistake. 57 M. Vladislavlev, “Dzhon Stuart Mill’” Zhurnal Ministerstva Narodnago Prosveshcheniia 175, (1874), 121. 58 Ibid.; On Vladislavlev see, P. Kallinikov, ed. Russkii Biograficheskii Slovar’, http://rulex .ru/01030650.htm, accessed on November 2015.



41

professed admiration for Plato as evidence that Mill had not been entirely indifferent to “the world of the ideal, especially early in his life.” Had Mill ever read the Bible, the reviewer argued, “he would have been amazed by the personality of Jesus Christ.”59 A more unsparing version of this criticism was presented a year later by Alexander Fedorovich Gusev, a professor of theology from Kazan’ Spiritual Academy and the author of several books on religion and ethics. Gusev’s assessment of the Autobiography, published in the Orthodox Review (Pravoslavnoe Obozrenie), was intended as an introduction to his essay on Mill’s Utilitarianism, which appeared a year later. Judging from his statement that Mill’s father “had renounced not only the Scripture but also all natural religions,” Gusev was familiar with the original Autobiography and was appalled by it revelations.60 Amplifying the point made by Vladislavlev (whose article he cited), Gusev wrote that Mill was unable to “appreciate the moral force” of Christianity which had inspired “millions of people” to pursue “greater perfection” and “heroic deeds.” With less sympathy and more alarm in his tone, Gusev surmised that Mill “apparently was not familiar with the New Testament,” nor had he ever held the Gospels in his hands.61 In the absence of religious education, Mill had become “susceptible” to the arguments of utilitarian ethics, which Gusev denounced as contrary and “harmful” to the Christian morality. Mill’s unbounded adulation of Harriet Taylor was, according to Gusev, another consequence of the emotional emptiness that an irreligious upbringing had created in Mill. To fill the emotional void, Mill had elevated an earthly person into an object of religious worship. Harriet Taylor became to Mill “the Heavenly Being” that Mill had never known but had always been subconsciously longing for. “It is sad,” Gusev wrote, “that while denying the existence of Higher Being, he took an ordinary person for one.”62 Gusev’s argument, that want of religious education had damaged Mill’s psyche, was echoed by Pavel Dmitrievich Gorodtsev, an archpriest and professor of theology at the St. Petersburg Institute of Transportation. In 1881, he published a critical study of Mill’s positivism in relation to Christianity, which opened with a brief survey of Mill’s biography.63 Some of the labels that he 59 60

61 62 63

Vladislavlev, “Dzhon Stuart Mill,” 122. A. Gusev, “Dz. St. Mill’ kak moralist,” Pravoslavnoe Obozrenie, no 3, (1875), 108. On Gusev see, “Alexander Gusev,” in P. Kallinikov, ed., Russkii biograficheskii slovar http://rulex .ru/01041162.htm, accessed on November 2015. Gusev, “Dz. St. Mill’,” 107. Gusev was wrong; Mill did read the Bible. See, Reeves, John Stuart Mill, 474. Ibid., 112. Pavel Gorodtsev, Pozitivizm i khristianstvo (Religiozno-filosofskie vozzreniia Dzhona Stuarta Millia i ikh otnoshenie k khristianstvu (St. Petersburg, Tip S. Dobrodeeva, 1881), 1–7.


42

Berest

applied to Mill – his alleged arrogance and detachment from “the real life of the people” – Gorodtsev borrowed from the Edinburgh Review (1874), which he cited in a footnote, but most of his essay was devoted to a discussion of Mill’s lack of faith, which the British reviews had barely noticed.64 Like his colleague from Kazan’, Gorodtsev argued that Mill’s education had left him with no moral compass in life, “no understanding of happiness and how to achieve it.”65 The crisis that ensued, according to Gorodtsev, had offered Mill a chance to find a path to God. Twisting Mill’s account of his recovery, Gorodtsev attributed the cure not to Mill’s newly found aesthetic sensibilities but to the motives of Christian love and truth Mill had allegedly discovered in Wordsworth’s poetry. “Christian teaching in a poetic form,” Gorodtsev wrote, “awoke and enlivened Mill.”66 “Had he made one more step, Mill might well have become a Christian, contrary to his father’s wish.”67 “Unfortunately,” Gorodtsev continued, “this did not happen.” Mill’s marriage to Harriet Taylor – a woman, who, in many ways, resembled Mill’s father, according to Gorodtsevx– had put an end to Mill’s spiritual enlightenment.68 Such critical assessments, however, were far outnumbered by reviews that either ignored the issue of religion69 or mentioned it in a neutral, descriptive manner.70 Some even praised Mill’s father for rejecting a lucrative ecclesiastical 64 See Stack, “The Death,” 184. 65 Gorodtsev, Pozitivizm, 5. 66 Ibid., 6. 67 Ibid., 6–7. 68 Ibid., 7. 69 N.M. [N.K. Mikhailovskii], “Obzor Politicheskoi ekonomii i Avtobiografii Millia,” Otechestvennye Zapiski, no. 1 (1874), 167–73. (Reprinted in N.K. Mikhailovskii, Sochineniia, 2 vols. (St. Petersburg: V.M. Vol’f, 1896), 2: 551–66. A. Miklashevskii, “Dzhon Stuart Mill’, biograficheskii ocherk,” in Mill’, Osnovaniia Politicheskoi Ekonomii (Moscow: K.T. Soldatenkov, 1895), vii–lvii; [Anon.] “Avtobiografiia Dzhona Stuarta Millia” Russkaia Mysl’, no. 1 (1897), 14–16. 70 Iu. Rossel’ “Dzhon Stuart Mill’ i ego shkola. Stat’ia pervaia.” Vestnik Evropy, (May 1874), 19– 20; E.V., “Zhizn’ Dzh. Stuarta Millia,” Severnyi Vestnik, no. 3 (1889), 197, 204–5. [The anonymous author is possibly Ernst Karlovich Vatson. See, I. F. Masanov, Slovar’ psevdonimov Russkihk pisatelei, uchenykh i obschestvennykh deiatelei 4 vols. (Moscow: Izd-vo Knizhnoi Palaty, 1958), 3: 262. Vatson served as a Professor of History at the Moscow Kadet Corps until 1861, when he was fired and banned from teaching for participating in student u nrest. After that he concentrated on translation and journalism, contributing to many journals, including Sovremennik (until its closure in 1866), Russkaia Mysl and Severnyi Vestnik. Several of his best known articles were concerned with the workers’ question in Europe. See, “Ernst Karlovich Vatson,” in Kallinikov, ed. Russkii Biograficheskii Slovar’, http://rulex .ru/01030478.htm, accessed February 2, 2017.



43

career that was contrary to his beliefs.71 Mikhail Ivanovich Tugan-Baranovskii, Mill’s first Russian biographer, wrote that “[i]nstead of comfortable (privol’naia) life as a preacher, he [Mill’s father] chose the life of a literary proletarian” with all its hard work and financial insecurity.72 For the journalist Iurii Andreevich Rossel’, who published in 1874 an extensive and highly positive review of Mill’s thought, the older Mill’s “indifference” to all religions, “whether modern or ancient” was a “remarkable fact” that bespoke his impartiality as a thinker.73 According to Rossel’, this upbringing allowed the young Mill to grow into “an honest person distinguished by remarkable tolerance towards all religious opinions.” Rossel’ was at pains to convince readers that, despite the absence of religious education, Mill “never fell into dogmatic atheism” and was a person of “strong morals.”74 By contrast, the economist Aleksandr Nikolaevich Miklashevskii, preferred to ignore Mill’s unbelief. He only noted that both Mills espoused a “religion of duty” throughout their lives.75 V Russian readers were less interested in Mill’s religious beliefs than in his intellectual development and upbringing. Even Mill’s religious critics, with the exception of Gorodtsev, devoted considerably more space to analyzing Mill’s secular education than to his religious beliefs. This is not surprising. The issues of education, of character formation and the concept of childhood itself, were subjects of active debate in Russia during the second half of the nineteenth century. These issues emerged, along with the debate on serfdom and the women’s question, after Russia’s defeat in the Crimean war of 1853–55, which inaugurated a period of liberal reforms and “the intellectual revolution” in Russia, as one contemporary termed it.76 Still forbidden to discuss Russian political order in 71 72 73 74 75 76

E. Konradi, “Dzhon Stuart Mill’,” in D. S. Mill’, Utilitarizm. O Svobode (St. Petersburg: A. M. Kotomin, 1882), xxiv. M. Tugan-Baranovskii, Dzhon Stuart Mill’: ego zhizn’ i ucheno-literaturnaia deiatel’nost’ (St. Petersburg: Tip. tov-stva Obshchestvennaia pol’za, 1892), 5–6. Iurii Rossel’, “Dzhon Stuart Mill’,” 21. Ibid., 22. Miklashevskii, “Dzhon Stuart Mill’,” x. The words belong to the radical writer Nikolai Vasil’evich Shelgunov. He wrote that this period was comparable only to “the intellectual revolution that France experienced in the mid-eighteenth century.” Quoted in E.D. Dneprov, “K.D. Ushinsky – The Great Russian Educator of the nineteenth century,” in K.D. Ushinsky, Selected Works, ed. A.I. Piskunov (Moscow: Progress, 1975), 13.


44

Berest

the open, the intelligentsia focused on seemingly more innocuous topics – the notion of lichnost’ (personhood or individuality) and the individual’s position within the family, marriage and society at large – all of which carried a thinly disguised political message. It was widely understood among the intelligentsia that the emancipation of the individual and of Russian society from the autocratic state ought to begin with the individual’s capacity for critical thinking, moral autonomy and, most importantly, with respect for other people’s rights and dignity.77 Even the radical intelligentsia, which otherwise favored a political solution to the tyranny of the tsar, did not neglect the importance of character formation and education as means to Russia’s renewal.78 In Russia, readers took seriously Mill’s description of his Autobiography as a story of education and intellectual development.79 Far from seeing it as “jejune and dreary,” as did some British writers,80 many Russian reviewers commented that Mill’s account of his life, although indeed “devoid of adventure and heroic deeds,” was “fascinating and instructive” because it described such an “unusual” educational “experiment.”81 This was the kind of reception that Mill had apparently wished to see. As Terence Ball has recently argued, the Autobiography was intended as a work of “applied ethology” (the science of character 77 See Ibid., 13–21; A. A. Nikol’skaia, Vozrastnaia i pedagogicheskaia psikhologiia v dorevoliutsionnoi Rossii (Dubna: Feniks, 1995), 12–13, 22–24. As one early feminist recalled, “the literature of the 1860s preached the ideas of wide humanity (shirokoi gumannosti), sense of personal dignity, [and] the need to strive for the rights of the people…, it demanded freedom and independence of thought, the right to criticism and analysis …” See E. N. Vodovozova, Umstvennoe i nravstvennoe vospitanie detei (St. Petersburg: Tip. M. Stasiulevicha, 1907), 91. See also, Ben Eklof, “Worlds in Conflict, 1861–1914: Patriarchal Authority, Discipline and the Russian School,” in Ben Eklof, ed., School and Society in Tsarist and Soviet Russia (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1992), 96, 98; On the theme of “lichnost’” see also, Derek Offord, “Lichnost’: Notions of Individual Identity,” In Catriona Kelly and David Shepherd, Constructing Russian Culture in the Age of Revolution, 1881–1940 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 13–25; G.M. Hamburg and Randall A. Poole, “Introduction: the Humanist Tradition in Russian Philosophy,” in G.M. Hamburg and Randall A. Poole, eds., A History of Russian Philosophy, 5. 78 See, Felicity Ann O’Dell, Socialization Through Children’s Literature: The Soviet Example (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), 53. 79 [Anon] “Iz Avtobiografii,” Delo 3 (1873), 134; Konradi, “Dzhon Stiuart Mill’,” i; Vladislavlev, “Dzhon Stiuart Mill’,” 112; Rossel’, “Dzhon Stiuart Mill’,” 5. 80 Quoted in Stack, “The Death,” 181. 81 [Anon.]”Dzh. St. Mill’ ego zhizn’ i trudy,” Delo, no. 10 (1873), 5; Konradi, “Dzhon Stiuart Mill’,” i; N.M. [Mikhailovskii], “Obzor,” 168; Vladislavlev, “Dzhon Stiuart Mill’,” 118; TuganBaranovskii called Mill’s education an “unprecedented experience.” Tugan-Baranovskii, Dzhon Stiuart Mill’, 22.



45

formation), which Mill considered crucial for democratic society. If democracy were to prosper, it needed independent-minded individuals who could counter the tendency towards mediocrity and conformity lurking behind the rule of the majority. Although he never wrote a separate work on ethology, Mill’s ideas on the psychological and social factors that influence character formation found their way into his major works, including, most importantly, his Autobiography, which provided a case study of Mill’s own experience with civic-oriented education.82 What he ultimately hoped to convey was an example of education that led to the formation of the critically thinking individual with a strong sense of morality and “regard for the public good.”83 This idea appealed to progressive-minded readers in Russia whose concern, ironically, was not the hidden dangers of democracy and mass society, but oppression by the autocratic state. It was widely understood among the intelligentsia that, in Russia, civic-oriented education could serve as a means of individual emancipation and empowerment against the forces of autocracy, patriarchy and economic oppression.84 This notion informed the Russian Sunday school movement and the vigorous campaign for women’s education, which began in the second half of the 1850s.85 Many university students saw it as their moral duty to share the fruits of their education with those who stood in need of intellectual improvement. Alexander Mikhailovich Skabichevskii, a well-known literary critic, described in his memoirs the enthusiasm with which the young intelligentsia sought to spread education “left and right” (na levo i na pravo).86 He himself “zealously tried to instill the most progressive 82

Terence Ball, “Competing Theories of Character Formation,” in Georgios Varouxakis and Paul Kelly, eds., John Stuart Mill, 36, 48–52; On Mill’s ethology see also, Capaldi, John Stuart Mill, 167, 176–78; On the cultural messages implicit in Mill’s Autobiography, see Stafford, John Stuart Mill, 44. 83 Mill, Autobiography, 39. 84 See Vodovozova, Umstvennoe i nravstvennoe vospitanie, 47, 84, 90, 201; M. I. Pokrovskaia, Vospitanie zdorovykh privychek (St. Petersburg: Tip. P.P. Soikina, 1901), 14, 22–4, 66; Kh. D. Alchevskaia, Peredumannoe i perezhitoe: dnevniki, pis’ma, vospominaniia (Moscow: Tip. D.I. Sytina, 1912), 44, 123; Eklof, “Worlds in Conflict,” 96; S. F. Egorov, “K.D. Ushinskii: zhizn’ i pedagogicheskaia deiatel’nost’,” in S.F. Egorov, et al., eds., K.D. Ushinskii. Pedagogicheskie sochineniia, 2 vols., (Moscow: gospedizdat, 1988), 1: 7–8; 85 See, Alchevskaia, Peredumannoe, 32–3, 131–3; Reginal E. Zelnik, “The Sunday School Movement in Russia, 1859–62,” Journal of Modern History 37, no. 2 (1965), 151–70; Richard Stites, The Women’s Liberation Movement in Russia: Feminism, Nihilism and Bolshevism 1860–1930 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978), 30–35. 86 A.M. Skabichevskii, Literaturnye vospominaniia (Moscow: Zemlia i fabrika, 1928), 118–9, 125–6; See also A. Kizevetter, Na rubezhe stoletii (Prague: Obris, 1929), 169, 286.


46

Berest

ideas” into his own sister, whose education in the elite Smol’nyi Institute was not good enough, in his view. Skabichevskii recalled that, while a student, he had provided paid lessons to several wealthy clients and free tutoring to the children from an impoverished family. “It was rare,” he noted, “that someone did not have one or more non-paying pupils.”87 Quite often, unmarried sisters, relatives and even wives of such idealistic-minded “enlighteners” (“razvivateli”), as Skabichevskii called them, were the primary beneficiaries of this “epidemic” of education.88 Self-education and circles for mutual study also grew in popularity in the 1860s,89 not least because the system of university education, controlled as it was by the government, could not satisfy the expectations of critically thinking individuals.90 For the needs of such adult learners a group of liberal professors from Moscow University put together a two-volume reading guide, which included, unsurprisingly, the Russian translations of Mill’s Logic, Utilitarianism, On Liberty and The Principles of Political Economy.91 All entries in the guide contained a short bibliographical note and were arranged by academic field. The note on Mill’s Principles, for instance, read as follows: “A thorough study of this book is a must for everyone who wishes to acquire firm knowledge of political economy.” It was recommended that the readers begin with Adam Smith before proceeding to Mill. After that they could move on to David Riccardo and Karl Marx.92 What methods should be used for educating children and adults was another important question that engaged the liberal intelligentsia at the start 87 88

89

90 91

92

Ibid., 124. Chernyshevskii noted in his diary that his friend had plans to “develop” his own wife, whose education did not go beyond basic literacy. Chernyshevskii tried to do the same for his wife, Ol’ga. See, N. Chernyshevskii, Polnoe Sobranie Sochinenii 16 vols. (Nendeln: Kraus reprint, 1971)1: 30, 535. In both cases, their effort was ultimately unsuccessful because their wives were not interested in deepening their education, but judging from Skabichevskii’s memoirs, many of his friends carried out their mission with greater success. See, A.M. Skabichevskii, Literaturnye vospominaniia, 125–6. Such circles are often mentioned in the memoir literature. See, for instance, Alexandra Kornilova-Moroz, “Perovskaia i osnovanie kruzhka Chaikovtsev,” Katorga i ssylka 22 (1926): 16, 13–16, 23–4; Vera Figner, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii 6 vols. (Moscow: Vsesoiuznoe obshchestvo politicheskikh katorzhan i ssyl’no-poselentsev, 1932), 6: 48. See, William F. Woerhlin, Chernyshevsky: the Man and the Journalist (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971), 32–5. Kniga o knigakh: Tolkovyi ukazatel’ dlia vybora knig po vazhneishym otrasliam znanii. Ed. by I.I. Ianzhul, P.N. Miliukov, P.V. Preobrazhenskii, L.Z. Morokhovets (Moscow: Bibliotechnyi fond, 1892), 26, 31–2, 162–3. Ibid., 162–3.



47

of the reform era.93 To the traditional system based on harsh discipline and rote memorization they counter-posed a more pupil-oriented “humanistic” model that emphasized non-coercive methods, critical thinking, as well as moral education in a child’s development.94 A pioneer of the new pedagogy, Konstantin Dmitrievich Ushinski, sought to incorporate into pedagogical science the latest developments in the fields of physiology, sociology, psychology and philosophy of mind, including Mill’s ethological ideas in Logic, which Ushinskii cited repeatedly in his work Man As a Subject of Education: Pedagogical Anthropology.95 In this intellectual climate, the story of Mill’s education was bound to attract a lot of attention in Russia. One reviewer noted that Mill’s book presented a good occasion to revisit some of the most difficult and controversial issues in modern pedagogy—how much a child could and should learn at a young age.96 The reviewer, Evgeniia Ivanovna Konradi, was a radical feminist and an author of several pedagogical books and many journalistic articles, which covered a wide range of feminist, political and philosophical issues.97 In 1882, she wrote a book-length introduction to the second Russian edition of Utilitarianism and On Liberty. A considerable part of this introduction was devoted to Mill’s Autobiography. Konradi advertised Mill’s Autobiography as a fascinating reading that would appeal to a wide audience, because it provided “most instructive ideas (samye pouchitel’nye) not only for a psychologist, … but also for the reader who is concerned with the problem of the relationship between the 93 A.I. Volkova, Vospominaniia, dnevniki, pis’ma (Nizhnii Novgorod: Izdatel’stvo A.S. Vushniakova, 1913), 195–6; Alchevskaia, Peredumannoe, 122–23, 131, 355; E.D. Dneprov, “K.D. Ushinsky ,” 5–7, 13–15; Nikol’skaia, Vozrastnaia i pedagogicheskaia psikhologiia, 21–5; S.F. Egorov, “K.D. Ushinskii,” 11. 94 See, Eklof, “Worlds in Conflict,” 98; S.F. Egorov, “K.D. Ushinskii,” 29; Nikol’skaia, Vozrastnaia i pedagogicheskaia psikhologiia, 23; N. Shelgunov, Vospominania (Moscow: Gosizdat, 1923), 81, 97. 95 K.D. Ushinskii, “Chelovek kak predmet vospitaniia. Opyt pedagogicheskoi antropologii,” in K.D. Ushinskii, Pedagogicheskie sochineniia 6 vols. (Moscow: Pedagogika, 1988), 6: 137, 167, 252, 296, 298–300, 342–45; On Ushinskii,’s attempt “to raise education to a level of science” see, E.D. Dneprov, “K.D. Ushinsky,” 7. 96 E. Konradi, “Dzhon Stuart Mill’,” in Dzhon Stiuart Mill’, Utilitarianizm i O svobode, (St. Petersburg: Tip. A.M. Kotomina, 1882), xv–xvi; The reviewer from Delo cited James Mill’s Essay On Education to the effect that the child’s character is formed very early, of which Mill-son was a good example. See, [Anon.] “Dzhon Stiuart Mill’,” Delo, no. 10 (1873), 6. See also, N.M. [Mikhailovskii], “Obzor,” 176; Vladislavlev, “Dzhon Stiuart Mill’,” 124–5; Rossel’ “Dzhon Stiuart Mill’,” 17. 97 On Konradi see, Marina Ledkovsky, et al. eds., Dictionary of Russian Women Writers (Westport: Greenwood, 1994), 315–17.


48

Berest

individual and his social environment (okruzhauschaya sreda).”98 So “remarkable” were the “details” of Mill’s education (especially the list of books he had read), Konradi noted, that “one would take them for tale-telling” or “bragging,” had it not been for the fact that Mill related them with such “honesty and noble simplicity.” “It is not surprising,” she added, “that most of the talk elicited by the Autobiography revolves around these facts.”99 Konradi had a personal interest in the questions of child rearing. She had previously cited Mill’s Autobiography in her famous pedagogical work A Mother’s Confession (1876), which provided advice to mothers based in part on the experience of educating her own children.100 Using Mill as an example of a child prodigy, Konradi now elaborated on the point that she had already mentioned in her Confession. She argued that the answer to the question whether too much study (“mnogouchen’e”) was harmful or helpful to the child ultimately depended on the child’s individual abilities, the personality of the teacher and the content of education.101 Quantity does not always translate into quality, and what was good for the gifted Mill might not apply to other children, although she warned that recent tendency to spare children hard work often produces the saddest results.102 Like Konradi, many reviewers argued that Mill’s modest view of his natural abilities should be taken with a grain of salt.103 But on the question of how much Mill benefited from his stringent educational regimen there was no agreement. Mill’s own answer to this question was not enough for some reviewers. They tried to scrutinize his conclusions in light of the facts that Mill had related in his Autobiography, supplemented in some reviews by the references to Alexander Bain’s sympathetic biography of Mill.104 Implicit in their 98 Konradi, “Dzhon Stiuart Mill’,” ii–iii. 99 Ibid., xvi. 100 Konradi, “Ispoved’ materi,” in E.I. Konradi, Sochineniia E. I. Konradi, 2 vols. (St Petersburg: Izd. V.A. Baladinoi, 1899), 1: 308–9. On Konradi’s pedagogical thought see, L. A. Gritsai, “Problema materinstva i materinskogo vospitaniia v trudakh predstavitel’nits zhenskogo dvizheniia kontsa xix-nachala xx veka,“ Vestnik Udmurtskogo Universiteta 3 (2013): 68–70. 101 Konradi, “Dzhon Stiuart Mill’,” xviii–xxi; Konradi, “Ispoved’ materi,” 309. 102 Konradi, “Ispoved’ materi, 308–9. On Konradi’s (semi-autobiographical) pedagogic work see, L. A. Gritsai, “Problema materinstva i materinskogo vospitaniia v trudakh predstavitel’nits zhenskogo dvizheniia kontsa xix-nachala xx veka,“ Vestnik Udmurtskogo Universiteta 3 (2013): 68–70. 103 N.M. [Mikhailovskii], “Obzor,” 175; Vladislavlev, “Dzhon Stuart Mill’,” 118; TuganBaranovskii, Dzhon Stuart Mill’ , 17, 25; Rossel’, “Dzhon Stiuart Mill’,” 15. 104 Alexander Bain, John Stuart Mill: A Criticism with Personal Recollections (New York: A. M. Kelley, 1969).



49

scrutiny was the question whether Mill’s appreciation of his own education had accurately gauged his father’s system or rather had sprung from filial duty and thus was not to be taken at face value. For many, the facts pointed to a more ambivalent picture than Mill was willing to admit. According to Miklashevskii, for instance, the results of James Mill’s educational “experiment” had been mixed. On the one hand, such an intense regimen allowed “[John Stuart] Mill to become a great thinker and indefatigable worker.” On the other hand, “it broke his soul and deprived him of childhood pursuits and many other things that make human life enjoyable.”105 Miklashevskii noted that Mill was raised “without parental affection” (bez roditel’skoi laski), in isolation from his peers and with no chance to develop “a sense of and a taste for the beautiful,” all of which left an indelible mark on Mill’s personality.106 The crisis that inevitably followed such an “extreme” and “one-sided” education shook Mill’s faith in Benthamite utilitarianism and helped him emerge as a happier individual, but it also, in Miklashevskii’s view, transformed him in Miklashevskii’s view, transformed him into “a person of middling opinion” who took it as his principle that “the truth lies somewhere between the two extremes.” This quality allowed Mill to become a truth seeker and “an embodiment of justice,” admired by everyone; yet, according to Miklashevskii, the same quality prevented Mill from becoming “a reformer.” To be a reformer, Miklashevskii argued, “one has to be devoid of any duality and hesitations,” especially “in moments of struggle.”107 By contrast, Nikolai Konstantinovich Mikhailovskii, Russia’s leading populist philosopher, reserved judgment on the effects of Mill’s accelerated education. An admirer of Mill, Mikhailovskii was somewhat disappointed that the Autobiography, for all Mill’s “sincerity and thoroughness,” left many gaps in the story of his upbringing, making it difficult to decide whether the program devised by Mill’s father and the associationist theory that informed it “met the reasonable demands of pedagogy.”108 Some might say, Mikhailovskii wrote, that the early and extremely demanding study schedule enabled Mill to develop his modest abilities; but others might argue that it impeded the growth of “genius” in Mill by allowing too little space for “his natural intellectual initiative.” Mikhailovskii was uncertain of the answer, but he noted that Mill’s emotional crisis inevitably throws doubt on the appropriateness of his father’s methods. “At the same 105 106 107 108

Miklashevskii, “Dzhon Stiuart Mill’,” xvi–xvii. Ibid., xix. Ibid., xix, xxv, xxviii. N.M. [Mikhailovskii], “Obzor,” 175. His “sincerity” was also praised by Russkaia Mysl’. See, [Anon.] “Avtobiografiia Dzhona Stiuarta Millia,” Russkaia Mysl’, no. 1 (1897): 15.


50

Berest

time,” he added, “[John Stuart] Mill touched on a very important question,” namely the possibility of compressing the years of childhood, thereby extending the period of intellectual maturity in human life.109 Some readers had difficulty believing that even such a gifted child as Mill had been able to absorb all of the reading that James Mill assigned to his young son.110 An anonymous reviewer from Severnyi Vestnik wrote that John Stuart Mill’s educational journey should be taken “more as a warning than an example worthy of emulation.”111 Although intellectually the result may have been admirable, emotionally “it came at a high cost” to the young Mill who knew his father only as a demanding and “sometimes far from fair” educator rather than as a loving parent. The reviewer doubted that fear, even in reasonable amount, should have a place in education, despite Mill’s assertion to the contrary.112 Another reviewer concurred.113 The injunction against using fear in the classroom was a common thread in liberal pedagogical literature at that time. Criticism of fear-based education was a tacit political challenge to the principles of patriarchal power and coercion that permeated all Russian institutions, from schools to monarchy.114 One reviewer expressed surprise that Mill appeared reluctant to renounce fear as a tool of discipline altogether. Well known for his Anglophilia, the reviewer wrote with disappointment: “Even in England, there are few good educators able to maintain discipline in children without recourse to harsh treatment (surovoe obraschenie).”115 On the conservative side, Vladislavlev shared the view (as did Gusev) that Mill’s reading program was excessive for his age. If mental exhaustion did not turn Mill into “an idiot,” Vladislavlev argued, it was only because Mill had been “a gifted child.” “Somebody else would have become completely incapable of mental activity.”116 Vladislavlev, however, was more worried about political implications of early education. Alluding to the Russian context, he voiced the concern that exposing young immature minds to serious socio-political literature might not be in the best interests of society. Mill had become a 109 Ibid., 176. 110 E. V. “Zhizn’,” 207–8; Vladislavlev, “Dzhon Stuart Mill’,” 115. Tugan-Baranovskii, Dzhon S tiuart Mill’, 24. 111 E. V. “Zhizn’,” 208. 112 Ibid.; Similar view of the “high price” paid by Mill was expressed by Tugan-Baranovskii, Dzhon Stiuart Mill’, 28. 113 Rossel’, “Dzhon Stuart Mill’,” 17. 114 Eklof, “Introduction,” in B. Eklof, ed., School and Society, 4–5. 115 Rossel’, “Dzhon Stiuart Mill’,” 17; On Rossel’ see, Berest, “J.S. Mill’s Principles,” 21. 116 Vladislavlev, “Dzhon Stiuart Mill’,” 118.



51

hilosopher of “progressive ideas,” but other young men might end up with the p wrong views. “Modern society,” he argued, “suffers, in part, because the young generation … starts talking about political, social and religious issues before they are mature enough” to understand them.117 The blame for Mill’s unhappy childhood went, of course, to his father, but the picture of the elder Mill that emerged from Russian reviews was more nuanced and fair than the one presented by the British press. In Russia, reviewers tried to distinguish between his role as a father-pedagogue and that of a philosopher-reformer. Liberal reviewers generously praised James Mill for his democratic aspirations, “civic virtues,” and the passion with which he attacked class privileges118 and old prejudices.119 He was called “a democrat,” who “believed deeply in reason and freedom,”120 and a “remarkably conscientious person” whose whole life had been devoted to the cause of justice.121 TuganBaranovskii noted that James Mill’s articles in the Westminster Review were “written with remarkable force and persuasiveness, providing a theoretical foundation for democratic demands and exercising huge influence on public opinion” in Britain.122 Along the same line, Severnyi Vestnik argued that no other thinker in Britain had done more for the democratic reforms in the early 1830s than James Mill.123 In Russia, the image of James Mill as a father and a pedagogue varied according to the sympathy that the reviewers showed for Mill-the child and also according to reviewers’ own parental philosophies and experiences. TuganBaranovskii and Konradi reminded readers that Mill’s father had been driven by the best and the noblest intentions, although they both regretted the absence of praise in his pedagogy and both criticized his inability to show warm feelings towards his children.124 Vladislavlev called James Mill a “dry and hardhearted (cherstvyi) pedagogue,” and a father who was “devoid of tenderness.” But Vladislavlev understood why a person serving as the sole educator of his own children had been prone to irritability.125 By contrast, Rossel’ found no excuse for James Mill’s “irritable temperament” or for his resort to strictness in 117 Ibid., 119. 118 Konradi, “Dzhon Stiuart Mill’,” xxiii; 119 Tugan-Baranovskii, Dzhon Stiuart Mill’, 6. 120 Miklashevskii, “Dzhon Stiuart Mill’,” xiii. 121 Tugan-Baranovskii, Dzhon Stiuart Mill’, 6, 10, 12. 122 Ibid., 10. 123 E.V., “Zhizn,” 202; See also Rossel’, “Dzhon Stiuart Mill’,” 22. 124 Tugan-Baranovskii, Dzhon Stuart Mill’, 14, 20; Konradi, “Dzhon Stuart Mill’,” lxxiii–lxxvii, lxxix. 125 Vladislavlev, “Dzhon Stiuart Mill’,” 115; 123–4.


52

Berest

pedagogy.126 The reviewer from Severnyi Vestnik saw signs of disappointment and alienation on both sides as a result of James Mill’s detached parenting. The older Mill, in his opinion, must have been disillusioned when he realized later that his son had turned out “in many ways different from him.”127 More damning to James Mill was the charge that his domineering style had suppressed his son’s sense of autonomy and made John Stuart susceptible to other people’s influences for the rest of his life. This view was shared by most Russian reviewers, including Tugan-Baranovskii, who otherwise emphasized that the older Mill’s methods favored the development of analytical and independent thinking over rote memorization and passive learning. He shrewdly noted that James Mill’s authoritarian manner of teaching (which the older Mill could not help by virtue of his personality) defeated the very core principles of his pedagogical philosophy.128 In another variant of this scenario, Rossel’ implied (similar to some modern biographers129) that, intellectually, Mill did not become his own person until his father’s death. Accustomed to submit to his authority, the younger Mill “kept silent about their differences” while his father was still alive.130 Some reviewers reproached the older Mill for passing on to his son his melancholic outlook – a trait reinforced by his one-sided educational program, which aimed only at the cultivation of mind to the complete neglect of feelings.131 The reviewer from Severnyi Vestnik wondered if Mill would have been a more original thinker had he been given a chance to develop his “imagination” in childhood.132 This reproach notwithstanding, in Russian reviews there was a great deal of leniency, even compassion, for the older Mill. With a mixture of sympathy and disapproval, Miklashevskii noted that Mill’s father belonged to the kind of people who, being unable by their nature to enjoy the “sentimental” aspects of life, “drown themselves in hard work.”133 He felt sorry for a person whose gloomy 126 Rossel’ “Dzhon Stiuart Mill’,” 17. 127 E.V., “Zhizn’,” 207. 128 Tugan-Baranovskii, Dzhon Stiuart Mill’, 61, 24; N.M. [Mikhailovskii], “Obzor,” 177; Miklashevskii, “Dzhon Stiuart Mill’,” xxii; Vladislavlev, “Dzhon Stiuart Mill’,” 115; Gusev, “Dz. St. Mill’,” 112–13. 129 Capaldi, John Stuart Mill, 11; see also Jonathan Loesberg, Fictions of Consciousness: Mill, Newman and the Reading of Victorian Prose (London: Rutgers University Press, 1986), 55–59. 130 Rossel’, “Dzhon Stiuart Mill’,” 22. 131 Tugan-Baranovskii, 6, 11–12; Konradi, “Dzhon Stiuart Mill’,” lix, lxxix; Miklashevskii, “Dzhon Stiuart Mill’,” xvii. 132 E.V., “Zhizn’,” 209. 133 Miklashevskii, “Dzhon Stiuart Mill’,” xv.



53

temperament and analytical mind (akin to a “thinking machine”) robbed him of the ability to enjoy life and his children.134 “His [James Mill’s] pessimism,” wrote another reviewer, “is all the more striking since he lacked nothing in life. He was well off, had an influential and honorable position in society, he had every right to be proud of his children, he enjoyed the respect of his numerous friends and acquaintances, and lastly, he had a cause … to which he was devoted with all his heart… And yet, James Mill did not love life.”135 Missing from this list was a happy marriage, which the reviewer mentioned a few pages earlier, noting (in passing) that the older Mill had “little in common with his wife.”136 With all pros and cons carefully weighed, the liberal reviewers’ overall impression was that the older Mill had been a conscientious and well-meaning, but not a very skilled pedagogue. This was a fairly gracious assessment considering that the educational philosophy advocated by leading Russian pedagogues at that time emphasized child-centered methods, allowance for spontaneity and initiative, respect for the child’s autonomy, physical education and the relationship of trust between teacher and pupil – all in contrast to what James Mill had imposed upon his son.137 Even so, the reviewers were willing to give credit to the older Mill for working tirelessly towards instilling in his son “a sense of duty,” “moral sensitivity,” and the capacity for “strong analytical thinking.” These were the qualities that the intelligentsia sought to cultivate in the younger generation.138 The fact that Mill grew up in an atmosphere “free from any superstition” was also attributed to his father.139 As for conservative reviewers, Gorodtsev and Gusev were less lenient to the elder Mill’s pedagogical or personal shortcomings, speaking with no sympathy of his “gloomy” view of life and contempt for sentimental feelings.140 For Gusev, the upbringing James Mill had given his son was proof of the errors inherent in utilitarian philosophy. For Gorodtsev, it exemplified the impoverished mind and life of a person with no faith in God. The older Mill’s political credentials were overlooked in both reviews, but neither Gorodtsev nor Gusev

134 Ibid., xv. 135 Tugan-Baranovskii, Dzhon Stiuart Mill’, 12. 136 Ibid., 7. 137 On Russian pedagogical philosophy see, Nikol’skaia, Vozrastnaia, 36–52. 138 Vladislavlev, 127; See also Rossel’, 19; Tugan-Baranovskii, 44, 46, 87; [Anon] “Dzhon Stiuart Mill,’” Delo, no. 10 (1873), 6–9. 139 [Anon.] “Dzhon Stuart Mill’,” Delo, no. 10 (1873), 6. 140 Gorodtsev, Pozitivizm, 1–3; Gusev, “Dz. St. Mill’,” 108–9.


54

Berest

resorted to offensive attacks of the kind that could be found in the British press.141 VI Mill’s portrayal of Harriet Taylor in his Autobiography presented a more difficult topic for his Russian admirers, as it did for Mill’s British followers, who had been embarrassed by his unrestrained praise of Harriet’s virtues.142 But once again, one is struck by the differences in tone when comparing the image of Harriet and her relationship with Mill in Russian and British reviews. Even before the publication of the Autobiography, Harriet Taylor had been known in Russia not just as Mill’s companion, but as a thinker in her own right. Her Enfranchisement of Women, translated into Russian in 1860, was one of the first Western writings on feminism that reached Russia at the start of the liberal era. Although the translator was somewhat confused about the authorship of the essay, attributing it to Mill rather than Harriet, he acknowledged her role as Mill’s intellectual partner and described her as one of the greatest minds of her time. Some of feminist-minded readers in Russia were better informed about her writings and referred to the Enfranchisement as her own essay.143 Among those who reviewed Mill’s Autobiography, most sympathized with the women’s movement and were familiar with feminist literature, including Mill’s The Subjection of Women. Mikhailovskii, for instance, translated The Subjection into Russian in 1869. Turgan-Baranovskii wrote of The Subjection that it was “a powerful … manifesto in favor of women’s equality and independence.”144 He credited Harriet, not John Stuart Mill, for the emotional power that the book exercised on readers. A similar idea was expressed in Mikhailovskii’s review. He argued that, after Harriet’s appearance, Mill’s “abstract principles” of women’s rights (which he adopted “very early”) had acquired a more concrete and emotional form.145 141 See Stack, “The Death,” 183. 142 For instance, Bain, John Stuart Mill, 171. 143 Berest, “The Reception,” 115. 144 Tugan-Baranovskii, Dzhon Stiuart Mill’, 63. 145 N.M. [Mikhailovskii], “Obzor,” 178; The anonymous reviewer from Severnyi vestnik [E. K. Vatson] wrote that while Mill had been a supporter of women’s rights before he met Harriet, it was from her that he learned “not only about the fundamental injustice but also about the practical inconvenience of women’s current position in society.” See E.V., “Zhizn’ Dzh. Stiuarta Millia,” 79.



55

However, Mill’s vigorous assertion of Harriet’s contribution to The Principles of Political Economy (the most popular of his works in Russia) appears to have surprised many reviewers.146 Tugan-Baranovskii acknowledged that Taylor was “bolder and more radical [than Mill] in social questions.” He maintained that “under her influence [Mill] became sympathetic to socialism,” but he also argued that her influence on Mill’s economic thought had been emotional rather than intellectual. It stemmed from her “impressionable sympathetic personality (otzyvchivyi kharakter)” as well as her practicality – two qualities in which Mill was deficient.147 As a former Marxist and now a left-leaning liberal, Tugan-Baranovskii bowed to Harriet Taylor’s passionate sense of justice, noting that she “constantly reminded [Mill] of real life and of the ordinary people (narod) whose happiness should be the object of any knowledge.” However, Tugan-Baranovskii doubted that her contribution to The Principles went beyond that, “despite Mill’s assertion” to the contrary. “The only work that indeed belongs to her as much as to him,” Tugan-Baranovskii concluded, “is The S ubjection of Women.”148 According to Mikhailovskii’s assessment, Harriet’s influence, although beneficial, created a sense of “duality” in Mill’s economic thought: Mill always tried to reconcile Harriet’s “ethical” principles, which pointed him in a direction of socialism, with his father’s “intellectual ideas,” which drew Mill back to the philosophy of laissez-faire and individualism.149 By contrast, Miklashevskii argued that Mill’s socialist inclinations owed more to the influences of the French socialists and later, to the revolutions of 1830 and 1848, although he also believed that Harriet had been “more radical than her husband.” “It is possible,” Miklashevskii conceded, “that under her influence he became more sympathetic towards Saint-Simon and Fourier.”150 Similar to Tugan-Baranovskii, Miklashevskii attributed Harriet’s socialist sympathies to her “kind-heartedness (dobroserdechie)” rather than to her intellectual insight. He then argued that, intellectually, Mill remained indebted to his father more than to any other person. Miklashevskii wrote: “Only in writing two of Mill’s works did she take an active part. On Liberty and The Subjection of Women were written in collaboration with her, but even there Mill’s ideas

146 See also Berest, “J.S. Mill’s Principles,” 94. 147 Tugan-Baranovskii, Dzhon Stiuart Mill’, 63. 148 Ibid., 64. 149 N.M. [Mikhailovskii], “Obzor,” 179. 150 Miklashevskii, “Dzhon Stiuart Mill’,” xxxi.


56

Berest

remain embedded in the individualistic and democratic philosophy that he imbibed from his father.”151 Having established Harriet’s intellectual credentials, some reviewers also tried to understand whether she had been a loving and supportive companion to Mill, as he had implied. They could not ignore the fact that Harriet earned much less flattering epithets from some of the people close to Mill. The anonymous reviewer from Severnyi Vestnik cited Carlyle’s early opinion of Mill’s wife as “a real romantic heroine,” but the reviewer also noted Carlyle’s later, less gracious, pronouncement that she was a “dangerous” person who desired “to dominate.”152 Tugan-Baranovskii admitted that “most of Mill’s friends entirely rejected his exalted view of her… Many openly disliked her” for being “arrogant” and “excessively emotional” (affektivnaia), but he insisted that this was far from being a universal opinion, for “others, such as Carlyle, admired her.” Trying to put a positive spin on the contradictory reputations that Harriet Taylor had elicited (and completely ignoring Carlyle’s negative remarks), Tugan-Baranovskii argued: “The very diversity of opinion [on Harriet] proves that she was an extraordinary person (nediuzhinii chelovek).”153 In his mind, there was no doubt that Harriet provided Mill with everything he needed: she “lived by his interests, augmented his energy, and pushed him ever forward (zastavliala ego idti vse vpered i vpered.)” Their marriage, he concluded, was a “happy” one.154 Miklashevskii, for his part, tried to withhold his judgment on a matter that he thought was too personal to be discussed in public. He reminded readers that Mill himself “did not like it” when people talked about his relationship with Harriet. Mill had even broken with some friends and family members, 151 Ibid., xxxii; The reviewer from Severnyi vestnik saw The Principles and On Liberty as two mutually contradictory works—one advancing the socialist ideal, the other advocating individualistic principles. He was unsure what to make of Mill’s claim that both works were written with Harriet’s help. See E.V., “Zhizn,” 78–9. 152 E.V., “Zhizn’,” 75. Carlyle changed his opinion of Harriet when he realized that she was not going to be his disciple. See Jo Ellen Jacobs, “The Lot of Gifted Ladies is Hard: A Study of Harriet Taylor Mill’s Criticism,” Hypatia 9, no. 3 (1994): 135. 153 Tugan-Baranovskii, Dzhon Stiuart Mill’, 60. Note his choice of the word ‘person’ over ‘woman’ in this statement. 154 Tugan-Baranovskii, Dzhon Stiuart Mill’, 63. His view of Harriet as Mill’s inspirer closely resembles Capaldi’s recent reassessment which provides the most sympathetic picture of Harriet’s influence on Mill in recent scholarship. Capaldi argues that “she reinforced his [Mill’s] need to believe that he was a major force of the time, and in so doing she helped him to become just that voice.” If Mill’s father “had instilled in him … a sense of failure,” Harriet had done the opposite. See, Capaldi, John Stuart Mill, 189–90.



57

“who had dared to broach” this delicate issue. “A person’s private life,” Miklashevskii wrote, “is a mystery and should be left untouched.”155 And yet, the topic was irresistible. A few pages later Miklashevskii, much like two other reviewers, speculated that “most likely” Mill’s tendency to “idealize” Harriet Taylor was due to “psychological reasons” – his loneliness, the deep-seated need for a soul-mate, and the kind of emotional sensitivity that one might not even suspect in a person who possessed such a rational mindset and “stern appearance.”156 It is no wonder, Miklashevskii wrote, that Mill experienced “an emotional fever (emotsional’naia likhoradka)” when he finally met “a woman endowed with wit and imagination.”157 In Harriet, whose mind was more “practical and concrete,” Mill found his “other half,” and so became a more complete person. So great was her ability to understand and filter his “abstract” ideas through her “practical” mind, that Mill, in Miklashevskii’s opinion, began “to imagine” that she “had arrived” at the same ideas independently.158 This was an argument that Miklashevskii adapted from W.L. Courtney’s 1889 biography of Mill, only in a more sympathetic form.159 If Miklashevskii saw Harriet as Mill’s soul-mate bringing “pure and noble love” into his life (no matter the excessive adulation on his part), Courtney implied that Harriet had taken advantage of Mill’s emotional vulnerability and longing for companionship.160 He scoffed at Mill’s sensitivity, which is his view, “had degenerated into sentimentality.” Comparing Mill to Descartes and Comte, who also had women-muses in their lives, Courtney argued that all three philosophers, being deficient in the “sense of the concrete,” had displayed “a strange fascination” with the female faculty of practical thinking which, in his view, detracted from their philosophical thought.161 By contrast, Miklashevskii used the same 155 Miklashevskii, “Dzhon Stiuart Mill’,” xxx. 156 See also, Tugan-Baranovskii, Dzhon Stiuart Mill’, 60. E.V., “Zhizn’,” 77. 157 Miklahevskii, “Dzhon Stuart Mill’,” xxxii; The reviewer from Severnyi vestnik wrote: “When Mill met Mrs. Taylor, the flame of love, long smoldering under the ashes of pretended coldness, burst forth.” See E. V. “Zhizn’,” 77. Cf. W. L. Courtney, Life of John Stuart Mill (New York: W. Scott, 1889), 118. 158 Miklashevskii, “Dzhon Stiuart Mill’,” xxxii. 159 It was a paraphrase of Courtney’s statement: “When a cleaver woman gives expression to some of the thought which, in the man’s case, are the result of hard thinking, he is apt to imagine that she, too, must have been through a similar mental discipline…. He admires her, therefore, in proportion to the seriousness of his own logic, not in reference to her own native powers.” Courtney, Life, 117. 160 Miklashevskii, “Dzhon Stiuart Mill’,” xxx; Courtney, Life, 116–17. Courtney’s picture of Harriet was criticized by Jo Ellen Jacobs, “The Lot of Gifted ladies is Hard,” 136–7. 161 Courtney, Life, 116.


58

Berest

comparison to praise Harriet and to excuse rather than criticize Mill’s adulation of her qualities. A woman who is able to “infuse life” into abstract ideas, he argued, naturally induces adulation in a man whose thinking is focused on the “abstract and logical.” To Miklashevskii, their relationship was an example of “two people mutually loving and complementing each other.”162 A different line of argument was adopted by Rossel’, whose attitude towards Harriet reflected resentment and protectiveness, similar to that exemplified by Mill’s former secretary and friend Alexander Bain.163 In Rossel’s view, Mill had been unfair to himself and too modest when he proclaimed Harriet as his writing partner. Rossel’ granted that she must have been a “remarkable woman,” and that “perhaps she was indeed equal to him in intellectual and moral qualities, but still, her role was secondary: she did not write his works, Mill did.”164 He rebuked Mill for using “the voice of emotions rather than reason” in speaking about Harriet, although Rossel’ conceded that her overall influence on Mill must have been “beneficial.”165 Among Russian portrayals of Mill’s private life, Konradi’s review stood out by its spirited defense of Mill’s passion for Harriet. Konradi felt indignant at the “primitiveness” and vulgarity of society’s current notions of the relationship between the sexes. This vulgarity, in her view, prevented “most people” from understanding the true essence of love. They do not believe, she complained, in “the ideal of love” in which “fiery passion” is united with “friendship” and “noble aspirations.”166 Such an ideal had often been discounted as idealistic or utopian, and people who had espoused it had often been disparaged as romantics. Against this background of “narrow-mindedness,” she wrote, “Mill’s reminiscences of his relationship with his wife make an extremely pleasant (chrezvychaino otradnoe) impression by presenting us with a picture of moral refinement.”167 A comparison that came to her mind was one between Mill and Dante or Petrarch, who spoke of their beloved women with the same “emotional excitement” (pafos) as did Mill. Whether Mill had exaggerated Harriet’s virtues was a question that Konradi declared irrelevant to her purposes.168 162 Miklashevskii, “Dzhon Stiuart Mill’,” xxxxii. He appears to have missed Courtney’s sarcasm in characterizing Mill’s “weakness.” See Ibid. 163 Bain, John Stuart Mill, 163–74. 164 Rossel’, “Dzhon Stiuart Mill’,” 27. 165 Ibid. By contrast, Bain was more unforgiving. He remarked that Mill’s praise of Harriet “violates our sense of due proportion … it is but natural outcome of his extraordinary hallucination as to the personal qualities of his wife.” See Bain, John Stuart Mill, 171. 166 Konradi, “Dzhon Stiuart Mill’,” xxxiii. 167 Ibid., xxxiv. 168 Ibid.



59

It is no coincidence that the most sympathetic depiction of Mill’s relationship with Harriet Taylor came from the pen of a woman-feminist. Surveying the history of commentaries written about Harriet, some scholars noted that Harriet’s reputation has always reflected the “cultural expectations” of women’s role169 and “the overall status of women during the periods the commentators wrote.”170 A woman-intellectual who defied social conventions, Harriet had suffered the unenviable fate of being attacked both for her lifestyle and her intellectual aspirations. With the exception of the two earliest commentators – H.R. F. Bourne and Mansfield Manston – the British critiques of Harriet in the nineteenth century had been disparaging, with the “predominance of ad feminam attacks and an almost complete refusal to consider htm’s ideas.”171 Harriet was commonly presented as “the evil seductress,” who had bewitched and dominated the naïve Mill.172 Besides the obvious sexism of such comments, personal jealousy on the part of Mill’s friends might also have played a role in such criticisms, as Capaldi recently suggested.173 For Mill’s admirers, such as Alexander Bain, downplaying Harriet’s intellectual stature was a means of reasserting Mill’s originality and independence against his own acknowledgment of Harriet’s influences.174 It was not until the second decade of the twentieth century that more sympathetic accounts of Harriet began to emerge, but her image as a “seductress” and poor influence on Mill was slow to die, in part because commentators in the 1950s and 1960s found new faults in Harriet: her socialist inclinations.175

169 Alice S. Rossi, Introduction to Essays on Sex Equality: John Stuart Mill and Harriet Taylor Mill (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970), 35–6. 170 Jacobs, “The Lot of Gifted Ladies,”133; (Of the current revisionist studies on Harriet, Jacobs’ analysis is particularly insightful). See also, A. Tatalovich, “John Stuart Mill: The Subjection of Women: An Analysis,” in John Stuart Mill, Critical Assessments, 4: 287. 171 Jacobs, “The Lot,” 136. 172 Ibid., 136. 173 See Capaldi, John Stuart Mill, 189. 174 Bain, John Stuart Mill, 146. After citing in full Mill’s acknowledgment of Harriet’s influence, Bain, not without some sarcasm, commented that “willingness to learn is a good thing,” but Mill’s “best piece of work” – his Logic – was an “unassisted invention.” Ibid., 146. Bain was particularly struck by Mill’s statement in his acknowledgment that he had always held a “humble opinion” of his “powers as an original thinker, except in abstract sciences (logic, metaphysics, and the theoretical principles of political economy and politics).” Is that, he wondered, not enough to claim the title of an original thinker? “How many more subjects would have been necessary to establish the claim?” Ibid. 175 Jacobs, “The Lot,” 146, 149.


60

Berest

To modern feminists, it might be of some consolation that, at least in Russia, Harriet’s earliest reputation had been more positive and gender-neutral.176 While admitting that Mill’s tribute to his wife had been rather excessive and somewhat out of character for such a “reserved” and impartial thinker as Mill, none of the reviewers resorted to sexist attacks against Harriet. Nor did they see their relationship as inappropriate in any way. Most of the reviewers were sympathetic to the women’s movement, as were the majority of the Russian intelligentsia in the second half of the nineteenth century. Living under the paternalistic power of the Tsar, much like the power of the husband in marriage, the male intelligentsia in Russia developed more sensitivity to women’s demands for rights and independence than did their liberal counterparts in England.177 For Russian liberals, the women’s question was part of the bigger struggle against the patriarchal order and the culture of oppression that in Russia pervaded the whole society, from family to the state. Their feminist leanings, moreover, were often combined with a sympathy for socialist ideas (in another contrast to England), which further explains the more appreciative view of Harriet’s influence among Russian reviewers.178 On the other hand, the “attitude-to-women” was not the only factor in Russian writings on Mill. Even those liberal reviewers who cannot be considered feminists refrained from sexist remarks about Harriet. They generally agreed that she had been a positive moral influence on Mill, although they were more skeptical of her intellectual contribution.179 Apparently, their admiration for Mill (his feminism notwithstanding) prevented them from criticizing a woman 176 Especially notable is Tugan-Baranovskii’s statement that “she was bolder and more radical than Mill.” Tugan-Baranovskii, Dzhon Stiuart Mill’, 63. In Western scholarship, this idea has only recently been expressed by feminist scholars. See, Jacobs, “The Lot of Gifted Ladies,”152; Susan Moller Okin, Women in Western Political Thought (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979), 226–7. 177 See Diana Green, “Mid-Nineteenth-Century Domestic Ideology in Russia,” in Women and Russian Culture, ed. Rosalind Marsh (New York: Berghahn Books, 1998), 89; Laura Engelstein, The Keys to Happiness: Sex and the Search for Modernity in Fin-de-Siecle Russia (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992), 4; Barbara Engel, Mothers and Daughters: Women of the Intelligentsia in Nineteenth-Century Russia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 51. 178 On Russian feminists, see Berest, “The Reception of J.S. Mill’s Feminist Thought,” 112–3, 136, 139, 140. 179 Vladislavlev mentioned openly (but respectfully) his disagreement with Mill on the issue of feminism. See, Vladislavlev, “Dzhon Stiuart Mill,” 150. The attitude of Rossel’ and E.V. can be gauged from the fact that both omitted to mention Mill’s The Subjection in their otherwise positive analysis of Mill’s legacy.



61

who meant so much to him. The only disparaging portrayal of Harriet in Russia was presented by the religious conservative Gorodtsev, whose main concern, however, was not her feminist or socialist leanings, but her atheistic beliefs.180 It is also notable that the story of Mill’s romance did not appear as unusual and defiant in Russia as it did in his home country, perhaps because of the stronger influence of feminist ideas on the Russian intelligentsia. In his nihilist novel, What is to be Done? (1863), Chernyshevskii had famously argued that the emancipation of humanity required a more progressive model of marriage, one that granted emotional fulfillment and personal freedom to both spouses. The creative energy generated by their personal happiness should be channeled, according to Chernyshevskii, towards socially useful goals, making the lives of both spouses more meaningful and complete.181 Written from a prison cell and published due to a censor’s oversight, Chernyshevskii’s novel was wildly popular among the idealistic “generation of the 1860s.” Following its publication, many feminist women in Russia sought fictitious marriages in order to liberate themselves from parental authority and to engage in social (or revolutionary) activism. When a real romantic relationship with a man who could understand their aspirations was not forthcoming, a fictitious marriage emulating the life of Chernyshevskii’s protagonists seemed like a good alternative.182 Chernyshevskii’s own marriage exemplified his unconventional view of marriage: he allowed his wife full freedom to pursue her love affairs, while he himself remained loyal to her.183 Another radical-minded writer, Nikolai Vasil’evich Shelgunov, was known to live in a shared marriage with his friend, Mikhail Larionovich Mikhailov, also a radical thinker and publicist, who advocated feminist ideas and was the first to translate into Russian MillTaylor’s essay “The Enfranchisement of Women.”184 The woman Shelgunov and Mikhailov both loved was herself a writer and a feminist. The new ideas of marriage expressed and experienced by the radical intelligentsia in the 1860s 180 Gorodtsev, Pozitivizm, 7. 181 See Irina Paperno, Chernyshevsky and the Age of Realism: A Study in the Semiotics of Behavior (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988), 90–2. 182 See Marcelline Hutton, Remarkable Russian Women in Pictures, Prose and Poetry (Lincoln: Zea Books, 2013), 118; Paperno, Chernyshevsky, 136; Toby W. Clyman and Judith Vowles, eds., Russia Through Women’s Eyes: Autobiographies from Tsarist Russia (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996), 312. 183 See Adam B. Ulam, The Bolsheviks: The Intellectual and Political History of the Triumph of Communism in Russia (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998), 56; Stites, The Women’s Liberation Movement, 90. 184 See Berest, “The Reception of J.S. Mill’s Feminist Thought,” 115; On Shelgunov’s marriage see, Paperno, Chernyshevsky, 147–9.


62

Berest

must have influenced Russian perceptions of Mill’s relationship with Harriet. Their story of intellectual and romantic companionship could well be interpreted as a variation of Chernyshevskii’s ideal. VII Another theme from the Autobiography that attracted Russian readers was the story of Mill’s mental crisis. In the English-language scholarship today, this episode is the most closely studied segment of Mill’s life, with several psychophilosophical explanations, some rather fanciful, offered to elucidate the condition of Mill’s health and mind in 1826.185 In the nineteenth century, however, Mill’s supporters in Britain showed surprisingly little interest in his emotional revelations. They either ignored the issue altogether186 or limited themselves to recounting Mill’s words and events surrounding the crisis, with little attempt at psychological analysis.187 The only exception was John Morley’s sympathetic review of the Autobiography published in 1874. Morley interpreted Mill’s “crisis of disappointment” not as a consequence of mental exhaustion from overwork, but as a natural, age-related stage of mental growth that many men of intellect are bound to experience. In Mill’s case, according to Morley, it resulted in greater boldness, nobility and depth in his ideas, including the idea of happiness. Morley sought to refute the common view that “Mill’s life was … joyless” and that his very philosophy of happiness was “unacceptable and not worthy of being striven after.”188 Like Morley, many Russian reviewers tried to extract Mill’s recipe for happiness from his story of mental breakdown and subsequent transformation, but their conclusion was not quite the same. In Morley’s interpretation, Mill’s notion of happiness included four major ingredients: not expecting too much from life, enjoying “objects of mental culture,” having “genuine private 185 See, for instance, Mike W. Martin, “Depression: Illness, Insight and Identity,” Philosophy, Psychiatry and Psychology 6 (1999), 271–86; Peter Glassman, J.S. Mill: The Evolution of a Genius (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1985); Bruce Mazlish, James and John Stuart Mill: Father and Son in the Nineteenth Century (New York: Routledge, 1975); By contrast, Loesberg argues that “the nervous breakdown of 1826 was actually a minor event,” which Mill gave a status of “emotional conversion” much later in life for the purpose of providing justification to his new theory of free will. See, Loesberg, Fictions, 54–5. 186 For instance, H.R. Fox Bourne’s collection of essays. 187 Bain, John Stuart Mill, 38–9, 44; Courtney, Life, 55–6. 188 John Morley, Nineteenth-Century Essays (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970), 158–9.



63

affections,” and cultivating “a sincere interest in the public good”189 This was an accurate summary of Mill’s philosophy of life, but contrary to what we would expect from an admirer of Mill, neither Mill’s affection for Harriet nor even her name was mentioned anywhere in Morley’s essay. By contrast, according to Miklashevskii and Tugan-Baranovskii, it was love for Harriet – noble and reciprocated – that brought happiness to Mill.190 Citing Mill’s confession that his “condition” would not have been so unbearable in 1826 had he “loved any one sufficiently” to share his painful thoughts, Tugan-Baranovskii argued that only with the appearance of Harriet did Mill find an ultimate cure for his melancholy.191 What Mill experienced before that was a more enlarged concept of intellectual happiness due to his discovery of Wordsworth’s poetry, which provided some immediate relief to his pain; but at a deeper level, as TuganBaranovskii implied, Mill’s feeling of loneliness had remained, now even more intense, since Mill began to drift away from his farther and the circle of his youthful friends.192 Mill’s “great longing (ogromnaia potrebnost’) for love and happiness,” which even his father’s stern education did not extinguish, had finally been answered by Harriet.193 In fact, the Autobiography does not say exactly when Mill ceased to suffer from relapses into depression or whether Harriet was the final cure,194 but to the sympathetic Tugan-Baranovskii, the conclusion suggested itself when he compared the life of Mill-son and Mill-father. As much as he admired the older Mill’s stoicism and selfless “passion for the common good,” he felt that idealistic pursuits alone were not enough to make a person happy. The younger Mill, according to Tugan-Baranovskii, had achieved a more natural and joyous, yet meaningful and useful life.195 Interestingly enough, the same comparison was made by Morley, who argued: “Mr. Mill’s conception of happiness in life is more intelligible if we contrast it with his father’s.”196 And yet, Harriet was conspicuously missing form Morley’s picture of Mill’s happiness.

189 Ibid., 160. 190 Miklashevskii, “Dzhon Stiuart Mill’,” xxix; Tugan-Baranovskii, Dzhon Stiuart Mill’, 61, 45. 191 Gusev made a similar assertion, even though he regretted Mill’s adulation of Harriet, which in his view, bordered on religious worship. See Gusev, “Dz. St. Mill’,” 111–2. 192 Tugan-Baranovskii, Dzhon Stiuart Mill’, 51. 193 Ibid., 61. 194 Mill only mentions that after his breakdown in 1826, he “had several relapses, some of which lasted many months” but none was as deep as the first one. See, Mill, A utobiography, 120. 195 Tugan-Baranovskii, Dzhon Stiuart Mill’, 44–49. 196 Morley, Nineteenth-Century Essays, 159.


64

Berest

VIII What were the reasons for such contrasting treatments of Mill’s Autobiography in Russia and in Britain? One reason was a greater receptivity of the Russian intelligentsia to those of Mill’s ideas that his compatriots often dismissed as too “radical.” While The Subjection of Women caused a backlash in Britain, costing Mill many of his liberal supporters, in Russia it enhanced his renown as a philosopher aspiring to equity for all.197 Where Bain (Mill’s protégé and otherwise a sympathetic biographer) lamented that Mill’s “doctrine of the natural equality of men” was one of his “greatest theoretical errors as a scientific thinker,”198 Russian liberals always lauded Mill for his democratic and socialist sympathies.199 Perhaps even more illustrative was the issue of the land reform—the last and the biggest of Mill’s controversies. In both countries, Mill’s campaign was interpreted as the culmination of his political radicalism; the difference, however, was that in England it drew strong condemnation from the liberals, while in Russia, where many liberals were sympathetic to the populist cause, it received special praise.200 Konradi, for instance, commended Mill for being able to break from “commonly accepted, traditional views” on land o wnership. The fact that Mill was “already some sixty years old” when he started this campaign demonstrated, according to Konradi, that “Mill preserved plenty of intellectual energy and freshness [of mind] until the very end.”201 The land reform campaign was another proof (along with his changing views in political economy) that Mill’s whole life had presented “a constant drive forward (nepreryvnoe dvizhenie vpered) without stopping or slowing down until the moment of death.”202 Konradi marveled that, even during the

197 See Berest, “The Reception of J.S. Mill’s Feminist Thought,” 137–40. 198 Bain, John Stuart Mill, 146; See also, Collini, Public Moralists, 138. 199 For instance, Tugan-Baranovskii, Dzhon Stuart Mill’, 63; Iu. Rossel’, “Dzhon Stiuart Mill i ego shkola,” Vestnik Evropy (August 1874): 655; V. I. Pokrovskii, “Lichnost’ i Obschestvo (po Milliu),” Otechestvennye zapiski, no. 3, (1868): 265–6; N. N. Rozhdestvenskii, O znachenii Dzhona Stuarta Millia v riadu sovremennykh ekonomistov (St. Petersburg: Tip E. Praza, 1867), 81; V. Miropol’skii, “Universitetskoe obrazovanie v zhenshchin v Amerike i Rossii,” Russkaia Mysl’, No. 4 (1883), 223–4; I. I. Yanzhul, “Novyi tip Angliiskogo radikalizma,” in I. I. Yanzhul, Ocherki i issledovaniia, 2 vols., (Moscow: Tip. A. I. Mamontova, 1884), 1: 34. 200 See, Berest, “J.S. Mill’s Principles,” 17–18, 21, 25–6. 201 Konradi, “Dzhon Stiuart Mill’,” xi. 202 Ibid., ix. Konradi especially noted Mill’s comment on common lands in his review essay “Maine on Village Communities.” The review and Maine’s essays were translated into Russian in 1874.



65

period of acute personal crisis, “Mill never stopped thinking about the fate of humanity.”203 Konradi’s last comment was typical of the sentiments expressed in liberal reviews. In Russia, the Autobiography was perceived as a testament to Mill’s life-long devotion to the cause of justice, as well as his last moral message on the subject of public good and the relationship between individual and society.204 It is ironic that in England – the country which many liberal reviewers in Russia admired as a beacon of freedom and which in fact made the Mill phenomenon possible – there was little enthusiasm for Mill’s reformist zeal and even less appreciation of the Autobiography’s moralism.205 As Morley observed with sadness, “Mr. Mill has been ungenerously ridiculed for the eagerness and enthusiasm of his contemplation of a new and better state of human society.”206 Perhaps, it was precisely his “eagerness” and sense of self-righteousness that put Mill’s compatriots off. In a country that already enjoyed so much economic progress and freedom, there was naturally a great deal of political contentment, caution and respect for tradition, which must have made the Autobiography look like a reproach to Mill’s compatriots.207 Morley, for one, was willing to concede as much: “The too common tendency in us all to moral slovenliness and a lazy contentment,” he wrote, “finds a constant rebuke in his career…”208 This is not to say that Mill was beyond criticism in Russia. On the radical spectrum, he was criticized for not being bold enough in his reformist ideas.209 203 Konradi, „Dzhon Stiuart Mill,“ xx. 204 For instance, Konstantin Leont’ev, a prominent religious and political philosopher, quoted Mill’s Autobiography in support of his article on the social progress. See, K. Leont’ev, “Um i chuvstvo kak factory progressa,” Delo, no. 2 (1883): 10; Konradi made extensive use of the Autobiography as a way of illustrating Mill’s philosophy of utilitarianism and “the theory of free individual,” as she put it. See, Konradi, “Dzhon Stiuart Mill,” lxiii–lxv; xcviii. 205 As Stack ironically noted, the “high-minded content of the text was manna to those who dismissed Mill as a desiccated machine.” See, Stack, “The Death,” 182. 206 Morley, Nineteenth-Century Essays, 158. 207 On Mill’s role as a public moralist and his compatriots’ reaction to it, see Collini, Public Moralists, 132–3, 136–7; Even before the Autobiography, Mill’s domestic audience was often irritated by his didactic tone and “assumption of special enlightenment” as one reviewer put it upon the publication of Mill’s Subjection of Women. Quoted in Ibid., 137. In the same spirit, another reviewer (a woman) was offended by Mill’s (alleged) presumption that he knew better what was good for women. See Nicholson, “Reception,” 473–4. 208 Quoted in Collini, Public Moralists, 136. 209 See Berest, “J. S. Mill’s Principles,” 15–16; M. Tsebrikova, Introduction to Dzh. Stiuart Mill’, Podchinennost’ zhenshchiny (St. Petersburg: Tip. S. V. Zvonareva, 1870), xxiii; Konradi too, for all her praise of Mill’s political growth, noted that “Mill did not entirely free himself


66

Berest

On the conservative side, he drew some fire from anti-feminist writers, including Lev Tolstoy, who judged Mill’s concept of womanhood too remote from realities of life.210 But hostile criticism was rare and was followed, almost invariably, with swift rebuttal by Mill’s loyal supporters.211 One critic complained in 1875 that the liberals “attack viciously (s ozhestocheniem) all those who happen to declare their skepticism regarding Mill.” If the liberals “ever make any rebukes to Mill,” he added, it is only because “some of his ideas are not liberal enough, [and] his radicalism has its limits.”212 The fact that this reviewer had to preface his criticism of Mill with a long self-defensive statement was itself a good indicator of Mill’s reputation among the liberal intelligentsia. With their notorious tendency for radicalism and political impatience (which had psychological roots in suffering from years of enforced inactivity and political silence under autocratic rule213), Russian liberals were all the more happy to welcome Mill’s growing radicalism, much in contrast to their more moderate counterparts in England, whose gradualist approach had been a time-tested principle in British history. The growing interest in the genre of autobiography in Russia may have been another important factor in the success of Mill’s Autobiography among Russian readers. It was a relatively new tradition that grew in popularity with the start of the reform era. Compared to their Western counterparts, Russian autobiographical writings tended to be less personal and more socially oriented as well as politically charged.214 For lack of other suitable venues, autobiographies in autocratic Russia were often used as a platform for social criticism, which proved remarkably effective in drawing the attention of the educated

210 211 212 213

214

from the influences of traditional views,” although she admitted that this was more difficult to accomplish in England where traditions go far back in history. Konradi, “Dzhon Stiuart Mill’,” iv–v; Dmitrii Ivanovich Pisarev, one of the founders of Russian nihilism, was extremely critical of Mill’s Malthusianism, which he saw as an expression of bourgeois ideology indifferent to the needs of the working people. See, Dmitrii Pisarev, Sochineniia 4 vols. (Moscow: Goslitizdat, 1955), 2: 104. Berest, “The Reception of J.S. Mill’s Feminist Thought,” 129–30. Berest, “J.S. Mill’s Principles,” 16–17. Gusev, “Dz. St. Mill’,” 102–3. See, Martin Malia, Alexander Herzen and the Birth of Russian Socialism (Cambridge, Mass.: Cambridge University Press, 1961), 118–9, 134, 313, 416–20; Aileen M. Kelly, Toward Another Shore: Russian Thinkers Between Necessity and Change (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), 1–28. T. W. Clyman and J. Vowles, Introduction to Russia Through Women’s Eyes: Autobiographies from Tsarist Russia, ed. T. W. Clyman and J. Vowles (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), 12–3.



67

classes to such issues as peasant poverty, unsanitary urban conditions, and the rights of women. The author’s private life and inner struggles were only revealed in a limited manner, usually inasmuch as they illuminated the social themes implicit in the narrative. In Russia, where the concept of personhood carried the imprint of collectivist mentality,215 focusing on the inner self, let alone on one’s sins and follies in the manner of Rousseau’s Confession, was considered inappropriate and egotistical, despite being the very essence of the genre that Russia had borrowed from the West.216 And yet, there was a natural curiosity in deeper, more revealing explorations of human nature and intimate moments of life. This explains, in part, the popularity in Russia of pseudoautobiographies, which allowed the narrator more room for self-introspection and confessional mode of expression.217 Mill’s Autobiography seems to have answered readers’ interest in the writings that engaged the themes of happiness and the meaning of life. In this case, readers were the more fascinated, because the author was telling a truthful, not semi-fictional story of life. The chapter narrating Mill’s inner “transformation” was called “the best” and the most “eloquent” segment of the Autobiography.218 Its detailed analysis occupied a considerable part of most reviews, implicitly inviting the reader to reflect on Mill’s experience. Tolstoy, a master of the Russian psychological novel, read Mill’s Autobiography and made the following comment in his letter to Charles Wright: “Psychological facts of the highest importance are often revealed in autobiographies, quite independently of their authors’ will. Such facts, I remember, impressed me in Mill’s autobiography.”219 It is not known which particular facts Tolstoy meant, but a central event of Tolstoy’s life – a deep emotional crisis at the peak of his literary career (which he described in his Confession) – bears a close resemblance to Mill’s “mental breakdown.” According to a scholar of Tolstoy, “Mill’s autobiography provided

215 See Offord, “Lichnost’,” 14–25. 216 Clyman and Vowles, Introduction, 14. 217 On the popularity of this hybrid genre, see Andrew Wachtel, The Battle for Childhood Creation of a Russian Myth (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990), 15, 40; Charlotte Rosental, “The Silver Age: highpoint for women?” in Linda Edmondson, ed., Women and Society in Russia and the Soviet Union (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 42–3. 218 [Anon], “Iz Avtobiografii,” Delo, no. 11 (1873), 106; Miklashevskii, “Dzhon Stiuart Mill’,” xxii; 219 Tolstoi’s Letters, ed. R.F. Christian (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1978), 2:640; See also Tugan-Baranovskii’s comment that Mill’s portrait of his father presents to the reader “a deep psychological interest.” Tugan-Baranovskii, Dzhon Stiuart Mill’, 5.


68

Berest

Tolstoy with an archetype for a memoir of doubt … so much so that he decided to borrow it in such an obvious manner from Mill.”220 Judging from the attention the reviewers paid to Mill’s account of his crisis, Tolstoy was not the only one who could relate to Mill’s experience. For Russian intellectuals driven by the idea of civic duty, the Autobiography offered a new insight into the dilemma that had preoccupied them since the publication of Chernyshevskii’s nihilistic novel: how to reconcile the need for private happiness with the demands of a life in service to the people. Knowing the selfsacrificial tendencies of the Russian intelligentsia, one reviewer hoped that Mill’s example was convincing enough to prove that the choice “between private and public, between feeling and reason” was “an artificial antithesis.”221 How many readers emulated Mill’s example is hard to tell, but it is clear that the Russian discourse on happiness itself received a new impetus with the publication of Mill’s Utilitarianism and the Autobiography.222 The story of Mill’s crisis was now perceived as an elaboration on the concept of happiness that Mill had first outlined in his utilitarian philosophy.223 It was not unusual in the nineteenth century to find Western thinkers whose works were revered in Russia as much as or even more than in their home countries. George Sand, for instance, was given an “exceptionally warm reception,” earning the honorary name “mother of Russian realism,”224 and making a profound impact on the first generation of Russian feminists.225 Among political thinkers, Karl Marx comes to mind as a prominent of example of intellectual appropriation and subsequent adaptation within Russian thought. Like Marx, Mill found a wider audience in Russia than at home, because many of his ideas 220 Inessa Medzhibovskaya, Tolstoy and the Religious Culture of His Time: A Biography of a Long Conversion (New York: Lexington Books, 2008), xxvi. 221 Konradi, “Dzhon Stiuart Mill’,” xxiii. 222 For instance, Vasilii Vasil’evich Rozanov, Russian philosopher of the Silver Age, noted in his Autobiography that he read Mill’s Utilitarianism while still very young, in his school years. “From the book,” he wrote, “I took away only one notion, but it remained with me for a long time (tol’ko odno, no zato nadolgo)—that … the purpose of man’s life is happiness… Later I was obsessed with this idea.” See Vasilii Rozanov, O sebe i zhizni svoei (Moscow: Moskovskii rabochii, 1990), 687. 223 Konradi, “Dzhon Stiuart Mill’,” xiv–xxiii, lxiii; Tugan-Baranovskii, Dzhon Stiuart Mill’, 44– 9, 60–1, 64; Miklashevskii, “Dzhon Stiuart Mill’,” xiv, xxiii, xxvi; [Anon.] “Iz Avtobiografii,” Delo, no. 10 (1873): 21. 224 Dawn D. Eidelman, George Sand and the Nineteenth-century Russian Love-triangle Novels (Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 1999), 16. 225 See, Stites, Women’s Liberation, 19–25; Lesley Herrmann, “Jacques in Russia: A Program of Domestic Reform for Husbands,” Studies in the Literary Imagination 12, no. 3 (1979): 61–81.



69

resonated with the liberal and radical intelligentsia. Even after censorship cuts, the Russian editions of Mill’s works contained enough of his original thought to make Mill a revered figure in Russia. Russian publicists, moreover, often tested the limits of censorship by using reviews of Mill’s works (and other Western literature) as a medium for the discussion of ideas that might not have received the censor’s approval in articles concerned strictly with Russia.226 It appears that books by Western liberals and even socialists had a better chance to reach Russian audiences than did writings produced by their Russian counterparts, especially if the work in question had already been widely read in Europe.227 In some cases, censors judged that the content of the book was too abstract or too remote from Russian realities to pose a serious danger.228 However, for the Russian journalists skilled in writing between the lines, reviewing such works presented an opportunity for disguised political commentary. A praise of English civil society, for instance, inevitably implied (to an experienced reader) a negative comparison with the Russian political order,229 while the discussion of abstract economic theories would conjure up the images of economic exploitation in Russia, as did Chernyshevskii’s commentary to Mill’s Principles of Political Economy.230

226 Tsebrikova’s introduction to Mill’s The Subjection of Women was a manifesto of Russian radical feminism, which went far beyond Mill in demanding the right to work for both single and married women, in keeping with the socialist principles of equality. See, Berest, “The Reception,” 133–6. Another illustrative example is Chernyshevskii’s book-long commentary to Mill’s Principles, which became popular among Russian radicals and had been praised by Karl Marx himself. See Berest, “J. S. Mill’s Principles,” 15; Pokrovskii inserted several statements of his own into his translation of Mill’s On Liberty published in Syn Otechestva. One of them, for instance read: “Clearly, in our times, the moral code … pays more attention to the interests of capitalists than those of workers…” Pokrovskii, “Lich’nost,’ i obschestvo (po Milliu),” 269. 227 For instance, Mill’s On Liberty and Robert Owen’s A New View of Society passed censorship in the 1860s and were later reissued in new editions, while the mouthpiece of Russian radicals Sovremennik (the Contemporary) was closed down in 1866. See also Marianna Tax Choldin’s discussion of the story surrounding the publication of Victor Hugo’s works. Marianna Tax Choldin, A Fence Around Empire: Russian Censorship of Western Ideas under the Tsars (Durham: Duke University Press, 1985), 85. 228 This is how Marx’s Capital passed censorship. See. Choldin, A Fence, 111. 229 See, Eugine Pyseur, “Mikhail N. Katkov: Advocate of English Liberalism in Russia, 1856–1863,” The Slavonic and East European Review 45, no. 105 (1967): 446–7. 230 On Aesopian language in Russian literature and the press, see Robert Justin Goldstein, Political Censorship of the Arts and the Press in Nineteenth-Century Russia (London: Macmillan, 1989), 62–3.


70

Berest

The same Aesopian tactic was applied to the Autobiography. Mill was held to be an exemplar of the qualities that the Russian intelligentsia admired – a strong sense of justice, duty and self-discipline. Praising Mill’s contribution to the cause of “people’s wellbeing (narodnoe blagosostoianie),” Miklashevskii emphasized that Mill embodied the virtues of those “radicals” who concerned themselves not with abstract truths but with ideas that have practical use and can be implemented “in the nearest future.”231 He added that Mill was “the best and the most sympathetic representative of English philosophical and political radicalism, whose influence continues to this day.”232 In recounting the details of Mill’s life, Russian reviewers also drew readers’ attention (in a somewhat veiled language) to such themes in the Autobiography as the culture of debate in England, the picture of life in a country with “free institutions,” the importance of critical thinking and civic education for the individual’s moral development.233 Those themes were taken for granted in Mill’s liberal homeland, but in autocratic Russia they added to the attraction of the book. With its emphatic stress on the idea of service, the Autobiography was perceived by Russian liberal reviewers as didactic reading, akin to Chernyshevskii’s novel. The value of the Autobiography for Russian audiences was well summarized by the bibliographic essay published in 1897 in the journal Russkaia mysl’ (Russian Thought) on the occasion of the second Russian edition of Mill’s work. The anonymous author referred to the Autobiography as “something truly outstanding even among other works of this kind.”234 He then wrote: “For us it [the Autobiography] is interesting and instructive; we can see in it how a genuine culture (nastoiashchaia kul’tura) is created… we can see in the book how the best people are able to serve scholarship and the public good.”235 For Russian readers well versed in Aesopian language, the reviewer’s message was clear. 231 Miklashevskii, “Dzhon Stiuart Mill’,” x–xi; By contrast, in England, Mill’s image as a philosopher-reformer did not fare well with the public. As Nicholson notes, “It is an irony that so many of his contemporaries found him much more persuasive as a philosopher than as a reformer.” Nicholson, “The Reception,” 465. Reeves agrees that “the prevailing judgment at that time was that he would have done better sticking to his books.” Reeves, John Stuart Mill, 354. 232 Ibid., viii. 233 Konradi, “Dzhon Stiuart Mill,” xii, lxxii, lxxvii, lxxxiii, xcix–ciii; Tugan-Baranovskii, Dzhon Stiuart Mill’, 24, 44, 36, 51; Miklashevskii, “Dzhon Stiuart Mill’,” xiii, xxviii–xxix; [Anon] “Iz Avtobiografii Dzhona Stiuarta Millia,” Delo, no. 11 (1873): 120; [Anon], “Iz Avtobiografii Dzhona Stiuarta Millia,” Delo, no. 10 (1873): 6, 10; Mikhailovskii, “Obzor,” 170–71; Vladislavlev, “Dzhon Stiuart Mill’,” 142; [Anon], “Avtobiografiia (istoriia moei zhizni i ubezhdenii) Dzhona Stuarta Millia,” Russkaia mysl’ no. 1 (1897): 14–16. 234 Ibid., 14. 235 Ibid., 16. (The italics are original.)
