You are only partly right in regarding my article as that of an angered man: that epithet is too mild and inadequate to express the state to which I was reduced on reading your book.  But you are entirely wrong in ascribing that state to your indeed none too flattering references to the admirers of your talent.  No, there was a more important reason for this.  One could endure an outraged sense of self-esteem, and I should have had sense enough to let the matter pass in silence were that the whole gist of the matter; but one cannot endure an outraged sense of truth and human dignity; one cannot keep silent when lies and immorality are preached as truth and virtue under the guise of religion and the protection of the knout.

Yes, I loved you with all the passion with which a man, bound by ties of blood to his native country, can love its hope, its honor, its glory, one of its great leaders on the path toward consciousness, development, and progress.  And you had sound reason for losing your equanimity at least momentarily when you forfeited that love.  I say that not because I believe my love to be an adequate reward for a great talent, but because I do not represent a single person in this respect but a multitude of men, most of whom neither you nor I have ever set eyes on, and who, in their turn, have never set eyes on you.  I find myself at a loss to give you an adequate idea of the indignation your book has aroused in all noble hearts, and of the wild shouts of joy that were set up on its appearance by all your enemies, both the nonliterary -- the Chichikovs, the Nozdrevs, and the mayors—and by the literary, whose names are well known to you.  You see yourself that even those people who are of one mind with your book have disowned it.  Even if it had been written as a result of deep and sincere conviction, it could not have created any impression on the public other than the one it did.  And it is nobody’s fault but your own if everyone (except the few who must be seen and known in order not to derive pleasure from their approval) received it as an ingenious but all too unceremonious artifice for achieving a sheerly earthly aim by celestial means....

.... You failed to realize that Russia sees her salvation not in mysticism or asceticism or pietism, but in the successes of civilization, enlightenment, and humanity.  What she needs is not sermons (she has heard enough of them!) or prayers (she has repeated them too often!), but the awakening in the people of a sense of their human dignity lost for so many centuries amid dirt and refuse; she needs rights and laws conforming not to the preaching of the church but to common sense and justice, and their strictest possible observance.  Instead of which she presents the dire spectacle of a country where men traffic in men, without even having the excuse so insidiously exploited by the American plantation owners who claim that the Negro is not a man; a country where people call themselves not by names but by nicknames such as Vanka, Vaska, Steshka, Palashka; a country where there are not only no guarantees for individuality, honor and property, but even no police order, and where there is nothing but vast corporations of official thieves and robbers of various descriptions.  The most vital national problems in Russia today are the abolition of serfdom and corporal punishment and the strictest possible observance of at least those laws that already exist.  This is even realized by the government itself (which is well aware of how the landowners treat their peasants and how many of the former are annually done away with by the latter), as is proved by its timid and abortive half-measures for the relief of the white Negroes and the comical substitution of the single-lash knout by a cat-o-three tails.

Such are the problems that prey on the mind of Russia in her apathetic slumber!  And at such a time a great writer, whose astonishingly artistic and deeply truthful works have so powerfully contributed toward Russia’s awareness of herself, enabling her as they did to take a look at herself as though in a mirror-  publishes a book in which he teaches the barbarian landowner to make still greater profits out of the peasants and to abuse them still more in the name of Christ and Church... And would you expect me not to become indignant?...  Why, if you had made an attempt on my life I could not have hated you more than I do for these disgraceful lines.... 

Proponent of the knout, apostle of ignorance, champion of obscurantism and Stygian darkness, panegyrist of Tartar morals—what are you about!  Look beneath your feet—you are standing on the brink of an abyss!...  That you base such teaching on the Orthodox Church I can understand: it has always served as the prop of the knout and the servant of despotism; but why have you mixed Christ up in it?  What have you found in common between Him and any church, least of all the Orthodox Church?  He was the first to bring to people the teaching of freedom, equality, and brotherhood and to set the seal of truth to that teaching by martyrdom.  And this teaching was men’s salvation only until it became organized in the Church and took the principle of Orthodoxy for its foundation.  The Church, on the other hand, was a hierarchy, consequently a champion of inequality, a flatterer of authority, an enemy and persecutor of brotherhood among men—and so it has remained to this day.  But the meaning of Christ’s message has been revealed by the philosophical movement of the preceding century.  And that is why a man like Voltaire who stamped out the fires of fanaticism and ignorance in Europe by ridicule, is, of course, more the son of Christ, flesh of his flesh and bone of his bone, than all your priests, bishops, metropolitans, and patriarchs —Eastern or Western.  Do you really mean to say you do not know that!  Now it is not even a novelty to a schoolboy.

Hence, can it be that you, the author of The Inspector General and Dead Souls, have in all sincerity, from the bottom of your heart, sung a hymn to the nefarious Russian clergy whom you rank immeasurably higher than the Catholic clergy?  Let us assume that you do not know that the latter had once been something, while the former had never been anything but a servant and slave of the secular powers; but do you really mean to say you do not know that our clergy is held in universal contempt by Russian society and the Russian people?  About whom do the Russian people tell dirty stories?  Of the priest, the priest’s wife, the priest’s daughter, and the priest’s farm hand.  Does not the priest in Russia represent the embodiment of gluttony, avarice, servility, and shamelessness for all Russians?  Do you mean to say that you do not know all this?  Strange!  According to you the Russian people is the most religious in the world.  That is a lie!  The basis of religiousness is pietism, reverence, fear of God.  Whereas the Russian man utters the name of the Lord while scratching himself somewhere.  He says of the icon: If it works, pray to it; if it doesn’t, it’s good for covering pots.

Take a closer look and you will see that it is by nature a profoundly atheistic people.  It still retains a good deal of superstition, but not a trace of religiousness.  Superstition passes with the advances of civilization, but religiousness often keeps company with them too; we have a living example of this in France, where even today there are many sincere Catholics among enlightened and educated men, and where many people who have rejected Christianity still cling stubbornly to some sort of god.  The Russian people is different; mystic exaltation is not in its nature; it has too much common sense, a too lucid and positive mind, and therein, perhaps, lies the vastness of its historic destinies in the future.  Religiousness has not even taken root among the clergy in it, since a few isolated and exceptional personalities distinguished for such cold ascetic contemplation prove nothing.  But the majority of our clergy has always been distinguished for their fat bellies, scholastic pedantry, and savage ignorance.  It is a shame to accuse it of religious intolerance and fanaticism; instead it could be praised for exemplary indifference in matters of faith.  Religiosity among us appeared only in the schismatic sects who formed such a contrast in spirit to the mass of the people and who were numerically so insignificant in comparison with it....

.... As far as I can see, you do not properly understand the Russian public.  Its character is determined by the condition of Russian society in which fresh forces are seething and struggling for expression; but weighed down by heavy oppression, and finding no outlet, they induce merely dejection, weariness, and apathy.  Only literature, despite the Tartar censorship, shows signs of life and progressive movement.  That is why the title of writer is held in such esteem among us; that is why literary success is easy among us even for a writer of little talent.  The title of poet and writer has long since eclipsed the tinsel of epaulets and gaudy uniforms.  And that especially explains why every so-called liberal tendency, however poor in talent, is rewarded by universal notice, and why the popularity of great talents that sincerely or insincerely give themselves to the service of orthodoxy, autocracy, and nationality declines so quickly....And here the public is right, for it looks upon Russian writers as its only leaders, defenders, and saviors against Russian autocracy, orthodoxy, and nationality, and therefore, while always prepared to forgive a writer a bad book, will never forgive him a pernicious book.  This shows how much fresh and healthy intuition, albeit still in embryo, is latent in our society, and this likewise proves that it has a future.  If you love Russia, rejoice with me at the failure of your book!

I would tell you, not without a certain feeling of self-satisfaction, that I believe I know the Russian public a little.  Your book alarmed me by the possibility of its exercising a bad influence on the government and the censorship, but not on the public.  When it was rumored in St. Petersburg that the government intended to publish your book in many thousands of copies and to sell it at an extremely low price, my friends grew despondent; but I told them then and there that the book, despite everything, would have no success and that it would soon be forgotten.  In fact it is now better remembered for the articles that have been written about it than for the book itself.  Yes, the Russian has a deep, though still undeveloped, instinct for truth....

 I cannot express myself by halves, I cannot prevaricate; it is not in my nature.  Let you or time itself prove to me that I am mistaken in my conclusions.  I shall be the first to rejoice in it, but I shall not repent what I have told you.  This is not a question of your or my personality; it concerns a matter that is of greater importance than myself or even you; it is a matter that concerns the truth, Russian society, Russia.  And this is my last concluding word: If you have had the misfortune of disowning with proud humility your truly great works, you should now disown with sincere humility your last book, and atone for the dire sin of its publication by new creations that would be reminiscent of your old ones.

SALZBRUNN

July 15, 1847