Walter C. Clemens, Jr. Boston University, Professor Emeritus

If God does not exist, are good and evil just human constructs? To understand the essence of human life, should we explore ordinary or extreme conditions? Exploring apologies for bloodshed, Morson adapts Mikhail Bakunin’s concept of the non-alibi—that no one can escape responsibility for his or her actions. A pervasive theme in Russian literature traced by Morson is how the aspiration to relieve human suffering can lead to profound empathy or bloodthirsty tyranny. High ideals can provoke execrable behavior. Some Russian writers wrote poems and stories meant to explore and understand the human condition. Some were pilgrims wandering among ideas; others were idealists, often incorrigible and disappointed. A third group worshipped violence. Members of the self-styled intelligentsia, they were devoted to revolution by violent means. Why did “People’s Will [Narodnaya Volya]” revolutionaries assassinate the “Tsar Liberator” Alexander II in 1885? Having succeeded his reactionary father in 1856, the new tsar eliminated serfdom in 1861, established a western style court system in 1864 along with local selfgovernment institutions [zemstva], modernized the military in 1874, with classes in reading and writing, and was planning to introduce a constitution when he was killed. Apologists of the assassination averred that nothing could be reformed without violence. They ignored that in 1861 some 55 million peasants had obtained freedom and a small piece of their own land. Students of Russian history, the founding director of the Kennan Institute notes, have ignored the growth of these institutions and their castration under Bolshevik rule.1 The reign of Alexander II, Morson states (p. 23) also “witnessed an amazing, perhaps even unsurpassed, concentration of literary genius.” Parts of Crime and Punishment and War and Peace appeared in the same “thick” journal in April 1866. On the other hand, the poems and stories of Pushkin and Lermontov (each killed in a duel) appeared in the 1820s and 1830s, as well as the first true Russian drama, Gore ot Uma [Wit Works Woe] by Alexander Griboyedov, written in 1823- 1824 but not staged in his lifetime due to state censorship and mentioned only en passant by Morson, even though his play eviscerates Russia’s leisured upper classes and warns of the folly of suppressing free thought. The 1820s also saw the first poems of Fedor Tiutchev (not mentioned by Morson), written from the 1820s to 1870s, widely seen as Russia’s third greatest poet.2 As a government official, Tiutchev opposed narrow-minded censorship but urged propaganda to blind Europeans to the ugly facets of tsarist rule. Demands for revolutionary violence dated from before the ascendance of Alexander II. Then, one year after serfdom was ended, the proclamation “Young Russia” (written by P.G. Zaichnevsky and others)—contrary to mounting evidence—declared: “There is only one way out of this oppressive and terrible situation…a bloody and merciless revolution…to change all the foundations of contemporary society….We know that rivers of blood will flow and innocent victims will perish…but we still welcome this approach.” To spare the sensitivities of readers, this review omits details of how “Young Russia” planned to kill not just supporters of the old regime but those claiming to be neutral. 1 S. Frederick Starr, email January 19, 2024. 2 Richard A. Gregg, Fedor Tiutchev: The Evolution of a Poet, New York: Columbia Universit