RUSSIA AND NIETZSCHE

Throughout the Russian section the reader will notice plenty of references to Nietzsche and quite a few long quotes from him. This shouldn’t be surprising, of course, as I am fond of Nietzsche anyway, and like to quote him at the first opportunity in all of my sections. But before I proceed to my next entry, the Russia-Nietzsche connection has to be briefly explained, to emphasize its significance outside any personal attachments. Such is the purpose of this entry.

My particular love for Nietzsche, in spite of our numerous points of disagreement, is more than a matter of personal predilection. Being a Russian, I find a peculiar “Russianness,” a kindred spirit, if you like, in the great German (who was incidentally partly Slavic, but I wouldn’t invest too much into his Slavic genes). His dashingly brave thinking, a penchant for fatalism, and several other oddities, are endearing not just to me, but to any true Russian, hence an incredible admiration for him, bordering on veneration, on the part of the Russian Intelligentsia as a whole.

Nietzsche had a keen “sixth sense” allowing him to discern Russia’s coming world-historical prominence, and, most remarkably, he was pointing in the right direction as to where Russia’s global greatness would be coming from. Here is an earthshaking passage from his Jenseits-208:

“The sickness of the will is spread unevenly over Europe. It looks strongest where culture has been at home longest; it disappears to the extent, to which the barbarian still (or again) claims his rights under the loose garments of Western culture. In France today the will is most seriously sick.

“The strength to will is a little greater in Germany; but it is much stronger in England, Spain, and Corsica, not to speak of Italy, which is too young to know what it wants. But it is the strongest and most amazing in Russia. There the strength to will has long been accumulated and stored up, there the will, unsure whether to negate or to affirm, is waiting, menacingly, to be discharged.

“I do not say this because I want it to happen: the opposite would be more after my heart-- I mean, such an increase in the menace of Russia, that Europe would have to resolve to become menacing, too, namely, to acquire one will by means of a new caste that would rule Europe, a long terrible will of its own that would be able to cast its goals millennia hence, so, the long-drawn-out comedy of its many splinter states, as well as its dynastic and democratic splinter wills, would come to an end. The time for petty politics is over: the very next century will bring the fight for the dominion of the earth, the compulsion to large-scale politics.”

The colossal futuristic value of his prognostication will be properly discussed in the Nietzsche section, but, so far, it is important to discern Nietzsche’s underlying approval of Russia, in his attribution to her of the very same characteristic (strength of the will), which is obviously the dearest to his heart.

As we will be discussing later, in the coming entry on the blessedness of suffering, the Russian attitude to suffering constitutes a peculiar strength of Russia’s national character, and Nietzsche remarkably agrees with this:

“…They (mischief-makers) submitted to punishment as one submits to an illness, or to a misfortune, or to death, with that stout-hearted fatalism without rebellion, through which the Russians, for example, are still having an advantage over us Westerners in dealing with life.” (Genealogie, II:15)

As for the Russian fatalism, it is indeed a national characteristic, observed by every great Russian writer. I particularly recommend to the reader Lermontov’s brilliant short story The Fatalist (which constitutes a part of his experimental novel A Hero of Our Time), in which this trait has been taken to a revealing extreme.

And finally, here is an astonishing similarity between Bakunin’s passion for destruction as also a creative passion, and Nietzsche’s Zarathustra, quoted here from his Ecce Homo, Why I am a Destiny, Section 2:

“And whoever wants to be a creator in good and evil, must first be an annihilator, and break values. Thus the highest evil belongs to the greatest goodness: but this is being creative.”

It is worth repeating here that Nietzsche may actually have got this idea from reading Bakunin (although I wouldn't be too surprised if he had come to it by himself, revealing an affinity in their thinking patterns), as he must surely have taken the word nihilist, which he likes so much, from the Russian writer Turgenev, who had coined this word in the first place, or from Dostoyevsky, who later used it in his novel Besy (The Demons).