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Nechludov: *
Resurrection was published 1899, last novel written by Tolstoy, final major long fiction work published in his lifetime. Originally published serially in the popular weekly magazine Niva (to raise funds for the resettlement of the Doukhobors). Intended it as an exposition of the injustice of man-made laws & hypocrisy of the institutionalized church. It also explores the economic philosophy & theory of Georgism, to which Tolstoy had become an advocate late in life.
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Petrinism: *
In 19th century Russia, the intellectuals were split between the Slavophil’s and the Westerners. The pseudomorphosis of Petrinism will be a Culture which is affable or compatible with Faustian Culture. It will be a Culture favourable to Western sensibilities & morality. Tolstoy’s hero Nechludov is concerned with his personal soul, his own salvation (an idea Spengler sees as quintessentially Faustian, as against a much broader moral concern for the community as a whole). This places Tolstoy in the camp of the Westerners.
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Raskolnikov: *
Dostoevsky, in contrast to Tolstoy, was clearly a Slavophil & rejected Western Civilization. In the 1860s, he discovered Pochvennichestvo (a movement similar to Slavophilism); it rejected Europe's culture& contemporary philosophical movements (e.g. nihilism, materialism). In "Socialism and Christianity", he claimed that civilisation was degraded & moving towards liberalism & losing its faith in God. Traditional Christianity should be recovered. Contemporary Western Europe rejected revelation & Christian ethics ('Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself'). It had replaced these with practical conclusions (every man for himself and God for all) or scientific slogans (the struggle for survival). This was the result of the collision between communal and individual interests, brought about by a decline in religious and moral principles. Dostoevsky distinguished three "enormous world ideas" prevalent in his time: Roman Catholicism, Protestantism & Russian Orthodoxy. Catholicism continued Imperial Rome& had thus become anti-Christian and proto-socialist. Protestantism was self-contradictory & would ultimately lose power and spirituality. He deemed Russian Orthodoxy to be the ideal form of Christianity.