If you conclude from the title of the column that it contains an account of Russia’s recent invasion of Ukraine, or a description of where Russian troops are currently encamping and where they are advancing. So you are wrong. An even bigger issue is being discussed in this column.
An issue that, once fully understood, will never make it difficult for you to comprehend conflicts in which Russia is a party. This is the subject that literature and philosophy will be discussed in the coming paragraphs. And these two things are very different from each other in taste and texture.
Literature is a genre, while philosophy is a dry and tasteless thing like barley bread. In my opinion, the literary man will always look like the owner of an interesting personality, but a philosophical man is like one having curses of mothers. In my life, I have not seen anyone except Ustad Ahmad Javed and Shafiq Mukarram Qaiser Shehzad, to whom even philosophy has not been able to distort them. Both are Sufis, so they are in God’s care.
You cannot understand a novel unless you understand its author. And you can’t understand a writer unless you understand the political and social environment of his country at the time when that masterpiece was written. Because the intellectual structure of a writer is the result of the circumstances around him.
For example, our so-called writers are intellectual slaves because they were born in a region where slavery to British colonialism was mentally accepted. In these lines, since the two great novelists of the world of literature, Leo Tolstoy and Fyodor Dostoevsky, are under discussion, and both are Russian, we must first know their background.
Luckily for us, not only the house but also the time of both is the same. Surprisingly, the two lived in St. Petersburg for a long time, but never met. Dostoevsky asked for an appointment, but Tolstoy did not know him, so he refused, thinking “he must be a Facebook user who will waste time.”
However, when Dostoevsky passed away and the shocking news spread on Facebook, Tolstoy also read one of his “posts” to see why there is so much mourning in the city. You wonder where Facebook came at that time. Websites and apps didn’t really exist then. At that time, the faces were the book and the shock of Dostoevsky’s departure was written on every face. The reaction of Tolstoy after reading Dostoevsky is in itself a true tribute.
He wrote: “I have never seen this person. And it had nothing to do with it. But now, all of a sudden, when he passed away, I realized that he was the one who could be my closest and dearest. A man whose presence I needed most. I consider him my friend, and I have no doubt we’ll meet one day.”
Interestingly, Tolstoy did not like Dostoevsky’s novel “Crime and Punishment” at all. He was disappointed by the outcome of the story. Tolstoy thought the poor young boy would eventually change the world, but the story ended differently. Dostoevsky, however, seemed to love Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina.
Dostoevsky’s words were: “Anna Karenina is sheer perfection as a work of art. No European work of fiction of our present day comes anywhere near it. Furthermore, the idea underlying it shows that it is ours, ours, something that belongs to us alone and that is our own property, our own national ‘new word’ or, at any rate, the beginning of it.”
Consider the eloquence of Dostoevsky, a man with a very tall personality. How much emphasis there is on “ours” in particular. He even gave it the status of national property. This is the real writer. A writer is a person who represents the culture of his region to the rest of the world, and a leader who helps his people to stay connected to their culture and identity.
In other words, his loyalty is not only to his culture but he is also its guardian. In our case, British colonialism has left poison, the effect of which is also in literature that our writer is not our representative. They have a responsibility to bring Western civilization to us instead of passing it on to others.
Leo Tolstoy and Fyodor Dostoevsky were born in Russia, where 90% of the population lived in slavery. There was no resistance from these slaves. They had accepted it as God’s will. The country was dependent on agriculture. Ten percent belonged to the elite, knowledge and luxury were for them. Tolstoy himself was part of the elite.
Thus Napoleon arrived there in 1812. Its invasion lasted five months. Napoleon was not alone, he came with 14 allies. It is the psyche of the western nations that they always attack in the form of gangs. Less country, more Indian film goons. A total of one million people on both sides were killed in the five-month war imposed by Napoleon.
Just like when we see crackers exploding in the street, crowds of people gather there to talk about why we had to face this cracker. Will it happen again? If so, what is the remedy? Even on the global scene, when the cracker of war explodes, countries gather where the same questions are discussed on a larger scale.
So that’s what happened in Russia. There were “circles” formed, which led to the emergence of rebellious ideas. In such a situation, 35 years later, when another attack was carried out jointly by the Ottoman Empire, Britain and France, the conflict rises. Tolstoy also fought in this war as a soldier. Thus these two great writers saw firsthand the devastation of war, its causes, and consequences.
Interestingly, Dostoevsky also enlisted in the army. But couldn’t pass out from the academy. The narrator of the time states that in human history, the military uniform would not have been as bad on the body of any human being as it was on Dostoevsky. He did not have the manners to dress up. He even held a gun like a stick.
The Crimean War lasted from 1853 to 1856. But the remarkable thing is that in the five-month war imposed by Napoleon, a total of one million people were killed on both sides and Russia was victorious. The Crimean War lasted for three years. But a total of half a million people were killed on both sides. And many of them died of epidemics.
But the war resulted in Russia’s defeat. Thus, this war had a profound effect on the people in terms of thinking. The nation was the one whose illiterate concept was based on “God’s will”. So they did not like this God’s intention at all. In such a situation, when the rebel circles started calling for atheism, it spread rapidly.
The idea began to emerge that they must become like Europe. In other words, indigenous liberal-type people began to emerge there. Tolstoy and Dostoevsky were watching this breakdown in Russian society very closely and with great attention. (To be continued)
