Nikolay Konstantinovich Mikhaylovsky () (,
Meshchovsk
Meshchovsk (russian: Мещо́вск) is a town and the administrative center of Meshchovsky District in Kaluga Oblast, Russia, located on the Tureya River southwest of Kaluga, the administrative center of the oblast. Population:
History
It ...
–,
Saint Petersburg
Saint Petersburg ( rus, links=no, Санкт-Петербург, a=Ru-Sankt Peterburg Leningrad Petrograd Piter.ogg, r=Sankt-Peterburg, p=ˈsankt pʲɪtʲɪrˈburk), formerly known as Petrograd (1914–1924) and later Leningrad (1924–1991), i ...
) was a Russian literary critic, sociologist, writer on public affairs, and one of the theoreticians of the
Narodniki
The Narodniks (russian: народники, ) were a politically conscious movement of the Russian intelligentsia in the 1860s and 1870s, some of whom became involved in revolutionary agitation against tsarism. Their ideology, known as Narodism ...
movement.
Biography
The school of thinkers he belonged to become famous in
Russia in the 1870s and 1880s as exponents of political and economic reforms. He contributed to ''
Otechestvennye Zapiski
''Otechestvennye Zapiski'' ( rus, Отечественные записки, p=ɐˈtʲetɕɪstvʲɪnːɨjɪ zɐˈpʲiskʲɪ, variously translated as "Annals of the Fatherland", "Patriotic Notes", "Notes of the Fatherland", etc.) was a Russian lite ...
'' from 1869 until its suppression in 1884. He became co-editor of ''
Severny Vestnik
''Severny Vestnik'' (russian: Се́верный ве́стник, en, The Northern Messenger) was an influential Russian literary magazine founded in Saint Petersburg in 1885 by Anna Yevreinova, who stayed with it until 1889.
History
In the e ...
'' in 1873, and from 1890 until his death in 1904 served as co-editor of ''Russkoye Bogatstvo'' ("Russian Treasure") with
Vladimir Korolenko
Vladimir Galaktionovich Korolenko (russian: Влади́мир Галактио́нович Короле́нко, ua, Володи́мир Галактіо́нович Короле́нко; 27 July 1853 – 25 December 1921) was a Ukrainian-born ...
. His collected writings were published in 1913.
Thought
Social philosophy
In his works, Mikhaylovsky developed the idea of the relationship between the
hero
A hero (feminine: heroine) is a real person or a main fictional character who, in the face of danger, combats adversity through feats of ingenuity, courage, or Physical strength, strength. Like other formerly gender-specific terms (like ...
and the masses (
crowd
Generally speaking, a crowd is defined as a group of people that have gathered for a common purpose or intent such as at a demonstration, a sports event, or during looting (this is known as an acting crowd), or may simply be made up of many ...
). Contrary to the ideas popular among revolutionary-minded people of the late 19th-early 20th centuries that an
individual
An individual is that which exists as a distinct entity. Individuality (or self-hood) is the state or quality of being an individual; particularly (in the case of humans) of being a person unique from other people and possessing one's own Maslow ...
having strong character or talent is able to fulfil incredible things and even change of the course of
history
History (derived ) is the systematic study and the documentation of the human activity. The time period of event before the History of writing#Inventions of writing, invention of writing systems is considered prehistory. "History" is an umbr ...
, in the articles "Heroes and Crowd" (1882) and others, Mikhaylovsky presents a new theory and shows that an individual does not necessarily mean an outstanding individual, but any individual who by chance finds himself within certain circumstances in the lead or just ahead of the crowd. Mikhaylovsky emphasizes that at definite moments an individual can give substantial strength to a crowd (through his emotions and actions), and so the whole event can acquire a special power. Thus, the role of an individual depends on its psychological influence is reinforced by mass perception.
Mikhaylovsky was one of the radical thinkers who were 'acutely conscious of their wealth and privilege', as the psychological inspiration of the revolution was guilt, writing: 'We have come to realise that our awareness of the universal truth could only have been reached at the cost of the age-old suffering of the people. We are the people's debtors and this debt weighs down on our conscience.'
Mikhaylovsky regarded the historical process as a progression of social environment differentiation, eventually leading to the emergence of individuality. The struggle for individuality was seen as a matter of environment adapting to personality, in contrast to the Darwinist notion of struggle for existence, in which an individual adapts to the environment. Criticizing Darwinists for the transference of biological laws onto societal development, Mikhailovsky thought it necessary to expand Darwinism with 1)
Karl Ernst von Baer
Karl Ernst Ritter von Baer Edler von Huthorn ( – ) was a Baltic German scientist and explorer. Baer was a naturalist, biologist, geologist, meteorologist, geographer, and is considered a, or the, founding father of embryology. He was ...
's law, in compliance with which organisms develop from the simple to the complex, and 2) the solidarity principle, at the base of which lies simple cooperation. Mikhaylovsky saw the utmost criterion of social progress in obtaining the ideal of a perfect, harmoniously developed person. If simple cooperation is a social union of equals with similar interests and functions and "solidarity" as the main attribute of the society in question, in the case of complex cooperation there exists a highly developed division of labor whose major attribute is the "struggle" of interrelated groups. In his view, a society might reach an advanced stage of development and yet belong to the lower type of organization, as, for instance, was the case with European capitalism based on division of labor and complex cooperation. Hence Mikhaylovsky concluded that peasant Russia lagged behind the capitalist West according to the stage of development, but surpassed it if judged by the type of organization. Furthermore, like the majority of nineteenth-century Russian thinkers, he attached particular significance to the ''
obshchina'' (traditional peasant community), a unique trait distinguishing Russia from other countries.
Минувшее. Ру
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Further reading
* James H. Billington, ''Mikhailovsky and Russian Populism'' (1958).
* George Douglas Howard Cole, ''A History of Socialist Thought'', vol. III, part 1 (1956).
References
External links
Литературная критика
{{DEFAULTSORT:Mikhaylovsky, Nikolay
1842 births
1904 deaths
Russian philosophers
Russian sociologists
Russian literary critics
Russian socialists
People from Meshchovsk
People from Meshchovsky District