Session 12: Russian Literature, Russian Culture

2nd Global Conference

Friday 13th March – Monday 16th March 2009

Salzburg, Austria

Conference Programme, Abstracts and Papers

The 20th century has been an extremely turbulent century for Russia. Three revolutions at the beginning of the century, a civil war, the building of a brand new nation, a reign of terror, World War II, victory, the death of a ‘god-like’ leader,  a thaw, the Cold War, a period of stagnation, Perestroika, Glasnost, the collapse of the Soviet Union, the building of another brand new nation.  All these events have been reflected in the literature produced through the century.

20th Century Russian literature deals with issues of the revolution, the civil war, nation building, socialist construction, the  heroes of the war and the nation, the horrors of World War II, the problems of ecology, the rift between the village and the city, and other such issues. Or then, it deals with issues of bitterness, of anger, of hatred, of loneliness, of the terror of Stalin, of fear, of executions, of a stifling of innocent voices and people.

However, in all these works there is no forgiveness, unlike 19th century Russian literature that deals with the theme of forgiveness in works ranging from Pushkin’s The Stationmaster to Dostoevsky’s Crime & Punishment to Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, as perhaps it is impossible to forgive; there is nothing that can be forgiven or then the tradition of forgiveness that existed prior to the Socialist Revolution had been erased.

Forgiveness is often linked to religion. Practically every religion gives space for forgiveness. Forgiveness allows for continuity. If you forgive, then things can continue. If you do not forgive, it marks the end.

This paper examines this tradition of forgiveness in 19th century Russian literature and the absence of it in the 20th century and tries to answer the question why Russia can no longer forgive.

Download Draft Conference Paper (pfd)

Would a divine being, a greatest conceivable being, have the moral prerogative to forgive? Ivan, a character in Dostoevsky’s Brothers Karamazov, insinuates—through a poignant story of the torture of an eight-year old boy—that there are wrongs that the Christian God does not have “the right” to forgive, namely, (grievous) wrongs perpetuated by one human being against another. In Ivan’s view, only the victim of a (grievous) wrong is able—has “the right”—to forgive his victimizer, and God is not always the victim of human wrongdoing. Or if He is, He is not invariably the only victim. For example, even if the cruel general who sicks his dogs on the young boy has in so doing sinned against God, he has also done the boy a direct (and very serious) wrong: pointedly, it is the boy who is mauled, not God. God is, as it were, a third party to this wrong, to this suffering. In Ivan’s general view, whenever God is a third-party to a wrong, He doesn’t have the moral prerogative to forgive it.

Ivan clearly means for this significant conclusion to lead to another: if there are sins that God cannot properly forgive, how can He promise, as Christianity teaches He does, an “eternal harmony.” In the kingdom of God proclaimed by the Christian scriptures “all sins are forgiven,” a righteous God has been reconciled with fallen humanity, and, presumably, the resident fallen human beings with one another. But if God cannot properly forgive all sins, how can he properly bring about such a kingdom? A just God, who does not attempt what He has no moral prerogative to do, would not be able, Ivan believes, to promise heaven.

Ivan’s discussion is crafted with great care, to head off various responses that might initially arise in the minds of devout listeners, such as his brother Alyosha. And his challenge to Christianity presents, in the very least, a serious and perplexing puzzle for thoughtful Christians who suppose God is able, in His perfection, to fulfill His eschatological promise. I will consider the (de)merits of several possible resolutions. First, that there are special circumstances in which third party forgiveness is proper, and God’s acts of third-party forgiveness are among them. Second, that God does not attempt to forgive all (grievous) wrongs, even some done by His people, it being the work of His followers to do some of the “kingdom-making” acts of forgiving. And third, that God so prizes the “forward-looking” benefits of forgiveness over the “backward-looking” considerations of justice that He is willing—justifiably—to violate the demands of justice to create His kingdom.

My discussion is theological, but has important philosophical implications for defining what forgiveness is and what moral function the practice at its best serves, as well as for thinking about how to weigh competing moral considerations such as benevolence and justice.