Did the Native Soil Movement Really Exist? (Polemical Notes)

Abstract

This article deals with ideological and aesthetic foundations of the 19th-century literary movement which was later called Pochvennichestvo (Native Soil). Some scholars have suggested that the three principal figures of this movement — Fyodor Dostoevsky, Apollon Grigoryev and Nikolay Strakhov — were so different in their views that it is more reasonable to investigate the ideas of each of them separately. V. N. Zakharov, an outstanding expert on Dostoevsky, asserted in his article “Pochvennichestvo in Russian Literature: Metaphor as a Mythologeme” (2012) that the only one who truly lived up to the Native Soil principles was Dostoevsky, who set forth the program of the new movement in the Announcement about the subscription to the journal Vremya in 1860. According to Zakharov, unlike the other, “false”, members of the movement, who were just authors of Vremya, Dostoevsky widely used the metaphor pochva (soil) as a mythologeme in this article and in his subsequent works. In fact, Zakharov shared the opinion that there was a significant difference in the views of these writers. In this case, however, the very existence of the Pochvennichestvo as a single movement can be questioned. The present article argues that the term pochva was no less frequently employed by the other leading representatives of the movement and that the use of this mythologeme is not the only indication of their adherence to it. Although Dostoevsky, Grigoryev and Strakhov had serious ideological divergences, their philosophical and aesthetic views were much closer. The Native Soil writers shared a positive attitude towards spiritual independence and a national orientation of Russian literature. All of them relied on the organic essence of life and creativity. They highly appreciated the importance of Pushkin and denied excessive theorizing, aristocratic and nihilistic tendencies. The article shows how the Native Soil principles were developed by Dostoevsky, Grigoryev and Strakhov during their collaboration in the journals Vremya and Epokha and unfolded later in the journal Zarya, edited by Strakhov, and in the journal Grazhdanin, edited by Dostoevsky, as well as in Dostoevsky’s famous Pushkin Speech