Date of Award

7-1956

Degree Type

Master's Essay - Restricted

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Department

History

Abstract

Winston Churchill, in one of his striking phrases, referred to Russian Foreign policy as "a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma,"

This phrase is an apt description of Russia itself. As one hailed as National Prophet by his contemporaries Fyodor Dostoevsky should be well suited to aid us in the solution of Russia's mystery, his ideas should be the key to an understanding of the Russian revolution and of the Russian problem in general. His purpose was to bring the Russian intellectuals back to the true tradition of the Russian folk and soil and thus save Russia and mankind. His method was to destroy the subversive influence of the West by his works, especially his two great novels The Possessed and The Brothers Karamazov, the journals he edited, and his famous Pushkin lecture. With our democratic background we are at a loss to understand the Eastern mind. The Russians themselves have asked whether Russia was really a European country with a European culture or whether she was not, after all, outside of Europe, westernized in haste and to the detriment of her true value by the arbitrary will of Peter the Great.

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