Love vs. Ideology: The Hypocrisy of Pyotr in Dostoevsky's Novel
what is love? Is love an idea or is it action? These are some questions Dostoevsky explores in The Brothers Karamazov.
For Dostoevsky, there was something that really concerned him. It was the attitude of the Russian elite of his day. The Russian elites of his day were very interested in the revolutionary ideologies coming out of Europe. Whether it was a form of enlightenment or Marxism. Dostoevsky's concern was that as the elite were interested in these revolutionary ideals and ideologies coming from Europe, they were neglecting their basic religious values and he felt that that would affect their commitment to love; it would affect their capacity for love.
A great example of that in the novel is the character called Pyotr. Pyotr appreciates the European ideologies and values. He takes pride in aligning himself with the European ideologies and intellectuals. Dostoevsky mentions how Pyotr appreciates Proudhon who is a European intellectual who was friends with Karl Marx. And was also an anarchist who wanted to tear down the system and rebuild it again. Proudhon's famous quote is "Property is theft." To own property he said it's stealing from nature, so to speak.
So here's the interesting part! Pyotr appreciates and wants to be seen as someone who aligns with Proudhon. At the same time Pyotr owns a lot of property. He doesn't just own property. He owns a thousand serfs that work in estates. Serfs are peasants who almost are like slave labor in the Russian society of that time. And what we see here is that Pyotr becomes a great example of what Dostoevsky considers ideological hypocrisy. Pyotr aligns with the European intellectual who says, "Property is theft!". He wants to be seen as someone who is a part of this revolutionary ethos at the same time he owns people as property.
So Dostoevsky was concerned that this kind of ideological hypocrisy makes people self-righteous. It reduces their capacity to love. We see that in the novel where Pyotr despises Fyodor as someone who is uneducated, who is neglectful of his son Dimitri. Pyotr is Dimitri's uncle. He takes guardianship of Dimitri away from Fyodor. After a while, he loses interest in being a guardian to Dimitri. So he leaves him and goes to Europe to be a part of the revolutionary movement.
So why would he do that? Why would he want to be seen as this very good person who's fighting in a big revolutionary cause, while at the same time, abandoning a young man to whom he made a promise? To understand this, we need to understand the inner psychology of how revolutionary movements work.
A great example of that is something we see in Lenin who spearheaded the communist revolution in Russia in 1917. And in 1919, just two years after the bloody revolution, he wrote to this to one of his comrades, Maxim Gorky. He said, "We do not have time to pay attention to individual complaints. Our job is to overthrow the old regime and build a new society." What do we see here? We see here a lack of concern for the individual while being concerned about the masses. So the individual can fall through the cracks and that's okay. This is what Pyotr is doing here. He is concerned about these big revolutionary movements and ideas in Europe while he abandons the young man Dimitri who he took under his guardianship.
Dimitri needed a good shepherd, so to speak. And what we see in Jesus is the opposite of what Lenin talks about. What we see in Jesus is care for the individual in Luke 15, Jesus talks about how a good shepherd is somebody who would leave the 99 sheep and go after the one lost sheep. And when the one lost sheep is found anxious and desperate, the good shepherd would pick up the sheep, put it on the shoulders and bring the sheep back home.
Dimitri was neglected by his father. What he needed was a good shepherd. But what ended up happening is Pyotr adopted him and then abandoned him, creating in Dimitri a deep scar of how he viewed himself as being an unwanted person. This psychological scar would eventually turn into a form of violence later on in the novel which becomes central to the rest of the story.
So Pyotr in his ideological hypocrisy became self-righteous and is incapable of love. Dostoevsky loves putting opposite characters together on the opposite side to Pyotr is another character called Polyonov. Polyonov is someone who takes guardianship of the other two sons that Fyodor had, Alexi and Ivan, and is different from Pyotr.
Polyonov pays attention to the individual. He pays attention to that one lost sheep in a Christ-like way. In fact, Ivan says Polyonov had this passion for good deeds and Dostoevsky comments that Polyonov recognized the uniqueness of Alexi. Who eventually becomes the protagonist of the novel and it was Polyonov's attention to Aleksey and in helping him develop into a young man is what helps Alexa develop a deeper moral conscience. And makes them into a compassionate young man.
What we see in Dostoevsky here is as he places, these two contrasting figures, Pyotr, and Polyonov to give us a sense of what love really is. Love is not about having the right ideas. Love is about actions. Love is not about going on these ideological battles, so to speak, that we often see in social media, where people fight with each other about what is the right idea to help billions of people. And in fighting with each other about all these ideas about helping billions of people, they fail to act, to love the individuals who are in front of them.
And this is what Dostoevsky was trying to critique in terms of the ideological hypocrisy among the elite, which took away their capacity for love. So if we want to be people who are loving, What Dostoevsky is calling us in some sense is to love the individual in a Christ-like self-giving way. And if each of us would do that, then billions of people will all feel cared and loved.
