Assuredly many sad and deplorable facts must be recognized: sincere, honest young men, earnestly seeking the truth, went on their quest to the people, trying to alleviate its woes. And what happened? The people drove them away, and refused to recognize their honest efforts. For those young men hold the people to be otherwise than as it is. [...]
Blessed, none the less, be those who shall find the right path in these circumstances! The breach with environment is bound to be much more decisive than the breach between the society of to-day and to-morrow, which the Socialists prophesy. For if one wants to go to the people and remain with the people, one must first of all learn not to scorn the people;* and this it is well-nigh impossible for our upper class to do. In the second place, one must believe in God, which is impossible for Russian Europeans (though the genuine Europeans of Europe do believe in God); they hate and despise its ideals, and offer it remedies which it cannot but regard as senseless and crazy.
Abridged
From ‘Letters of Fyodor Michailovitch Dostoevsky to his Family and Friends’ (?1914), by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821-1881), edited and translated by Alexander Eliasberg (1878-1924) and Ethel Colburn Mayne (?-1941).
* “Instead of living the life of the people,” Dostoevsky had written earlier in this letter, “these young men, who understand the people in no wise, and profoundly scorn its every fundamental principle — for example, its religion — go to the people not to learn to know it, but condescendingly to instruct and patronize it: a thoroughly aristocratic game!”