Dostoyevskii’s little known novel, An Unpleasant Predicament, is a masterwork in political psychology. Central to most of Dostoyevskii’s work is that action, and the mentality or ideology that justifies action, does not spring from reason, but rather a confused myriad of passions and internal drives. Specifically, political ideology springs from these disjointed causes, and the tragi-comic consequences of the self-justificatory belief that one’s ideological position derives from “rationality” and a “sincere desire” to “improve” the lot of man is the central core of this story, and lies at the core of modern politics.

The story begins among three high ranking bureaucrats speaking of ethical life just after the reforms of Alexander II. The youngest, only recently promoted to general (as a civil service rank), Ivan Illytch, is the “progressive” of the group, and seeks to outdo his older colleagues in discussion and “understanding of humanity.” From the beginning, the desire to “show off,” to “upbraid” comes to the forefront, and is the first passion driving ideological liberalism within the troubles psyche of the young general. What drives the young man is the desire to be noticed and recognized as a “progressive intellect.” Of course, Dostoyevskii is attempting to show not an ideological type, but rather a psychological type, for, in reality, the latter does not exist, but only the former.

Ivan Illytch speaks in instantly recognizable, albeit cliched, phrases: empty, void, but calculated to get him “recognized” as an intellect. His phrases revolve around “humanity” and “equality,” without any specifics, merely chanting mantras learned from western liberals; “they will embrace each other in a moral sense” he repeats, speaking of Russians under his tutelage, without understanding what this phrase might mean. He tries to sound logical, tries to put on airs as an English empiricist, and ends up making a fool of himself. “Humanity” in his lexicon is a codeword for an entire, foggy and inchoate western liberal system, a system Ivan cannot explain or understand, but it does “set him off” from his colleagues.

This novel is, like so much else in Dostoyevskii’s corpus, prophetic. He sees ideology as a sign of a psychological state rather than as some rational interest in “humanity,” and so foresees the mentality of a Kerenskii or Yeltsin. These are individuals who believe that ideology is autonomous, that is, that the ideas, placed in some sort of order and designed to win applause, can exist and function apart from actual, day to day life, and the day to day ideas of “ordinary” people. That ideology, in their minds, once imposed upon a people, will not have effects separate from what exists on paper, and not a part of the “syllogistic” reasoning of the ideologue. In other words, Dostoyevskii is writing a comedy, a comedy whose purpose is to show the unintended consequences of the passionate drives that formulate ideology to cover for some more fundamental state, a state such as insecurity, a desire for praise, for acceptance.

The arena where the young general will “try out” his ideological phrases and pious posturing is at a wedding of one of his bureaucratic subordinates. Ivan believes that one must treat one’s “subordinates with the utmost in humanity,” a phrase, again, never explained or remotely understood. He believes that, if he arrives at this wedding party–which he hears about third hand, having not been invited–he will enlighten his benighted inferiors, raise their collective consciousness and be treated with the utmost respect and deference. He desires, in fact, he daydreams, about how he will be considered the hero of the party, how he will make speeches on liberal topics designed to evoke tears of joy and heartfelt applause, and how the young couple will remember these for the rest of their married life.

This young clerk just married is named Pseldomov, a name without meaning. Apparently, it was a “bureaucratic error,” for it may have been Pseudomov at one time, but he must now live with this error and use this meaningless name. He is a low level clerk earning a mere 10 rubles a month, and it is precisely this lowly state that the young general will “uplift” with his unannounced and uninvited visit.

As Ivan Illytch approaches the home where the party is taking place, he begins to fantasize, in the most grandiose way, how his appearance and his lofty ideas will make him nearly an object of worship among the benighted guests. He will use his position as a general to impress and uplift the population, for they must listen to a man of that high and lofty rank. He daydreams like this: “They will know my heart, they will know my essential nature: ‘he is stern as chief,’ they will say of me, but ‘as a man, he is an angel!’ Then I will have conquered them; I should have conquered them by one little act which would have never have entered [my colleague’s] head; they will be mine, I should be their father, and they, my children. . . .Why, I am morally elevating the humiliated, I restore him to himself. . . my name will be printed on the hearts of all, and the devil only knows what might come of that popularity!”

This psychological type is well known to 21st century western readers. It is that of the 40-something female, new age guru who reads two books on herbal healing and things she’s a doctor; it is the limousine liberal of the universities, using his position as professor to manipulate his students in the latest fashionable ideology; it’s the board member of the big-name corporate foundation, who things he’s uplifting humanity by secretly financing leftist front groups in the name of “democracy”; it’s the career woman who gives over her children to the daycare 10 hours a day so she can “uplift womanhood” in the corporate world; it’s the liberal clergyman who dreams of founding an “ecumenical church” to worship the “moral nature of man” and his “progress.” What do all these people all have in common? It is passion and desire, rather than reason, that motivates them. Their desire to “uplift” or to “heal” is based on something more fundamental, it is based on a desire to dominate, to control, to alter, to gain reputation, to make money, to be “recognized” as something, to be accepted by the powerful, to be praised, to be considered “progressive,” intelligent and “independent.”

Modern ideology claims autonomy for itself, and in fact, liberalism is based on such as assumption. Liberalism believes that people come to ideology because, in some vacuum, they have weighed all the political, religious and moral options possible, read all the major works in each ideology, religion and moral idea available to modern man, have produced “pro-con” lists, and then, after years (if not decades) of study and reflection, have come to come to a certain ideology “with conviction.” It is doubtful that anyone really believes this. But, of course, if people come to an ideological point of view based on something other than this, what remains of liberal democracy? If reason does not control one’s actions, then passion does, or at least, passion which drives reason. If passion drives reason, than people are not free, but are controlled by inner drives and desires very difficult to control, or even understand; then psychology, rather than ethics or politics, is the central discipline of social relations. If the average “activist” does not know the difference between a passionate desire and its pseudo-intellectual apparel, what does it say of activism? Are “democratic rights and freedoms” merely a license for people to work out their psychological states and problems? Is “liberal democracy” merely an arena where the apparatus controls passionate outbursts?

Ivan enters the wedding party, absolutely certain he will be treated like royalty, and then, he believes, will use this treatment to enlighten the crowd. For the rest of the novel, the comedy works itself out. The first thing one might recognize is a bi-polarity among the crowd. There is either servile deference or haughty contempt towards the general. Most of the attendees are of lower orders in the Petrine bureaucratic pecking order, and thus either grovel (for the sake of later benefits) or ignore him altogether. Some even show him contempt, particularly the invited journalists. But the bi-polarity becomes even more clear once the general’s plan completely fails. Slowly, the general comes to realize that he is using his bureaucratic position to enlighten the lower orders; in other words, his love of equality is vitiated by the notion that his position and the institutionalization of inequality is at the center of his plans and desires to impose “humanity.” But his passionate desire to impress has long covered up any conceptual conflict over this.

In addition, there is the bi-polarity of his alleged love of humanity and the equality of rights/obligations, along with the fact that he is uninvited and is forcing himself on the crowd. In other words, the perennial conflict within the liberal psyche has shown itself, that he is forcing liberalism upon people in the name of equality and “humanity.” He is “forcing them to be free,” in that infamous phrase of Rousseau. Liberalism, wherever it’s been implanted, has been imposed by force. From China under Sun to Britain under Cromwell; the French Revolution to the American University system; from Holland to South Africa; from Reconstruction to desegregation, liberalism must be imposed and enforced. Ideology, as such, recognizes no particulars, for it is abstract by its very nature, and as a result, it must be imposed by force and sanction, for the average citizen does not thin in abstractions. People must conform themselves to ideology, rather than ideology conforming itself to life. Politics, in its true sense, is based on ideas rather than life, and this is the ultimately bi-polarity that this novel deals with.

The comic and tragic elements of the general’s appearance at this wedding are precisely the ideology and its attendant passions coming face to face with life. It is a contradiction rather than bi-polarity: ideology is abstract, general, imbued with the vices of its activists and intellectuals; life is particular, gradual, specific, based around experience, personality and local loyalty. The two are opposites. But once it is clear that few actually want the general there, and are manifestly uncomfortable with his presence, the story of Pseldemov emerges as an anti-type to the ideological dreaming of the young general. As it happens, Pseldemov comes from the lowest form of urban poverty. Homeless after the death of his father, having his aged mother as his only friend, Pseldemov was able to scrape by, with his mother taking in laundry in a “corner” of a house somewhere, i.e. they were only able to lease a tiny part of a shared apartment, a “corner” in the verbiage of the era.

Pseldemov received the lowest of bureaucratic positions at 10 roubles a month, and sought a marriage whereby he might receive some property as a dowery. He found a young girl abused by her father regularly, a girl with obvious mental problems, whose father wanted her out of the house. This father, a drunk and a retired bureaucrat named Mlekopitaev, had a small house outside the city, filthy, but at least some property that might be improved. This father treated Pseldemov with contempt, forcing him to dance and sing to entertain, and he forced the young man to dance to prove his malleability and submission. He liked the young man because he appeared submissive and weak, and the perfect son-in-law for that reason. It is this wedding party, financed with only the bare minimum from the elder Mlekopitaev, that the general had crashed.

The general, obsessed with praise and reputation, had not considered the real life situation of his “inferior,” and neither do any ideologue breathless with glee to impose his ideological theory upon an entire population, if not the world. The story of Pseldemov was designed to be a counterpoint to the ideology of Ivan. Stories are specific, like life. Ideologies are very much unlike life, as they are abstract and based on logical designs, the product of the mind. But it is this contradiction that permits of the comic and tragic elements of the story. Ivan had not considered that maybe this family was poor, and that by his arrival, they would be forced to buy goods far out of their price range, but customary to serve a man of high rank. The elder Mlekopitaev had given only a small amount for the wedding and refused any more cash. As a result, when the general arrived, the Pseldemov’s needed to buy champagne and other expensive items out of their paltry store of money, amounting to one ruble. They needed to alter their behavior for the sake of their exalted company. In short, he destroyed the party and broke the family.

Making matters worse, the young general, having drunk too much, and after attempt to make a lofty speech on equality, passes out on the floor, drunk and increasingly ill. They then place him on the only available bed in the tiny house, and that is the nuptial bed, which the general proceeds to break and vomit upon. The bride, having been placed in a drawing room for a makeshift “nuptial couch” with her new husband, falls out of the tiny “bed” and screams in terror. The entire party rushes in, only to humiliate the girl, who goes running out of the room. She never really liked this arrangement, and runs straight into the arms of a young officer she had her eye on. Everything ends in disaster, and Pseldemov sits on the broken couch, broke and alone.

The bizarre situation the general has created illustrates in a rather powerful way that incompatibility between ideology and life; between liberalism and the superior social position necessary to impose it upon people who would rather be left alone. The confrontation between culture and the dreams of the bureaucrat and professor. The general’s vomiting and illness is symbolic of this unnatural situation, the mixing of elements that cannot be mixed without nausea. They have rejected him as he as rejected their food and drink, neither of which he was used to. To summarize the bi-polar nature of this situation:

So what is the “Unpleasant Predicament?” It is not merely the public humiliation of the young general, it is the position of the western liberal in Russia, and liberals in general. While preaching freedom, they use force; while preaching brotherhood, they demand ideological conformity; while preaching equality, they use money and position to alter society secretly. Ideologues have no understanding of life, a life where most people do not care about philosophical abstractions but would rather be left alone. Ideology without life leads to frustration, failure and coercion. A knowledge of life, on the other hand, leads to a slow abandonment of liberal ideology. This is the predicament, and Dostoyevskii’s prophetic abilities cannot be gainsaid.