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Church to become more active in society. It had, he said, lost sight of its pastoral role and had shown itself to be indifferent to Russia's major problem, the suffering of the poor. Such views were widely shared by lay theologians, like the Slavophile Khomiakov, and even by some priests in the Church hierarchy, whose writings were an influence on Dostoevsky.⁹⁵ There was a common feeling that the Church was losing ground to the socialist intelligentsia and to the various sectarians and mystics who were searching for a more meaningful and socially responsible spiritual community.

Dostoevsky's writings must be seen in this context. He, too, was searching for such a Church, a Christian brotherhood like the Slavophiles' sobornost', that would transcend the walls of the monastery and unite all the Russians in a living community of believers. His Utopia, a socio-mystical ideal, was nothing less than a theocracy. Dostoevsky advanced this idea in The Brothers Karamazov - in the scene where Ivan gains the approbation of the elder Zosima for his article proposing the radical expansion of the jurisdiction of the ecclesiastical courts. This was a subject of considerable topical importance at the time of the novel's publication. Ivan argues that, contrary to the pattern of Western history, where the Roman Church was absorbed by the state, the idea of Holy Russia was to raise the state to the level of a Church. Ivan's reforms of the courts would substitute the moral sanction of the Church for the coercive power of the state: instead of punishing its criminals, society should seek to reform their souls. Zosima rejoices at this argument. No criminal can be deterred, he argues, let alone reformed, by 'all these sentences of hard labour in Siberian prisons'. But unlike the foreign criminal, Zosima maintains, even the most hardened Russian murderer retains sufficient faith to recognize and repent of his crime; and through this spiritual reformation, the elder predicts, not only would a member of the living Church be saved but 'perhaps also the number of crimes themselves would diminish to a quite unbelievable extent'.⁹⁶ From Dostoevsky's Notebooks it is clear that he shared the elder's theocratic vision (which was closely based on the writings of Optina's Father Zedergolm) of a 'single universal and sovereign Church' that was destined to appear on the Russian land. 'The star will shine in the East!'⁹⁷

According to Dostoevsky's friend and fellow writer Vladimir Solov-

iev, The Brothers Karamazov was planned as the first of a series of novels in which the writer would expound his ideal of the Church as a social union of Christian love.⁹⁸ One can see this vision unfolding in the final scene of The Brothers Karamazov, where Alyosha (who has left the monastery and gone into the world) attends the funeral of the poor child Ilyusha, struck down by tuberculosis. After the service, he gathers around him a group of boys who had followed him in caring for the dying boy. There are twelve of these apostles. They gather at the stone where Ilyusha's father had wanted to bury his son. In a farewell speech of remembrance, Alyosha tells the children that the spirit of the dead boy will live on for ever in their hearts. It will be a source of kindness in their lives and it will remind them, as Alyosha tells them, 'How good life is when you do something that is good and just!'⁹⁹ Here was a vision of a Church that lived outside the walls of any monastery, a Church that reached out to the heart of every child; a Church in which, as Alyosha had once dreamed, ' "there will be no more rich or poor, exalted nor humbled, but all men will be as the children of God and the real Kingdom of Christ will arrive"'.¹⁰⁰

The censors banned large parts of Dostoevsky's novel, claiming that such passages had more to do with socialism than with Christ.¹⁰¹ It is perhaps ironic for a writer who is best known as an anti-socialist, but Dostoevsky's vision of a democratic Church remained close to the socialist ideals which he espoused in his youth. The emphasis had changed - as a socialist he had believed in the moral need for the transformation of society, whereas as a Christian he had come to see that spiritual reform was the only way to effect social change - but essentially his quest for Truth had always been the same. Dostoevsky's whole life can be seen as a struggle to combine the teaching of the Gospels with the need for social justice on this earth, and he thought he found his answer in the 'Russian soul'. In one of his final writings Dostoevsky summarized his vision of the Russian Church:

I am speaking now not about church buildings and not about sermons: I am speaking about our Russian 'socialism' (and, however strange it may seem, I am taking this word, which is quite the opposite of all that the Church represents, to explain my idea), whose purpose and final outcome is the