Russian Nihilism

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Introduction
The state of unrest that occasionally manifests itself in other countries is a perennial condition in the great Russian Empire and is not likely to come to an end there until absolutism abdicates in favor of constitutional government. Indeed, even then tranquility may be slow in coming; for the movements for reform have been, almost from necessity, in the nature of a conspiracy and the teaching of history is that when a conspiracy has become successful the conspirators quarrel among them selves. It is not to be supposed that if the Emperor should resign his throne or grant a constitution to-day, there would be anything much better than anarchy in that unhappy country to-morrow. This might not be so if free speech and a free press had gradually educated the people to a reasonable understanding of what is both desirable and possible. This they may yet have to learn through years of parliamentary wrangling and civil war. Nor can the citizens of the foremost enlightened countries on the globe — England, France, Italy — even our own free land — sneer with any grace at the poor Russians; for we have all arrived at a stable condition of civil liberty only through exactly such tribulation.

The common idea of nihilism confounds it with anarchism; and this chapter, by the famous and mysterious Russian author, Stepniak, is especially timely, in view of the new and apparently more powerful movement to overthrow or modify the government of that empire. That there should be such a popular view of nihilism is not wonderful, considering that the assassination of the Emperor Alexander II, March 13, 1881, was attributed to the nihilists. It is a mournful fact that of the three great emancipators of the nineteenth century — Alexander, Lincoln and Dom Pedro — two were. assassinated and the other was dethroned.

This selection is by Sergius Stepniak.

Time: 1881
Place: Russia

The peculiar character of the Russian revolutionary movement that is known under the name of “nihilism” has been determined by the special nature of the latter-day despotism oi the Romanoffs, which is unendurably oppressive for the masses and galling in the extreme for the individual. Neither the one nor the other of these incentives of rebellion, taken separately, could bring men to such a pitch of indignation as leads to the acts associated with the name of nihilism. And the reader will surely of generally well-informed men have very strange ideas about the so-called nihilists. Struck by their methods and the misleading name given them, many persons still consider them to be “anarchists,” deniers of everything, striving after destruction for destruction’s sake. But, on the other hand, there are some per sons who have come to the conclusion that the nihilists are not socialists but simply radicals, striving for political freedom and constitutional forms of government. The late Charles Bradlaugh expressed such views in several of his magazine articles upon the Continental revolutionary movements, which he had studied very carefully.

Finally, there is a third class and it is not small, who try to bring their sympathy with the nihilists into accordance with their abhorrence of violent methods by declaring that only a small and extreme fraction of nihilists are bomb- throwers and dynamiters and that the “genuine article” consists of decent people, who are in favor of obtaining political freedom for their country by peaceful, even “constitutional,” methods, overlooking the small detail that the possibility of constitutional methods implies the existence of a constitution, which is what Russia so sorely lacks.

Besides the bad name which we, Russian revolutionists, must needs use, under protest, if we wish people to understand what we are speaking about — besides this name, the vagueness and contradictoriness in the general understanding of our movement are due to two causes : its complicated character on the one hand and on the other the rapid changes that it has undergone in a very short time.

Thus Charles Bradlaugh suggests, “It is probable that in the great towns a sort of anarchist socialism is popular with the more educated speakers and writers.” This is a mistake. Anarchism does not exist in the Russia of to-day; or, rather, it is so feebly rep resented as to give not the slightest sign of its existence. Within the past seventeen years not a single paper or pamphlet has been published in the Russian language, in Russia or abroad, in the interests of anarchism; not a single profession of that faith has been made at any of the numerous trials, nor has there been a single public manifestation of any kind. Russian socialism of the last decade is entirely social-democratic. But only fifteen or seventeen years ago the whole of the socialist Russia was anarchical ; although this anarchism, as the reader will presently see, had nothing whatever to do with the dynamite anarchists of modern times.

This is not the only transformation that has taken place in our movement. It was propagandist in 1873-187 7, terrorist in 1878-1879; in 1880-1882 it was chiefly military and not unlike the Spanish patriotic movement; and it has become to a large ex tent civil and popular again within the past eight years. It is now on the eve of a new transformation and there is no saying whether it will become military, civil or terroristic or all combined.

The primitive and genuine nihilists, those who actually bore that name in Russia and to some extent deserved it, were a philosophical and ethical school, long ago extinct in Russia, which has been immortalized by Turgenieff in his Fathers and Children.

The intellectual movement, of which Bazarof is a living impersonation, sprang up in our country in the epoch following the Crimean defeat, which marks a general breaking-down of the despotic regime of Nicholas.

Continued.

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