Russian Nihilism – 4

And now the socialists of the West came to tell the young enthusiasts that there is a way to solve the social question and remove forever the causes of popular suffering.

Continuing Russian Nihilism,
our selection from Sergius Stepniak. The selection is presented in six easy 5 minute installments.

Previously in Russian Nihilism.

Time: 1881
Place: Russia

And now the socialists of the West came to tell the young enthusiasts that there is a way to solve the social question and remove forever the causes of popular suffering. These theories appeared as the last word of social philosophy, sanctioned by the authority of the greatest names in economical science and by the adhesion of many hundred thousand workmen of the international socialism, standing at the head of the world’s democracy. The Russians jumped at them as at a new revelation. The new apostles found their gospel, for which they would live and die.

From 1870 the Russian Revolution ceases to be something apart and becomes a branch of international socialism, which at that epoch descended from the clouds and became for the first time the embodiment of the workingmen’s aspirations. Still, the peculiar conditions of our country gave to the Russian social ist movement a somewhat different shape and history.

At that time, as nowadays, international socialism was divided into two unequal sections, the socialist-democrats and the anarchists. The former advocated the abolition of private property in the instruments of labor and their collective ownership by the workmen. But they wished to preserve the existing political organizations, which should be made an instrument for the economical rebuilding of the state. Thus, for the socialist- democrats the practical object was to take possession of the political power. Peaceful electoral agitation was their chief weapon, physical revolution being admitted only incidentally, if at all.

The anarchists, headed by our countryman, Michael Bakunin, were in favor of a total remolding both of economical and of political organization, advocating the total abolition of the state and the substitution for it of a series of small, absolutely independent and freely constituted communes. Parliamentary institutions were for them of no possible use and they relied for the realization of their ideals entirely upon the spontaneous action of the masses risen in rebellion.

Of these two doctrines, the last had by far the greater fascination for the Russian socialists of 1870. It promised more, for to abolish at one stroke men’s economical and political bondage was like killing two birds with one stone. Then it made of no account the political backwardness of Russia, which appeared rather more favored than other countries. The antiquated autocracy was easier to overthrow than a constitutional monarchy based upon the popular vote. According to Bakunin, the village mir had only to be freed from the oppressive tutorship of the State to become an ideal form of anarchical government by all with the consent of all.

The Russians are very subject to spiritual contagion and often accept or drop a theory in a body. In 1870 the whole of advanced Russia was anarchist. The autocracy was opposed simply because it was a government, no substantial difference being admitted to exist between Russian autocracy and, let us say, the English parliamentary regime. Accordingly, nothing was expected and nothing was asked, from the educated classes and the liberal opposition, which was in favor of a constitutional government for Russia. The socialists of this epoch based all their hopes upon the peasants. Thousands of young people of both sexes went upon a crusade among the peasants; the more exalted with the object of calling them to open rebellion, the more moderate with the intention of preparing the ground for future revolution by peaceful socialist propaganda. This was one of the most touching and characteristic episodes of the younger movement, when the motto “All for the people and noth ing for ourselves” was the order of the day.

Most of the young enthusiasts — for they were all young — belonged to the upper classes. The peasants, for whose awakening they purposed to give their all, had been the serfs of their fathers. The feeling of suspicion toward their former masters was so strong as to render utterly hopeless any attempt on the part of the “gentlemen” to obtain any influence among the common people. The propagandists, therefore, renounced all their privileges and became themselves common manual laborers, workmen and workwomen in the fields, at the factories, at the wharves and railways, in all places where common workpeople assembled. They endured cheerfully all hardships and privations and considered themselves repaid for all their trouble if they succeeded in winning here and there adherents to their cause.

This socialist crusade was a complete failure. The peasants only opened their eyes with wonder at the summons to rebellion, on the part of strangers, who came nobody knew whence and wished nobody knew what. They lent, it is true, a very willing ear to the propaganda of socialism. But there was no way of getting adherents without attracting the attention of the police, in a country where everything is watched. In the course of 1873 and 1874 fifteen hundred propagandists and agitators or their friends and supposed accomplices, were arrested in the thirty- seven provinces of the empire and thrown into prison. Half of them were released after a few months’ detention; the rest were kept in preliminary confinement from two to four years, during which seventy-three either died or lost their reason. In 1877 one hundred ninety-three were tried and condemned to various punishments, from simple exile to ten years of hard labor in the mines of Siberia.

This was a death-blow to anarchism. Whatever may be one’s views upon the best form of society in the future, it was evident that at that time the political question was not so irrelevant to the cause of the workers themselves as the early socialists tried to believe. Thousands of lives were wrecked for saying in private things that are proclaimed from the house-tops in all free countries. The propagandists who were ready to devote their lives to the work of enlightening the people, were not al lowed to devote to them more than a few days, sometimes a few hours. Political freedom was evidently something worth having, were it only for the sake of enabling the people’s friends to be of some use to them.

Continued.

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