RUSSIAN NIHILISM AND ITS LITERATURE.
I.
The Word "Nihilism."
I have scarcely realized until now the difficulties in the way of the
subject I am treating. To talk of nihilism is an audacious undertaking,
and in spite of all my endeavors to hold the balance true, and to
consider calmly the social phenomena and the literature into which it
has infiltrated, I shall perhaps not be able to avoid a note of
partiality or emotion. To some I shall seem too indulgent with the
Russian revolutionaries, and they may say of me, as of M.
Leroy-Beaulieu, that my opinions are imbibed from official sources and
my words taken from the mouth of reactionaries.
The first stumbling-block is the word "nihilism." In Tikomirov's work on
Russia seven or eight pages are devoted to the severe condemnation of
the use of the expressions "nihilism" and "nihilist," Nevertheless, at
the risk of offending my friend the author, I must make use of them,
since, as he himself allows, they are employed universally, and all the
world understands what is meant by them in an approximate and relative
way. I do not reject the term proposed by Tikomirov, who would call
nihilism "the militant intelligence;" but this is much too long and
obscure, and before accepting it, it behooves one to understand what is
meant by _Russian intelligence_. The nihilists call themselves by a
variety of names,--democrats, socialists, propagandists, _new men_, or
sometimes by the title of some organ of their clandestine press. This
war of names seems puerile, and I prefer to face the fury of Tikomirov
against those who not only use the objectionable term but dedicate a
chapter to what it represents, and study nihilism as a doctrine or
tendency distinct among all that have arisen until now. I cannot agree
to the idea that nihilism is merely a Russian intellectual movement, nor
do I think that all Europe is mistaken in judging that the nihilist
explosions are characteristic of the great Sclav empire. On the
contrary, I believe that if Russia were to-morrow blotted from the map,
and her history and every trace of her national individuality
obliterated, only a few pages of her romances and a few fragments of her
revolutionary literature being left to us, a philosopher or a critic
could reconstruct, without other data, the spirit of the race in all its
integrity and completeness.
Now, to begin, how did this much-discussed word originate? It was a
novelist who first baptized the party who called themselves at that time
_new men_. It was Ivan Turguenief, who by the mouth of one of the
characters in his celebrated novel, "Fathers and Sons," gave the young
generation the name of nihilists. But it was not of his coinage;
Royer-Collard first stamped it; Victor Hugo had already said that the
negation of the infinite led directly to nihilism, and Joseph Lemaistre
had spoken of the nihilism, more or less sincere, of the contemporary
generations; but it was reserved for the author of "Virgin Soil" to
bring to light and make famous this word, which after making a great
stir in his own country attracted the attention of the whole world.
The reign of Nicholas I. was an epoch of hard oppression. When he
ascended the throne, the conspiracy of the Decembrists broke out, and
this sudden revelation of the revolutionary spirit steeled the already
inflexible soul of the Czar. Nicholas, although fond of letters and an
assiduous reader of Homer, was disposed to throttle his enemies, and
would not have hesitated to pluck out the brains of Russia; he was very
near suppressing all the universities and schools, and inaugurating a
voluntary retrocession to Asiatic barbarism. He did mutilate and reduce
the instruction, he suppressed the chair of European political laws, and
after the events of 1848 in France he seriously considered the idea of
closing his frontiers with a cordon of troops to beat back foreign
liberalism like the cholera or the plague. Those who have had a near
view of this Iron Czar have described him to me as tall, straight,
stiff, always in uniform, a slave to his duties as sovereign, the
living personification of the autocrat, and called, not without reason,
the Quixote of absolutism. At the close of a life devoted to the
fanatical inculcation of his convictions, this inflexible emperor, who
believed himself to be guided by the Divine hand, saw only the
dilapidation and ruin of his country, which then started up dismayed and
raised a cry of reprobation, a chorus of malediction against the emperor
and the order of things established by him. Satire cried out in strident
and indignant tones, and spit in the face of the Czar with terrible
anathemas. "Oh, Emperor," it said to him, "Russia confided the supreme
power to you; you were as a god upon the earth. What have you done?
Blinded by ignorance and selfishness, you longed for power and forgot
Russia; you spent your life in reviewing troops, in changing uniforms,
in signing decrees. You created the vile race of press-censors, so that
you might sleep in peace, that you might ignore the needs of the people,
and turn a deaf ear to their cries; and the truth you buried deep, and
rolled a great stone over the door of the sepulchre, and put a guard
over it, so that you might think in your proud heart that it would never
rise again. But the light of the third day is breaking, and truth will
come forth from among the dead." And so the great autocrat heard the
crash of the walls that he had built with callous hands and cemented
with the blood and tears of two millions of human beings whom he had
exiled to Siberia. Perhaps the inflexible principles, the mainspring of
his hard soul, gave way then; but it was indeed too late to give the
lie to his whole life, and according to well-authenticated reports he
sought a sure and speedy death by wilful exposure to the rigors of the
terrible climate. "I cannot go back," were the dying words of this
upright and consistent man, who, notwithstanding his hardness, was yet
not a tyrant.
However, it was under his sceptre, under his systematic suppression,
that, by confession of the great revolutionary statesman Herzen, Russian
thought developed as never before; that the emancipation of the
intelligence, which this very statesman calls a tragic event, was
accomplished, and a national literature was brought to light and began
to flourish. When Alexander II. succeeded to the throne, when the bonds
of despotism were loosened and the blockade with which Nicholas vainly
tried to isolate his empire was raised, the field was ready for the
intellectual and political strife.
Russia is prone to violent extremes in everything. No social changes are
brought about in her with the slow gradations which make transitions
easy and avoid shocks and collisions. In the rest of Europe modern
scientific progress was due to numerous coincident causes, such as the
Renaissance, the art of printing, the discovery of America; but in
Russia the will of the autocrat was the motor, and the country was
forced and surprised into it. And when this drowsy land one day shakes
off its lethargy and takes note of the latent political effervescence
within itself, it will be with the same fiery earnestness, the same
exaggeration, the same logical directness, straight to the end, even
though that end culminate in absurdity.
Before explaining how nihilism is the outcome of intelligence, we must
understand what is meant by intelligence in Russia. It means a class
composed of all those, of whatever profession or estate, who have at
heart the advancement of intellectual life, and contribute in every way
toward it. It may be said, indeed, that such a class is to be found in
every country; but there is this difference,--in other countries the
class is not a unit; there are factions, or a large number of its
members shun political and social discussion in order to enjoy the
serene atmosphere of the world of art, while in Russia _the
intelligence_ means a common cause, a homogeneous spirit, subversive and
revolutionary withal. To write a history of modern literature,
particularly of the novel, in Russia, is equivalent to writing the
history of the revolution.
The subversive, dissolvent character of this intelligence--working now
tacitly, now openly, and with a candor surprising in a country subjected
to such suspicious censorship--explains why the czars, once the
protectors of the arts, have become since the middle of this century so
out of humor with authors, books, and the press. We have heard of one
emperor--the cleverest of them all--who in the interest of his reforms
had his own son whipped to death. Russian art, also son of the czars,
figuratively speaking, received scarcely better treatment when it
signified a desire to stand on its own feet.
Long and painful is the list of persecutions directed against the
growth of Thought, in prose and verse, and above all against illustrious
men. But we must make a distinction, so as not to be unjust. Herzen,
exiled and deprived of all his possessions, and the famous martyr
Tchernichewsky, confined twenty and odd years in a Siberian prison or
fortress, do not arouse our astonishment, for they suffered the common
fate of the political agitator; but it seems a pity that such artists as
Dostoiëwsky and Turguenief should suffer any such infliction at all. All
Russian literature is charged with a revolutionary spirit; but there is
the same difference between those authors whose aim is political and
those who merely speak of Russia's wounds when occasion offers, that
there is between those who are licentious and those who are simply open
and candid. And by this I do not mean to compare the nihilist writers
with licentious ones, nor to convey any stigma by my words. I merely say
that when literature deliberately attacks established society, the
instinct of self-preservation obliges the latter to defend itself even
to persecuting its adversary.
II.
Origin of the Intellectual Revolution.
Whence came the revolutionary element in Russia? From the Occident, from
France, from the negative, materialist, sensualist philosophy of the
Encyclopædia imported into Russia by Catherine II. and later from
Germany, from Kantism and Hegelianism, imbibed by Russian youth at the
German universities, and which they diffused throughout their own
country with characteristic Sclav impetuosity. By "Pure Reason" and
transcendental idealism, Herzen and Bakunine, the first apostles of
nihilism, were inspired. But the ideas brought from Europe to Russia
soon allied themselves with an indigenous or possibly an Oriental
element; namely, a sort of quietist fatalism, which leads to the darkest
and most despairing pessimism. On the whole, nihilism is rather a
philosophical conception of the sum of life than a purely democratic and
revolutionary movement. Since the beginning of this century Europe has
seen mobs and revolutions, dynasties wrecked and governments overturned;
but these were political disturbances, and not the result of mind
diseased or anguish of soul.
Nihilism had no political color about it at the beginning. During the
decade between 1860 and 1870 the youth of Russia was seized with a sort
of fever for negation, a fierce antipathy toward everything that
was,--authorities, institutions, customary ideas, and old-fashioned
dogmas. In Turguenief's novel, "Fathers and Sons," we meet with Bazarof,
a froward, ill-mannered, intolerable fellow, who represents this type.
After 1871 the echo of the Paris Commune and emissaries of the
Internationals crossed the frontier, and the nihilists began to bestir
themselves, to meet together clandestinely, and to send out propaganda.
Seven years later they organized an era of terror, assassination, and
explosions. Thus three phases have followed upon one another,--thought,
word, and deed,--along that road which is never so long as it looks, the
road that leads from the word to the act, from Utopia to crime.
And yet nihilism never became a political party as we understand the
term. It has no defined creed or official programme. The fulness of its
despair embraces all negatives and all acute revolutionary forms.
Anarchists, federalists, cantonalists, covenanters, terrorists, all who
are unanimous in a desire to sweep away the present order, are grouped
under the ensign of _nihil_.
The frenzy which thus moves a whole people to tear their hair and rend
their garments has at bottom an element of passionate melancholy born of
just and noble aspirations crushed by fatal circumstances. We have seen
what Nature and history have made of Russia,--a nation civilized by
violence, whose natural and harmonious development was checked, and
which was isolated from Europe as soon as the ruling powers perceived
the dangers likely to ensue from communication therewith. The impulse of
youth toward the unknown and the new, toward vague dreams and
abstractions, was thus exasperated; and from out the seminaries,
universities, and schools, from the ranks of the nobility and from the
bosom of the literature, there arose a host composed of women hungering
for the ideal, and young students, poor in pocket and position, who gave
themselves up to a Bohemian sort of life well calculated to set at
nought society and the world in general. A Russian friend once told me
that seeing a _mujik_ looking very dejected and melancholy he asked what
was the matter, and received answer, "Sir, we are a sick people." His
reply defines the whole race; and of all the explanations of nihilism,
that which describes it as a pathological condition of the nation is
perhaps the most accurate.
One must be prudent, however, in calling an intellectual phenomenon
based upon historical reasons a sickness or dementia; and above all one
must not confound the mental exaltation of the enthusiast with the
vagaries of the unsound mind. We do not allow ourselves to call him a
fool who does not think as we do, nor even him who leaves the beaten
common track for dizzy heights above our ken. No reformer or other great
man, however, has escaped the insinuation of foolishness, not even Saint
Francis of Assisi, who openly professed idiocy. But we have a kind of
sympathy for madness of a speculative character,--the sort of lunacy
which makes mankind dream sometimes that material good does not entirely
satisfy, that makes it yearn anxiously for something that it may never
obtain on this earth.
To begin with, is nihilism pure negation? No. Pure negation conceives
nothing further, and whatever it denies it affirms at the same time.
Nihilism, or to use their own term, Russian _intelligence_, contains the
germs of social renovation; and before referring to its political
history I will explain some of its strange and curious doctrines.
III.
Woman and the Family.
Among the most important of the nihilist doctrines is that which refers
to the condition of woman and the constitution of the family; and the
attempt radically to modify things so guarded and so sacred presupposes
an extraordinary power in the moving principle. The state of woman in
Russia has been far more bitter and humiliating than in the rest of
Europe; she wore her face covered with the Oriental veil until an
empress dared to cast it aside,--to the great horror of the court; among
the peasants she was a beast of burden; among the nobles an odalisque;
in the most enlightened classes of society the whip hung at the head of
the bed as a symbol of the husband's authority. The law did not keep her
perpetually a minor, as with us, but allowed her to administer her
property freely; yet the invisible and unwritten bonds of custom made
this freedom illusory. The new ideas have changed all this, however, and
to-day the Russian woman is more nearly equal to the man in condition,
more free, intelligent, and respected than elsewhere in Europe. Even the
peasants, accustomed to bestow a daily allowance of the lash upon their
women, are beginning to treat them with more gentleness and regard, for
they realize, tardily though certainly, the worth of the ideas of
justice deduced from the Gospels, which once planted can never be rooted
out. Their conquests are final. A few years hence the conjugal relation
in Russia will be based on ideas of equality, fraternity, and mutual
respect. I have never gone about preaching emancipation or demanding
rights, but I am nevertheless quite capable of appreciating everything
that savors of equity.
The great Russian romantic poet, Lermontof, lamented the moral
inferiority of the women of his country. "Man," said this Russian Byron,
"should not be satisfied with the submission of his slave or the
devotion of his dog; he needs the love of a human being who will repay
insight for insight, soul for soul." This noble aspiration, derived from
the profound Platonic allegory of the two soul-halves that seek each
other and thereby find completion, the Russian intelligence desired to
realize, and as a step toward it procured participation for woman in
intellectual and political life; she, on her part, proved her worth by
bringing to nihilism a passionate devotion, absolute faith, and
initiative energy. When the early Christians rehabilitated the pagan
woman, somewhat the same thing happened, and a tender gratitude toward
the gentle Nazarene led virgins and matrons to vie with strong men in
the heroism displayed in the amphitheatre.
But in our times the systematic efforts toward female emancipation have
a tendency to stumble into absurdities. To show to what an extent
conjugal equality has been carried in certain Russian families of
humble position, I was told that the wife cooks one day and the husband
the next! At the beginning of the reign of Alexander II. the longing for
feminine independence was expressed in the wearing of short hair, blue
spectacles, and extraordinary dress; in smoking, in scorn of neatness,
and the assumption of viragoish and disgusting manners. The serious side
of the movement led them on the other hand to study, to throw themselves
into every career open to them, to show a brave front in the hospitals
of typhus and the plague, to win honors in the clinics, and to practise
medicine in the small villages with noble self-abnegation, seriousness,
and sagacity.
It is worthy of note, in examining Russian revolutionary tendencies,
that political rights are a secondary consideration, and that they go
down to the root of the matter, and seek first to reclaim natural
rights. In countries that are under parliamentary regimen, half of the
human race is judicially and civilly the servant of the other half;
while in the classic land of absolutism all parts are equal before the
law, especially among the reformatory class, the nobility.
There is one fact in this connection which, though rather dubious on the
face of it, is yet so original and typical that it ought not to be
omitted. Owing to these modifications in the social condition of women,
and also to political circumstances, we are told that one frequently
hears in Russia--among the _intelligent_ class particularly--of a sort
of free unions, having no other bond than the mutual willingness of the
contracting parties, and marked by singular characteristics. Some of
these unions may be compared to the espousals of Saint Cecilia and her
husband, Saint Valerian, or to the nuptials of the legendary hero
separated by a naked sword from the bride. The Russians call this a
fictitious marriage. It sometimes happens that a young girl, bold,
determined, and full of a longing for life,--in the social sense of the
word,--leaves the paternal roof and takes up her abode under that of
another man. Having obtained the liberty and individuality enjoyed by
the married woman, the protector and the _protégée_ maintain a fraternal
friendship mutually and willingly agreed to. In Turguenief's novel,
"Virgin Soil," a young lady runs away from her uncle's house with the
tutor, a young nihilist poet, with whom she believes herself to be
deeply in love; but she finds out that what she really loved and craved
was liberty, and the chance to practise her politico-social principles;
and as these two runaways live in chastity, the heroine finally, and
without any conscientious scruples, marries another poet, also a
nihilist, but more practical and intelligent, who has really succeeded
in interesting her heart.
Is such a voluntary restriction the result of a hyperæsthesia of the
fancy, natural to an age of persecution, in which those who fight for
and defend an idea are ready at any moment to go to the gallows for its
sake? Is it mere woman's pride demanding for her sex liberty and
franchises which she scorns to make use of? Is it a manifestation of an
idealist sentiment which is always present in revolutionary outbursts?
Is it a consequence of the theory which Schopenhauer preached, but did
not practise? Is it Malthusian pessimism which would refuse to provide
any more subjects for despotism? Is it a result of the natural coldness
of the Scythian? There seems to be no doubt, according to the statement
of trustworthy authors, that there are nihilist virgins living
promiscuously with students, helping them like sisters, united by this
strange understanding. Solovief, who made a criminal attempt on the life
of Alexander II., was thus _married_, as was shown at his trial.
Among the young generation of nihilists this sort of union was really an
affiliation in devotion to their party. The bride's dower went into the
party treasury, her body was consecrated to the worship of the unknown
God; and being but slightly bound to his or her nominal spouse, each one
went his or her way, sometimes to distant provinces, to propagate and
disseminate the good news.
Tikomirov (from whose interesting book I have taken most of my
information concerning the constitution of the Russian revolutionary
family) seems to think that French authors have not done full justice to
the austerity and purity of nihilist customs, and he depicts a charming
scene in the home of intelligence, whose members are united and
affectionate, where moral and intellectual equality produce solid
friendship, precluding tyranny on the one hand and treason on the other;
adding that in Russia everybody is convinced of the superiority of this
sort of family, and only foreigners think that nihilism undermines the
foundations of conjugal union. Is this really true? In any case it seems
possible that such a beautiful ideal might be attained to in our Latin
societies, given the elevated conception of the Catholic marriage, which
makes it a sacrament, were there only a little more equity, toward which
it is evident, however, that laws and customs are ever tending.
In speaking of nihilist marriages, it is well to add that in general the
Russian revolutionary movement has a pronounced flavor of mysticism,
although at first sight it seems an explosion of free-thinking and
blasphemy. It is true that nihilist youth laughs at the supernatural,
and has been steeped in the crudities of German materialism and in the
pliant philosophies of the clinic and the laboratory; but at the same
time, whether because of the religious character of the race, or because
of a certain exaltation which may be the fruit of a period of stress,
the nihilist young people are mystics in their own way, and talk about
the martyrs to the cause with an inspired voice and with the unction of
a devotee invoking the saints. In proof of this I will give here a
nihilist madrigal dedicated to the young heroine in a political trial,
Lydia Figuier, who had studied medicine in Zurich and Paris.
"Deep is the impression, O maiden, left by thy enchanting
beauty; but more powerful than the charm of thy face is the
purity of thy soul. Full of pity is the image of the
Saviour, and his divine features are full of compassion; but
in the unfathomable depths of thine eyes there is still more
love and suffering."
The extremes of this rare sort of fanaticism are still better shown in a
famous novel of Tchernichewsky, the hero of which outdoes the Hindu
fakirs and Christian anchorites in point of macerations, penances, and
austerities. He is offered several kinds of fruit, but he will taste
only the apple, which is what the people eat; he fasts in grief and
anguish, and one day, in order to accustom himself to bear any sort of
trial, he lays himself down upon a cloth thickly studded with nails an
inch long, points upward, and there he remains until his blood saturates
the ground. Not content with mortifying the flesh in this way, he
disposes of all his worldly goods among the poor, and vows never to
touch a drop of wine or the lips of woman. This is only the hero of a
story-book; yes, but this story endeavors to present a type, an ideal
pattern, to which the _new men_, or nihilists, try to conform
themselves.
It must be understood that when I say mysticism, I use the word in a
generic and not in a theological sense. It seems contradictory to say
that an atheist can do and feel like the most fervent believer; but a
man may pass a whole lifetime in parrying logic, and yet sometimes what
his reason refuses his imagination accepts. There is something in
nihilism that recalls the transcendental contradictions of the Hindu
philosophies and religions, especially Buddhism; and in Russian brains
there is a fermentation of heterodox illumination which is manifested
among the common people by sects of tremblers, jumpers, and others, and
among the more learned classes by revolutionary mysticism, amorphism,
anarchy, and a gloomy and rebellious pessimism. The prophets of the
ignorant sects among the people preach many of the revolutionary dogmas,
teaching disobedience to all authority, community of goods, social
liquidation and free love, yet without political intention; and better
educated nihilists, even reactionary minds like Dostoiëwsky, feel the
pulse of mystic enthusiasm which runs in the blood. The people are so
predisposed to color the language of the political devotee that they
were quite satisfied with the answer given by the propagandist Rogatchef
to the peasants who asked what he sought among them. He replied, "The
true faith."
To the honor of humanity be it said that the most profound emotions it
has experienced have been produced by its own thirst for the ideal, and
caused by the need of belief, and of feeling in one form or another a
religious excitement. It is this element which conquers our sympathy for
nihilism; this shows us a young and enthusiastic people given to visions
and sublime ardors. To put it more explicitly, I am not passing judgment
upon the only revolutionaries just now extant in the world. I have very
little liking for political upheavals; but, to the egotistical
indifference that afflicts some nations, I believe that I prefer the
passionate extremes of nihilism. In politics as in art we want the
living.
It will be seen therefore that the people were not irrelevant in
confounding nihilism with a religions sect. As far as our rationalist
age will admit, the nihilist dissenter resembles the great heretics of
the Middle Ages; he has traces of the Millenarian, of Sakya Muni, and of
the German pantheists; and he has the blind faith, the hazy transports,
the dogmatical and absolute affirmation of the persecuted religious
sects, and of esoteric and subterranean beliefs. He adores a divinity
without feelings, deaf and primitive, and this adoration is the
corner-stone of the nihilist temple. The _mujik_ sublimated by Russian
literature is the god of nihilism.
IV.
Going to the People.
Here is a passage from Tikomirov's book to illustrate this aspect of
Russian revolution:--
"Where is there any sociological theory that can explain the
crusade taken up in 1873 by thousands of young men and women
determined to _go to the people_? The word crusade is
appropriate. Our youths left the bosom of their families;
our maidens abandoned the worldly pleasures of life. Nobody
thought of his own welfare; the great cause absorbed all
attention, and the nervous tension was such that many were
able to endure, without injury to health, unusual and
dreadful privations. They gave up their past life and all
their property, and if any vacillated in offering his
fortune to the cause, he was looked upon with pity and
contempt. Some renounced official positions and gave all
their means, even to thousands of rubles; others, like
Prince Krapotkine, from being _savants_, diplomats and
opulent, became humble artisans. The prince took to painting
doors and windows. Rich heiresses sought occupation as
factory operatives, even some who had reigned as belles in
aristocratic salons. It was as though, exiled from other
classes of society, they found, in turning to the people,
their souls' true country."
Do not these words almost seem to describe the beginnings of
Christianity in Rome?
The idol takes no notice of his fanatical adorers, nor perhaps does he
understand them any better than the peasant-woman of Toboso understood
the amorous suit with which Don Quixote wooed her malformed and
dishevelled person. The Russian peasant cannot make anything of theories
and apotheoses evolved from an intellectual condition amounting to
rapturous frenzy. "Oh that I might die," exclaims a devout nihilist,
"and that my blood like a drop of hot lead could burn and arouse the
people!" This thirst for martyrdom is common, but above all is the
anxiety to be amalgamated with the people, to know them, and if possible
to infuse them with the enthusiasm they feel themselves.
It requires more courage to do what Russians call _going to the people_,
than to bear exile or the gallows. In our society, which boasts of its
democracy, the very equalization of classes has strengthened the
individual instinct of difference, and especially the aristocrats of
mind, the writers and thinkers, have become terribly nervous, finicky,
and inimical to the plebeian smell, to the extent that even novels which
describe the common people with sincerity and truth displease the public
taste. Yet the nihilists, a select company from the point of view of
intellectual culture, go, like apostles, in search of the poor in
spirit, the ignorant and the humble. The sons of families belonging to
the highest classes, alumni of universities, leave fine clothes and
books, dress like peasants, and mix with factory hands, so as to know
them and to teach them; young ladies of fine education return from a
foreign tour and accept with the utmost contentment situations as cooks
in manufacturers' houses, so as to be able to study the labor question
in their workshops. We find very curious instances of this in
Turguenief's novel "Virgin Soil." The heroine, Mariana, a nihilist, in
order to learn how the people live, and to _simplify herself_ (this is a
sacramental term), helps a poor peasant-woman in her domestic duties.
Here we have the way of the world reversed: the educated learns of the
ignorant, and in all that the peasant-woman does or says the young lady
finds a crumb of grace and wisdom. "We do not wish to teach the people,"
she explains, "we wish to serve them." "To serve them?" replies the
woman, with hard practicality. "Well, the best way to serve them is to
teach them." Equally fruitless are the efforts of Mariana's _fictitious
husband_, or _husband by free grace_, as the peasant-woman calls
him,--the poet and dreamer Nedjanof, who thinks himself a nihilist, but
in the bottom of his soul has the aristocratic instincts of the artist.
Here is the passage where he presents himself to Mariana dressed in
workman's clothes:--
"Mariana uttered an exclamation of surprise. At first she
did not know him. He wore an old caftan of yellowish drill,
short-waisted, and buttoned with small buttons; his hair was
combed in the Russian style, with the part in the middle; a
blue kerchief was tied around his neck; he held in his hand
an old cap with a torn visor, and his feet were shod with
undressed calfskin."
Mariana's first act on seeing him in this guise is to tell him that he
is indeed ugly, after which disagreeable piece of information, and a
shudder of repugnance at the smell of his greasy cap and dirty sleeves,
they provide themselves with pamphlets and socialist proclamations and
start out on their Odyssey among the people, hoping to meet with
ineffable sufferings. He would be no less glad than she of a heroic
sacrifice, but he is not content with a grotesque farce; and the girl is
indignant when Solomine, her professor in nihilism, tells her that her
duty actually compels her to wash the children of the poor, to teach
them the alphabet, and to give medicine to the sick. "That is for
Sisters of Charity," she exclaims, inadvertently recognizing a truth;
the Catholic faith contains all ways of loving one's neighbor, and none
can ever be invented that it has not foreseen. But the human type of the
novel is Nedjanof, although the nihilists have sought to deny it. There
is one very sad and real scene in which he returns drunk from one of
his propagandist excursions, because the peasants whom he was
haranguing compelled him to drink as much as they. The poor fellow
drinks and drinks, but he might as well have thrown himself upon a file
of bayonets. He comes home befuddled with _wodka_, or perhaps more so
with the disgust and nausea which the brutish and mal-odorous people
produced in him. He had never fully believed in the work to which he had
consecrated himself: now it is no longer scepticism, it is invincible
disgust that takes hold upon his soul, urging him to despair and
suicide. The lament of his lost revolutionary faith is contained in the
little poem entitled "Dreaming," which I give literally, as follows:--
"It was long since I had seen my birthplace, but I found it
not at all changed. The deathlike sleep, intellectual
inertia, roofless houses, ruined walls, mire and stench,
scarcity and misery, the insolent looks of the oppressed
peasants,--all the same! Only in sleeping, we have
outstripped Europe, Asia, and the whole world. Never did my
dear compatriots sleep a sleep so terrible!
"Everything sleeps: wherever I turn, in the fields, in the
cities, in carnages, in sleighs, day and night, sitting or
walking; the merchant and the functionary, and the watchman
in the tower, all sleep in the cold or in the heat! The
accused snores and the judge dozes; the peasants sleep the
sleep of death; asleep they sow and reap and grind the
corn; father, mother, and children sleep! The oppressed and
the oppressor sleep equally well!
"Only the gin-shop is awake, with eyes ever open! And
hugging to her breast a jug of fire-water, her face to the
pole, her feet to the Caucasus, thus sleeps and dreams on
forever our Mother, Holy Russia!"
To all nihilist intents and purposes, particularly to those of a
political character, the masses are apparently asleep. Many eloquent
anecdotes refer to their indifference. A young lady propagandist, who
served as cook on a farm, confesses that the peasants spitefully accused
her of taking bread from the poor. In order to get them to take their
pamphlets and leaflets, the nihilists present them as religious tracts,
adorning the covers with texts of Scripture and pious mottoes and signs.
Only by making good use of the antiquated idea of distribution (of
goods) have they any chance of success; it is of no use to talk of
autonomous federations, or to attack the emperor, who has the people on
his side.
The active nihilists are always young people, and this is reason enough
why they are not completely discouraged by the sterility of their
efforts. Old age abhors fruitless endeavors, and better appreciating the
value of life, will not waste it in tiresome experiments. And this
contrast between the ages, like that between the seasons, is nowhere so
sharp as in Russia; nowhere else is the difference of opinions and
feelings between two generations so marked. Some one has called nihilism
a disease of childhood, like measles or diphtheria; perhaps this is not
altogether erroneous, not only as regards individuals but also as
regards society, for vehemence and furious radicalism are the fruit of
historical inexperience, of the political youth of a nation. The
precursor of nihilism, Herzen, said, with his brilliant imagery and
vigor of expression, that the Russia of the future lay with a few
insignificant and obscure young folks who could easily hide between the
earth and the soles of the autocrat's boots; and the poet Mikailof, who
was sentenced to hard labor in 1861, and subsequently died under the
lash, exclaimed to the students, "Even in the darkness of the dungeon I
shall preserve sacredly in my heart of hearts the incomparable faith
that I have ingrafted upon the new generation."
It is sad to see youth decrepit and weary from birth, without enthusiasm
or ambition for anything. It is more natural that the sap should
overflow, that a longing for strife and sacrifice, even though foolish
and vain, should arise in its heart. This truth cannot be too often
repeated: to be enthusiastic, to be full of life, is not ridiculous; but
our pusillanimous doctrine of disapproval is ridiculous indeed,
especially in life's early years,--as ridiculous as baldness at twenty,
or wrinkles and palsy at thirty. Besides, we must recognize something
more than youthful ardor in nihilism, and that is, sympathetic
disinterestedness. The path of nihilism does not lead to brilliant
position or destiny: it may lead to Siberia or to the gibbet.
V.
Herzen and the Nihilist Novel.
But it is time to mention some of the precursors of nihilism. First of
all there is Alexander Herzen, a brilliant, paradoxical writer, a great
visionary, a keen satirist, the poet of denial, a romanticist and
idealist to his own sorrow, and, in the bottom of his soul, sceptical
and melancholy. Herzen was born in Moscow in the year of the Fire, and
his mind began to mature about the time the December conspirators forced
Nicholas I. into trembling retirement. He was wont to say that he had
seen the most imposing personification of imperial power, had grown up
under the shadow of the secret police and panted in its clutches.
Charmed by the philosophical doctrines of Hegel and Feuerbach, which
were then superseding the French, he became a socialist and a
revolutionary. Just at the time when to have a constitution was the
ideal and the dream of the Latin peoples, who were willing to tear
themselves to pieces to obtain it, this Sclav was writing that a
constitution was a miserable contract between a master and his slaves!
Herzen was but a little more than twenty years old when he was sent to
Siberia. On his return from exile he found at home a mental
effervescence, a Germanic and idealist current in the wake of the
eminent critic Bielinsky, Sclavophiles singing hymns in praise of
national life and repudiating European civilization which was in turn
defended by the so-called Occidentals; and lastly he found a set of
literary, innovators who formed the famous _natural school_, at the head
of which was the great Gogol. Herzen fell into this whirl of ideas, and
his æsthetic doctrines and advanced Hegelianism had great influence, and
after some more serious works he published his celebrated novel, "Who is
to Blame?"--a masterly effort, which gained him immense renown in
Russia. It was masterly more by reason of the popularity it achieved
than by its literary merit, for Herzen is, after all, not to be counted
among the chief novel-writers of Russia. Herzen was born to point the
way to a social Utopia rather than the road to pure Beauty. He invented
new phases of civilization, societies transformed by the touch of a
magic wand. The star of Proudhon was at this time in the ascendant, and
Herzen, attracted by its brilliancy, left his country never to return;
but he did not on this account cease to exercise a great influence upon
her destinies, so great, indeed, that some profess to think that had
Herzen never lived, nihilism would have perished in the bud.
Herzen hailed with delight the French revolution of 1848. He expected to
behold a social liquidation, but he saw instead only a conservative
republic,--a change of form. Then he cried out in savage despair, and
his words have become the true nihilist war-cry: "Let the old world
perish! Let chaos and destruction come upon it! Hail, Death! Welcome to
the Future!"
To sweep away the past with one stroke became his perennial aspiration.
He drew a vivid picture of a secret tribunal which every _new man_
carries within himself, to judge, condemn, and guillotine the past; he
described how a man, fearful of following up his logical conclusions,
after citing before this tribunal the Church, the State, the family, the
good, and the evil, might make an effort to save a rag of the worn-out
yesterday, unable to see that the lightest weight would prove a
hindrance to his passage from the old world to the new. "There is a
remarkable likeness between logic and terror," he said. "It is not for
us to pluck the fruits of the past, but to destroy them, to persecute
them, to judge them, to unmask them, and to immolate them upon the
altars of the future. Terror sentenced human beings; it concerns us to
judge institutions, demolish creeds, put no faith in old things,
unsettle every interest, break every bond, without mercy, without
leniency, without pity."
This was his programme: Not to civilize or to progress, but to
obliterate, to demolish; to replace what he called the senile barbarity
of the world with a juvenile barbarity; "to go to the very limits of
absurdity,"--these are his own words. They contain the sum of nihilism;
they include the pessimist despair, and the foolish proscription of art,
beauty, and culture, which to an artistic mind is the greatest crime
that can be laid at the door of any political or philosophical doctrine.
A tendency that aspires to overthrow the altar sacred to the Muses and
the Graces can never prevail.
Herzen went to London, established a press for the dissemination of
political writings in Russia, and organized a secret society for Russian
refugees, among whom he counted Bakunine; and having refused to return
to his country, he founded a singular paper called "The Bell"
(_Kolokol_), of which thousands of copies, though strictly prohibited by
the censor, crossed the frontier. They were distributed and read on
every hand, and a copy was regularly placed, by invisible hands, in the
chamber of the emperor, who devoured it no less eagerly than his
faithful subjects. From the pages of this illegal publication the
sovereign learned of secret intrigues in his palace, of plots among his
high officials, and scandalous stories reported by the socialist refugee
with incredible accuracy. By the side of these evidences of dexterity
and cleverness, some of the stratagems recounted of the times of our own
Carlist war seem mere child's play.
As the precursor of nihilism Herzen excites great interest, but there is
much to be said of Tchernichewsky and Bakunine. It is said that the
latter's influence was more felt abroad than at home, and that he fanned
the activity of the Internationalist societies, and of the Swiss,
Italian, and Spanish laboring classes. Be that as it may, Bakunine was a
classic type of the conspirator by profession,--in love with his
dangerous work. He adopted as his motto that to destroy is to create.
Caussidière saw him and watched him during the insurrections in Paris,
and exclaimed, "What a man! The first day of the revolution he is a
treasure; on the second we must shoot him!" Paris was not the only
witness of his feats; he fought like a lion at the barricades in
Dresden, and was elected dictator; he took an active part in the Polish
insurrection; he quite outshone Carl Marx in the International, and with
him originated the anarchist faction, and that last grade of revolution,
amorphism. As for Tchernichewsky, he is considered the great master and
inspirer of contemporary nihilism, his principal claim to such a place
being based on a novel; and at the bottom of the Russian revolution we
shall always find the epic fictions of our day exerting a powerful
influence.
With Herzen's novel the tendencies of nihilism were first revealed; with
Tchernichewsky's they became fixed and decisive. Novels of Gogol and
Turguenief overthrew serfdom, and novels of Turguenief, Dostoiëwsky,
Tolstoï, Gontcharof, and Tchedrine are the documents which historians
will consult hereafter when the great contest between the revolution and
the old society shall be written. When Tchernichewsky wrote his famous
novel, he had already tried his hand at various public questions, had
made a compilation from the "Political Economy" of John Stuart Mill, and
was a prisoner on the charge of organizing the revolutionary propaganda
in Russia along with Herzen, Ogaref, and Bakunine, who were refugees in
London. Before setting out to suffer his sentence of fifteen years'
imprisonment and perpetual residence in Siberia, he was tied to a stake
in a public square of St. Petersburg, and after the reading of the
sentence a sword was broken over his head. What a blow was dealt at
absolute power by this man, shut up, annihilated, suppressed, and
civilly dead! Happy the cause that hath martyrs!
His novel produced an indescribable sensation. The nihilists were
inclined to resent Turguenief's "Fathers and Sons," whose hero, the
materialist Bazarof, represented the new generation, or, according to
them, caricatured it. Tchernichewsky's book was considered to be a
faithful picture, and a model besides for the party; it was the
nihilists painted by one of themselves, so to speak. Although it is
tedious and inconsistent in its arguments, the book shows much talent
and a fertile imagination; the author declares that it is his purpose to
stereotype the personality of the _new man_, who is but an evanescent
type, a sign of the times, destined to disappear with the epoch he has
initiated. Writing about the year 1850, he says, "Six years ago there
were no such men; three years ago they were little noticed, and now--but
what matters what is thought of them now? Soon enough they will hear the
cry, Save us! and whatever they command shall be done." Farther on he
says that these _new men_ in turn shall disappear to the last man; and
after a long time men shall say, "Since the days of those men things go
on better, although not entirely well yet." Then the type shall reappear
again in larger numbers and in greater perfection, and this will
continue to happen until men say, "Now we are doing well!" And when this
hour arrives, there will be no special types of humanity, there will be
no _new men_, for all shall realize the largest sum of perfection
possible. Such is the theory of this famous martyr, and it is certainly
as original as it is curious.
The admirers of Tchernichewsky's novel compare it to "The City of the
Sun," by Campanella, "Utopia," by Sir Thomas More, "The Journey to
Icaria," by Cabet, and the phalansterian sketches by Fourier's
disciples. This comparison is alone sufficient to decide the rivalry in
favor of Turguenief; for the Siberian exile wrought only in the interest
of socialist propaganda, while the author of "Virgin Soil," whether
accurate or not in detail, was a consummate artist. Only political
excitement can dictate certain judgments and decisions. If I speak now
more at length of the exile's novel, it is for the sake of its
representative value, and as a reflection of nihilism in literature. The
title is, "What to do?" The author wishes to solve the problem put by
Herzen in the title to his novel, "Who is to blame?" and under the guise
of a love-quarrel he delineates the ideal of the contemporary generation
represented by two favorite characters, the two classic types of the
nihilist novel,--the student of medicine, a _new man_, saturated with
science and German metaphysics, and a brave girl longing to be
_initiated_ and thirsting to consecrate herself to some lofty cause.
Among other curiosities there is a nihilist husband, who, on discovering
that his wife is enamoured of somebody else, calculates his moral
sufferings as equivalent to the excitement produced by four cupfuls of
strong coffee, and he therefore takes two morphine pills and declares
that he feels better! In spite of being prohibited by the censor, this
novel, as might be expected, had a great success; the editions
multiplied clandestinely; the heroine's type became immensely popular;
the young girls took to the study of medicine with an enthusiasm and a
will to which I can personally testify; and if report be true, a part of
the new ideas concerning conjugal equality and the constitution of the
family proceeded from this novel. The popularity of the author,
glorified by the halo of his sufferings and imprisonment, far superseded
that of Herzen.
Materialism and positivism soon came also to replace the visions of
Herzen; for when Alexander II. opened the frontiers which the inflexible
Nicholas had closed, the students brought home new idols from the German
universities. Schopenhauer and Buchner superseded Hegel and Feuerbach.
Schopenhauer, with his pessimism, his theory of Nirvana and universal
annihilation, arrived just in time to foster the germs of fatalism
dormant within the Russian soul; and Buchner, by means of his very
superficial but eloquent book, was also in season to offer an
accessible, clear, and popular formula to unthinking minds and negative
or indolent temperaments; "Force and matter" was for a time the Bible of
Russian students. It will be readily seen that the revolutionary formula
and methods in Russia always came from abroad; but they met with
tendencies which were unexpected, even though they proved favorable to
development. The philosophy of nihilism was drawn from Western sources,
no doubt; yet this phenomenon made its appearance only in Russia, a land
predisposed to realism and mysticism, to brutality and languor, and
above all to melancholy limitless as its plains.
We are told of the now famous saying of a nihilist, who, being asked his
doctrines, replied, "To see earth and heaven, Church and State, God and
king, and to spit upon them all!" Although the verb to _spit_ is not so
offensive in Russia as here, and is rather a sign of repugnance than of
insult, such a reply contains the sum of negative nihilism; and
negation, the critical period, cannot last longer than the despairing
sigh of the dying. The active phase of nihilism, the reign of terror,
passed by quickly, and now the party is beginning to lay aside its
ferocious radicalism and deal with realities.
VI.
The Reign of Terror.
The reign of terror was short but tragic. We have seen that the active
nihilists were a few hundred inexperienced youths without position or
social influence, armed only with leaflets and tracts. This handful of
boys furiously threw down the gauntlet of defiance at the government
when they saw themselves pursued. Resolved to risk their heads (and with
such sincerity that almost all the associates who bound themselves to
execute what they called _the people's will_ have died in prison or on
the scaffold), they adopted as their watchword _man for man_. When the
sanguinary reprisals fell upon Russia from one end to the other, the
frightened people imagined an immense army of terrorists, rich, strong,
and in command of untold resources, covering the empire. In reality, the
twenty offences committed from 1878 to 1882, the mines discovered under
the two capitals, the explosions in the station at Moscow and in the
palace at St. Petersburg, the many assassinations, and the marvellous
organization which could get them performed with circumstances so
dramatic and create a mysterious terror against which the power of the
government was broken in pieces,--all this was the work of a few dozens
of men and women seemingly endowed with ubiquitousness, so rapid and
unceasing their journeys, and so varied the disguises, names, and
stratagems they made use of to bewilder and confound the police. It was
whispered that millions of money were sent in from abroad, that there
were members of the Czar's family implicated in the conspiracy, that
there was an unknown chief, living in a distant country, who managed the
threads of a terrible executive committee which passed judgment in the
dark, and whose decrees were carried out instantly. Yet there were only
a few enthusiastic students, a few young girls ready to perform any
service, like the heroine of Turguenief's "Shadows;" a few thousand
rubles, each contributing his share; and, after all, a handful of
determined people, who, to use the words of Leroy-Beaulieu, had made a
covenant with death. For a strong will, like intelligence or
inspiration, is the patrimony of the few; and so, just as ten or twelve
artist heads can modify the æsthetic tendency of an age, six or eight
intrepid conspirators are enough to stir up an immense empire.
After Karakozof's attempt upon the life of the Czar (the first spark of
discontent), the government augmented the police and endowed Muravief,
who was nicknamed _the Hangman_, with dictatorial powers. In 1871 the
first notable political trial was held upon persons affiliated with a
secret society. Persecutions for political offences are a great mistake.
Maltreatment only inspires sympathy. After a few such trials the doors
had to be closed; the public had become deeply interested in the
accused, who declared their doctrines in a style only comparable to the
acts of the early Christian martyrs. Who could fail to be moved at the
sight of a young woman like Sophia Bardina, rising modestly and
explaining before an audience tremulous with compassion her
revolutionary ideas concerning society, the family, anarchy, property,
and law? Power is almost always blind and stupid in the first moments of
revolutionary disturbances. In Russia men risked life and security as
often by acts of charity toward conspirators as by conspiracy itself. In
Odessa, which was commanded by General Totleben, the little blond heads
of two children appeared between the prison bars; they were the children
of a poor wretch who had dropped five rubles into a collection for
political exiles, and these two little ones were sentenced to the
deserts of Siberia with their father. And the poet Mikailof chides the
revolutionaries with the words: "Why not let your indignation speak, my
brothers? Why is love silent? Is our horrible misfortune worthy of
nothing more than a vain tribute of tears? Has your hatred no power to
threaten and to wound?"
The party then armed itself, ready to vindicate its political rights by
means of terror. The executive committee of the revolutionary
socialists--if in truth such a committee existed or was anything more
than a triumvirate--favored this idea. Spies and fugitives were quickly
executed. The era of sanguinary nihilism was opened by a woman, the
Charlotte Corday of nihilism,--Vera Zasulitch. She read in a newspaper
that a political prisoner had been whipped, contrary to law,--for
corporal punishment had been already abolished,--and for no worse cause
than a refusal to salute General Trepof; she immediately went and fired
a revolver at his accuser. The jury acquitted her, and her friends
seized her as she was coming out of court, and spirited her away lest
she should fall into the hands of the police; the emperor thereupon
decreed that henceforth political prisoners should not be tried by jury.
Shortly after this the substitute of the imperial deputy at Kief was
fired upon in the street; suspicion fell upon a student; all the others
mutinied; sixteen of them were sent into exile. As they were passing
through Moscow their fellow-students there broke from the lecture-halls
and came to blows with the police. Some days later the rector of the
University of Kief, who had endeavored to keep clear of the affair, was
found dead upon the stairs; and again later, Heyking, an officer of the
_gendarmerie_, was mortally stabbed in a crowded street. The clandestine
press declared this to have been done by order of the executive
committee; and it was not long before the chief of secret police of St.
Petersburg received a very polite notice of his death-sentence, which
was accomplished by another dagger, and the clandestine paper, "Land and
Liberty," said by way of comment, "The measure is filled, and we gave
warning of it." Months passed without any new assassinations; but in
February, 1879, Prince Krapotkine, governor of Karkof, fell by the hand
of a masked man, who fired two shots and fled, and no trace of him was
to be found, though sentence of death against him was announced upon the
walls of all the large towns of Russia. The brother of Prince Krapotkine
was a furious revolutionary, and conducted a socialist paper in Geneva
at that time. In March it fell to the turn of Colonel Knoup of the
_gendarmerie_, who was assassinated in his own house, and beside him was
found a paper with these words: "By order of the Executive Committee. So
will we do to all tyrants and their accomplices." A pretty nihilist girl
killed a man at a ball; it was at first thought to be a love-affair, but
it was afterward found out that the murderess did the deed by order of
the executive committee, or whatever the hidden power was which inspired
such acts. On the 25th of this same March a plot against the life of
the new chief of police, General Drenteln, was frustrated, and the walls
of the town then flamed with a notice that revolutionary justice was
about to fall upon one hundred and eighty persons. It rained
crimes,--against the governor of Kief, against Captain Hubbenet, against
Pietrowsky, chief of police, who was riddled with wounds in his own
room; and lastly on the 14th of April Solovief attempted the life of the
Czar, firing five shots, none of which took effect. On being caught, the
would-be assassin swallowed a dose of poison, but his suicide was also
unsuccessful. Solovief, however, had reached the heights of nihilism; he
had dared to touch the sacred person of the Czar. He was the ideal
nihilist: he had renounced his profession, determined to _go with the
people_, and became a locksmith, wearing the artisan's dress; he was
married _mystically_, and by _free grace_ or _free will_, and it was
said that he was a member of the terrible executive committee. He
suffered death on the gallows with serenity and composure, and without
naming his accomplices. "Land and Liberty" approved his acts by saying,
"We should be as ready to kill as to die; the day has come when
assassination must be counted as a political motor." From that day
Alexander II. was a doomed man, and his fatal moment was not far off.
The revolutionaries were determined to strike the government with
terror, and to prove to the people that the sacred emperor was a man
like any other, and that no supernatural charm shielded his life. At the
end of 1879 and the beginning of 1880 two lugubrious warnings were
forced upon the emperor: first, the mine which wrecked the imperial
train, and then the explosion which threw the dining-room of the palace
in ruins, which catastrophe he saw with his own eyes. About this time
the office of a surreptitious paper was attacked, the editors and
printers of which defended themselves desperately; alarmed by this
significant event, the emperor intrusted to Loris Melikof, who was a
liberal, an almost omnipotent dictatorship. The conciliatory measures of
Melikof somewhat calmed the public mind; but just as the Czar had
convened a meeting for the consideration of reforms solicited by the
general opinion, his own sentence was carried out by bombs.
It is worthy of note that both parties (the conservative and the
revolutionary) cast in each other's face the accusation of having been
the first to inflict the death-penalty, which was contrary to Russian
custom and law. If Russia does not deserve quite so appropriately as
Spain to be called the country of _vice versas_, it is nevertheless
worth while to note how she long ago solved the great juridical problem
upon which we are still employing tongue and pen so busily. Not only is
capital punishment unknown to the Russian penal code, but since 1872
even perpetual confinement has been abolished, twenty years being the
maximum of imprisonment; and this even to-day is only inflicted upon
political criminals, who are always treated there with greater severity
than other delinquents. Before the celebrated Italian criminalist
lawyer, Beccaria, ever wrote on the subject, the Czarina Elisabeth
Petrowna had issued an edict suppressing capital punishment. The
terrible Muscovite whip probably equalled the gibbet, but aside from the
fact that it had been seldom used, it was abolished by Nicholas I. If we
judge of a country by its penal laws, Russia stands at the head of
European civilization. The Russians were so unaccustomed to the sight of
the scaffold, that when the first one for the conspirators was to be
built, there were no workmen to be found who knew how to construct it.
VII.
The Police and the Censor.
It is not easy to say whether the government was ill-advised in
confronting the terrors of nihilism with the terrors of authority.
Public executions are contageous in their effect, and blood intoxicates.
The nihilists, even in the hour of death, did not neglect their
propaganda, and held up to the people their dislocated wrists as
evidences of their tortures. One must put one's self in the place of a
government menaced and attacked in so unusual a manner. Certain extreme
measures which are the fruit of the stress of the moment are more
excusable than the vacillating system commonly practised from time
immemorial; and which is foster-mother to professional demagogues, and
dynamiters by vocation and preference.
The police as organized in Russia seem to inspire greater horror even
than the nihilist atrocities. In the face of judicial reforms there
exists an irresponsible tribunal, called the Third Section of the
Imperial Chancellorship. The worst of this kind of arbitrary and
antipathetic institutions is that imagination attributes many more
iniquities to them than they in reality commit. Russian written law
declares that no subject of the Czar can be condemned without a public
trial; but the special police has the right to arrest, imprison, and
make way with, rendering no account to any one. Thus absolute power
leaps the barriers of justice. It must be acknowledged that the dark
ways of the special police only reflected those of their nihilist
adversary. Nowhere in the world, however, is the police so hated;
nowhere do they perform their work in so irritating a manner as in
Russia; and the public, far from assisting them, as in England and
France, fights and circumvents them. The proneness to secret societies
in Russia is the result of the perpetual and odious tyranny of the
police. The Russian lives in clandestine association like a fish in
water; so much so that after the fall of Loris Melikof the reactionaries
were no less eager for it than the nihilists, and bound themselves
together under the name of the Holy League, taking as a model the
revolutionary executive committee, and even including the death-sentence
in their rules.
War without quarter was declared, and the police organized a
counter-terror characterized by impeachment, suspicion, espionage, and
inquisition. There were domiciliary visitations; every one was obliged
to take notice whether any illegal meetings were held in his
neighborhood, or any proscribed books or explosive materials were to be
seen; no posters were allowed to be put on the walls, and every one was
expected to aid the arrest of any suspicious person; a vigilant watch
was kept upon Russian refugees; the rigors of confinement were enforced;
and all this made the police utterly abhorred, even in a country
accustomed to endure them as a traditional institution since the last of
the Ruriks and the first of the Romanoffs.
The chief of the Third Section became a power in the land. The Section
worked secretly and actively. The chief and the emperor maintained
incessant communication, and the former was made a member of the
cabinet, and could arrest, imprison, exile, and put out of the way,
whomever he pleased. During the reign of the kind-hearted Alexander II.
his power declined for a while, until nihilist plots and manoeuvres
caused it to be redoubled. There was a struggle unto death between two
powers of darkness, from which the police came out beaten, having been
unable to save the lives of their chief and the sovereign.
While the Third Section attacked personal security and liberty, the
censorship, more intolerable still, hemmed in the spirit and condemned
to a death by inanition a young people hungry for literature and
science, for plays, periodicals, and books. Mutilated as it is, the
newspaper is bread to the soul of the Russian. The Russian press, like
all the obstacles that absolute power finds in its way, was founded by
one of their imperial civilizers, Peter the Great, and it maintained a
purely literary character until the reign of Alexander II., when it took
a political form. Under the iron hand of the censor, the Russian press
has learned the manner and artifices of the slave; in allusions,
insinuations, retentions, and half-meanings it is an adept, for only so
can it convey all that it is forbidden to speak. It must emigrate and
recross the frontier as contraband in order to speak freely.
The censor lies ever in ambush like a mastiff ready to bite; and
sometimes its teeth clinch the most inoffensive words on the page, the
most innocent page in the book, the librettos of operas, as for example
"The Huguenots" and "William Tell." In 1855 certain literary works were
exempted from the previous censure, but this beneficence was not
extended to the periodical press. The newspapers of St. Petersburg and
Moscow were open to a choice between the new and old systems, between
submitting to the rule of the censor and a deluge of denunciations,
seizures, suspensions, and suppressions; and they willingly chose the
former. So the Russian press exists under an entirely arbitrary
sufferance, and according as the political scales rise and fall they are
allowed to-day what was prohibited yesterday, and sometimes their very
means of sustenance are cut off by an embargo on certain numbers or the
proscription of advertisements. If a liberal minister is to the fore,
times are prosperous; if there is a reaction, they are crushed to death.
This accounts for the popularity of the secret press, which is at work
even in buildings belonging to the crown, in seminaries and convents,
and in the very laboratory of dynamite bombs.
Books are as much harassed as periodicals. The Russians, being very fond
of everything foreign, sigh for books from abroad, especially those that
deal with political and social questions; but the censor has
custom-houses at the frontier, and the officials, with the usual
perspicacity of literary monitors, finally let slip that which may prove
most dangerous and subversive, and exercise their zeal upon the most
ingenuous. They have even cut off the _feuilletines_ of thousands of
French papers,--what patience it must have required to do it!--while
Madame Gagneur's novel, "The Russian Virgins," passed unmutilated. I
wonder what would be the fate of my peaceful essays should they receive
the unmerited honor of translation and reach the frontiers of Muscovy!
As to the foreign reviews, they are submitted to a somewhat amusing
process, called the _caviar_. Suspicious passages, if they escape the
scissors, get an extra dash of printing-ink. Thus the Russian is not
even free to read till he goes from home, and by force of dieting he
suffers from frequent mental indigestion, and the weakest sort of
_spirits_ goes to his head!
All this goes to prove that if speculative nihilism is a moral
infirmity congenital to the soul of the Russian, active and political
nihilism is the fruit of the peculiar situation of the empire. The
phrase is stale, but in the present case accurate. Russia is passing
through a period of transition. She goes forward to an uncertain future,
stumbles and falls; her feet bleed, her senses swim; she has fits of
dementia and even of epilepsy. Good intention goes for nought, whether
the latent generosity of revolutionaries, or of government and Czar.
Where is there a person of nobler desires and projects than Alexander
II.? But his great reforms seemed rather to accelerate than to calm the
revolutionary fever.
As long as the revolution does not descend from the cultivated classes
upon the masses of the people, it must be content with occasional
spurts, chimerical attempts, and a few homicides; but if some day the
socialist propaganda, which now begins to take effect in the workshops,
shall make itself heard in the country villages, and the peasant lend an
ear to those who say to him, "Rise, make the sign of the Cross and take
thy hatchet with thee," then Russia will show us a most formidable
insurrection, and that world of country-folk, patient as cattle, but
fanatical and overwhelming in their fury, once let loose, will sweep
everything before it. Nothing will appease or satisfy it. The
constitutions of Western lands they have already torn in pieces without
perusal. Even the revolutionaries would prefer to those illusory
statutes a Czar standing at the head of the peasants, and institutions
born within their own land. It is said that now, just as the nihilist
frenzy is beginning to subside, one can perceive a smouldering agitation
among the people manifesting itself occasionally in conflagrations,
anti-Semitic outbreaks, and frequent agrarian crimes. What a clouded
horizon! What volcanic quakings beneath all that snow! On the one hand
the autocratic power, the secular arm, consecrated by time, tradition,
and national life; on the other the far-reaching revolution, fanatical
and impossible to appease with what has satisfied other nations; and at
bottom the cry of the peasants, like the sullen roar of the ocean,
for--it is a little thing--the land!