The Icon and the Axe

by James Billington

  gunov's original Proclamation to the Young Generation of 1861 that "we

  not only can, but we must. . . arrive at somejtiew order unknown^^mjto

  America."41?"*"""**

  TEejnajor source of foreign inspiration was French socialist thought. Louis Blanc,„jvho had irttemptea to set up actual socialist experiments am£Sff the.people of ????-? fW brit^thnr'a'JOLJiC^ daw£hjg,j£r2la£edthe"purery theoretical" Fourier and Owen as the socialist saint most revered by the populists. But the principal prophet ot ffienew order for the populists was the passionate figure of Pierre-JoseptiProudhon, who dominated French socialist thought from the failure of the revolution of 1848 until his death in 1865. Proudhon introducejLan elejnen|.of-pa§sipjiate egalitarianism and heroic, semi-anarchistic opposition to political authority

  which" maderunT~a~ partic^lar]y^_sympathetic figure for survivors oYThe

  iconoclastic revolution in Russia. ProudhorTwas, like Rousseau, a French provincial '????????^????? him to Paris a certain plebeian indignation against aristocratic elites and centralized authority. He opposed a proposed

  constitution during the revolution of 1848, "not because it is bad, but because it is a constitution"; flatly labeled private property "theft"; and in his famojisjournals The People, The Representative oiihe People-and The Voice of the PTople^he"cteygtoped a kind of mystical belief in_"the people" as a mighty force capable ot rejuvenating Europe!

  All of this appealed to the alienated intellectuals of the Alexandrian era, who were also provincial outsiders in many cases with an iconoclastic attitude toward authority, an incisive and disjointed polemic style, and an anguished desire to establish or re-establish links with "the people." Proudhon viewed himsatL moreover, as a kind of Christian socialist, work*-, ing mTBrmittently all his adult life on a never-completed study of Christ as a_J social reformer and frequently introducing apocalyptical language-all tend- 4 ing to increase his appeajjto the RussianywhQjsnded to view socialism as an 1 outgrwth of^uppressed traditions within heretical Christianity. BoJhjoTthe^ prophetic forerunners of the^eepwlisXJa«Kement, Herzen and Bakunin, were frieria

  rand adroTr^rs nf ???????? fellow provincials^ so to speak, who had come to Paris, the Mecca of revolution in the late forties. Trigjuaccepted Pr"iHhj^rjX£^planaticjrthat the debacle of 1848-9 resulted from the failure of tbe revolutionaries to link themselves "mrreservedly with the elemental power of the people. They, and Russian radical thought generally, had"

  continued to hopeffiat socialist transformation might yet be accomplished on French soil through a working-class movement led by Proudhon i.bjiLthsy^ gradually began to place their hopes for change in the unspoiled Russian people! *""

  This transfer_of hopesjrom West to East became complete in 1871

  after Bismarck's Germany defeated France in the Frrmm-PriJssian W?r"and "a repubUc_yyithout ideals" came into being over the ruins of the Paris Commune. France was now a center of fashions rather than "the lighthouse of the world"; it had become, in the title of Mikhailovsky's famous essay of October, 1871, the land of "Darwinism and the Operettas of Offenbach." All of Europe is now ruled by jungle laws of the survival of the fittest and a culture whose highest symbol is the cancan; and Mikhailovsky pointedly ends his piece with the phrase novus rerurn mihi nascitur ordo.

  s~r

  The new order of things as envisaged by the main line of populist thought as it developed from Herzen and Chernyshevsky through to Lavrov, Mikhailovsky, and Shelgunov was a unique Russian variant of the general European phenomenon of moralistic, "utopian" socialism. The populists believed in "subjective socialism" to be brought about by mormldeals rather thalT'^'ooTective socialism" th"at~is created irrespective~of human ~.*a

  1. 1 ne 1 urn to social 1 nougni

  theories about revolutionary organization and economic determinism gained almost no suggortamong Russians during the populis^rj^JJiojagh^^^ioraT outrage of his denuncmtionj3fj^a|›kalisr^

  PoplffisTsocialism did not involve just a reconstitution of society on the

  communal modHl)TThe^peaSarit obshchina, but a creative development of

  the obshchina form itself TrTorder to guarantee the full dewlgpment of the

  human personality, hferzen stressed the need for assuring indjvidualrights

  within the new socialist society, Chernyshevsky the need for maintaining

  individual incentives, and Mikhailovsky the need for preventing dehuman

  izing overspecialization. For all of JhemJhe_full d^y^lo^mMjtjo£4luman

  personality was^mjBdjnskj^sjvor^than the fate of the

  whole world/^Mikhailovsky described all of history as an endless "struggle for individuality" and describejjfcejcoming' golden age_as one of "subjective anthropocentrism." Nicholas Chaikovsky, whose circle in St. Petersburg was the real center of the populist movement, thought that he was founding a "religion of humanity" and included in his group several members of a "God-manhood sect" which taught that each individual was literally destined to become a god.42

  The populists professed to accept industrial development but wished to_preservaJhg_ more moral type ofsocietv_foundJn^the commune, while m°v'ngj£jfog j?.J^S££E££5f civilization which scienu^c progress was bring- ing into beings Indeed, thefirst ofthe mass "movementstojhepeople" in 1871-3 was direcgj^^el^'/ia^i^»^at^ie urbanworkers jjfjit. Peters- burg, who were thniightJ-oJinHjfbf^key to the future and be particularly^ capable of "mental andjrjpral development." This movement to the people appealed to intellectuals in other cities, who formed groups loosely affiliated with the Chaikovtsy in many major cities of the empire. This initial effort to educate urban workers and evangelize them with the new belief in the inevitability of progress involved many of the Russian radicals who were to become well known in the West through prolific later writings in exile: Peter Kropotkin and Serge Kravchinsky (Stepniak). Disillusioned with the lack of response to their teachings among the working class, the Chaikovtsy concluded that they must go instead to the peasantry, which still dominated the thinking of the Russian masses. Accordingly, they suddenly found thei»sdy£^cjughtjupin the "mad summer" of JJ amp;7A.. one of the most ^ fan^stic..^ad^unprecedented~lociiT~ movements of the entire nineteenth

  century.*~ ' ~~--.-- -¦-

  ,~ Suddenly, without any central leadership or direction, more than two

  thou^aj3dj^e^2nd_a_number oFolderj5eople and aristocrats were swept' awaybyas£irit_of self-renunciation. In almost every province of European Russia, young intellectuals dressed_asj›easants and set out from the cities

  to live among them, join in their daily life, and bring to them the good news'""" that a new age was dawning. Rich landowners_gaye_ away their possessions or agreeTTto jet .students use their estates for social propaganda and experi-ment; agnostic Jews had themsejyes~b~aptised~asOrthgdox in order to be moje at one with the peasantry; women joined in the exodus in order to.

  *haH12g|""jjyJn ^' hopFf! ???| suffering 43

  The rpg'Tr^JS13fi-.pf*rplffY'*4_and terrified by this "movement to the – people,"" arresting 770andmolesting many more in its effortjo crushjE?"' ~", ?????????? haijhypressjnn o"F~a non-yjplent movement only pushed

  populism into more violent and extreme_j›aths. Mikhailovsky, the leading ‹- popularizer" of evolutionary populism in the seventies, always described populism as a middle way for Russia between the Scylla of reaction and the Charybdis of revolution. It was the fate of_populism in the late seventies to be first dashed against the rock to the right andjhen sucked into the whirlpool to thejeft T'oTmHirstand thlT|ate of pj›rajlisjn_MdJhe^ljrnacti£ events of thej,aj£jjeyenties and e^rly^ejght^,j3M^

  nature of the reactionary and revolutionary traditions Itot^MJiOilfiMrgBtly-develo_p£dinRussia.

  The Scylla of reaction was expressed not so much in the ruthless arrests of late 1874 as in the subsequent war with Turkey. This war wasj;he_direct_ result of the new imperialistic doctrine of messianic Pan-Slavism. It was a large"-"Sc"aTFdeE6erate war of aggrandizement, brutally foughtagainstabrat
al foe by a citizen's army that Russialiadjtssembled throu^fl^ritroHiigtioiur of a more^stemalic and muver¥aTconscription in 1874. Thiswar_gase_~~

  for violence and

  ideals of ???1?_????§? extraordinarily difficult.

  Reactionary Pan-Slavism began in the second half of Alexander's reign to replace in many minds official nationality as the ideology of tsarist Russia. Faced with a many-sided ideological assault in the course of the sixties, the~tsarist regime had luTneaTrorn fts initial policy of prag--^ rhatic liber^rcrage'ssiorrs to a new Thiliiant nationalism. Great Russian chauvinism first proved its worth as an antidote to revolutionary enthusiasm

  during the Polish uprising of 1863. The sejm^oJScJaLiellow press skillfully sou^httodiscredit the revolutionaries as traitors because of their sympathy with the Poles and to glorify iTseneToTT^ulisiari military leaders as popular folK"Eeroes. A former radical, Michael Katkov, championed this approach in his new newspaper, Moscow News, which he proudly designated "the organ of a party which may be called Russian, ultra-Russian, exclusively Russian."44

  To compete in the idealistic atmosphere of the sixties, however, a

  *-»1? iu rsiiw ??????

  J /1? ? ? II IKJ Jl/LlWl X ftlVWg

  played on classic Russian prejudices by denoundngnotonly_Jbe_Tj^ Gerrri3ns~but also tne Poles as Western trahoj^_jndMjh£_Jitmgaiiaiis_as^ "AsJ^rrmtertSpeTg"

  .tera"E5fc

  party bidding for public favor had to offer some noble, altruistic goal to the

  public. Thus, the "exclusively Russian party" of Katkov resurrected the old

  rornMticJd£alof_Slay^^it to theJRiissjan pjihljc^asji^

  kind of latter-day crusade against both the "Romano-rieriT›an"-Mfest 4,pd _ the heathen Turks.

  The center ofthis new reactionary PaJi-Slavisrn__was Moscow, in_ which__tEe^acobin externiits~6L^Z^ft were concurrently gathering strength in th^Jatesixties. The decisive event in the emergence of reactionary Pan-Slavism was the Moscow Slavic Congress of 1867, which was largely supported by the city of Moscow and loudly hailed by Aksakov's journal Moscow as well as Katkov's Moscow News. The only previous congress of Slavs had takenplacein Praguein 18^8_, with ????^?^^?" representatives being two outcasts: the revolutionary Bakunin and_an01d BelSve^ishop^^BuL the_new congress wasZgjyen lamb support aj_djs|›on-sorship by official Russia. Itbgcajne, in effejrt_Jbe first of those now-fanuliar ^cuTturaF festivals whose m^gJfSc(:ical re^Ttlt^isto^ad^ng^ RusjknpoMcaT^g^ves.^he writing that most perfectly expressed the views of reactionary Pan-Slavs in Russia was a hitherto unpublished treatise by an obscure Slovakian called Slavdom and the World of the Future, which was suddenly vaulted to prominence in the closing days of the congress. It

  ?

  called for the.jmjficajtifin of the Slavs under Russian leadership, with

  Moscow tobejthj^capjtaljjRu^to J›e

  (he' religion.45 The idea__of_^yjoJeiU^jrjrcc^ncjkble conflict between the Slavic "and the "Romano-German worlds was given a__^mJ^jSvrafe-scientffic formulation by a biologist and former Petrashevets, Nicholas Da^ilevsky7inHhTs"T7SS«a and Europe, published serially in 1868, and as a book in 1871.

  Pan-Slavism became ????_?^?? amp;???1 tdeolggyjhrough sughworks as the sho£ter^nd_jnofe_ blunLJuempxandum^jjf General Rostislav Fadeev, Opinion on the Eastern QuestiQUk. which was also published serially in thelate sixtiesanjiJu^_as_aJ3aatin -187.0. During the Russb-Turkish War of 1877-8, this frankl^xpansionistideoJbgyOTo^d^tq^ngly effective in rallying mass support for a successful war effort. This autocratic, imp^alillcTPafbSIavMrTbore little resemblance to the mellow and idealistic Slavophilism of an earlier generation, or even to the earlier Pan-Slav proclamations of men like Aksakov and Bakunin, who had linked Pan-Slavism with the federative principle and with support for the Polish efforts to break loose from the Tsarist yoke.

  It was a brutal, but at the same time popular, doctrine. It provided a simple,**dramatic picture~cT^?^^j^rg^ffie^_J^nsn^^c^5rarM channeled off domesT™"*'

  uroge. Pan-Slavism can be described as Moscow's jropheticalternative to the""" prophetic7"StT?etgrsBu"rg^~aleTr doctrine of populism. Like popuJisrn^JPan-SlavIsTfnai|fflsnge3j^^

  Berlin, Paris, or Rome in search^Mnspjration. holding ouyhe_promise of a new destiny and deliverance in the East. But, whereas thepopulists pointed propheticallyto the Russian countryjjde, trie^Pm-SlavTTiarkeQDack to 1??~?? lffiperial "?????? of reooji^erin^^onstantinople. Like "the pulisIsTtne Pan^STavs offered ameory of history based on the application

  m . ~ -

  of allegedly scientific principles "to" social 'proDTemsTblSt they^^g!e3To*flie

  Darwiaistte-prrHclple of inevitable Struggle and survival of the fittest, which

  the"^Q|nmusTS'^tea3fastry refused to recognize"as sclentiticatly~applicable to

  humanity. The violent repression of the movementjo the people and the

  violence and fanaticism ofth"e""Turkish war seems to have subtly convinced

  many radicals that perhaps the Darwinistic image was right. In their desire

  to swerve away" from the Scylla of reaction in the post-war years, they

  found themselves increasingly drawn into the Charybdis of Jacobin revolu

  tion, the opposite extremism of the Alexandrian period. The whirlpool of

  professional reyojutionary actiyityhad frequently beckoned to confused

  participants in the populist movement. But prior to the formation of a

  nationwHe, populist revolutionary organization (the second organization to

  bear the title "Land and Liberty") late in 1878 and the more explicitly

  terrorist People's Will organization that supplanted it the following year,

  populism hjj amp;Jje^nidjmjtffiejlj^with evolutionary rather than

  revolutionary approaches.

  The rejjoJivJiojiary Jacobinism of the left was, like the reactionary

  Pan-Slavism of the right, a Muscovite outgrowth of the restlesslconoclasm

  of the sixties. The first call for secret^e^hrtionarj^pj^^^

  action ^as contained in the pamphlet "Youn£^ijsji3^!4mbiisJieiHnj562

  by a iimeteeri^ear-ojd_jr^athematics student, at Moscow University, £,

  Zaichnevsky^He was one of a group of about twenty Moscow students who

  called themselves "The Society of Communists" and.jie^gje^thgn^lyes^

  almost_ entirely to ~^^^^??^^^^^\^^^?1^^^^?^^^^,?.?

  literature^JThe most thoroughgoing program for nationwide revolutionary

  organization was provided, curiously enough, by Herzen's old friend and

  collaborator, Nicholas Ogarev, in connection with the efforts to make a

  nationwide movement out of the Land and Liberty group of the early

  sixties. The first Land and Liberty group was based in St. Petersburgjud

  ??????????????*^^^to trans-

  courtroom revelations about his activities and the literary representatit given them in Dostoeysky'^jr^efSS^e^precipitated a vigorous" journe istiS^is^ulsionTE^asted throughout the early seventies

  form it into a conspiratorial revolutionary organization ruajby a secret_ ?????^??????? with regional organization, veiled front groups as a mask for revolutionary organization, and a publication centej^brpa44oj)£oyide ideolo^cluH^ppc*rFffid theoretical direction.46 The first Land and Liberty group^wenrouTof existence in 1863 and never seems to have adopted a fully revolutionary program or organization. The^next stage in the development of ajrofessional revolutionary tradition occurred once ????~??" Moscow, with the formation of two new extremist circles in 1865, those "of N. ishutin and NTNefedov, respectively. The first group, known as "The'""' Organization," commissioned a young student, Dmitry Karakozov, to attempt an assassination of Tsar Alexander II the following year, thus launch-ing"the tradition of^actjye revolutionary terrorj'srn It also formed a secret circle within the revolutionary group known as Hell (Ad) to combat police provocateurs and conduct terrorist activities. Membejs^of_Jbe^Hell group were expectedTo'gTvtTup all family ties, assumg_new name
s^and be pre-pared to jsacrifice their lives. The counter-revolutionary white terror that followed the Kikrakozov attempt drove the leading protege of N. Nefedov, young Sergius Nechaev, to further extremes in outlining a course for professional revolutionaries.

  Like the Ishutin group, Nechaev had visions of founding a professional

  revolutionary cadre that was to be linked with a vast, Europe-wide conspira

  torial organization. He journeyed abroad, received a measure of approval

  from a fascinated Bakunin and Ogarev, and returned to Moscow in 1869 to

  put his fantastic plans into practice. He brought^with him as a guide forjiis

  revolutionary organization the famous* Revolutionary Catechism, with its