The radicals would soon capture the center stage of Russian life and culture and even provoke a series of “anti-nihilist” novels designed to demonstrate their limitations and errors. The post-Crimean decade, however, was also the period of formation of Russian liberalism, which had much greater support than the radicals among the intelligentsia: the professors, doctors, and teachers who made up its core. The liberal generation was also deeply affected by the new scientism of the era, which seemed to find a European model in Darwin, Herbert Spencer, and French positivism. The first and primary leader of the liberals, however, remained true to the older Hegelianism of his youth, albeit in the liberal rather than radical interpretation. This was Boris Chicherin, a professor of law whose conception of Russian history neatly fit his political ideas and legal training. His idea was simply that early Russian history to Peter the Great, had been the history of the development of statehood. Autocracy was a primitive survival from the later phases of this era, necessary in its time but now becoming outdated. Peter’s reign had signaled the beginning of the development of legality within the autocratic structure, a development that was reaching its maturity in his own times with the great reforms. The task of the reform generation was to move this process forward, so that the further development of society would raise Russia to the level of civilization suitable for a constitution. The constitution was for the future, the task of the present was to move along the process of reforming the state, not to blow it up.
Chicherin’s ideas or some variant of them were easy to fit with the general fascination with progress in nineteenth-century Europe, and the liberals felt they were part of a worldwide process that sooner or later would triumph in Russia too. These ideas were the inspiration of the zemstvo activists, as well as the journalists and writers who gathered around the new newspapers and the more intellectual “thick journals.” The latter were ideally suited for the age, as the censorship was much more interested in daily newspapers and popular literature than the thick journals. Long learned discussions of local government in England or economic problems of the Russian countryside were much easier to get through censorship (thus Karl Marx’s Capital was legally published in Russia). The most popular of the thick journals was the Messenger of Europe (Vestnik Evropy), founded in 1866. Every month its subscribers received three or four hundred pages of high-level journalism and even scholarly articles on current topics, novels, and verse that included the future classics of Russian literature and usually a novel translated from some Western language. The journal was full of useful information, long articles in which the authors discussed not only the alleged subject at hand but also many excursions into various types of useful knowledge – scientific, social, economic, even medical. In the drawing rooms of the provincial gentry and the libraries of gymnasium teachers throughout the Empire, journals of this sort were a lifeline, a connecting link with the larger world in Russia and beyond, and an inspiration for dogged persistence in zemstvo work and other humble attempts to make a modern society of Russia.
Conservative thought, as well, radically changed after Crimea. Unlike the liberals – numerous and in general agreement with one another – the conservatives remained a series of small mutually hostile groups alongside several idiosyncratic thinkers who lacked a following. The most important group was still the Slavophiles, who found a constituency among the bankers and textile millionaires of Moscow. The millionaires subsidized their journals and allowed them to keep their ideas before the public even if their circulation never reached the same volume as the liberal publications. The Slavophiles were generally supportive of the reform process, but they thought that too much of it was the result of mechanical adoption of Western models. Nationalism was increasingly the dominant feature of Slavophile ideology. They also feared farther moves in certain areas, especially any liberal (government or outside) measures that might weaken the peasant community, for them the basis of Russia’s unique harmony in a world of political and social strife. Their general support of the autocracy and its policy was by no means uncritical, and earned them considerable official suspicion and hostility.
A more powerful advocate of conservative ideas was Mikhail Katkov, who until the Polish revolt was a liberal spokesman. In the wake of the revolt Katkov and his Moscow News (Moskovskie Vedomosti), subsidized by the Russian government in spite of occasional clashes, became the principal public voice of Russian nationalism and the idea of autocracy. Katkov advocated a sort of “westernizing” conservatism, one where Russian would acquire an industrial social order but retain the authoritarian form of government of the past, modernized by modern administrative methods. In many ways Katkov admired Bismarck’s Germany and hoped that Russia would imitate it, not least in its strident nationalism. Katkov’s nationalism was nastier than the vague “nationality” principle of Uvarov and Nicholas I. Katkov was relentlessly anti-Polish and anti-Semitic, and for all of his admiration of Germany, he was relentlessly hostile to the Baltic German aristocracy still so prominent in Russia’s government and army, as well as at court. He also favored an aggressive foreign policy and came to advocate a strongly anti-German policy. The government was not always happy with Katkov (the Baltic German issue was a constant irritant) as it did not admit the propriety of even friendly criticism, but it could not do without him. For the conservative gentry and officialdom, Katkov was an oracle. None of the other conservative voices, even Dostoevsky’s, had his following.
The conservatives and the government were most of all afraid of the revolutionary movement, which they correctly perceived as a political, social, and cultural threat. Indeed the communes of radical students inspired by Chernyshevsky’s novel were very far from the privileged world of the court or the liberal journalists and their readers. The students operated by strict equality, including that of men and women. Their communes were broader than the revolutionary movement, including many members with only vague political views, but they formed an ideal recruiting ground. The expansion of the universities meant that many of the students were much more plebeian than their predecessors – the children of priests, minor officials, and noblemen whose incomes, to say the least, did not match their status. After 1859 women gradually entered universities, and their presence, entirely in accord with radical ideology, led to a major role for women in the revolutionary movement and gave it a distinctive style.
The young revolutionaries operated entirely underground. The reform of Russian society had not led to the appearance of legal public politics, for the state retained all power in its hands and political parties were not permitted. Not only liberals and radicals, but even conservatives were prevented from forming any sort of political associations, even in support of the state. Among the principal victims of the censorship was the Slavophile leader Ivan Aksakov, who supported the autocracy and was highly conservative and openly anti-Semitic. Aksakov nevertheless believed that he should have the right to criticize the autocracy in the press. The government saw things differently, and Aksakov’s publications eventually came to an end. The liberals enjoyed broad support among the intelligentsia, especially its core of professionals, and controlled a number of key newspapers and periodicals, but they had no organization. The closest to a liberal (or conservative) forum was the zemstvo, whose meetings sometimes took on a political air, but the police and administration made sure that these attempts came to nothing. The only political actors outside the government were the revolutionaries.
In the early years, the 1860s, the main radical groups were small, only a few dozen members at the most, and were short-lived. They were also conspiratorial and dominated by a few charismatic leaders, some of them young men of very questionable character and motives, the most famous being Sergei Nechaev. Nechaev convinced his followers that he represented a revolutionary “central committee” under whose orders he worked. In fact it existed only in his imagination. In late 1869 he told his small group that one of their number was an informer for the police and that they should murder him,
which they did. The result was that the police, while investigating the murder, uncovered the organization. Nechaev fled abroad, leaving his followers to their fate – exile in Siberia. Even the anarchist Bakunin, who at first thought that Nechaev represented some sort of new wave in Russia, finally realized that he was mentally unbalanced and morally depraved.
The few small groups like Nechaev’s were doomed to failure, but events also kept the incipient radical movement from taking off in the first decade of its existence. The occasion was the attempt to assassinate the tsar on April 4, 1866. The would-be assassin was one Dmitrii Karakozov, a minor nobleman from the Volga region who had been involved in various radical groups, mostly composed of students, for several years. His comrades, who were more serious personalities than the like of Nechaev, actually opposed the idea and tried hard to dissuade him. They failed, and Karakozov shot at Tsar Alexander as he was leaving the Summer Garden but he missed. He was immediately captured and the tsar spoke to him, asking him if he was a Pole. Karakozov replied that he was pure Russian, and the police now knew that they were dealing with terrorism, a new phenomenon in the Russian revolutionary movement. Karakozov believed that killing the tsar would inspire a popular revolt, or at worst weaken the government and thus force further reform. The opposite happened, for it produced a government shakeup and the appointment of several less liberal ministers and the reactionary count Petr Shuvalov to head the Third Section. The pace of reform notably slowed.
By 1870 enough experience had accumulated among the radicals to suggest that the conspiratorial methods were unsavory and ineffective. The issue in any case was to spread radical ideas among the people, primarily among the peasantry. The result was the formation of new organizations whose members decided that the young radicals should “go to the people.” Thus in 1874 thousands of young men and women began to learn practical skills and move to rural areas to try to fit into peasant society. Concrete political goals were placed far in the future, and the radicals concentrated on spreading their ideas. The effort lasted for several years, and was a complete failure. The peasants were at best unreceptive, suspicious of outsiders, especially from higher social levels (no matter how plebeian the students were, they were still not peasants). Many of them turned the radicals (or “populists”) over to the police.
By the summer of 1876 it was clear that going to the people had failed and the remains of the group in St. Petersburg created a formal organization called Zemlia i Volia (“Land and Freedom”). The authorities noticed the actions of the new group and arrested many of them, holding mass public trials in 1877 that featured the veterans of “going to the people” as well as newer detainees. The trials were a disaster for the government as prisoner after prisoner presented impassioned and well-reasoned explanations for the misery of Russia’s people and their plans for the future. The government struggled against the movement with inadequate forces and antiquated methods, but it could not break its spirit. The conditions and practices of the Russian prisons were primitive and caused much suffering, something widely known in society as well as in revolutionary circles, and it gave the rebels a halo of martyrdom. Then in early 1878 one of the prisoners in St. Petersburg was ordered to be flogged by general Trepov, the governor-general. A few weeks later a young woman walked into his office during the period reserved for petitioners, and in revenge shot him several times with a revolver. The general survived his wounds, but the young woman, Vera Zasulich, became the object of yet another public trial. The jury failed to convict her, and she escaped abroad. From then on the government avoided the civilian court system and tried revolutionaries in military field courts.
Zasulich’s act inaugurated three-and-a-half years of a fantastic duel between the revolutionaries and the police. Most of the populists were now convinced that the social revolution could not occur without the destruction of the Russian autocracy. Unless Russia became a federal and democratic republic, the radicals would never have the freedom of action to preach social renewal. Therefore they shifted their effort from preaching radical social ideas to propaganda for political revolution, and most important, for a program of terror against the state. They did not target random populations: the objects of terror were only the officials of the state, and among those, mainly the ones responsible for political control and repression, that is policemen, governors of provinces, the Minister of the Interior, and the tsar himself. The terror campaign produced a split in the movement, with the majority in favor of terror forming a new organization, Narodnaia Volia (“People’s Will”) and the minority, which wanted to stick to the old policy of agitation and propaganda, keeping the old name, Land and Freedom. Most of the latter soon emigrated.
The People’s Will then began a coordinated campaign of terror that came increasingly to focus on the tsar himself. Alexander responded slowly to the campaign, believing that his fate was in God’s hands and in any case the traditions of the court made strict security very difficult. As before, the tsar frequently rode about St. Petersburg with only a squad of Cossacks and resisted any greater measures for his protection. His attention was focused on government and his private life, for the death of the empress in 1880 allowed him to finally marry his longtime mistress, Princess Ekaterina Dolgorukaia, which legitimized their children. The attempts on his life continued and after several failures terror came even to the Winter Palace. Stepan Khalturin, one of the few revolutionaries actually of peasant origin, managed to disguise himself as a carpenter and get access to the palace, where he exploded a bomb early in 1880, killing many soldiers of the guards but missing the tsar. A small band of revolutionaries had caused a crisis in the state, too old-fashioned even after the reforms to operate effectively against the terrorists and too autocratic to command or even solicit universal support. This time, however, the government responded immediately. Alexander replaced the Third Section with a Department of Police under the Ministry of the Interior and established a Supreme Executive Commission under general Count Michael Loris-Melikov. Loris-Melikov, an Armenian who knew numerous European and Caucasian languages, had an excellent military record from the Caucasian wars, the Russo-Turkish War, and a recently successful administrative career. His plan was to fight the revolutionaries both by repression and a return to the reform process that had been stalled for nearly a decade. Thus liberal journalists dubbed his program “the dictatorship of the heart.” Soon Loris-Melikov moved up to head the Ministry of the Interior, and began to circulate plans for greater reform. By February 1881, he had constructed a plan for a consultative legislature based on the zemstvos to be called together to provide support for the state and to show society that the government was truly committed to reform. Perhaps Russia would change, but fate determined otherwise.
Narodnaia Volia had paid no attention to Loris-Melikov and the rumors of reform. In any case the prospect of reform did not cheer them, for it might help the government survive and further economic reform might damage the peasant commune. Narodnaia Volia’s Executive Committee under Alexander Zheliabov and Sofia Perovskaia put all its resources into killing the tsar, and on March 1, 1881, they succeeded. As Alexander was returning to the Winter Palace along the Catherine Canal in Petersburg, one of the revolutionaries threw a bomb at his carriage. Several of his guards and a fourteen-year-old boy were killed, many were wounded, and the tsar got out of the carriage to see what had happened. A second terrorist in the crowd threw another bomb at him, fatally wounding the tsar and killing himself. Alexander was carried to the Winter Palace with his legs blown off and soon died. The last words of the tsar who had freed the peasants, and, however haltingly, transformed Russia were, “it is cold, it is cold…take me to the Palace…to die.”
Now his son Alexander came to the throne as Alexander III, and after some initial discussion, any talk of reform or legislatures came to an end and Loris-Melikov lost his position. The assassins were publicly hanged. The educated classes were appalled that the revolutionaries had killed the tsar, while many of the peasants b
elieved that it was a conspiracy of the nobles acting in revenge for the emancipation of the serfs. Another effect of the assassination was the first great wave of pogroms against the Jews in the Ukrainian provinces of southern Russia. It was a fitting beginning to more than a decade of conservative politics and attempts at counter-reform. Yet counter-reform ultimately achieved little. It was a tribute to the strength of the original reforms and their anchoring in law that most of them could not be undone. The zemstvos, for example, were continually harassed by the minions of the Ministry of the Interior, but they continued to exist and work. The new institutions had become part of the fabric of Russian society, whose increasing progress kept them alive. In spite of the use of censorship and forms of repression like administrative exile for liberals and radicals alike, the press flourished and expanded, providing a forum for the discussion of as much of the government’s policies as it could get away with. Alexander III’s autocracy could retard the development of Russian society, but could not stop it.
12 From Serfdom to Nascent Capitalism
The city of St. Petersburg exemplified the transformation of Russia in the decades after the emancipation of the serfs. As the nineteenth century progressed, it changed from an administrative capital of government buildings and aristocratic residences with a seaport into a major industrial center served by railroads as well as the ever-expanding port and the older canal system.
A Concise History of Russia (Cambridge Concise Histories) Page 25