Russian nihilist movement
The term "nihilism" has been widely misused in the West when discussing the Russian movement, especially in relation to revolutionary activity. Criticizing this misterming by Western commentators, Sergey Stepnyak-Kravchinsky stated that revolutionaries themselves simply identified as socialist revolutionaries, or informally as radicals. However, from outside Russia, the term "nihilist" was misapplied to the entirety of the country's revolutionary milieu. The "Encyclopædia Britannica" attributes the probable first use of the term in Russian publication to Nikolai Nadezhdin who, like Vasilij Bervi and Vissarion Belinsky after him, used it synonymously with skepticism. Nadezhdin himself had applied the term to Aleksandr Pushkin. From there, nihilism was interpreted as a revolutionary social menace by the well-known conservative journalist Mikhail Katkov, for its negation of moral principles. The term came into favour when accusations of "materialism" proved no longer sufficiently derogatory. The intellectual origins of the nihilist movement can be traced back to 1855 and perhaps earlier, where it was principally a philosophy of moral and epistemological skepticism. However, it was not until 1862 that the term was first popularized, when Ivan Turgenev in his celebrated novel "Fathers and Sons" used "nihilism" to describe the disillusionment of the younger generation, the , towards both the traditionalists and the progressive reformists that came before them, the . This at a time when the terms faced by serfs under the emancipation reform of 1861 were seen as bitterly failing. The nihilist characters of Turgenev's novel take up the name of their own volition, stating that negation is the most necessary thing in the present age and as such they deny . Likewise, the movement very soon adopted the name, despite the novel's initial harsh reception among both the conservatives and younger generation, and wherever the term was not embraced it was at least accepted. The term "realist" was used by Dmitry Pisarev to describe the nihilist position and was also the name of a literary movement, literary realism, which had flourished in Russia in the wake of Pushkin. Although Pisarev was among those who celebrated the embrace of nihilism, the term "realism" may have done away with the connotations of subjectivism and nothingness that burdened nihilism while retaining the rejection of metaphysics, sophistry, sentimentalism, and aestheticism. In a notably later political climate, Alexander Herzen instead presented nihilism as a product of the that the had adopted. Contemporary scholarship has challenged the equating of Russian nihilism with mere skepticism, instead identifying it with the fundamentally character of the nihilist movement. In fact, the nihilists sought to liberate the Promethean might of the Russian people which they saw embodied in a class of prototypal individuals, or "new types" in their own words. These individuals were seen by Nikolay Chernyshevsky as "rational egoists", by Pisarev and Nikolai Shelgunov as the "thinking proletariat", by Pyotr Lavrov as "critically thinking personalities", by Nikolay Mikhaylovsky as the "intelligentsia", and by others as "cultural pioneers". Nihilism has also been attributed to a perennial temperament of the Russian people, existing long before the movement's nascency. Overlapping with forms of Narodism, the movement has also been defined in political terms. Soviet scholarship, for example, often interchanges the designation "revolutionary democrats". However, the role of politics was seen as not suited to the current environment by most nihilists. Rather, they disregarded politics, and those who notably held political views or socialist sympathies remained vague. Russian nihilism has also been defined in subcultural terms, in philosophical terms, and incorrectly as a form of political terrorism. Russian nihilism, as stated in the "Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy", "is perhaps best regarded as the intellectual pool of the period 1855–66 out of which later radical movements emerged". During this foundational period, the countercultural aspects of the movement scandalized the country and even minor indiscretions left nihilists imprisoned for lengthy periods or in exile to Siberia, where grittier revolutionary attitudes fermented. At its core, Russian nihilism inhabited an ever-evolving discourse between the and the . While nihilism was not exclusive from them, the were on principle a generation given to idealism. "Their attraction to the airy heights of idealism was partly a result of the stultifying political atmosphere of the autocracy, but was also an unintended consequence of Tsar Nicholas I's attempt to Russian society", writes historian Michael Allen Gillespie. "Their flight from the harsh reality of everyday life into the ideal was prepared on an intellectual level by the theosophy of Freemasonry, which exercised great intellectual force in Russian at the time, especially among those whose intellectual education had been shaped by Böhemian mysticism of the radical orthodox sects, the so-called Old Believers." Despite this, the provided the fertile soil for the 's ideological advancements, even in their confrontations. Russian materialism, as its own tradition, dawned in the period 1855–1866 under the influence of post-Hegelian German materialism and the delayed influence of the French Enlightenment, and came to be synonymous with Russian nihilism. The origins of this followed from Ludwig Feuerbach as a direct reaction to the German idealism which had found such popularity under the —namely the works of Friedrich Schelling, Georg Hegel and Johann Fichte. However, it was in fact those among the who were characterized as nihilists at first, and it was Left Hegelianism that the Schellingians began to define as nihilism. One such materialist who worked to bring a radical slant to Hegelian thought was Mikhail Bakunin, himself an anarchist and gentry . In his 1842 "Reaction in Germany", Bakunin espoused the radical dictum:
This celebration of destructive passion was almost in anticipation of the nihilist to come. Of those early materialists, Bakunin was of considerable influence to Russian nihilism, even contributing to its cause, though he denies a place among the nihilists himself and must be considered separate from radicals of the . As a Left Hegelian, and especially in his younger years, his political dedication stemmed from a more romantic, idealistic approach to the dialectical process of the . As well as this, Bakunin was a Westernizer—a group which on the whole was seen as obsolete to the nihilists. Despite this, Bakunin is often seen as among the first nihilists, a position he callously also assigns to the German philosopher Max Stirner. Among the Westernizers was another significant impact on the history of Russian nihilism, Alexander Herzen. As early as the 1840s, Herzen involved in radical circles in Moscow where he circulated the ideas of socialist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, in rejection of both utopian and Jacobin forms of socialism. Other preliminary figures of this generation include Ivan Turgenev and Vissarion Belinsky. It was not until the death of Nicholas I in 1855, and the end of the Crimean War the following year, that this Feuerbachian materialist trend developed into a broad philosophical movement. Alexander II's ascent to the throne brought liberal reforms to university entry regulations and loosened control over publication, much to the movement's good fortune. Where those early thinkers such as Bakunin and Herzen had found use of Fitche and Hegel, the that followed were set on their rejection of idealism. German materialists Ludwig Büchner, Jacob Moleschott, and Carl Vogt became favourites. The ideas of John Stuart Mill, though his bourgeois liberalism was detested, lent notable influence to the movement. Later, Charles Darwin and Jean-Baptiste Lamarck also gained importance. Often considered the first of the , Nikolay Chernyshevsky became an admirer of Feuerbach, Herzen, and Belinsky towards the end of the 1840s. It was at this time that he drew towards socialist materialism and was in close contact with members of the Petrashevsky Circle. By the late 1850s however, Chernyshevsky had become politically radicalized and began to reject Herzen's social discourse, devoting himself instead to the revolutionary socialist cause. Alongside Chernyshevsky came Ivan Sechenov, who would later be credited as the father of Russian physiology and scientific psychology by Ivan Pavlov. Chernyshenvsky and Sechenov shared the argument that the natural sciences were wholly adequate to study human and animal life according to a deterministic model, and Sechenov lent particular influence to Chernyshevsky in this regard. This more subtle argument was favoured since state censorship made no allowance for outwardly challenging its religious doctrines. Yet another , Nikolay Dobrolyubov, further elborated the ideas of Russian materialism and is at times seen as a leading nihilist. Dobrolyubov had in fact occasionally used the term "nihilism" prior to its popularization at the hands of Turgenev, which he had picked up from sociologist and fellow Vasilij Bervi-Flerovskij, who in turn had used it synonymously with skepticism. Together with Chernyshevsky, of whom he was a disciple and comrade, Dobrolyubov wrote for the literary journal "Sovremennik"—Chernyshevsky being its principle editor. With their contributions, the journal became the primary organ of revolutionary thought in its time. The two of them, later followed by Maxim Antonovich and Dmitry Pisarev, had taken up the Russian tradition of social criticism crossed literary criticism which Belinsky had begun. The discoursing of Russian literature allowed them the vehicle to have their ideas published that censorship would not have otherwise granted. Pisarev himself wrote at first for "Rassvet" and then for "Russkoye Slovo"—the latter of which came to rival "Sovremennik" in its influence over the radical movement. The , which began as an 18th-century legal designation for those of miscellaneous lower-class, by the 19th century had become a distinct yet ambiguously defined social class and gave rise to the stratum among the intelligentsia. The , meaning "of indeterminate rank", were neither peasants, foreigners, tributary natives, nor urban taxpayers such as merchants, guildsmen, and townsfolk, but instead included lower-class families of clergymen, civil servants, retired military servicemen, and minor officials. While many of the most prominent nihilist were raised free from the extremes of poverty and repression, instead born to genteel families or clergymen, a connection between radicals of the generation and the has often been emphasized in comparison to the hegemony of the gentry intelligentsia among the previous generation. As early as the 1840s, the gained significant influence over the development of Russian society and culture, the intelligentsia of this class (or intelligentsia) also being referred to as the revolutionary intelligentsia. Vissarion Belinsky and members of the Petrashevsky Circle were among these, being prominent figures of the movement to abolish serfdom. Nikolay Chernyshevsky, who was born to a priest, spent his years as a student during the 1840s. He began writing for the literary journal "Otechestvennye Zapiski" in 1853, and then for "Sovremennik".
, as popularized by Dmitry Pisarev, was the marked embrace of the style and cynicism of the nihilist character Yevgeny Bazarov from Ivan Turgenev's "Fathers and Sons", in which the term "nihilism" was first popularized. Pisarev graduated university in 1861, the same year as serfdom was abolished and the first major student demonstration was held in St. Petersburg. Turgenev himself notes that as early as 1862, the year of the novel's publishing, violent protestors had begun calling themselves nihilists. The surge of student activism became the backdrop for Alexander II's education reforms, under the supervision of education minister Aleksandr Vasilevich Golovnin. These reforms however, while conceding an expansion of the intelligentsia, refused to grant more rights to students and university admittance remained exclusively male. Historian Kristian Petrov writes:
Literary works and journals quickly became enrapt with polemical debate over nihilism. Nikolay Chernyshevsky for his part saw Turgenev's novel as a personal attack on Nikolay Dobrolyubov, and Maxim Antonovich excoriated it in his review. Pisarev famously published his own review at the time of the novel's release, where he championed Bazarov as the role model for the new generation and celebrated the embrace of nihilism. To him, Bazarovism was the societal struggle that must be toiled through rather than resisted—he attributed it to the exclusive and distinct spiritual strength of the young and their courage to face social disorder. The popularity of Pisarev's review rivaled that of even the novel itself. The atmosphere of the 1860s had led to a period of great social and economic upheaval across the country and the driving force of revolutionary activism was taken up by university students in Moscow and St. Petersburg. Mass arson broke out in St. Petersburg in the spring and summer of 1862 and, coinciding with insurrections in Poland, in 1863. Fyodor Dostoevsky saw Nikolay Chernyshevsky as responsible for inciting the revolutionaries to action and supposedly pleaded with him to bring a stop to it. Historian James Buel writes that while St. Petersburg faced threat of destruction, arson became rampant all throughout Russia. Turgenev's own opinion of Bazarov is highly ambiguous, stating: "Did I want to abuse Bazarov or extol him? "I do not know myself", since I don't know whether I love him or hate him!" Nevertheless, Bazarov represented the victory of the intelligentsia over the gentry intelligentsia to which Turgenev belonged. Comparing to Ivan Goncharov's "The Precipice", which he describes as a caricature of nihilism, Peter Kropotkin states in his memoirs that Bazarov was a more admiral portrayal yet was still found dissatisfying to nihilists for his harsh attitude, his coldness towards his old parents, and his neglect of duties as a citizen. With the death of Dobrolyubov in 1861 and the arrest of Chernyshevsky in 1862, the movement fell to Pisarev and others. Maxim Antonovich became head of "Sovremennik"'s literary criticism department and entered into bitter disputes with other publications, namely with Pisarev at "Russkoye Slovo". Tensions between the two journals boiled over into what Fyodor Dostoevsky deemed the schism between the nihilists, further pointing to Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin as giving the "Sovremennik" a now regressive character. Chernyshevsky published his landmark 1863 novel "What Is to Be Done?" while being held at Peter and Paul Fortress as a political prisoner. Ironically, despite being the most openly revolutionary work of its time and a direct product of the suppression Chenryshevsky had faced, the book passed censorship by an extraordinary failure of bureaucracy and was published without issue. Chernyshevsky continued to write essays and literature while incarcerated. In 1864, he was sentenced and given a mock execution before being exiled to Siberia, where he served seven years in forced labour camps followed by further imprisonment. Chernyshevsky gained a legendary reputation as a martyr of the radical movement and, unlike Mikhail Bakunin, not once did he plead for mercy or pardon during his treatment at the hands of the state. After struggling in the face of censorship, from which much of its core content is left unclear and obscured, Russian materialism among theoreticians would later be suppressed by the state after an attempted assassination of Tsar Alexander II in 1866, and would not see a significant intellectual revival until the late nineteenth century. The "Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy" states: Revolutionary organizations during the 1860s took only the form of conspiratorial groups. From the revolutionary turmoil of the years 1859–1861, which had included peasant uprisings in Bezdna and Kandievka, the secret society "Zemlya i volya" emerged under the strong influence of Nikolay Chernyshevsky's writings. Among its key members were Nikolai Serno-Solovyevich, his brother Aleksandr Serno-Solovyevich, Aleksandr Sleptsov, Nikolai Obruchev and Vasily Kurochkin. The full extent of the organization spanned St. Petersburg, Moscow, Kazan, Nizhny Novgorod, Perm, and several cities in Ukraine. The group supported the intellectual development of social and political thought that expressed the critical interests of the Russian peasantry, and also worked to publish and disseminate prohibited revolutionary writings and ideas to commoners, intellectuals, and soldiers. Alexander Herzen, Nikolay Ogarev, and Mikhail Bakunin all kept contact with its leadership. "Zemlya i volya" accrued supporters within the Russian military and allied itself with revolutionary activity in Poland. In league with the organization was the Ishutin Circle, founded in Moscow in 1863, under the leadership of Nikolai Ishutin. Historian Shneer Mendelevich Levin writes:
After the disappearance of "Zemlya i volya", the Ishutin Circle began to unite various underground groups in Moscow. The group arranged the escape of Polish revolutionary Jarosław Dąbrowski from prison in 1864. The same year, the group founded a bookbinding workshop, then in 1865, a sewing workshop, a tuition-free school, and a cotton wadding cooperative. They failed, however, in their attempts to arrange Chernyshevsky's escape from penal servitude. Ties were forged with Russian political , Polish revolutionaries, and fellow organizations in Saratov, Nizhny Novgorod, Kaluga Province, and elsewhere. The Circle then formed a steering committee, known as the Organization, and a sub-group within it known as Hell. Dmitry Karakozov, who was the cousin of Nikolai Ishutin, joined the Circle in 1866 and on April 4th of that year carried out an attempted assassination of Alexander II, firing a shot at the Tsar at the gates of the Summer Garden in Saint Petersburg. The attempt failed and Karakozov was sentenced to death. Nikolai Ishutin was also arrested and sentenced to be executed before ultimately being exiled to a life of forced labour in Siberia. In total, thirty-two members of the Circle were sentenced. Following the attempted assassination of the Tsar in 1866, the political environment in Russia began returning to that of Nicholas I's rule. In the meantime, extensive castigation of nihilism had found its place in Russian publication, official government documents, and a burgeoning trend of antinihilistic literature. Notable earlier works of this literary current include Aleksey Pisemsky's "Troubled Seas" (1863), Nikolai Leskov's "No Way Out" (1864), and Viktor Klyushnikov's "The Mirage" (1864). Also in 1864, Fyodor Dostoevsky published his novel "Notes from Underground", countering and satirizing Chernyshevsky's "What Is to Be Done?". In it, Dostoevsky offers a philosophical critique of Chernyshevsky's rational egoism yet from the perspective of a satirical protagonist, whom Dostoevsky posits as a more realistic portrayal of egoism—a dislikable glorifier of self-will rather than a magnanimous rationalizer of self-interest. virtuous fictional creations were not the genuine, flesh-and-blood egoists whose growing presence in Russia Dostoevsky feared", writes scholar James P. Scanlan. "Yet the doctrine these pseudo-egoists advanced–rational egoism–was a genuine danger, because by glorifying the self it could turn the minds of impressionable young people away from sound values and push them in the direction of a true, immoral, destructive egoism. "
Dostoevsky published his following work, "Crime and Punishment", in 1866, particularly in response to Pisarev's writings. "Zemlya i volya" was re-established in 1876, originally under the name (Northern Revolutionary-Populist Group), by Mark Natanson and Alexander Dmitriyevich Mikhaylov. As a political party, the organization became the first to separate itself from past conspiratorial groups with its open advocacy of revolution. The party was predominated by Bakuninists, though became the first truly organization to emerge. Sergei Nechayev heightened aggression within the movement and pressed for violent conflict against the tsarist regime. He appeared on the scene in 1868, and soon afterward fled to Switzerland. Bakunin, an admirer of Nechayev's zeal and success, provided contacts and resources to send Nechayev back to Russia to found a new secret cell based organization, called the People's Retribution (Russian: Narodnaya Rasprava), based on the principles of the "Catechism". The uncompromising tone and content of the "Catechism" was influential far beyond the mere character Nechayev personified in the minds of the revolutionaries. The organization had just a few dozen members when student Ivan Ivanovich Ivanov—one of Nechayev's first and most active followers—began to protest the leader's methods. This threat to his authority spurred Nechayev into action. He secretly gathered the group members closest to him, declared that the mysterious imaginary central committee possessed the evidence of Ivanov's betrayal, albeit not producible for security reasons, and obtained his death sentence. Author Ronald Hingley wrote: "On the evening of 21 November 1869 the victim [Ivanov] was accordingly lured to the premises of the Moscow School of Agriculture, a hotbed of revolutionary sentiment, where Nechayev killed him by shooting and strangulation, assisted without great enthusiasm by three dupes. [...] Nechayev's accomplices were arrested and tried", while he managed to flee back to Switzerland again. Upon his return from Russia to Switzerland, Nechayev was rejected by Bakunin for taking militant actions and was later extradited back to Russia where he spent the remainder of his life at the Peter and Paul Fortress. Due to his charisma and force of will, Nechayev continued to influence events, maintaining a relationship to Narodnaya Volya and weaving even his jailers into his plots and escape plans. In December 1881 69 members of the prison guard were arrested and Nechayev's prison regime was rendered exceedingly harsher. He was found dead of scurvy in his cell on 21 November 1882.
Formative period
Even as it was yet unnamed, the movement arose from a generation of young radicals disillusioned with the social reformers of the past, and from a growing divide between the intelligentsia of the genteel and non-genteel social classes. As Kropotkin states, terrorism was particular to given historical conditions of the revolutionary struggle and not to nihilist philosophy itself, which in turn however, scholar Gillespie adds, was central to revolutionary thought in Russia throughout the lead-up to the Russian Revolution. Religious scholar Altizer states that Russian nihilism in fact had its deepest expression in a Bolshevist nihilism of the 20th century.