[1]The best authority for the facts connected with the development of the German Social Democracy is Franz Mehring’sGeschichte der Deutschen Sozial-demokratie.
[1]
The best authority for the facts connected with the development of the German Social Democracy is Franz Mehring’sGeschichte der Deutschen Sozial-demokratie.
[2]See Mehring,Geschichte.
[2]
See Mehring,Geschichte.
[3]See Appendix.
[3]
See Appendix.
[4]Our tr. of the programme is taken from theProtokollor shorthand report of the party meeting at Stuttgart, 1898, to which it is prefixed.
[4]
Our tr. of the programme is taken from theProtokollor shorthand report of the party meeting at Stuttgart, 1898, to which it is prefixed.
It is agreed that anarchism as a form of socialism originated with Proudhon; but the theory owes its fuller development chiefly to Russian agitators. The great apostle of the system in its most characteristic stage was Michael Bakunin.
Bakunin[1]belonged to the highest Russian aristocracy and was born at Torshok, in the government of Twer, in 1814. In due time he entered the army as an officer of artillery, which was a select department of the service. While serving in Poland, however, he was so painfully impressed with the horrors which he saw exercised under Russian despotic rule, that he resigned his commission and entered on a life of study. In 1847 he visited Paris, and met Proudhon, who had a decisive influence on his opinions.
The revolutionary movement of 1848 gave the first opportunity for the activity of Bakunin as agitator. He was particularly concerned in the rising atDresden in 1849. But the hands of the reactionary Governments and of their police were heavy on the baffled enthusiasts of the revolution. Bakunin had a full share of their bitter experience. As he tells us himself in his work on Mazzini, he was for nearly eight years confined in various fortresses of Saxony, Austria, and Russia, and was then exiled for life to Siberia. Fortunately, Muravieff, Governor of Siberia, was a relative, who allowed him considerable freedom and other indulgences. After four years of exile, Bakunin effected his escape, and through the greatest hardships made his way to California, and thence to London in 1860.
Bakunin thus passed in prison and in exile the dreary years of European reaction which followed the revolutionary period of 1848. When he returned to London he found that the forward movement had again begun. It was a time of promise for his own country after the accession of Alexander II. to the throne. In theKolokolhe assisted Herzen to rouse his countrymen and prepare them for a new era; but the impatient temperament of Bakunin could not be satisfied with the comparatively moderate counsels followed by his friend. The latter years of his life he spent, chiefly in Switzerland, as the energetic advocate of international anarchism. In 1869 he founded the Social Democratic Alliance, which, however, dissolved in the same year, and entered the main International. He attempted a rising at Lyons in September 1870, soon after the fall of the Second Empire, but with no success whatever.
At the Hague Congress of the International he was outvoted and expelled by the Marx party. His activity in later years was much impaired by ill-health. He died at Berne in 1876.
In their preface to Bakunin’s work,God and the State, his friends Cafiero and Elisée Reclus afford us some interesting glimpses of the personality of the agitator. ‘Friends and enemies know that the man was great by his thinking power, his force of will, and his persistent energy; they know also what lofty disdain he felt for fortune, rank, glory, and all the miserable prizes which the majority of men are base enough to covet. A Russian gentleman belonging to the highest nobility of the empire, he was one of the first to enter in that proud association of the revolted, who knew to detach themselves from the traditions, the prejudices, the interests of race and class—to contemn their own happiness. With them he fought the hard battle of life, aggravated by prison, by exile, by all the dangers, and all the bitterness which devoted men have to undergo in their troubled existence.’
They then go on to say how ‘in Russia among the students, in Germany among the insurgents of Dresden, in Siberia among his brethren in exile, in America, in England, in France, in Switzerland, in Italy, among men of goodwill, his direct influence has been considerable. The originality of his ideas, his picturesque and fiery eloquence, his untiring zeal in propaganda, supported by the natural majesty of his appearance, and by his strong vitality, gained an entrance for himin all the groups of revolutionary socialists, and his activity left deep traces even among those who, after having welcomed it, rejected it because of differences in aim or method.’ But it was mainly by the voluminous correspondence with the revolutionary world, in which he spent whole nights, that his activity was to be explained. His published writings were the smallest part of his work. His most important treatise,God and the State, was only a fragment. ‘My life itself is a fragment,’ he said to those who criticised his writings.
Nothing can be clearer or more frank and comprehensive in its destructiveness than the socialism of Bakunin. It is revolutionary socialism based on materialism, and aiming at the destruction of external authority by every available means. He rejects all the ideal systems in every name and shape, from the idea of God downwards; and he rejects every form of external authority, whether emanating from the will of a Sovereign or from universal suffrage. ‘The liberty of man,’ he says in hisDieu et l’Etat, ‘consists solely in this, that he obey the laws of Nature, because he has himself recognised them as such, and not because they have been imposed upon him externally by any foreign will whatsoever, human or divine, collective or individual.’ In this way will the whole problem of freedom be solved: that natural laws be ascertained by scientific discovery, and the knowledge of them be universally diffused among the masses. Natural laws being thus recognised by every man for himself, he cannot but obey them, for they are the laws also of his own nature;and the need for political organisation, administration, and legislation will at once disappear.
It follows that he will not admit of any privileged position or class, for ‘it is the peculiarity of privilege and of every privileged position to kill the intellect and heart of man. The privileged man, whether he be privileged politically or economically, is a man depraved in intellect and heart.’ ‘In a word, we object to all legislation, all authority, and all influence, privileged, patented, official and legal, even when it has proceeded from universal suffrage, convinced that it must always turn to the profit of a dominating and exploiting minority, against the interests of the immense majority enslaved.’
The following extracts taken from the programme of the International Social Democratic Alliance, which he founded, will help to complete our knowledge of the views of this extraordinary agitator. The Alliance declares itself atheistic; it seeks the abolition of all religions, the displacement of faith by science and of divine justice by human justice, the abolition of marriage as a political, religious, legal, andbourgeoisinstitution. The Alliance demands above all things the definite and complete abolition of classes, and political, economic, and social equality of individuals and sexes, and abolition of inheritance, so that in the future every man may enjoy a like share in the produce of labour; that land and soil, instruments of labour, and all other capital, becoming the common property of the whole society, may be used only by the workers—that is, byassociations of cultivators and industrialists. It looks forward to the final solution of the social question through the universal and international solidarity of the workers of all countries, and condemns every policy grounded on so-called patriotism and national jealousy. It demands the universal federation of all local associations through the principle of freedom.
Bakunin’s methods of realising his revolutionary programme are suited to his principles. He would make all haste to sweep away the political and social institutions that prevent the realisation of his plans for the future. The spirit of destruction reaches its climax in the Revolutionary Catechism, which has been attributed to Bakunin, but which contains extreme statements that do not consist with his acknowledged writings. It is at least a product of the school of Bakunin, and as such is worthy of attention. The spirit of revolution could not further go than it does in this document. The revolutionist, as the Catechism would recommend him to be, is a consecrated man, who will allow no private interests or feelings, and no scruples of religion, patriotism, or morality, to turn him aside from his mission, the aim of which is by all available means to overturn the existing society. His work is merciless and universal destruction. The future organisation will doubtless proceed out of the movement and life of the people, but it is the concern of coming generations. In the meantime all that Bakunin enables us to see as promise of future reconstruction is the free federation of free associations—associationsof which we find the type in the Russian commune.
The influence of Bakunin was felt chiefly on the socialist movement in Southern Europe. The important risings in Spain in 1873 were due to his activity. In the later revolutionary movement of Italy his influence superseded that of Mazzini, for there, as elsewhere, the purely political interest had yielded to the social in the minds of the most advanced.
The doctrines of Bakunin have also left their mark on the recent social history of France and French Switzerland. About 1879 the anarchist propaganda showed signs of activity in Lyons and the surrounding industrial centres. Some disturbances among the miners at Montceau-les-Mines in 1882, also provoked the attention of the police and Government, with the result that sixty-six persons were accused of belonging to an international association with anarchist principles. Of the accused the most notable was Prince Kropotkine, who, with the eminent French geographer Elisée Reclus and the Russian Lavroff, may be regarded as the greatest recent exponents of anarchism.
There is no more interesting figure in the recent revolutionary history of Europe than Prince Kropotkine. Like Bakunin, he belongs by birth to the highest aristocracy of Russia; his family, it was sometimes said among his familiar friends, had a better right to the throne of that country than the present dynasty. A man of science of European fame, of kindly nature and courteous manners, it may seem strange that heshould be an avowed champion of the most destructive creed now extant. A few of the leading facts of his life, as he gave them in his defence at the trial at Lyons in 1883, may throw some light on that question.[2]
His father was an owner of serfs, and from his childhood he had been witness to scenes like those narrated by the American novelist inUncle Tom’s Cabin. The sight of the cruelties suffered by the oppressed class had taught him to love them. At sixteen he entered the school of pages at the Imperial Court, and if he had learned in the cabin to love the people, he learned at the Court to detest the great. In the army and the administration he saw the hopelessness of expecting reforms from the reactionary Russian Government. For some time afterwards he had devoted himself to scientific work. When the social movement began, Kropotkine joined it. The demands made by the new party for more liberty met with a simple response from the Government: they were thrown into prison, where their treatment was terrible. In the prison where the Prince was detained nine lost their reason and eleven committed suicide. He fell seriously ill, and was carried to the hospital, from which he made his escape. In Switzerland, where he found refuge, he witnessed the sufferings of the people caused by the crisis in the watch manufacture; everywhere the like miseries, due to the like social and political evils. Was it surprising that he should seek to remedy them by the transformation of society?
The record[3]of the great anarchist trial at Lyons in 1883, to which we have already referred, is an historical document of the first importance. Every one who wishes to understand the causes, motives, and aims of the anarchist movement should study it carefully. At the trial a declaration of opinion was signed by the accused. The following extracts which give the purport of this declaration may be useful in elucidating the anarchist position. What they aim at is the most absolute freedom, the most complete satisfaction of human wants, without other limit than the impossibilities of Nature and the wants of their neighbours, equally worthy of respect. They object to all authority and all government on principle, and in all human relations would, in place of legal and administrative control, substitute free contract, perpetually subject to revision and cancelment. But, as no freedom is possible in a society where capital is monopolised by a diminishing minority, they believe that capital, the common inheritance of humanity, since it is the fruit of the co-operation of past and present generations, ought to be at the disposal of all, so that no man be excluded from it, and no man seize part of it to the detriment of the rest. In a word, they wish equality, equality of fact, as corollary, or rather as primordial condition of freedom. From each one according to his faculties; to each one according to his needs. They demand bread for all, science for all, work for all; for all, too, independence and justice.
As one of the accused maintained, even a Government based on universal suffrage gives them no scope for effective action in the deliverance of the poor, as of the eight million electors of France only some half a million are in a position to give a free vote. In such a state of affairs, and in view of the continued misery and degradation of the proletariat, they proclaim the sacred right of insurrection as theultima ratio servorum.
Perhaps the most striking feature of the trial was the defence of Émile Gautier before the Court of Appeal. Gautier was described by the Public Prosecutor as a serious intelligence gone astray, a licentiate in law who had passed brilliant examinations, a powerful orator who might be considered as the apostle of the anarchist idea in France. He was only twenty-nine years of age. In his defence Gautier described with passionate eloquence how he, the son of a law-officer (huissier), had been converted to revolution and anarchism by the sight in court of the daily miseries of debtors and bankrupts and other victims of a capitalist society. As Voltaire is said to have had an attack of fever at every anniversary of the massacre of St. Bartholomew, so he, far away in Brittany, was seized with a fever of rage and of bitter indignation when the calendar brought round the accursed dates at which bills and rents became due.
The leading principles of anarchism are marked by great clearness and simplicity, and may be summed up as the rejection of all external authority and of allprivate appropriation of land and capital. All human relations will depend on the free action and assent of the individuals concerned. Free associations will be formed for industrial and other purposes, and these associations will with a like freedom enter into federal and other relations with each other. The process of social reconstruction is, in short, the free federation of free associations.
Considered as an historic socialist movement, anarchism may therefore be set forth under these three heads: (1) Economically it is collectivism; (2) it is a theory of revolutionary action, which is certainly its characteristic feature; (3) it is a theory of the relation of the individual to law or government.
As regards the first point, its collectivism is common to it with the prevalent socialism, and therefore need not detain us here. Nor need much be said in the way of criticism of the details of the ultra-revolutionary programme of the anarchists. In our chapter on Marx we have already indicated that the materialism which is common to both schools cannot now be regarded as a tenable or admissible theory of the world. The materialism of both schools sprang from the Hegelian left. It should now be considered as dead, and should in all fairness be set aside in discussion for or against socialism. With regard to religion and marriage, it is hardly necessary to state that progress lies not in the abolition, but in the purification and elevation of those great factors of human life. Bakunin’s criticism of religion is simply a tissue of confusion and misconception.Marriage is a fundamental institution, on the purity and soundness of which social health and social progress must above all things depend: in this matter, more than almost any other, society must and should insist on the maintenance of due safeguards and regulations. Free love is a specious and delusive theory, which would tend to bring back social chaos. It would certainly establish a new slavery of women, whose needs and rights would be sacrificed in the name of a hollow and disastrous freedom.
With regard to the third leading principle above mentioned, the negation of government and external authority, the anarchy of Bakunin is essentially the same as that of Proudhon. But in Proudhon the principle was set forth in paradox, whereas Bakunin expounds it with perfect frankness and directness, and with a revolutionary energy which has seldom been equalled in history. What they both contemplate is a condition of human enlightenment and self-control in which the individual shall be a law to himself, and in which all external authority shall be abolished as a despotic interference with personal freedom. It is an ideal to which the highest religion and philosophy look forward as the goal of man, not as one, however, which can be forthwith reached through the wholesale destruction of the present framework of society, but through a long process of ethical and social improvement. The error of the anarchists consists in their impatient insistence on this proclamation of absolute freedom in the present debased condition of the great mass of thepeople in every class. They insist on taking the last step in social development before they have quite taken the first.
Like its collectivism, the theory of freedom is not a special feature of anarchism. Collectivism is simply the economic side of the prevalent socialism generally. Its theory of freedom is a very old theory, which has no necessary connection whatever with a revolutionary programme, and we should not misunderstand it because of the strange company in which we here find it. It is a high and long-cherished ideal of the best and greatest minds. The good man does his duty, not from fear of the police or the magistrate, but because it is his duty. And we must regard it as the high-water mark of his probity and goodness that the right is so wrought into the texture of his conscience and intelligence that the doing of it has become as natural to him as breathing or locomotion.
It is an ideal, also, which we must cherish for society and for the human race. And not in vain; for there is an ever-widening circle of human action, in which good and reasonable men do the right without pressure or stimulus from without, either from law or government. We are therefore to regard a well-ordered, intelligent, and ethical freedom as the goal of the social development of the human race.
But it is an ideal which must obviously depend for its realisation on the moral and rational development of men. It cannot come till men and the times are ripe for it. No doubt the realisation of it may be hinderedby evil institutions and reactionary Governments; yet these, too, are merely the outcome of such human nature as was once prevalent in the countries where we now find them. They have outlived their time. We are certainly right to get rid of them, as of other evil habits and conditions of the past, but it is best done when done wisely and reasonably. And it cannot be done in any wise or effectual manner except through a wide organic change in the human beings concerned.
A moral and rational freedom is therefore the goal of the social development of the world, and it is a goal towards which we must strive even now. But it is a goal that lies far ahead of us. For the present, and in the future with which we have any practical concern, society cannot be maintained without adequate laws, sanctioned and enforced by a regular Government. The elimination of the baser elements from human character and human society proceeds with most regrettable slowness. In the meantime, therefore, we must hold them in check by the best available methods. We may improve our laws, our police, and magistrates, but we cannot do without them.
It is an interesting fact that socialism has taken its most aggressive form in that European country whose civilisation is most recent. The revolutionary opinions of Russia are not the growth of the soil, and are not the natural and normal outcome of its own social development: they have been imported from abroad. Fallingon youthful and enthusiastic temperaments which had not previously been inoculated with the principle of innovation, the new ideas have broken forth with an irrepressible and uncompromising vigour which has astonished the older nations of Europe. Another peculiarity of the situation is that the Government is an autocracy served or controlled by a camarilla which has often been largely foreign both in origin and sympathy. In this case, then, we have a revolutionary party inspired by the socialism of Western Europe fighting against a Government which is also in many ways an exotic, and is not rooted in the mass of the people.
The history of Russia turns on two great institutions, the Tzardom and the mir. The Tzardom is the organ of Russian political life, while the mir is the social form taken by the agricultural population, and is the economic basis of the nation generally.
No reasonable man can doubt that the Tzardom has performed a most important function in the historical development of Russia. It was the central power which united the Russian people and led them in the long, severe, and successful struggle against Tartars, Turks, Lithuanians, Poles, and Swedes. Without it Russia would in all probability have suffered the same fate as Poland, which was distracted, weakened, and finally ruined by the anarchy and incurable selfishness of its nobles.
As in other countries, so in Russia, the central power was established through the subjection of princes and lords who were crushed by the strong and mercilessrule of the Tzars. Among those Tzars, too, were men of originality and courage like Peter the Great, who forced the people out of the old-world grooves which they loved so much; and when other means failed they did not hesitate to employ the cane, the knout, and the axe of the executioner to urge their nobles into the paths of Western progress. We need not say that the Tzars were not moved by benevolent reasons thus to benefit their subjects. The historic Tzars were not philanthropists or humanitarians. The aim of their reforms was political, to provide the Russian nation with better means and appliances for the struggle with her neighbours.
While the nobles were unable to make head against the Tzardom, the clergy were neither able nor disposed so to do. In Russia the clergy were not backed by a great international power like the Papacy. They were nursed in the traditions of Eastern Greek despotism and had no inclination to resist their rulers. The peasants were not a political power, except at the rare intervals when desperation drove them into rebellion.
Thus the circumstances of Russia have combined to establish an autocracy which has performed the greatest historic functions, and which has had a power and solidity without example in the rest of Europe. It has maintained the national existence against fierce and powerful enemies, it has in every generation extended the borders of the Russian power, and has been a real centre of the national life, satisfying the needs and aspirations of the people, not in a perfect manner byany means, yet with a considerable measure of success. If we do not realise the supreme importance of the work that the Tzardom has done for Russia, we cannot understand its present position and the hold it has on the feelings of the Russian people. The power of the Tzar has been such that it was hardly an exaggeration, when the Emperor Paul stated to General Dumouriez that there was no important man among his subjects except the person he happened to speak to, and while he was speaking to him.
It is only another instance of the irony of human affairs, however, that the really effective limit to the power of the Tzars is found in the officials, who are intended to carry it into effect. These officials act as the organs of the imperial authority from the centre to the farthest extremities of the empire. Yet they can by delay, by passive resistance, by suggestion, by falsehood, by the arts of etiquette and ceremonial, and all the other methods familiar to the practised servants of autocracy, mislead or thwart the will of their master or render it of no effect.
Such is the central power. Let us now consider the body of the people. In Russia, industry and city life have not formed a large part of the national existence. The mass of the people still live directly from the soil, and are organised in the mir. As is now well known, the mir is merely the Russian form of the village community, which at one time prevailed over all the countries of the world, as they attained to the sedentary or agricultural stage of development. It was the naturalsocial form assumed by people settling down into agriculture. It was the social unit as determined by obvious local economic and historic conditions. In most countries the village community has been reduced to a shadow of its former self, partly through the operation of natural economic causes, but largely also because the central power and the classes connected therewith have crushed it out. The local life of England in particular has been repressed and starved through the want of the most elementary resources and opportunities. It has been recognised as a most pressing duty of statesmen to revive and restore it in accordance with the prevalent conditions, but it will be long before the capacity and habit of common action can be again adequately acquired.
Owing to a variety of causes, which we cannot explain here, the Russian mir has continued to survive. It gave to the mass of the Russian people their own form of social life and of self-government; and it was economically self-sufficing. The mir drew from the soil, which it held in common occupation, the means for its own support and for the support of the nation as a whole. The relations of the members of the mir to each other were substantially conducted on terms of equality and freedom; but in view of the nobles and the Tzardom they were serfs till their emancipation in 1801. The mir was a social-economic arrangement, convenient both for the noble proprietors and for the Tzardom. It afforded to the central Government the necessary taxes and the necessary recruits; and thereforethe Tzars did not disturb it, but rather sought to fix and solidity it, and thereby make it more efficient as a source of supply both of soldiers and material means. Thus for centuries, full of movement in the political history of Russia, the mir has with little change endured as the social and economic basis of the national life.
In Russia, therefore, we find only two institutions that have had a real vitality and a specific influence, the Tzardom and the peasant community. Nobles and priests have exercised a substantive power only when the Tzardom has suffered a temporary lapse. The middle class has always been inconsiderable.
It was into a nation thus constituted that the most advanced revolutionary opinions of Western Europe at last found their way. The spirit of revolt had indeed not been unknown in Russia in former times. Among a peasantry sunk in immemorial ignorance and misery, and harassed by the incessant tribute of men and taxes which they were forced to pay, discontent had always been more or less prevalent, and it had sometimes broken out in open rebellion. During the reigns of the great Catharine and of Alexander I. a sentimental Liberalism had been fashionable in the upper classes. But it was not a very practical matter, and was not a serious danger to the autocracy. At the beginning of his reign Nicholas had to face a rising among the Guards at St. Petersburg, led by Liberal officers of high birth. He suppressed it in the speediest and most summary manner. Till his death, 1855, Nicholas maintainedarégimeof repression at home, and was the champion of absolutism in Europe.
Many circumstances combined to render the accession of Alexander II. a new departure in Russian history. The old methods of government had been thoroughly discredited by the failures of the Crimean war. There was a general feeling that the ideas and methods of the West, which had proved their superiority during the struggle, must be tried in Russia. As the young Emperor recognised the necessity of a new policy, great changes were made, and all went well for a time. Alexander carried the emancipation of the serfs, instituted new courts of law and a new system of local government, and gave a real impetus to education. It was not long, however, before the Emperor began to hesitate in view of the Liberal forces which he had let loose, and which threatened to overturn the whole fabric of Russian society. Like his uncle, Alexander I., the young monarch had not resolution enough to persevere in a practical and systematic course of reform.
The changes already made, and the prospect of changes still to come, roused into action all the conservative instincts and prejudices of old Russia. The insurrection of Poland in 1863, which called forth the sympathies of many Russian Liberals, provoked also a powerful reaction in old Russian circles. An attempt by Karakozoff on the Emperor’s life in 1866 may be regarded as the turning-point of his reign. Ideas of steady reform and of gradual temperate change havenot yet become familiar to the Russian temperament. Between those who wished to reform everything, and those who wished no change at all or to change very slowly, no compromise was possible in the circumstances and conditions of Russian society. Thus a revolutionary movement soon declared itself in full opposition to the policy of the Tzar. When we consider that the new party menaced not only the special political institutions of Russia, but the fundamental principles of the existing society generally—property, religion, and the family—we can see that the breach was inevitable.[4]
Three stages may be recognised in the history of the revolutionary movement. The first covered the period from the accession of Alexander II. in 1855 to about 1870. Its leading characteristic was negation, and the name of Nihilism, which is often erroneously applied to the whole revolutionary movement, should properly be restricted to this early stage. In the main it was simply the spirit of the Hegelian left frankly accepting the materialism of Büchner and Moleschott as the final deliverance of philosophy. In a country where religion had little influence among the educated classes, and where philosophy was not a slow and gradual growth of the native mind, but a fashion imported from abroad, the most destructive materialism made, an easy conquest. It was the newest fashion; it was theprevalent form among those who were reckoned the most advanced thinkers; it was clear, simple, and thorough. It was particularly well suited to a state of culture which was superficial, without experience or discipline.
In the words of Turgenief, who has portrayed the movement in his novel,Fathers and Sons, the Nihilists were men who ‘bowed before no authority of any kind, and accepted on faith no principle, whatever veneration may surround it.’ They weighed political institutions and social forms, religion and the family, in the balances of that negative criticism, which was their prevailing characteristic, and they found them all wanting. With revolutionary impatience they rejected everything that had come down from the past, good and bad alike. They had no respect for art or poetry, sentiment or romance. A new fact added to our positive knowledge by the dissecting of a frog was more important than the poetry of Goethe or a painting by Raphael.
Nihilism as represented by Bazarof, in the novel of Turgenief, is certainly not an attractive picture. We may respect his courage, honesty, thoroughness, and independence; but his roughness, cynicism, and indifference to family feelings are very repellent. Through the early death of the hero we are prevented from observing what might have been the further development of his character. We feel sure that if the story of this typical life had been continued, we should have seen very considerable changes in a more positive direction. The mood of universal negation can only be a temporaryphase in individual or national development. Negation may be the physic, it cannot be the diet, of the mind.
No movement for emancipation can be a purely negative thing; and no movement can be adequately described by reference to a single characteristic. The Nihilists found a wider view of the world in the writings of Darwin, Herbert Spencer and J. S. Mill; and they had also at an early period felt the influence of Saint-Simon, Fourier, Robert Owen, and latterly also of Lassalle and Marx. From the first, Nihilism seems to have involved a broad and real sympathy with the suffering classes. They wished to recall the attention of men from windy verbiage about art and poetry, from a sentimentalism which was often spurious, and from the clatter of the parliamentary machine, whose grinding was solely for the benefit of the wealthier classes, to the question of ‘daily bread for all,’ to the common people perishing for lack of elementary knowledge. And they insisted strongly on the equal rights of women.
It is evident that Nihilism could only be a passing phase in the history of Russia, and that it had a wholesome and beneficial side as well as a repellent one. In a country which was oppressed by an enormous burden of immemorial prejudices and abuses, a powerful dose of negation was calculated to have a most salutary operation. But the movement could not long live on negations merely. As time went on, the struggle for emancipation in Russia began to assume a more positive character.
In this way the revolutionary movement entered on its second stage, the stage of socialistic teaching and propaganda. Events in the West had kindled the imagination of the youthful champions of liberty in Russia, the rise and progress of the International, the terrible struggle at Paris under the Commune, the growth of the German Social Democracy. A positive and far-reaching ideal now drew the aspirations of the enthusiasts for liberty, the deliverance of the proletariat, represented in Russia by an ignorant and wretched peasantry. The anarchic socialism of Bakunin was unquestionably the controlling element in the new Russian movement. Beside it we must place the influence of Lavroff, another eminent Russian exile, who represented the more temperate phase of anarchism, shading off into the recognition of a constitutional and gradual development of the theory. In its second stage also the revolutionary movement of Russia was a mixed phenomenon. The anarchism of Bakunin continued, however, to be the characteristic feature, and thus the negative factor was still prominent enough.
From Bakunin also proceeded the practical watchword at this stage of the revolutionary movement, ‘to go among the people’ and spread the new doctrines. And this course was unwittingly furthered by the action of the Government. Early in theseventies, hundreds of young Russians of both sexes were studying in Western Europe, particularly at Zürich in Switzerland. As their stay there exposed them to constant contact with revolutionary Russian exiles, andto infection with all the unsettling ideas of the West, an imperial ukase of 1873 recalled them home. They returned home, but they carried their new ideas with them. ‘Going among the people’ was adopted as a systematic principle, a passion and a fashion among the youthful adherents of anarchism. In accordance with their creed they had no appointed organisation, no very definite plan of action. They ‘went among the people’ as the apostles of a new theory, each one as his heart moved him.
They went to be teachers or midwives or medical helps in the villages. In order the better to identify themselves with the common folks, some learned the humblest occupations. The trades of carpenter or shoemaker were most usually chosen, as being the easiest to master. Others toiled for fifteen hours a day in the factories, that they might have an opportunity of saying a word in season to their fellow-workers. Ladies and gentlemen, connected with the aristocracy and nurtured in all the refinement of civilisation, patiently endured the nameless trials of living with the Russian peasant. They endeavoured to adopt the rough hands and swarthy weather-beaten complexion, as well as the dress of the peasant, that they might not excite his distrust, for the gulf between the lower classes and the gentlemen in Russia is wide and fixed. The peasants had experience of the gentleman only as the representative of the Government coming with the knout and the police to extort taxes and recruits. No wonder that the sight of a shirt underneath the sheepskin of thesocialist missionary was enough to arouse the unconquerable suspicion of the poor people of the country.
The success of the missionaries was limited. With all his strong suspicion and his narrow range of ideas, the peasant could not easily understand the meaning and purpose of those strange men teaching strange things. The traditions of the past, as they came down to him dim and confused, contained many a bitter memory of disappointed hopes. He was apathetic as well as suspicious. Moreover, the teacher often delivered his message in half-digested formulas which had a meaning only as connected with the economic development of Western Europe, and which did not rightly attach themselves to anything within the experience of the Russian Peasantry.
Above all, the propaganda enjoyed only a very brief period of activity. The teachers went about their work with very little circumspection, in the careless free-and-easy way which seems so natural to the Russian temperament. Consequently, the Government had no difficulty in discovering and following up the traces of the propagandists. Before the year 1876 had ended, nearly all of them were in prison. More than 2000 were arrested during the period 1873-76! Many were detained in prison for years, till the investigations of the police resulted in 50 being brought to trial at Moscow and 193 at St. Petersburg at the end of 1877. Most were acquitted by the courts, yet the Government sent them into exile by administrative process.
The adverse experiences which we have recordedbrought the attempts at peaceful propaganda to a close, and the revolutionary party decided on the propaganda of action. They resolved to settle among the people and prepare them for a rising against the Government. Where peaceful teaching had failed, they sought to force a way by violent methods. It was a desperate policy to pursue among a people who had not been able even to understand the aims of the revolutionary party.
It is very characteristic of the circumstances of Russia that the most successful attempt at thus organising a scheme for revolutionary action could gain the adhesion of the peasantry only by pretending that it had the sanction of the Tzar. Jacob Stephanovitz, one of the prominent members of the revolutionary party, gave it out in South-Western Russia that he had an order from the Tzar to form a secret society among the common people against the nobles, priests and officials who were opposing the imperial wishes to confer land and freedom on the peasants. Those to whom he addressed himself could hardly believe that the Emperor was so powerless, but he did eventually succeed in forming a society of about a thousand members. When the plot was discovered by the police, the peasants were naturally enraged at the deception which had been practised on them. It should be added that such a method of action did not meet with the approval of the party as a whole.
Like the peaceful propaganda, the propaganda of action failed to gain a firm footing among the people.
At every step the revolutionary party found the organs of the central power ready to suppress their efforts in the most summary way. They were now convinced that they must directly attack the autocracy and its servants, and as they had received no mercy they decided to show none; and thus began the resolute, systematic, and merciless struggle of the revolutionary party against the Tzardom. For this end they naturally made a great change in their mode of action. They adopted a strong organisation instead of the lax discipline or total want of discipline commended by Bakunin. Affairs were conducted by a secret central committee, who with unsparing energy carried out the new aims of the party. The first great act in this the third stage of the Russian revolutionary movement was the assassination of General Trepoff, Prefect of Police, by Vera Sassoulitsch, at St. Petersburg, in 1878. The occasion of the deed was the flogging, by command of Trepoff, of a political prisoner personally unknown to her. Her object was to avenge the cause of outraged humanity on the servant of the autocracy. At the trial she was acquitted by the jury, to the great surprise of the Imperial Court. An attempt by the police to apprehend her on leaving the place of trial was frustrated by the mob, and she succeeded in making her escape to Switzerland.
The public gave the most unmistakable proofs of sympathy with Vera Sassoulitsch; and the event naturally excited great enthusiasm and emulation among the eager spirits of the revolutionary party. Police officialsand spies of the Government were cut off without mercy. General Mezentseff, Chief of Police, was stabbed in the streets of the capital in broad daylight. Prince Kropotkin, Governor of Charkoff, a relative of the revolutionist, was shot. General Drenteln was also openly attacked in the streets. After thus assailing the officers of the executive, they proceeded systematically to plan the assassination of the Tzar himself, as the head of the central power which they abhorred so much. Solovieff fired five shots at the Tzar without doing any harm; three attempts were made to wreck the imperial train, one of them failing because the Tzar had made a change in his arrangements; and he escaped the terrible explosion at the Winter Palace only because he was later than usual in entering his dining-room. These failures did not prevent the executive committee from prosecuting its desperate work, and on March 13, 1881, followed the tragic death of Alexander II.
We need not say that the violent death of Alexander II. sent a thrill of horror throughout Europe. It was felt to be a most lamentable and regrettable ending to a reign which had begun with such high and generous aspirations, and with so much promise of good to the Russian people. There was a natural difficulty in understanding how a Sovereign, benevolent in character and not unwilling to pursue a liberal policy, should be the victim of a forward movement among his people. The explanation must be found in the special circumstances of Russia, for Alexander was merely the representativeof a political system which, by its historic evolution, its nature and position, has exercised an absolute and often merciless mastery over its subjects, and the men that cut him off were youthful enthusiasts, who with revolutionary impatience were eager to apply to the belated circumstances of Russia the most extreme theories of the West.
The historian has often to regret that more wisdom is not available for the management of human affairs, and we may believe that a moderate measure of wisdom and patience might have prevented the fatal collision between the Tzar and the revolutionary party. The Tzardom, as we have seen, has performed a great and indispensable function in the national life of Russia. It still seems to be the only practicable form of government in such a country. No class is advanced or powerful enough to take its place. The mass of the Russian people are not yet capable of self-government on a wide scale. There is no large educated class. The middle and industrial class, in the modern sense of the word, are still comparatively small and unimportant; and it is probable enough that if there had been an influential middle class, and if the abolition of serfdom had been effected under their auspices, the peasants would have received less favourable treatment than they experienced from the autocracy. The best available form of government for Russia seems to be an enlightened Tzardom, and the Emperor Alexander II. was personally both enlightened and well-intentioned.
At the same time the position of the Tzardom cannotvery long be tenable in its present form. Russia lies where it is, in close proximity to progressive countries. In the past the Russian people have been largely disciplined by Germans; they have learned much from England, and have perhaps shown the greatest social and spiritual affinity to the French. This intercourse will go on. The strongest and most watchful Tzar cannot maintain a Chinese wall of separation between his country and the rest of Europe. Nor can the Tzars expect to have the benefit of the science of Western Europe for military purposes, and at the same time succeed in shutting it out from influencing the social and political life of their people. It is inevitable, therefore, that the liberal ideas of the West will continue to dissolve and disintegrate the old fabric of Russian ideas and institutions. One of two results appears necessary, either that the Tzars must strenuously follow the path of reasonable and energetic reform, or they may risk a revolution which will sweep away the present central power.
For Russia, as for other countries, there are but two alternatives, progress or revolution. If the latter consummation were to happen, it does not, however, follow that the cause of freedom would have any great direct and immediate furtherance. In the circumstances of Russia the man who wields the military power must be supreme. A new ruler resting on the army might be not less an autocrat than the old. We can but say that the present policy of the Tzardom is seriously retarding and arresting the natural and national developmentof Russia, and that it tends to provoke a catastrophe which may endanger its own existence. The industrial progress now being made in the country renders it only the more necessary that her political institutions should make a corresponding advance.
It remains now to say a word about the revolutionists who have played so remarkable a part in the recent history of Russia. The members of the Russian revolutionary party have been drawn from nearly all classes of the people. Some, as we have seen, belonged to highly placed aristocratic families; some have been sons of priests and of the lower officials. More recently the rural classes supplied active adherents to the militant party. One of the most notable features of the movement is the influence exerted in it by women. It was Vera Sassoulitsch who opened the death-struggle with the autocracy in 1878. A lady of high birth, Sophia Perovskaia, by the waving of a veil guided the men who threw the fatal bombs at the assassination of Alexander II.
But whether aristocrats or peasants, men or women, the members of the Russian revolutionary party have been remarkable for their youth. The large majority of those engaged in the struggle had not attained to the age of twenty-five. In view of their extreme youth, therefore, we need not say that they had more enthusiasm than wisdom, and more of the energy that aims at immediate success than of the considerate patience that knows how to wait for the slowly maturing fruits of the best and surest progress. Having regard to thevery subversive theories which they tried to sow broadcast among the masses of the Russian people, we see clearly enough that no autocracy in the world could avoid taking up the challenge to authority which they so rudely threw down. Only the Government of an enlightened people long familiar with the free and open discussion of every variety of opinion, can afford to give unlimited opportunity of propaganda to such views as were entertained by the Russian revolutionary party.
Yet while the theories of the party were from the first of a most subversive nature, it is right to emphasise the fact that they did not proceed to violent action till they were goaded into it by the police and the other officials of the central Government. Indeed, the measures of the Government and its representatives have often directly tended to the stirring up of the revolutionary mood. By their irritating measures of repression they provoked, among the students at the universities, disturbances which they quelled by most brutal methods. Young men arrested on suspicion, and kept in vile prisons for years while awaiting investigation, were naturally driven to hostile reflection on the iniquity of a Government from which they received such treatment.
In speaking of a country like Russia, we need not say that the most elementary political rights were denied the revolutionists. They had no right of public meeting, no freedom of the press, no freedom of utterance anywhere. They were surrounded with spies ready to give to every word and deed the worst interpretation.The peasants whom they desired to instruct in the new teaching might inform upon them. Their comrades in propaganda might be induced or coerced to betray them. It was often fatal even to be suspected, as the police and the other organs of Government were only too disposed to take the most rigorous measures against all who were charged with revolutionary opinion. Nor could the accused appeal to the law with any confidence, for the ordinary tribunals might be set aside, and his fate be decided by administrative procedure; that is, he could be executed, or condemned to prison or exile in Siberia, without the pretence of a legal trial. In such circumstances it was natural that resolute champions of liberty should be driven to secret conspiracy in its extremest form, and to violent action of the most merciless character.
While, therefore, historical accuracy obliges us to emphasise the fact that the aims of the revolutionary party far exceeded all that is included in liberalism and constitutional government, it is only just to explain that they resorted to violent methods only because the most elementary political rights were denied them. In the fiercest mood of their terrible struggle with the autocracy, they were still ready to throw aside their weapons.
In the address sent by the Executive Committee to Alexander III., after the death of his father, in March 1881, they offered to give up their violent mode of action, and submit unconditionally to a National Assembly freely elected by the people. They meantunder a constitutional government to have recourse only to constitutional methods.
With regard to the number of those concerned in the Russian revolutionary movement, it is not easy to speak with precision. There is no proof that the anarchist opinions have gained a large body of adherents in the country. The numerical strength of the party directly engaged in the struggle with the Tzardom has always been comparatively small. On the other hand, the movement has evidently met with a very wide sympathy in Russian society. In the absence of precise information, we may quote the words of one who has a good right to speak for the revolutionary party:—
‘The Russian revolutionary movement is really a revolutionsui generis, carried on, however, not by the mass of the people or those feeling the need of it, but by a kind of delegation, acting on behalf of the mass of the people with this purpose.
‘No one has ever undertaken, and perhaps no one could with any certainty undertake, to calculate the numerical strength of this party—that is to say, of those who share the convictions and aspirations of the revolutionists. All that can be said is, that it is a very large party, and that at the present moment it numbers hundreds of thousands, perhaps even millions of men, disseminated everywhere. This mass of people, which might be called the Revolutionary Nation, does not, however, take a direct part in the struggle. It entrusts its interests and its honour, its hatred and its vengeance, to those who make the revolution their soleand exclusive occupation; for under the conditions existing in Russia, people cannot remain as ordinary citizens and devote themselves at the same time to Socialism and the Revolution.
‘The real revolutionary party, or rather the militant organisation, is recruited from this class of revolutionary leaders.’[5]