Nikolai Tchaikovsky

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Nikolai Tchaikovsky
Born	7 January 1851 (NS)/ 26 December 1850 (OS) Vyatka, Russian Empire
Died	(1926-04-30)30 April 1926 (aged 76) Harrow, England

Nikolai Vasilyevich Tchaikovsky (Russian: Никола́й Васи́льевич Чайко́вский; 7 January 1851 [O.S. 26 December 1850] – 30 April 1926) was a Russian revolutionary.

Biography

Tchaikovsky was born in

But under the political régime of Russia in the 1870s, no public body or society could act freely if its activity was not fully approved by the government. Much effort was expended to suppress the promoters of the Narodnik movement, and Tchaikovsky was twice arrested. Under these conditions the new party soon lost its educational character and became a revolutionary and terrorist association [citation needed]. Tchaikovsky did not approve of this new tendency and joined a social-religious group, which received the name of “God-men” because its members tried to find in themselves a reflection of God. However, they were still followers of Russian Orthodoxy.

In 1874 Tchaikovsky left Russia, and a year later he went to the United States with a small party of men and women who shared his political views and religious feelings. They founded a communistic settlement at “Cedar Vale,” near Wichita, Kansas, and tried to work out their new religious and social teaching. The experiment proved a failure. After two years of hard experience, Tchaikovsky and his friends were obliged to recognize that mankind was not yet ready for the communistic life which they believed to be an imminent development of the future. They regarded communistic life as senseless without a constant feeling of the presence of God in the case of each member of the community, and this essential condition could not be achieved. Therefore, they returned to the “old world of antagonism.” The awakening was especially hard for Tchaikovsky, who not only found it necessary to reconstruct his conception of the world, but had a family to keep and no means of livelihood. He worked for some time as an ordinary workman in a shipbuilding yard and in a sugar factory near Philadelphia. His health broke down and with his family he joined the religious community of the Shakers, where he remained for a year.

In 1879 he returned to Europe, and in 1880 took up his residence in England, renewing his active participation in the Russian revolutionary organizations abroad. He met Peter Kropotkin, a former member of the Tschaikovsky Circle, in London in 1881, and together they attempted to organize English workers.

He was a member of the “Red Cross of the Narodnaia Volia,” and organized the supply of revolutionary literature to Russia. In 1905, during the

•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Paul Vinogradoff (1922). "Tschaikovsky, Nicholas Vasilievich". In Chisholm, Hugh (ed.). Encyclopædia Britannica (12th ed.). London & New York: The Encyclopædia Britannica Company.