Russian nihilist movement
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The Russian nihilist movement
Russian anarchist
Although most commonly associated with revolutionary activism, most nihilists were in fact not political and instead discarded politics as an outdated stage of humanity. They held that until a destructive programme had overcome the current conditions no constructive programme could be properly formulated, and although some nihilists did begin to develop communal principles their formulations in this regard remained vague.
Definition
"He's a nihilist," repeated Arkady.
"A nihilist," said Nikolai Petrovitch. "That's from the Latin, nihil, nothing, as far as I can judge; the word must mean a man who... who accepts nothing?"
"Say, who respects nothing," put in Pavel Petrovitch, and he set to work on the butter again.
"Who regards everything from the critical point of view," observed Arkady.
"Isn't that just the same thing?" inquired Pavel Petrovitch.
"No, it's not the same thing. A nihilist is a man who does not bow down before any authority, who does not take any principle on faith, whatever reverence that principle may be enshrined in."[14]
Ivan Turgenev, Fathers and Sons, Chapter 5
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,
The intellectual origins of the nihilist movement can be traced back to 1855 and perhaps earlier,
The term realist was used by
Overlapping with forms of
Historical context
Russian nihilism, as stated in the
At its core, Russian nihilism inhabited an ever-evolving discourse between the sorokovniki and the šestidesjatniki.
Westernizers
The Westernizers were the progressive wing of the 1840s and 50s intelligentsia who saw adopting Western European ideas as the necessary way forward for Russia's development. In general Westernizers were advocates of liberal reform, the abolition of serfdom, Western science and technology, and Enlightenment ideals imported particularly from France or Germany. Other preliminary figures of this generation include Ivan Turgenev and Vissarion Belinsky.[43]
Raznochintsy
The raznochintsy (meaning "of indeterminate rank"), which began as an 18th-century legal designation for those of the miscellaneous lower-middle classes, by the 19th century had become a distinct yet ambiguously defined social stratum with a growing presence in the Russian intelligentsia.[44] Put simply, the raznochintsy were "educated commoners".[45] Their backgrounds however, did not include peasants, foreigners, tributary natives, nor urban taxpayers such as merchants, guildsmen, and townsfolk, but instead included lower-end families of clergymen, civil servants, retired military servicemen, and minor officials.[46] While many of the most prominent nihilist thinkers were raised free from the extremes of poverty and hardship — some even having been born into aristocratic families — a connection between the raznochintsy and the new radicals has often been emphasized in comparison to the dominance of aristocratic intellectuals in previous generations.[47]
As early as the 1840s, the raznochintsy gained significant influence over the development of Russian society and culture,[48] the intelligentsia of this class came to be synonymous with the "revolutionary intelligentsia".[49] Vissarion Belinsky and members of the Petrashevsky Circle were among these, being prominent figures of the movement to abolish serfdom.[50] Of the nihilist generation, Nikolay Chernyshevsky, Nikolay Dobrolyubov, and Maxim Antonovich were all sons of unaffluent priests before turning to atheist materialism.
Russian materialism
Russian materialism, which quickly became synonymous with Russian nihilism, developed under the influence of
After severely struggling in the face of censorship — from which much of its core content is left unclear and obscured — the open academic development of Russian materialism would later be suppressed by the state after an attempted assassination of Tsar Alexander II in 1866,[55] and would not see a significant intellectual revival until the late nineteenth century.[56] The Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy states:
The only strictly philosophical legacy of the materialists came in the form of their influence on Russian Marxism. Georgii Plekhanov and Vladimir Lenin, the two thinkers most responsible for the development of Marxism in Russia, credited Chernyshevskii with having, respectively, 'massive' and 'overwhelming' influence on them. During the communist period of Russian history, the principal 'nihilist' theoreticians were officially lionized under the designation 'Russian revolutionary democrats' and were called the most important materialist thinkers in the history of philosophy before Marx.[57]
Left Hegelians
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/6c/Bakunin_Nadar.jpg/170px-Bakunin_Nadar.jpg)
Left Hegelianism in Russia began with those of the Westernizer generation who sought to radicalize Hegelian thought and build upon Ludwig Feuerbach's materialism. Among these were Alexander Herzen and Mikhail Bakunin, both sons of noblemen though Herzen had been born illegitimate. Bakunin became a Hegelian in 1838 and an extreme Left Hegelian shortly after visiting Berlin in 1840. That same year, Herzen began work on his own analysis of Hegel interpreted through August Cieszkowski and Feuerbach.
Both Bakunin and Herzen held concerns about the extremes of materialism. Whereas Bakunin is more strictly considered a Russian materialist, Herzen sought a reconciliation between
Let us therefore trust the eternal spirit which destroys and annihilates only because it is the unfathomable and eternal source of all life. The passion for destruction is a creative passion too![60]
Bakunin and Herzen began to meet rejection from others in the Westernizer camp for their open embrace of far-left politics. For Herzen this came with embracing the anarchist socialism of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, whose ideas he began circulating among Moscow's radical circles in the 1840s. The first roots of Bakunin's own interest in anarchism can also be traced to around this time. Bakunin was also the one to introduce Hegelian thought to Vissarion Belinsky.
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/4c/N_G_Chernyshevsky.jpg/170px-N_G_Chernyshevsky.jpg)
Often considered the first of the šestidesjatniki, 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.[61]
Transition to nihilism
It was not until the death of
Bakunin and Herzen held nihilistic views and contributed to the nihilists' cause. One should, however, remember that some significant differences remain between the nihilist "fathers" and the nihilist "children". ... Although Herzen could be qualified as a nihilist in several senses, he was by virtue of belonging to an older generation, supposedly prone to philosophical idealism, still regarded as an "other" by some of the canonized nihilists among the 1860s generation.[65]
German materialists Ludwig Büchner, Jacob Moleschott, and Carl Vogt became new favourites. Further influence came from the utilitarian ideas of John Stuart Mill, though his bourgeois liberalism was detested, and later from evolutionary biologists Charles Darwin and Jean-Baptiste Lamarck.[66]
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b7/Dimitri_Pisarev.jpg/170px-Dimitri_Pisarev.jpg)
In 1855, Chernyshevsky completed his first philosophical work and master's dissertation "The Aesthetic Relation of Art to Reality" — applying Feuerbach's methods to a critique of Hegelian aesthetics. The mid-1850s also saw the emergence of Nikolay Dobrolyubov as a budding university activist and poet. As a fellow šestidesjatnik, he further elborated the ideas of Russian materialism and is at times seen as a leading nihilist.[67] 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 šestidesjatnik Vasily Bervi-Flerovsky, who in turn had used it synonymously with skepticism.[68] 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.[69] The two of them, later followed by Maxim Antonovich and Dmitry Pisarev, had taken up the Russian tradition of socially-charged 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.[70] 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.[71]
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.
Bazarovism
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/72/Turgenev_by_Repin.jpg/170px-Turgenev_by_Repin.jpg)
Bazarovism, 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.[74] Turgenev himself notes that as early as 1862, the year of the novel's publishing, violent protestors had begun calling themselves nihilists.[75] 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 raznochinnaya intelligentsia, refused to grant more rights to students and university admittance remained exclusively male.[76] Historian Kristian Petrov writes:
Young nihilist men dressed in ill-fitting dark coats, aspiring to look like unpolished workers, let their hair grow bushy and often wore blue-tinted glasses. Correspondingly, the young women cut their hair shorter, wore large plain dresses and could be seen with a shawl or a big hat, together with the characteristic glasses. Such a nihilist could, however, above all be identified by a reversal of official etiquette; the men demonstratively refusing to act chivalrously in the presence of women, and the women behaving contrary to expectations. Both sexes hence sought to incarnate Bazarov’s roughness, his "cynicism of manner and expression."[77]
Literary works and journals quickly became enrapt with polemical debate over nihilism.[78] Nikolay Chernyshevsky for his part saw Turgenev's novel as a personal attack on Nikolay Dobrolyubov, and Maxim Antonovich attacked the book with such vitriol that others in the movement took issue with him.[79] 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.[80]
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.[81]
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!"[82] Nevertheless, Bazarov represented the triumph of the raznochinnaya intelligentsia over those like Turgenev from the aristocracy.[83] 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 admirable 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.[84]
What Is to Be Done?
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3b/What_is_to_be_Done.jpg/170px-What_is_to_be_Done.jpg)
Chernyshevsky published his landmark 1863 novel What Is to Be Done? while being held at Peter and Paul Fortress as a political prisoner.[85] By an extraordinary failure of bureaucracy, government censors allowed the book to be published without any trouble despite it being the most openly revolutionary work of its era and a direct product of the suppression Chernyshevsky had faced.[86] The novel marked a significant departure for Chernyshevsky into utopian socialism.
In the meantime, extensive castigation of nihilism had found its place in Russian publication, official government documents, and a burgeoning trend of
Chernyshevsky continued to write essays and literature while incarcerated. In 1864, he was sentenced and given a
Schism
Leading up to 1864, the movement underwent what Dostoevsky termed the 'schism of the nihilists'. The Sovremennik began taking a more moderate or even regressive position while Russkoye Slovo continued to push further into radical nihilism. Maxim Antonovich, now head of the Sovremennik's literary criticism department entered into bitter disputes with other publications ever since his disagreements with Pisarev over Bazarovism.[93] Under Pisarev, Russkoye Slovo took over as the leading journal of radical thought.
Attempted assassination of Alexander II
Conspiracy organisations
Revolutionary organizations during the 1860s took only the form of conspiratorial groups.
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.[96] In league with the organization was the Ishutin Circle, founded in Moscow in 1863, under the leadership of Nikolai Ishutin.[97] Historian Shneer Mendelevich Levin writes:
During 1863, the revolutionary situation in Russia virtually exhausted itself. The general peasant uprising, toward which Zemlya i volya was oriented, did not take place, and the Polish uprising was suppressed. Under these conditions, the revolutionary work of Zemlya i volya began to die down. Many members of the society were arrested or were forced to emigrate, and by the spring of 1864, Zemlya i volya had dissolved itself.[96]
After the disappearance of Zemlya i volya, the Ishutin Circle began to unite various underground groups in Moscow.
Surge of antinihilism
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/aa/Russian_Nihilists_are_being_tied_to_chairs_on_horse-drawn_pl_Wellcome_V0041837.jpg/220px-Russian_Nihilists_are_being_tied_to_chairs_on_horse-drawn_pl_Wellcome_V0041837.jpg)
Following the attempt on the Tsar's life, the political environment in Russia immediately began returning to the stifling atmosphere of Nicholas I's rule.[103]
Dostoevsky published his following work, Crime and Punishment, in 1866, particularly in response to Pisarev's writings.[104]
Revolutionary period
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/ad/%D0%9D%D0%B5%D1%87%D0%B0%D0%B5%D0%B2_%D0%A1%D0%B5%D1%80%D0%B3%D0%B5%D0%B9_%D0%93%D0%B5%D0%BD%D0%BD%D0%B0%D0%B4%D0%B8%D0%B5%D0%B2%D0%B8%D1%87.jpg/220px-%D0%9D%D0%B5%D1%87%D0%B0%D0%B5%D0%B2_%D0%A1%D0%B5%D1%80%D0%B3%D0%B5%D0%B9_%D0%93%D0%B5%D0%BD%D0%BD%D0%B0%D0%B4%D0%B8%D0%B5%D0%B2%D0%B8%D1%87.jpg)
Re-establishment of Zemlya i volya
End of Nechayev and the first nihilist revolution
See also
- Anti-nihilistic novel
- Cynicism
- Narodniks
- Narodnaya Volya
- Nihilist Faction
Notes
- ^ Occasionally, nihilism will be capitalized when referring to the Russian movement though this is not ubiquitous nor does it correspond with Russian usage.
- ^ a b The Russian terms sorokovnik and šestidesjatnik are used for the sake of accuracy in delineating the two generations. The former is often translated as 'man of the forties' and the latter as 'man of the sixties', though the sixties in this sense may include as early as 1855.
References
- ISBN 9780415250696.
Nihilism was a broad social and cultural movement as well as a doctrine.
"nihilism" was via Turgenev's F&C introduced to a wider audience in the early 1860s Russia, in the form of the loanword nigilizm
Peter Kropotkin, the leading Russian anarchist, defined nihilism as the symbol of struggle against all forms of tyranny, hypocrisy, and artificiality and for individual freedom.
Russian nihilism did not imply, as one might expect from a purely semantic viewpoint, a universal "negation" of ethical normativity, the foundations of knowledge or the meaningfulness of human existence.
The 1860s were once described by Trotsky as 'a brief eighteenth century' in Russian thought. The Nihilist thinkers sought to assimilate and resynthesize the main trends in Western materialism and positivism. As usual in Russia, imported ideas were treated selectively and deployed in quite distinctive intellectual formations.
on the whole the Westernizers were an obsolete older generation in the eyes of the Nihilists
First, the positive or constructive side of nihilism was never clearly defined. For some radicals, it was vaguely socialist, based on the idea of the village commune (mir). Others saw a managerial class as the basis for the new order. Most nihilists, however, were convinced that this positive goal could only be properly formulated when the chains of repression had been broken."; "This strange lack of concern was apparently the result of their belief that politics was linked to an outdated stage of humanity."; "The nihilists' neglect of politics, which they saw to be outdated, proved in this case to be their undoing.
The philosophy of nihilism then began to be associated erroneously with the regicide of Alexander II (1881) and the political terror that was employed by those active at the time in clandestine organizations opposed to absolutism.
The movement is misunderstood in Western Europe. In the press, for example, nihilism is continually confused with terrorism. The revolutionary disturbance which broke out in Russia toward the close of the reign of Alexander II., and ended in the tragic death of the Tsar, is constantly described as nihilism. This is, however, a mistake. To confuse nihilism with terrorism is as wrong as to confuse a philosophical movement like stoicism or positivism with a political movement such as, for example, republicanism. Terrorism was called into existence by certain special conditions of the political struggle at a given historical moment.
Ill-informed authors of that time usually referred to all Russian revolutionaries as "nihilists." Well-informed ones either did not refer to narodnichestvo at all, or employed this word correctly in the specific, narrow sense of the mid-1870's. ... The same holds true of the writings of no less an authority than Stepniak-Kravchinsky. ... In Russian Storm Cloud, protesting the misuse in the West of the word "nihilist," he says that the Russian revolutionaries themselves use two names: a formal one—"socialist revolutionaries"—and a colloquial one—"radicals."
Vissarion Belinsky, had symptomatically employed the term in a more neutral sense
liberal critics called the radicals "materialists"; but then, when it was no longer sufficiently derogatory, they came to prefer the term "nihilists".
Nihilism and anarchism, which for a while would completely dominate the intelligentsia and become a major factor in the history of nineteenth-century Russia, emerged in the final years of the reign of Alexander I.