it is my purpose, in this chapter, briefly to state it and give my reasons for it.
There is a widely prevalent impression in western Europe and the United States that the anti-Government party or class in Russia is essentially homogeneous; that its members are all nihilists; that they prefer violence to any other means of redressing wrongs; that they aim simply and solely at the destruction of all existing institutions; and that, in this so-called nihilism, there is something peculiar and mysterious — something that the Western mind cannot fully comprehend owing to its ignorance of the Russian character.[1] This impression seems to me to be a wholly erroneous one. In the first place the anti-Government party in Russia is not, in any sense of the word, homogeneous. Its members belong to all ranks, classes, and conditions of the Russian people; they hold all sorts of opinions with regard to social and political organization; and the methods by which they propose to improve the existing condition of things extend through all possible
- ↑ The popular view of nihilism is shown in the following quotations, the number of which might be almost indefinitely extended. "Nihilism, in its largest acceptation, is the flat negation of all faith and hope, whether in the social, political, or spiritual order." ["The Spell of the Russian Writers," by Harriet W. Preston. Atlantic Monthly Magazine, August, 1887, p. 208.] "Nihilism is an explosive compound generated by the contact of the Sclav character with western ideas." ... The Nihilists, "like the maniacs of the French Terror, were too keenly alive to existing evils to see any road out of them except by wholesale demolition. A breach with the national past had no terrors to them, because they had broken with it already. Crime was not repulsive, for the landmarks of good and evil had been swept away." ["Russia and the Revolution," by B. F. C. Costelloe. Macmillan's Magazine, March, 1882, p. 408.] "A minority of decided socialists, left to themselves, ... indulged in the conviction of the necessity of overturning all existing order; of annihilating property, state, church, marriage, society, etc., of placing communism instead of socialism on the throne; and of beginning this great work by the murder of the Tsar. This small but fanatical party were called Nihilists because they would accept absolutely nothing, and only saw happiness in the destruction of everything existing." ["Modern Russia," by Dr. Julius Eckhardt, p. 166.] Compare the above quotations with the declaration of principles of the Russian revolutionists, and the letter of the terrorist executive committee to Alexander III., which will be found in Appendix C.
