and the exchange of products will be effected directly, to the exclusion of all intermediaries. Physical, mental, and moral equality will be abolished by degrees; all will be educated alike, in the spirit of love, equality, and fraternity; the existing family, with its subordination of woman and its indulgence of man's egoism and arbitrariness, will be abolished. The centralised state will gradually be replaced by the self-government of the communes.
Since the immediate aim of the revolutionaries is the seizure of political power, they must organise themselves in a "state conspiracy." By this Tkačev means something essentially similar to the Lavrovist "mass organisation." He expressly condemns isolated revolutionary outbreaks on the part of small circles, but he demands like Bakunin a rigid hierarchical subordination to the "general leadership," for this alone "can bring definiteness of aim and can secure unity in the activity of all the members." For to Tkačev the immediate and sole program of revolutionary activity is "organisation as a means for the disorganisation and annihilation of the power of the existing state."
Tkačev remained editor of "Nabat" till 1877, and the paper was continued under other editors until 1881. It was disavowed by the Narodnaja Volja as Nečaev had been disavowed, for the blood-curdling glorifications of terrorist deeds were too compromising.
The influence of "Nabat" in Russia does not seem to have been great, but Tkačev, writing under pseudonyms, used his views also in authorised radical periodicals. Though he had to choose his words carefully, in view of the censorship, he was, like other radical writers, perfectly well understood. Tkačev had an effective style as publicist and as literary and historical critic, and his writings exercised a revolutionary influence upon the young.[1]
- ↑ Tkačev was a consistent expounder of economic materialism. He rejected in its entirety Russian aristocratic literature with its excursions into the domain of the humiliated and the suffering. Owing to the new developments, said, the position of writers had become economically insecure, and in their creative work this insecurity betrayed itself in the form of weltschmerz. Consequently every aristocratic author exhibited two sides. For example Turgenev, Gončarov, Pisemskii were great writers, but "apart from this their horizon did not extend further than the length of their noses"; with one of his nature, Tolstoi loved the people, but with the other side he loved to chatter; Dostoevskii was not worth mentioning; and so on.
