NIHILISTS (from Latin nail, "nothing "),. a revolutionary organization in Russia, aiming at the destruction of all existing laws, religions, and political and social systems, while preparing to replace them with nothing. It is stated that the term was first employed by the Russian novelist, Ivan Turgenieff, in his stories of Russian society. It was, however, accepted by the organization itself, as will appear in the following quota tion from a speech by a member, and which may be accepted as fairly significant of the doctrines with which the minds of the advanced radicals of Russia have become imbued. "Nothing, in the present state of social organization, can be worth much, for the simple reason that our ancestors instituted it. If we are still obliged to confess ourselves ig.nor ant of the exact medium between good and evil, how could our ancestors, less enlight cued than we, know it ? A German philosopher has said: ' Every law is of use. It rules the conduct of individuals who feel for one another and appreciate their respective wants. Every religion, on the other hand, is useless; for ruling, as it does, our relations with an incommensurable and indefinite Being, it can be the result only of a great terror or else of a fantastic imagination.' Now, we Nihilists say,"no law, no religion—rail! The very men who instituted these laws ruling their fellow-creatures have lived and died in complete ignorance of the value of their own acts, and without knowing in the least how they had accomplished the mission traced for them by destiny at the moment of their birth. Even taking it for granted that our ancestors were competent to order the acts of their fellow creatures, does it necessarily follow that the requirements of their time are similar to those of to-day? Evidently not. Let us then, cast off this garment of law, for it has.not been made according to out measure, and it impedes our free ments. Hither with the axe; and let us demolish Oerything. Those who come after us will know how to rebuild an edifice quite as solid as that which we now feel trembling over our heads." Two points will be observed in this manifesto: the one being its posi tive antagonism to all existing things—because they exist; the other the sophistry with the accepted position is reasoned out to a logical conclusion. And this brings us naturally to the starting points of Russian nihilism: in the influence of the Russian his tory; in the nature of the Russian people; and in the exceptional character of the Russian political system.
The present autocracy of Russia was originally an oligarchy, and not until Ivan I. •(III.) founded the existing Russian empire in the 15th c. was the power of the grand dukes, true oligarchs, destroyed. Autocracy was cemented by his immediate descend ant, Ivan the terrible, by Peter I., Katherine IL, and finally by Nicholas. Under the changed political condition instituted by these monarchs, there came to be but three orders or classes among the Russian people: the czar, the nobility and aristocracy, and the serfs: there was no bourgeoisie or middle class. This anomalous condition is supple mented by another; the existence for centuries of the Tar, an actual democracy, which has outlived tyranny and spoliation, and by which each village community has kept alive the ideas of socialism and equal rights. The rnir is in fact a co-operative association of the local peasantry, under a head elected by themselves, who exercises parental authority in conjunction with the village parliament which is convened in cases of emergency. This institution is primitive in its origin. which was Slavonic, is patriarchal in discipline, and preservative of the socialistic element in rural economy. Through its means exists the veritable commune in Russia; since the arable land and pasturage belong not to indi viduals, but are the collective property of the commune, which enjoys unlimited author ity in making allotments and in the redistribution of the soil. These village communes contain about five-sixths of the population, and are opposed to Caesarian despotism on the one hand, and centralized bureaucracy on the other. When to this exiraordinary combination of factors is added that of the persistent tendency of the Russian aristocracy toward anarchy—which is a historical fact—it will be seen what a readiness there is for socialistic ideas and positive revolutionary principles. After Ivan the terrible, a period of actual anarchy existed in Russia, when the boiars (barons) succeeded in fastening still more strongly the chains of servitude upon the unhappy serfs. The accession of Michael Romanoff to the throne, and the foundation of a new dynasty, proved to be the -death-blow to their hopes for ascendency in the realm, and there was nothing for them, and for all the petty potentates and government officials in the empire, but to continue em iron grasp on the lower order, for the increase of their wealth and power, if not of their dignity. A reviewer in Blackwood has epitomized the situation: "We have the monarch who rules, the courtiers who assassinate, and the serfs who obey." And Mr. Gladstone wrote, so late as 1880, of what he called "the oligarchic, diplomatic, and mili tary class:" "This class, or rather this conglomerate of classes, ever watchful for its .aims, ubiquitous yet organized, standing everywhere between the emperor and the people, and oftentimes too strong for both, is at work day and night to impress its own .character upon Russian policy." Under Ivan the terrible was organized the opritchini {elect, or covenanted), a body of guards, selected sometimes from the- lowest of the people, who swore implicit obedience to the czar, and in return were chartered libertines, robbers, and assassins. Each of them exercised a despotism as odious in its sphere as that of the czar, and they became the nucleus of a new kind of nobility, the nobility of function and government employ, which for all practical purposes nearly superseded the hereditary nobility. It is to be remembered that Nicholas ascended the throne over the ruins of a conspiracy which only his personal majesty and invincible courage enabled him to control; and this by such a massacre of those engaged in the uprising, that in one day 15,000 persons were slain, whose bodies were thrown by torchlight into the Neva. But before the accession of Nicholas, in 1821, when all Europe was convulsed with revo lutionary disorder, Russia began to feel the influence of the new ideas which pervaded the political atmosphere of the entire continent, and did not escape the infection of secret societies which had been brought back by the armies from France. It is not unreasonable to suppose that it was this influence which brought about the insurrection of Dec., 1825; since one of the leaders in the outbreak was Alexander Hertzen, who with Bakunin, is considered a founder of the nihilist organization; and who continued throughout his life (he died in 1870) to disseminate the most advanced radical opinions. As an illustration of the tendency of his writings, we have the following: "Despotism itself lives behind wooden walls, and has no stability. A conservative government like that of Austria has never been possible in Russia; we have nothing to conserve, because there is nothing stable among us Every government brings into questim existing rights and institutions; what was ordered yesterday is countermanded to-day.
Because there is no historical basis, we love novelties to distraction." Alexander II. ascended the throne under circumstances which, though less sanguinary than those of his father's accession, were yet essentially untoward. Apparently every thing was in ruins: the military system had broken down; the Crimean war had been a disaster; the administrative machinery of the state had almost collapsed. In clos ing the Crimean war,. the new emperor uttered a manifesto which was _significant of his hopes and designs for the. fOure or Russia. Among other expresSions in it was the desire that "by the combined efforts of the government and the people, the public admin istration would be improved, and that justice and mercy would reign in the courts of law." The beginning of his reign was signalized by the copious use of the pardoning power; and in its second year he began to move in his vast enterprise of the serfs, by submitting the question to the nobles of the empire. The number of serf owners in Russia was about 110,000, having under their control 23,000,000 peasants. In 1857 the emperor issued a ukase which was the beginning of the tremendous change which he had undertaken; and on Feb. 19 (March 3, N.s.), the emancipation law was completed, and the signature of Alexander IL gave freedom to 23,000,000 men. By the agrarian, or land law, which followed, the peasants of a commune were enabled to buy their holdings by a cash payment of about three years' rent, the state advancing four- , fifths of the full payment, which was to be repaid, with 6 per cent interest, in 49 years. ' In the outset, under this act, Russia paid $500,000,000 to the landlords to settle the newly emancipated serfs upon their own holdings, comprising farms extending over 300,000,000 acres. And as the peasants, from time to time, failed to meet their payments, the gov ernment advanced the amount. The final result of the land-law will be that the peasant,. by paying four-fifths of his rent for 49 years to the state instead of to his landlord, will, at the expiration of that period, have become absolute owner of his farm. It is to be ob served that by the enforcement of the emancipation act and the land act, the landlords. lost first, their serfs, and then 20 per cent of their rentals. The third great act of Alex ander II., was to extend the system of the mir, or local self-government, so as to give the peasants entire control as to this, with a very complete organization of elected officials. As the emperor also reformed the judiciary; introduced trial by jury, and the system of trials in open court; made decided improvements in the public administration of office; promoted education, so that between 1860 and 1870 the number of children who could read multiplied five-fold; and finally destroyed most of the existing class distinctions, and relaxed the severity of the censorship of the press; the continued existence of nihil ism, and its potency, as shown in the recent assassination of this very czar, present a most. difficult social and political question. The anomaly of the union of many of the wealth iest and most aristocratic Russians, men and women, with students and other educated persons, with the peasant class, in a wide revolutionary movement, having for its &volved_ object the destruction of all existing institutions, would be inexplicable, but for the pecu liar characteristics of Russian history—as already set forth; with other reasons now to be. indicated. Mr. Gladstone has said of Alexander IL: "The present emperor of Russia has, during a reign now approaching a quarter of a century, given ample evidence of a just and philanthropic mind. No greater triumph of peaceful legislation is anywhere recorded than the emancipation of the Russian serfs which he has effected." Of these very serfs, or peasants, he has said: "They are a peaceful and a submissive race, whose courage in the field is that of a determined and uncalculating obedience.' We have referred, as one of the starting points of Russian nihilism, to the nature of the Russian people. This is not what has been generally supposed, particularly by Americans, who have received their conclusions ready-made from always antagonistic and contemptuous English sources—to whose utterances those of Mr. Gladstone stand as a. relief. The current opinion as to the result of "scratching a Russian," derived from the emperor Napoleon I., who had no great cause to love the race, has been that this would be to disturb the Tartar savage beneath, and bring to light a disposition cruel, vindic tive, and stubborn; and a temperament stolid and lethargic; a combination of the mer ciless Asiatic, and the . boorish and phlegmatic Hollander of the picture-books. This conception is far from truth. The race is probably similar to the Irish in some charac teristics; and to the French in its mercurial nature; while in strange combination it resembles the German in its fondness for abstract philosophical reasoning, and the Span iard or Italian in its sensuousness and indolence. These latter characteristics give it an oriental stamp. As to the psychological tendencies of the Slave mind, Moritz Kauf mann writes that it is "singularly sensitive to the seductive influences of grand misty conceptions, while at the same time inclined to indolence and melancholy dejection"— again an oriental tinge. Keeping in view this fact; and remembering that in Russia there has been for centuries a struggle between the educated (aristocratic) class and the emperor; that while the individual administration of the government by the latter may have been excellent; that of his officials, from the highest to the lowest, has, confessedly, been infamous; that vast reforms were projected into the Russian system en masse, which elsewhere would'have been the slow work of centuries; that these reforms, while they alienated front the emperor and autocracy the favor of the upper class, did not gain that of the lower; it may well appear that Russia needed only to be infused with an element powerful enough and insidious enough, to become distracted into any madness. The tendency of the emancipation act and the land act, however noble and beneficent these were in themselves, has been to undermine the confidence of the Russian peasant, by removing from him the only sure foothold that he knew. As the prisoner, long con fined, pleads to return to his dungeon, the serf under his new condition of freedom, combined with that of proprietorship, is prostrated beneath an endowment which is an actual burden. For the peasant has to a certain extent merely changed owners—since. as to his payments for land, he is obliged to depend on some principal man in the village. And, meanwhile, the old commune principle is being slowly eaten away, and that of indiridualigin with its consequent responsibilities and antagonisms—both utterly foreign to the experience and taste of the Russian peasant—assumes its place.