After Bakunin, the one who did most to propagate nihilistic ideas in Russia, was the novelist Tschernyschewsky, who edited a radical monthly until it was suppressed in 1862, and afterward wrote What is to be Done, a remarkable novel, which was forbidden circulation in Russia, but was printed in Berlin and in Switzerland. Disseminated thus through broadsides, periodicals, newspapers, handbills, and even fiction, the nihilist views have found many readers. The students in the universities have been apt and eager scholars in the new dispensation, mainly on account of mai-administration of their various colleges; but also from that volatile temperament and tendency to advanced speculative opinions which generally characterizes students everywhere. An absurd rule, that a knowledge of Greek and Latin should be the test in university and civil-service examinations, drove many students from the universities and into nihilism. In Russia the only field for the young man of education who is not noble, is the civil-service: com merce, the industries, and agriculture, offer them nothing; the priesthood despised; there is little or no business for the lawyer, and the army positions are reserved to the nobility. Thus, to make a classical education a sloe qua non for entrance to the univer sity, was to set up an impenetrable barrier; since the students, for the most part, are the sons of poor trades-people, priests, and small government officials, to whom Greek and Latin arc impossible as preliminaries to a university education. Thrown out of their destined career, these young men had neither position, means of existence, nor prospects; and in very desperation they grasped at the delusive subleties of nihilism. There are no means of knowing the number of nihilists; the organization seems wide spread, but care ful investigators incline to consider the number as comparatively very small.
There remains only to recapitulate a few of the leading events in the history of the various revolutionary attempts made by this organization since its foundation. As early as 1859 nihilistic societies began to be formed in Russia among the students of the agri cultural college of Petrovski, near Moscow, who had adopted the materialistic views taught by Bfichner in his Force and _Vatter, and those on socialism set forth by the Ger, man, Max Stirner in his Property and the Individual; and who had read also it it said, Buckle's History of Civilization. It was in this institution that the first political assassina tion occurred, when one of the students named Ivanoff was killed by the notorious Netchaleff, who though an emissary of Bakunin, and of the chief committee of the nihilists, is accused of having been a common swindler, while he certainly proved him self to be an informer. This assassination, which did not happen until 1873, caused inteuse excitement, in the midst of which the perpetrator escaped to Switzerland, but only to be given up by the Swiss to the Russian government. He was tried in Moscow. in 1874 with closed doors, and would have been executed, but that on account of the information which he afforded, his sentence was commuted to transportation for life and penal servitude in the mines of Siberia. By his confessions 183 persons were implicated, and these were all seized on the same day, May 20, 1875. Their trial lasted 18 months, terminating in Dec., 1877, when 99 of the accused were sentenced to penal servitude in Siberia, 36 subjected to police supervision for a certain number of years, and the remain der acquitted; those were chiefly sons and daughters of priests, trades-people, Jews, and small officials, and were charged with seeking to propagate nihilism among the lower classes. Many of them were young girls. The began to attract atten tion as a really formidable association about the time of the trial of Vera Sassulitch iq 1878. Vera Sassulitch, a young woman 28 years of age, who had been under the surveil lance of the government on account of the suspicion that she was concerned with the nihilists, attempted the assassination of gen. Trepoff, one of the chief of secret police, in July, 1877. The officer in question had ordered a political prisoner to be flogged for some act of disrespect to him personally, and Vera Sassulitch, as she averred, committed the act in order to force the government to take note of the fact. She was tried by a jury of educated men, eight of whom held government positions, and to the general astonish ment, was acquitted, a result with which the Russian press and public showed them selves in full agreement. Gen. Trepoff was removed from his position, but was made gen. of cavalry. Vera Sassulitch left, the country after the trial in 1878, but her case was brought before the supreme court of revision, and the acquittal canceled on the ground of informality. In Aug.. 1878, gen. de Meaentzoff, the successor of gen. Trepoff, was stabbed at St. Petersburg while walking, and died the same day. This and other similar attacks were ascribed to the nihilists,. who were manifesting :remarkable activity in all directions. A secret associatiOn called the "National GOvernment'iSsticd a circular in.
'April, 1878, containing a revolutionary programme, and calling upon the people to take up arms. Assemblages of the people in public places were now prohibited by a minis f aria] order. In a letter from Odessa to a Vienna newspaper, it was stated that there
Were several thousand members of the nihilist society in that city alone; that the organ ization had powerful supporters in the highest ranks of society; and that a lady who was one of the Russian fashionable leaders, had been arrested for being in correspondence with the chief of the nihilist committee at St. Petersburg. During Sept., 1878, a pam phlet entitled Life for Life, which was considered a manifesto of the nihilists, was pub lished in St. Petersburg. Among other passages, it contained the following: "We are socialists. Our purpose is the destruction of the present economical organization and inequality which constitute, to our convictions, the root of all the evils of man kind. The question of the political f'orm.is entirely indifferent to us." . . . " Our daggers will never be sheathed until our oppressors, who strangle and gag us, are expelled from the country; and a terrible vengeance will be taken if the Russian nation do not put an end to this mediaeval barbarism." This declaration of socialism as a theory of governmental order, thus opposing the fundamental principle of nihilism, shows the heterogeneous elements and the blind fury of the whole movement. The assassination of gen. Mezeutzolf was in fact avowed by the nihilists in their journal Land and Liberty, in which they alleged that he deserved death because he had trampled right under foot; had tortured his prisoners; persecuted the innocent; and in his official capacity had mur dered by brutal ill-treatment, by hunger, thirst, and the rod, a number of persons whose names were given. On Feb. 22, 1879, prince Krapotchkin, governor of Kharkov, was assassinated by shooting; according to a nihilist circular, on account of certain inhuman acts against prisoners in his charge. Heyking, commander of gendarmerie at Kiev, was also among the victims of the nihilists, and on March 25, 1879, gen. Dreuteln, chief of the gendarmerie or third section, was shot at, and being missed, was warned that he could not long escape. The number and character of the persons assassinated or attacked by order of the committee of the nihilists was so great in the several towns of the empire, as to cause general alarm. The period of murders Was followed by one of conflagrations. In the month of June alone, in 1879, 3,500 fires broke out iu St. Petersburg, Orenburg, Koslow, Irkutsk, and Uralsk, destroying property to the amount of 12,000,000 rubles. Only 900 of these fires could be properly accounted for, and the remaining 2,600 were attributed to nihilist incendiaries. On April 2, 1879, an attempt to assassinate the emperor Alexander II. was made by Solovieff, who fired four shots at him from a revolver, but missed his aim. Solovieff was captured and afterward hanged. In Nov., 1879, an attempt was made to blow up the train by which the emperor was expected to arrive at Moscow; this attempt failed from a change of programme on the part of the emperor, who Was not on the train that was actually blown up by a mine by one Hartman, who escaped. In 1867 an attempt had been made on the emperor's life while he was in Paris, riding in the Bois de Boulogne with the emperor Napoleon III. The assassin fired at him but missed him. The third effort was that of a man who entered the imperial apart ments in disguise. The fourth, the terrible explosion at the Winter palace which killed Several persons.. The fifth and last occurred on the afternoon of Sunday, Mar. 13. 1881, and was a successful assassination. The emperor was returning from a parade in the Michel rnanege, and when near the Winter palace, a bomb was thrown beneath the imperial carriage, and exploded, breaking through the back of the vehicle, but without injuring the czar, who alighted to examine the extent of the damage. At that moment a second bomb was exploded close to his feet, shattering both his legs, and otherwise injuring him so that lie died in less than two hours. The two assassins were immediately arrested, and within a few days others were apprehended for complicity in the affair. The funeral of Alexan der II. took place on March 20, 1881. His son, the czarovitch, assumed the crown under the title of Alexander III. The assassination, which chilled the civilized world with horror, was openly rejoiced in at socialist meetings in various countries.
A proclamation of the executive committee of the nihilists, drawn up shortly after the attack on the emperor by the assassin Solovieff or`Solowfew, sums up the latest known published demands of nihilism as follows :—" A representative democratic form of gov ernment; permanent parliaments, with full powers to regulate all matters of state; exten sion of self-government in the provinces; complete autonomy of rural communes; the land to be put into the possession of the people; means to be found for placing the facto ries in the hands of the artels or artisan guilds; transformation of the army into a Militia; liberty of the press, and industrial combination." This ceases to be nihilism proper, and attempts reconstruction. It may mark a change in the direction of activity. Nihilism, too incoherent to be more than a blind frenzy, must soon destroy itself; but none can predict into what shape of revolution its fragments may be organized in some near future.