SECRET SOCIETIES IN RUSSIA. 



411 



many sanguine people believe that a national mil- 

 lennium is at hand. But gradually the enthusi- 

 asm cools under the influence of chilly experi- 

 ence. The chilling process naturally takes place 

 more rapidly among those in authority. The 

 new institutions do not work nearly so well in re- 

 ality as on paper, and new forces appear which 

 do not readily submit to control. The govern- 

 ment think it well to apply the curb, first in an 

 intermittent, irritating way, and then in a more 

 decided, systematic fashion. This is naturally re- 

 sented by the enthusiastic, sanguine people, and 

 the cry is raised that the reaction has set in. It 

 is no longer possible, they say, to trust to the 

 government for the realization of the expected 

 millennium. If it is to be realized, extra-legal 

 means must be employed. In a word, the stage 

 is again prepared for the entrance of secret politi- 

 cal societies. 



In the present reign the cooling process com- 

 menced almost as soon as the emancipation law 

 began to be put in execution, in 1861. Serf- 

 emancipation — the conferring of liberty and civic 

 rights on forty millions of human beings — is of 

 course a grand thing, of which a nation should be 

 proud, and with which every patriotic man with 

 any pretensions to being civilized and liberal must 

 warmly sympathize ; but when this great event 

 accidentally deprives you of all power over one- 

 half of your estate, and you find that your serfs are 

 dissatisfied because they do not get the whole of it, 

 probably you will feel — especially if your liberal- 

 ism and patriotism be of the vaporing, rhetorical 

 type — that really liberalism may be pushed a lit- 

 tle too far. So, at least, thought many of the 

 Russian proprietors. On the other hand, certain 

 youths, not amenable to sobering influences, held 

 that the emancipation law and the government in 

 general were not nearly liberal enough. These 

 considered that more land and less taxation 

 should have been given to the peasantry, and 

 after due consideration arrived at the conviction 

 that the best way to mend matters was to write 

 and disseminate the most terrifically seditious 

 proclamations. Then there were the disorders in 

 the universities; and, above all, there were the 

 Nihilists. What are the Nihilists? That is a 

 question which I have often put to men who 

 ought to be competent authorities, and I have 

 never received a satisfactory explanation, but 

 there is no difficulty in describing the popular 

 conception of them. According to popular opin- 

 ion, they were a band of fanatical young men 

 and women — many of them medical students — 

 who had determined to turn the world upside 



down, and to introduce " a new kind of social 

 order," founded on the most advanced principles, 

 communistic and otherwise. They had discov- 

 ered that the two chief fountains of crime and 

 human misery, viz., lust and the desire of gain, 

 might be hermetically sealed by abolishing the 

 obsolete institutions of marriage and private 

 property. When society would be so organized 

 that all the natural instincts of human nature 

 would find complete and untrammeled satisfac- 

 tion, there would be no inducement to commit 

 crime. That could not, of course, be effected in- 

 stantaneously, but something might be done at 

 once. The adherents of the new doctrines ac- 

 cordingly reversed the traditional order of things 

 in the matter of coiffure: the males allowed their 

 hair to grow long, and the female adepts cut their 

 hair short, adding occasionally the additional 

 badge of blue spectacles. Their appearance nat- 

 urally shocked the aesthetic feelings of ordinary 

 people, but to this they did not object. They 

 had raised themselves above the level of popular 

 notions, were indifferent to so-called public opin- 

 ion, despised Philistine respectability, and rather 

 liked to scandalize people with antiquated preju- 

 dices. Besides this, they had a special grudge 

 against the worship of aesthetic culture. Profess- 

 ing extreme utilitarianism, they explained that 

 the shoemaker who practises his craft is, in the 

 true sense, a greater man than a Shakespeare or 

 a Goethe, because humanity has more need of 

 shoes than poetry. Strange to say, the opera 

 found favor in their eyes — perhaps because the 

 founder of modern theoretical Communism had 

 included operatic representations in his phalan- 

 stere programme. Perhaps the most curious part 

 of this curious phenomenon was the prominence 

 of the female element in all the demonstrations. 

 When the students held meetings against the 

 orders of the authorities, ladies in short hair and 

 blue spectacles were generally among the ora- 

 tors. 



Let it be distinctly understood that I am de- 

 scribing not the Nihilists but simply the popular 

 conception of them. Some of their friends have 

 assured me that this conception is radically false. 

 According to these authorities there never were 

 any Nihilists. The people to whom this name 

 was applied were simply students who desired 

 beneficent liberal reforms. The peculiarities in 

 their costume arose merely from a laudable neg. 

 lect of trivialities in view of graver interests. 

 However this may be — and I do not pretend at 

 present to decide the question — many people 

 were alarmed, and the reaction was prepared in 



