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TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



nature and wants of the Eussian people — igno- 

 rance of the conditions of itshistorical life and of 

 man in general. So long as that specially practi- 

 cal and partly theoretical information has not heen 

 obtained, it is impossible to arrive at any conclu- 

 sion, and still more impossible to begin any activ- 

 ity. That Eussian radicalism does not know 

 man in general and the Kussian in particular — 

 that is unquestionable. We know by experience 

 that it wishes to impose on Eussians foreign modes 

 of thought and ideals which they are incapable of 

 appropriating. It promises them a stork in heav- 

 en, when they would much prefer a sparrow on 

 earth. By a priori reasoning and from general 

 knowledge of human nature, we may conclude 

 that every ignorant and 'undeveloped' man val- 

 ues most of all his own life, that the sphere of his 

 requirements is confined to food and a wife, and 

 that anything higher than these is unintelligible 

 for him until they are satisfied, and until you de- 

 velop in him human dignity and thought. Be- 

 sides this, various social misfortunes have brought 

 down the wants of the Eussian peasant to such a 

 minimum, that, firstly, it requires very great want to 

 make him protest, and, secondly, it requires very 

 small concessions to make him be silent and tran- 

 quil. If the apparent emancipation of the serfs post- 

 poned popular insurrection for several decades, it 

 is evident that when serious attempts at insurrec- 

 tion are made in the future, it will be sufficient 

 to diminish the taxes and increase a little the 

 amount of peasant land. Small material conces- 

 sions will induce them the more readily to de- 

 liver up the leaders and intelligent propagandists, 

 and that will continue until there have been cre- 

 ated in the people a popular idea and more or less 

 human culture, which must be created not by 

 hooks imported from abroad, not by incitement to j 

 revolt, but hy gradual human development, and 

 by influence in those places where it is not com- 

 pletely excluded by unfavorable circumstances. 

 The times of PugatcherT are past. The state has 

 succeeded in crushing the warlike, nomadic in- 

 stincts of the people. A popular rising has, there- 

 fore, no chance of success, and if such a thing did 

 happen to succeed, the people in its present intel- 

 lectual condition would gain nothing, and would 

 simply fall into the hands of a dictator, or of 

 capitalists, or of both. I do not deny the possi- 

 bility of an insurrection as the result of a w-hole 

 series of causes, but I am convinced that it can be 

 produced and guided only by elemental forces 

 independently of artificial influences. He who can 

 raise the spirit of such a popular movement and j 

 take advantage of it will alone gain by it, and his 

 success or failure, so far as the people are con- 

 cerned, will depend on the degree of conscien- 

 tiousness of the leaders ; for a popular revolution 

 is an elemental force, and not a principle, or a 



logical conclusion, or a mathematical programme. 

 Hence to raise Eevolutionarity {Revolutionnost) to 

 the rank of a principle is in my opinion an ab- 

 surdity. Eevolutionarity can exist only in the 

 feelings of an individual man or in the periodical 

 outbursts of the masses. The masses as an ele- 

 ment do not possess the critical faculty, and at 

 certain moments act by instinct. The individual 

 is obliged to act according to the critical faculty, 

 and ought not to construct his principles on ele- 

 mental impulsions of the masses. Eegarding the 

 latter as an historical and cultural necessity, he 

 ought to content himself with the following pro- 

 gramme : by the attentive study of the masses 

 and of the separate units of which they are com- 

 posed, he should inoculate the separate units with 

 consciousness and the critical faculty, avoiding all 

 bias and instigation, and introduce into the 

 masses, in so far as it is possible, the elements of 

 human culture. The rest should he left to the 

 elaboration of this material by the people. Fur- 

 ther than this the part of intelligent units cannot 

 go. Every departure from this, so to say, natural 

 programme, is as fatal to the intelligent units and 

 to the people as every departure from the laws of 

 Nature must be. Eevolutionarity as a principle is 

 an anomaly — a transferring of instinct to the sphere 

 of logic, that is to say, an unnatural union. But 

 all that is general theory. There are no actors, 

 and those who remain should spare themselves. 

 Such a miserably small group cannot do anything 

 more in the direction which I regard as the true 

 one. It ought therefore to contract itself so as to 

 form the nucleus of a future radical party, and in 

 the mean time it ought to examine the surround- 

 ings in which it lives, study these surroundings 

 and the people, investigate the conditions and or- 

 ganization of civilized life, elahorate the founda- 

 tion of a programme, increase as much as possible 

 the number of conscious and reflecting adepts — 

 not of children — and wait. Every revolutionary 

 pamphlet should he thrown into the fire. All that 

 is nonsense and absurdity. Perhaps the time will 

 soon come when it will be necessary to have a 

 conscious — radical — popular party, a genuine cham- 

 pion of popular interests — not a mere phantom in 

 the form of an anachronism ; and such a party will 

 not then be found. It is necessary to create it, 

 and in the mean time to wait, working slowly 

 but surely in that direction. It is time to get rid 

 of the charms of peasant surroundings, and to 

 give up thinking about externals. These youthful 

 outbursts without criticism lead to nothing but 

 harm." 



Let us hope that Young Eussia will soon 

 come to perceive clearly the truth coutained in 

 the last sentence of this curious document. — 

 Fortnightly Review. 



