NIIGATA 



NIHILISM 



only nominal. The apples and water-melon* of 

 tin- province me m>ic<l lor tlieir excellence. Pop. 

 (1889)40,778; (1892)49,884. 



Mliilislii i- a i. -mi used to describe certain 

 negative systems of philosophy. It wax applied 

 to some rationalists in tin- 12th century (Peter 

 Lombard, q.v. ), ami in modern times to various 

 negative systems of metaphysics, ethics, and 

 atheist philosophy. Of late, however, it has become 

 familiar OH applied tn Russian revolutionists, and 

 especially (though ^improperly ) to those of the 

 ' terrorist ' wing. In Russian life it was first 

 introduced by Turgenief (q.v.), in Fathers and 

 Sont ( 1862), to characterise a new type appearing 

 at that time among the Russian educated classes 

 men who, in Turgenief s own words, ' bow liefore 

 no authority of any kind, and accept on faith no 

 principle, whatever veneration surround it. ' Accord- 

 ingly, they defied ' the fathers ' ' to find out, in our 

 present life, family and social, one single institution 

 which would not deserve an absolute and pitiless 

 negation ; ' and, ' abandoning all talk about art, 

 unconscious artistic creation, parliamentarism, 

 reformed tribunals, and what not else,' they put 

 above all 'the question of daily bread for all,' 

 repudiated art as long as it is not in the service 

 of the masses, waged war against prejudices, and 

 reformed their own lives according to truth and 

 sincerity, assuming an outward roughness in their 

 liehaviour as a protest against the polished and 

 insincere relations in civilised life. Turgenief's 

 eminently objective description of the new ty]ie 

 having been misunderstood, Tehernyshevsky (q.v.) 

 wrote the novel What it to be done? represent- 

 ing the Nihilists not as simple philosophers of 

 negation, but as people engaged either in science, 

 or in social reforms on Robert Owen's lines, or 

 (a few of them) as popular revolutionists; and 

 especially insi-ting upon tlieir highly res|>ectful 

 relations to woman, whom they consider as an 

 intellectually equal comrade in work. The two 

 novels, both drawn from life, thus complete one 

 another, and give a correct idea of Nihilism, which 

 in its philosophical aspects is an outcome of 

 the philosophy of the 18th century as modified by 

 modem science (Buckle, Darwin, H. Spencer, and 

 J. S. Mill lieing the most popular authors among 

 Nihilists), while in social life it appears as a 

 protest ajraiimt ' the conventional lies of civilised 

 mankind.' Nihilism is thus the Russian equivalent 

 of the 18th century's Scottish and French Encyclo- 

 pedist philosophical movements ; but it differs 

 from them by having transmuted their philo- 

 sophical conceptions into everyday life. The teach- 

 ings of Nihilism, which has its roots in all previous 

 life of the Russian educated classes ( Pushkin was 

 already nlekuMned Nihilist by his adversaries), 

 found two very gifted expounder! in the art-critic 

 Dobroluboff ( 183(>-6I ) and the political writer 

 Pisarelf (died 1872), and has created a very bulky 

 literature, especially of novels propagating the same 

 ideas. They have exercised a deep influence upon 

 the life of the educated classes in Russia, and 

 created in Russian jiterature and art a current 

 which makes them differ so widely from literature 

 and art in western Kurope. They also contributed 

 to the deep reaching movement in favour of the 

 higher education of Russian women, which, not- 

 withstanding the opposition of government, is now 

 further advanced in Russia than in any European 

 country. The 324 non-classical aymnaaU for girls 

 quite equal to the licst institutions of the same 

 kind have now 90,000 pupils. Four women's uni- 

 versities and one medical academy, all supported 

 by private rontiihntioiiH and quite e<|tml to the 

 liet male universities, had an aggregate of 2000 

 students when closed by government in 1886-88 

 (one is reopened); betide*, 830 ladies already have 



obtained doctors' degrees in Russia after having 

 passed the Mime examinations as the male doctors. 



' Nihilists ' are now found in all classes of 

 educated Russians, the great bulk taking no part 

 whatever in the political struggle; while those 

 revolutionists who are descrilicd in wc-tein Kurope 

 as Nihilists have political programmes direct ly 

 borrowed from western Kurope, and are known in 

 Kii-sia as Radicals, Socialists, Anarchies. Popular- 

 iste, or Party of the Will of the People i the latter 

 resorting to political terror in order to obtain a 

 constitution). 



The name of Nihilist has, however, l-n so much 

 identified with the revolutionary movement in 

 Russia that a brief account of the latter must be 

 given under this heading. It was IMU-II, especially 

 under the influence of Herzen (q.v.) alioiit IHIK), 

 when the hopes of thorough reforms awakened by 

 the proi>osed emancipation of the serfs wei'e 

 frustrated by the ascendency acquired by the serf- 

 owners' party in the councils of the czar. I'm 

 clamations appealing to the peasants to revolt veic 

 issued in 1861; and two secret societies 'The 

 Great Russian' and 'Land and Libert \ '- were 

 organise;!. In I8U1 the poet Mikhailotl '(died in 

 Siberia in 1807) and in 1804 Tchernyshev sky (died 

 in 1887 at Astrakhan, after 20 years' confinement 

 in Silieria) and several others weie sent to hard 

 labour in BQwta in connection with this movement. 

 When, after the Polish insurrection (1H63), the 

 old party took the upper hand in the Winter Palace, 

 new revolutionary circles made their apjiearance ; 

 they resulted in a peasants' outbreak at Kazan 

 (1864), a revolutionary propaganda among workers, 

 and an attempt by Karakozoll upon the life of the 

 czar ( 1866). In ISTOa similar movement was started 

 among the youth under the leadership of NetchaiefV. 

 The failure of these two movement- led to the 

 appearance all over Russia of circles for more serious 

 self-education, which, however, soon took a more 

 revolutionary character, chiefly under the influence 

 of the powerful agitator, Michel Hakunin (q.v.), 

 the ideas of the International Working-men* 

 Association, which rapidly spread in Russia after 

 the Paris Commune, and the socialist writings of 

 Colonel Peter Lavroff. Young men and women of 

 rich families abandoned their homes, and went to 

 the villages and factories in the capacity of workers, 

 schoolmasters in villages, medical helps, midwives, 

 and so on, either simply to share with the people 

 their life of privation or to carry on a revolutionary 

 propaganda. More than 2000 persons were ai rested 

 (1873-76) in connection with the movement and 

 kept for years in prison ; but only 193 could l>e 

 brought (end of 18(7) before a supreme court. It 

 could not but acquit most of them ; yet even then 

 they were sent into exile. Several smaller groups 

 were tried and condemned during the same years. 



The flogging of a prisoner in the St Petersburg 

 prison by the then prefect of police, OJrneral Trc]>ff 

 a most influential person among the advisers of 

 the czar and the impossibility of otherwise bring- 

 ing the fact to publicity, induced Vera Zasulitch 

 to make an attempt upon General Trepoffs life 

 (February 1878). She was cent as a common-law 

 offender liefore a jury and acquitted (April 1878), 

 the attempt at rcarresting her as she left the court 

 being bullied by a riot in the streets, during 

 which one of her friends was shot. The trials for 

 |>o)itical offences were now withdrawn from the 

 senate ( which formerly used to judge them ) and 

 assigned to courts-martial ; while on the other side 

 the revolutionists, abandoning more and more the 

 propaganda among the people, resorted to a policy 

 if terror. They killed several snirs, one police 

 official, the governor-general of Kliarkoll', and the 

 :hief of the state police, General Mezcntsoff, in 

 broad daylight in St Petersburg (August 1878). 



