NIHILISTS. 





. The assassination of Prince Krapotch- 

 kin, Governor of Kharkov, who was shot Feb- 

 ruary 22, 1879, was explained in a Nihilist cir- 

 cular as having been on account of certain in- 

 human acts which he had committed against 

 prisoners under his charge. " Death for death, 

 execution for execution, terror for terror," said 

 tho circular; "this is our answer to the threats, 

 the persecutions, and the oppressions of the 

 Government. Should the latter persevere in its 

 old course, the bodies of Heyking [commander 

 of gendarmerie at Kiev, who was also killed by 

 Nihilists] and Mezentzoff will not have turned 

 into dust before the Government will hear 

 from us again." General Drenteln, chief of 

 the gendarmerie, was shot at, March 25th, and 

 was warned that he could not escape. In ref- 

 erence to this act, " Land and Liberty " said : 

 " It is not necessary to recapitulate Drenteln's 

 crimes. He deserves death for this alone that 

 he has been chief of gendarmes during this 

 period of repression." Leon Mirsky, the per- 

 petrator of this act, when tried for it in No- 

 vember, acknowledged what he had done, and 

 only pleaded that he had acted not as a com- 

 mon murderer, but for public reasons and under 

 the orders of a committee which he was bound 

 to obey. The number and character of the vic- 

 tims who were assassinated or attacked under 

 the orders of this mysterious committee was 

 so great in the several towns of the empire 

 as to give a color of foundation to the opinion 

 that a settled purpose existed to spread terror 

 and deter any one from serving the Govern- 

 ment in a capacity involving functions of po- 

 lice. The period of murders was followed by 

 one of arson, when whole towns were burned 

 with an enormous destruction of property, the 

 excess of which beyond the average amount of 

 destruction by ordinary incendiarism was as- 

 cribed to the instigation of the Nihilists. 



Nihilist societies began to be formed in 1859, 

 among the students of the Agricultural College 

 of Petrovski, near Moscow, who had adopted 

 the materialistic views taught by Bilchner in 

 his "Force and Matter," and the socialistic 

 views expounded by the German writer Max 

 Stirner, in his " Property and the Individual." 

 Both these books were prohibited by the Gov- 

 ernment, but that only caused them to be more 

 in demand, and a lithographed translation of 

 the "Force and Matter" was passed around 

 from hand to hand. Other works of similar 

 tendency were read by these students, among 

 them Buckle's " History of Civilization." The 

 first political murder took place at this insti- 

 tution, when one of the students was killed by 

 Netchayeff. The Government, alarmed by this 

 event, treated the students with severity, keep- 

 ing many of them in prison for years without 

 trial. Among the persons who suffered was 

 Vera Sassulitch, who was a friend of Netcha- 

 yeff 's sister. These persecutions caused the 

 Nihilists to gain many adherents among the 

 people and among literary men. One of the 

 latter class who joined them was Tcherny- 



tohevsky, whose novel, " What Is to be Done? " 

 is regarded as a kind of text-book of Nihilism. 

 After the Franco-German war the Nihilists 

 adopted the Panslavist cause, but the acquittal 

 of Vera Bassulitch again directed their atten- 

 tion to home affairs. In their later operations 

 they have been drawn further away from Pan- 

 slavism, the influence of which is rather on the 

 side of imperial ambition, and they now repre- 

 sent the reverse tendency in its extreme. 



The fact has been brought to light in the 

 course of the trials of Nihilists that a very 

 large proportion of the party is composed of 

 graduates, students, and persons who have not 

 been able to complete their studies. This cir- 

 cumstance is accounted for as the effect of 

 changes which have been made by the Gov- 

 ernment in the regulation of university studies. 

 These regulations were greatly relaxed, and 

 the facilities for entering the universities were 

 enlarged at one time, so that the halls of the 

 schools were crowded with students of mod- 

 erate means. Afterward the standards of ex- 

 amination were made more rigorous, so that 

 the students who had been drawn to the col- 

 leges, finding they would not be able to enter 

 the civil service, suddenly dropped their stud- 

 ies, and, being without position or prospects, 

 yielded to the persuasions of political agitators. 



The doctrines and objects of the Nihilists 

 must be gathered from the expressions of their 

 leaders and their own declarations of pxirpose. 

 Michael Bakunin, who is regarded as the found- 

 er of the doctrines of the party, in a speech at 

 Geneva in 1868, announced himself the bearer 

 of a new gospel, the mission of which was to 

 destroy the Lie, the beginning of which was 

 God. Having got rid of this belief, the next 

 lie to be destroyed was Right, a fiction invent- 

 ed by Might in order to insure and strengthen 

 her reign. Might formed the sole groundwork 

 of society, made and unmade laws ; therefore, 

 our first work, he said, " must be destruction 

 and annihilation of everything as it now ex- 

 ists," the good with the bad; "for if but an 

 atom of this old world remains, the new will 

 never be created." He detested communism, 

 advocated the abolition of marriage and inher- 

 itance, and taught that conscience was a mere 

 matter of education. Another Nihilist, in a 

 speech, sought to justify the deeds of political 

 assassins and incendiaries, on the ground of 

 the necessity of rooting out from men's minds 

 the habitual respect for the powers that be. 

 In March, 1876, several Nihilist proclama- 

 tions were seized in Prussia while on their 

 way to Russia, in one of which were these in- 

 structions : " You should only allow yourself 

 to be influenced in the selection of your vic- 

 tims by the relative use which the Revolution 

 would derive from the death of any particular 

 person. In tho foremost rank of such oases 

 stand those people who are most dangerous 

 and injurious to our organization, and whose 

 sudden and violent death would have the effect 

 of terrifying the Government and shaking its 



