What Pre-Revolutionary Russia Can Tell Us About Russia Today: Part III — Revolutionary Russia

No revolution in Western Europe can be definitely and finally victorious as long as the present Russian state exists at its side. . . At the present time, a social revolution could be accomplished in Russia with the greatest of ease, much more easily than in Western Europe. 

Frederick Engels

Russia's Mikhail Bakunin (1814–1876)
The 19th Century's Most Influential Revolutionary

Especially after the revolutions of 1830, when French liberals and revolutionaries replaced their king and the tsar crushed a rebellion in Poland, the better-informed people of Europe came to realize that dramatic change was in the air. As the philosopher Auguste Comte put it in 1831, "The first of the leading peculiarities of the present age is that it is an age of transition. Mankind have [sic] outgrown old institutions and old doctrines, and have not yet acquired new ones." But from where would such change come? Ideas were sprouting up everywhere—where would they be tested and put into practice? The answer was Russia.

Starting in the 19th century and expanding relentlessly through the Great War, radicalism in Russia would inspire worldwide terrorism and turn the nation into the main transmission station for the leftist ideologies of anarchism and Marxism. Eventually, of course, their supreme accomplishment would be within Russia itself, as the Great War gave history's most talented group of revolutionaries the opportunity to replace Romanov rule with totalitarian dictatorship. In the long run-up to the First World War, though, the turmoil in Russia had a broader international audience. By demonstrating that something irrationally destructive and uncompromising could be set loose even in a tightly controlled authoritarian state, the Russian radicals haunted monarchs, politicians, and generals and inspired reformers of every stripe.

The literature on the radical movements in Russia is almost as vast as the country itself and is simply beyond summarizing here. However, two issues deserve mention for their relevance to the centennial of World War I. How, despite intense monitoring by secret police, did the Russian leftists transmit revolutionary impulses through every sector of Russian society, winning adherents everywhere, even in the tsar's court? And how did the radicals succeed in winning international sympathy and support and inspire imitators across the globe, despite their prominent campaigns of assassination and terror undermining any claim to the moral high ground? They were simply murderers, after all.

The Russian radicals were relentlessly industrious and adaptable. Home-based or expatriate, as needed, they could originate doctrines, or they could also borrow extensively from kindred souls in other countries. They drew on writers like Marx or the German/American Karl Heinzen, who wrote an essay the Russians embraced justifying murder for political purposes. After a distillation process, they turned theories into action programs that worked in Russia. Also, effective revolutionaries seem to understand theatrics. They adjust the level and type of their activities to optimize the public's likely response to their actions and could—at a turn—make themselves seem victimized and gain sympathy. 

Example: After an earlier failed attempt on the life of Tsar Alexander II in 1866, the government cracked down hard on the nihilist radical groups who had made the attempt. However, the pamphleteers quickly labeled the crackdown the "White Terror." The public quickly forgot the work of the original failed single terrorist/assassin and focused attention on the "terrorism" practiced by the government. This process was replicated 15 years later when the assassination of Tsar Alexander II in 1881 shocked the world and resulted in further repressive measures by the authorities and martyrdom for the executed conspirators. 

Mass Execution of the Conspirators in
Alexander II's Assassination

How were the Russian revolutionaries able to turn crimes and terror into a form of proselytizing, to which a critical number of people succumbed? Because the Russian radicals understood how to control the language of debate. Russian revolutionaries believed in the adage: "If you can control the language, you can control ideas. By controlling ideas, you can control the way people think and act." Russia became a revolutionary hotbed when a cadre of highly intelligent but disaffected individuals who understood this principle emerged spontaneously in the 19th-century as the result of the modern trends of urbanization and industrialization.

It was the dramatically expanding educated class that felt most strongly torn by the 19th-century struggle between tradition and change. The educated population provides any society with its intellectuals, its elite shapers and articulators of ideas. In Russia, though, where the cultural shock of modernization was intensified due to its stark contrast to the tradition of autocracy, this stratum was especially energized. Plus, these were the people best able to use language and control debates and they had an automatic seat of power in the schools and universities. That's where people of ideas congregate, get jobs, and pass on their beliefs and practices to their students. These intellectuals, though a small portion of Russia's population, would provide it with an ever-growing source of sympathizers, financial backers, and revolutionaries throughout the 19th century. 

In Russia, its revolutionaries evolved in patterns that have been observed in other movements over the last two centuries. There, [this came about] in a natural hierarchy within intellectual communities. Out of an expanding intellectual class emerges a sub-grouping of the self possessed, who feel anointed to set the standards and norms for others and sense themselves part of a congregation of kindred spirits sharing that authority — an elite of elites. This elite group is commonly known as the "intelligentsia." There appear to be certain tests that must be passed to gain full acceptance by other self-anointed members of the intelligentsia. Rational secular values must predominate, with extreme skepticism, if not rejection, of any respect for the legacy of the past, patriotism, traditional sex roles and marriage, business and capitalism, and especially religious life. Members or candidates for the intelligentsia naturally envision themselves as reformers, social critics at-large, or "philosopher kings" in extreme cases. If they find or imagine opposition to their program they can feel alienated and become hyper-energized. This pushes a very small number of the intelligentsia, the particularly tough-minded, action-oriented, and ruthless, to the highest state of reformer: the revolutionary.

About that "tough-mindedness.” At some point the once idealistic and well-intended intellectual feels compelled to cross a bridge leaving his present-day humanity on the one side and entering a new idealized world of the future that exists only in his mind, one in which his means for achieving his ends need not be justified, in which two wrongs can now make a right, and inconveniences, like observing the Golden Rule and normal civility, can be ignored. This is how the "smartest and best" of us can turn out like those who came to control the revolution in France where their zeal—described by the conservative politician and political philosopher Edmund Burke as "Epidemical Fanaticism"—led to the mass executions of the Terror and much later to the mass murders of the 20th century. The novelist Honoré de Balzac put it more bluntly—"The intellectuals are the new barbarians."

In any case by the middle of the 19th century, an inner core of revolutionary hopefuls embraced or tolerated by a predominance of educated citizens, had become an ingrained feature of every European city. In Russia this new intelligentsia would prove a self-contained poison pill and a model for revolutionaries up through our current day. 

If this sounds harsh, consider that the Russian intelligentsia of the 19th century created or perfected three different ideologies that sanctioned murder and terror to achieve its ends:

 

Nihilism (Home Grown)—In rejecting all moral principles and social obligations (nihilism = nothingness), most nihilists sought to overthrow the tsarist regime and encourage the creation of "New Men" (note the clever use of language; who doesn't want to be new?) partly through a sexual revolution.  Its more extreme adherents called for the destruction of all the standing political and social institutions and, more viciously, the liquidation of the entire royal family and any who sought to protect them. The movement succeeded in using the 1866 failed assassination of the tsar to discredit the regime. Later radical groups would perfect this technique of sabotaging the legitimacy of governments.

Anarchism (Multiple Roots)—A movement advocating the destruction of the state, the Russian version was given a collectivist and violent tone by Mikhail Bakunin, Sergei Nechayev, and Petr Kropotkin who championed downtrodden peasants and workers, decentralization of power, atheism, and individualism. Frenchman Pierre-Joseph Proudhon also contributed an enduring slogan among anarchists—"Property is theft!" In July 1879, People's Will, an anarchist offshoot, embarked on a campaign of terrorism and assassination, arguing that only a violent intellectual elite could force government reforms. Its successful murder of Tsar Alexander II would inspire a long series of political assassinations culminating in the efforts of Gavrilo Princip and his associates in Sarajevo that set off the Great War. The immediate results of the death of Tsar Alexander II, who had freed the serfs and was considered a progressive reformer, were the installation of a police state and the arrest of most members of People's Will, which led to a brief factionalizing of Russia's leftist radicals. 

(Click on Image to Enlarge)

The Influence of Anarchism Was Broad and Long Lasting in the United States

1.  Pamphlet for 1884 Thanksgiving Day
Protest in Chicago
2.  Mugshot for Leon Czolgosz, Anarchist and Assassin of President William McKinley
3. 1909 Russian Workers Protesting in New York City

Marxism (Borrowed from Germany)—Anarchist terrorism opened the doors for the most effective of these doctrines.One of the most significant groups to emerge in the last two decades of the 19th century was the Social Democrats. In contrast to the anarchists, the Social Democrats were not populists but derived their ideology specifically from Karl Marx. Initially they opposed terrorism and assassinations but by 1886 had adopted the earlier models and were planning to assassinate the current tsar, Alexander III. The police uncovered the plot and arrested the conspirators, including the brother of Vladimir Lenin, Alexandr, who was hanged, thus adding to Lenin's motivations. A more vicious group followed the Social Democrats at the turn of the century, the Social Revolutionaries. What followed was an orgy of such violence that by 1909 support for revolutionary violence temporarily vanished. [The subsequent story of how Vladimir Lenin reorganized what came to be called the Bolsheviks and rose to become the pre-eminent Russian revolutionary will be covered in our future articles on the Russian Revolutions.]

Professor Steven Marks comments about how the methods of Russian revolutionaries spread throughout the world:

The 19th-century practitioners of Russian radicalism were the first to formulate the terrorist practices that have been in use ever since. . . The Russians inspired the adoption of new organizational forms and new methodologies of terrorism. What were the lines of transmission between Russian anarcho-terrorism and the world? The exploits of Bakunin, the People's Will, and their Socialist Revolutionary successors after 1902 were known globally by means of Russian exiles, newspaper accounts, and popular books. Firsthand knowledge of the Russian revolutionary movement spread with the thousands of people leaving Russia for abroad. Active revolutionaries fleeing from the law, members of the intelligentsia seeking political refuge, Jewish emigrants, and aristocrats on tour all spread word of Russian developments to the European continent, England, and the United States. And also to Japan, its proximity to the penal colony of Siberia making it a common destination.

Meanwhile, newspapers around the world, especially radical and third-world publications, were documenting the deeds of the revolutionaries. Important books that raised awareness about them and sometimes glamorized them included the novels of Turgenev and Joseph Conrad. A long list of works by the Russian radicals proved to be bestsellers among their kindred souls in other countries.

This is, however, not the end of the story. Another group of virulent contagions originated in or were absorbed into the troubled body of 19th-century Russia and were subsequently injected into the bloodstream of the world. These would contribute to the outbreak of both World Wars and ensure their outcomes were unsurpassably brutal. Unfortunately, as with the radical trends, these infections are still with us, apparently incurable. 

Antifa Demonstration, Portland, Oregon, 21st Century
A Blend of Nihilism, Anarchism, and Communism?

Sources: “Russia’s Early Identity Questions” from the chapter "Russia's Historical Roots" in The Russia Balance Sheet by Anders Åslund and Andrew Kuchins,  © Peterson Institute for International Economics, 2009. Reprinted with permission; and the Encyclopedia Britannica Online.