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THE LAST APPEAL OF THE RUSSIAN LIBERALS.

rorists" I have met in all varieties, both in European Russia and among the exiles in Siberia; but a Nihilist in the proper or even in the popular signification of that wordnever. Of course, if you use the term "Nihilist," as you would use the term "Knownothing," merely to denote a certain social or political party and without reference to the original significance of the appellation, you may apply it to any body of men-to the Knights of Labor, for example; but if you use the word with a consciousness of its primary signification, as you would use the word yellow to describe an orange, you cannot properly apply it to any branch of the protesting party in Russia. There is in the empire no party, organization, or body of men to which it is applicable.

The word "Nihilist" was introduced in Russia by Turgenef, who used it in his novel "Fathers and Children" to describe a certain type of character which had then recently made its appearance in the ranks of the rising generation and which he contrasted sharply and effectively with the prevailing types in the generation which was passing from the stage. As applied to Bazaroff, the skeptical, materialistic, iconoclastic surgeon's son in Turgenef's novel, the word "Nihilist" had a natural appropriateness which the Russian public at once recognized. There were differences of opinion as to the question whether any such class as that represented by Bazaroff really existed, but there was no difference of opinion with regard to the appropriateness of the term as applied to that particular character. It was accurately descriptive of the type. The word "Nihilist," however, was soon caught up by the conservatives and by the Government, and was applied indiscriminately by them as an opprobrious and discrediting nickname to all persons who were not satisfied with the existing order of things and who sought, by any active method whatever, to bring about changes in Russian social and political organization. To many of the reformers, iconoclasts, and extreme thewas orists of that time the term "Nihilist" perhaps fairly applicable as it certainly was, for example, to Bakunin and his followers and by some of them it was even accepted in a spirit of pride and defiance as an appellation which, although a nickname, expressed concisely their opposition to all forms of authority based on force. To the great mass of the Russian malcontents, however, it had then,

It is hardly necessary, perhaps, to say that this is not a vague, general assertion, made at random. I have particularly in mind the case of a well-known professor of the Moscow University whose name I will not give, because he is not yet in exile; the case of Constantine M. Staniukovitch, formerly editor of the Russian magazine "Diello," who is now in exile in the town of

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and has now, no appropriate reference what-
ever. It would be quite as fair and quite as
reasonable to say that the people in the United
States who were once called "Know-noth-
ings" were persons who really did not know
are persons
anything as to say that the people in Russia
who are now called "Nihilists
who really do not believe in anything, nor re-
spect anything, nor do anything except destroy.
By persistent iteration and reiteration, however,
the Russian Government and the Russian con-
servative class have succeeded in making the
world accept this opprobrious nickname as
really descriptive of the character and opinions
of all their opponents, from the "terrorist "
who throws an explosive bomb under the car-
riage of the Tsar, down to the peaceful and
law-abiding member of a provincial assembly
who respectfully asks leave to petition the
Crown for the redress of grievances. It would
be hard to find another instance in history
where an incongruous and inappropriate ap-
pellation has thus been fastened upon a hetero-
geneous mass of people to whose beliefs and
actions it has no sort of applicability, or a case
in which an opprobrious nickname has had
so confusing and so misleading an influence
upon public opinion throughout the world.

The peoplemost misrepresented and wronged
the members of the protesting
by this nickname are unquestionably the Rus-
sian liberals.
party who seek to obtain reforms by peace-
able and legal methods. From the point of
view of the Government there might perhaps
be some propriety in the application of the
term "Nihilist" to a conspirator like Nec-
haief or to a regicide like Ryssakoff; but there
can be no possible reason or excuse for calling
by that name a professor who opposes the in-
quisitorial provisions of the new university
laws, an editor who disputes the right of the
Government to banish a man to Siberia with-
out trial, or a member of a provincial assem-
bly who persuades his fellow-delegates to join
in a petition to the Crown asking for a con-
stitution. These people are not "Nihilists,"
they are not even revolutionists; they are
peaceable, law-abiding citizens, who are striv-
ing by reasonable methods to secure a better
form of government; and yet these men are
removed from their official places, silenced by
ministerial prohibition, arrested without ade-
quate cause, exiled without a judicial hearing,
and finally misrepresented to the world as
"Nihilists" and enemies of all social order.*
Tomsk, Western Siberia; and the case of Ivan I. Pe-
trunkevitch, formerly a justice of the peace and a
member of the provincial assembly of Chernigof, who
is now in exile in one of the northern provinces of
European Russia. They are all moderate liberals, and
they have all been punished without a trial or even a
hearing.

I do not mean to say that the Government the attitude of independence assumed by some formally and officially brands this class of its of the provincial assemblies, or became seriously opponents with this nickname, or seriously apprehensive that the liberal movement, if not regards it as properly applicable to them. I mean only that the Russian conservative party and the Government press have used the word "Nihilist" so persistently and so indiscriminately to characterize all sorts of malcontents, that the world has come to regard it as more or less descriptive of the whole protesting class, and has lost sight of the radical differences between the various groups of which that class is made up.

It is my purpose in the present paper to briefly describe the attitude taken toward the Government by this peaceable, law-abiding branch of the Russian protesting party, and then to allow the liberal members of that party to express in their own words the opinions which they hold with regard to the existing state of affairs in Russia, and the means which, in their judgment, should be adopted to stop oppression on one side and violent and unnatural forms of protest on the other.

Before proceeding, however, to an examination of the opinions and actions of the Russian liberals, it is necessary to sketch hastily the conditions under which the protesting class came into existence, and the nature of the wrongs and evils against which the protest was made. The sketch must necessarily be a brief and inadequate one, and the reader will, I trust, understand that it does not pretend to cover fully the ground, or even to outline the history of Russia during the period. It is intended merely to suggest the facts which are indispensable to a clear comprehension of the liberal position.

Between the years 1861 and 1866 the Russian Government, doubtless animated by a sincere desire to promote the welfare of the people, undertook a series of sweeping and farreaching reforms, which included the emancipation of the serfs, the grant of comparative freedom to the press, the reorganization of the courts, and the establishment of a system of local self-government, by means of elective assemblies, or zemstvos. If these reforms had been carried out in the liberal spirit in which they were apparently conceived, they would have affected beneficially every department of Russian social and political life; they would have lightened in a hundred ways the burdens which rested upon all classes of citizens; they would have satisfied, temporarily, at least, the growing demand for greater freedom of thought, speech, and action, and would have saved the country from a long, disastrous, and exhausting revolutionary struggle. Unfortunately, however, the Government either lost faith in its own projected reforms, took alarm at

checked and repressed, would go beyond the limits marked out for it, and perhaps get entirely beyond control. Instead, therefore, of carrying out its reforms perseveringly and consistently, and with a feeling of confidence in the good sense, patriotism, and self-control of the people, the Government began almost at once to restrict, qualify, and abrogate the rights and privileges which it had just granted. By means of ministerial circulars and secret instructions to provincial governors, it limited freedom of discussion in the provincial assemblies, gagged again the partially enfranchised press, withdrew whole classes of important cases from the jurisdiction of the reorganized courts, restricted the right of private meeting to discuss questions of political economy, arrested persons who assembled for the purpose of considering the problems presented by Russian life under the novel conditions which the reforms had created, and in a hundred ways harried and exasperated the liberal element, which sought merely to do its part in the work of reform, reorganization, and regeneration which the Government itself had undertaken. The result of this reactionary policy was of course intense popular dissatisfaction, which at first manifested itself in outspoken protests, then took the form of determined opposition, and finally ended in open insubordination. This called forth repressive measures of still greater severity, which only increased the feeling of exasperation; and at last the younger and more impulsive members of the liberal party, finding themselves powerless to attain by open and legal methods the objects which they had in view, and believing that the Government had never been sincere in its liberal professions, undertook to act for themselves, and in their own way, by organizing in all of the larger towns secret circles which were called "Circles for Self-Instruction." These were originally little more than associations of ardent young liberals, who met frequently at private houses to talk over their grievances, and discuss methods of improving the condition of the peasants; but they were gradually transformed by repressive measures into secret centers of revolutionary activity.

About this time began that remarkable, impulsive, generous but quixotic liberal crusade which was known as "going to the people." Thousands of educated young men, fired with an ardent desire to do something to atone for the sins of their fathers toward the recently emancipated serfs, and filled with pity for the latter's ignorance and misery, went into the Russian villages, into the suburbs of the great

cities, into factories, into workshops, into all places where the peasants toiled and suffered, and sought, by sympathy, by coöperation, and by personal instruction, to help and elevate the men and women whom their fathers had bought, sold, and flogged. Hundreds of cultivated and refined young women, with that singular capacity for self-sacrifice which is inherent in the Russian character, abandoned their homes and families, put on coarse peasant dress, went into the remotest, loneliest, and dreariest villages of the empire, and, in the capacity of school-teachers, midwives, or nurses, shared the hard, prosaic life of the common people, labored with them, suffered with them, and bore their burdens, merely in order to learn how they could best be helped. Sophia Perofskaya, one of the five regicides who were hanged at St. Petersburg in 1881, began her career with this sort of missionary work; Vera Phillipova, who planned the assassination of General Strelnikof and who died of prison consumption in the fortress of Schlusselburg last year, was another of the heroic young women who thus went "to the people"; Madame Kavalefskaya, who is now serving out a hard-labor sentence in Eastern Siberia, was a teacher in a peasant school; Anna Pavlovna Korba, who is dying by inches at the convict mines of Kara, was a Red Cross nurse, and treasurer of a local benevolent so ciety, before she became a member of the dreaded "Nihilist" Executive Committee; and hundreds of other young women threw themselves with passionate self-abnegation and self-devotion into the work of educating, elevating, and helping the lower classes.

Something analogous to this took place in our own country soon after the close of the civil war, when educated and refined young women from the New England States went south to teach in negro schools; but the movement in the United States never became epidemic, as it did in Russia, nor was it ever characterized by the reckless, heroic self-sacrifice which illumines so many dark pages of Russian history.

Of course the "Circles for Self-Instruction" and the unprecedented movement of the youth of Russia "to the people" did not escape the vigilant attention of the Government. Both were regarded, and perhaps with good reason, as seditious in their character, and steps were at once taken to put a stop to what was believed to be nothing more than a secret revolutionary propaganda. The "Circles for SelfInstruction" were broken up; all persons suspected of disloyalty were put under strict police supervision or banished to distant provinces; educated young men and women found in peasant villages were required to satisfac

torily explain their presence there; the more active opponents of the Government were exiled to Siberia by "administrative process," and arrests were made by the hundred in St. Petersburg, Moscow, Kiev, Odessa, and all the large towns of the empire. The feeling of exasperation meanwhile grew more and more intense, and the revolutionary movement more and more formidable, notwithstanding the increasing severity of the Government's repressive measures, until at last the prisons were literally crammed with political offenders, most of them young people from the educated classes. The cruel treatment of these prisoners and of the exiles in Siberia, who were regarded by their fellow-revolutionists as martyrs in the cause of freedom, finally provoked reprisals, and in 1878 General Mezzentsef, the Chief of Gendarmes, was assassinated in the street in St. Petersburg, and General Trepoff, the Chief of Police of that city, was shot by Vera Zassulitch, for ordering the flogging of a political prisoner named Bogoeuboff.

During all this time the Russian liberals, as distinguished from the revolutionists, had been endeavoring to discourage the resort to violence on the one side, and to secure justice, consistency, and adherence to law on the other. Their efforts, however, were not successful in either direction. The revolutionists believed that the time for peaceful remonstrance had passed, and regarded further discussion as useless, while the Government resented the intermediation of the liberals as an impertinence, if not a manifestation of sympathy with the declared enemies of the State.

Such was the situation of affairs in 1878 and 1879, when the first political assassinations announced the adoption by the revolutionary party of the policy of " terror." The liberals, foreseeing that this policy would almost certainly lead sooner or later to the assassination of the Tsar, and believing that the reaction which must follow such a crime would be disastrous, if not fatal, to the cause of liberty, determined to make another effort to obtain from the Government some recognition of the evils and wrongs against which the revolutionists were so fiercely protesting, and some promise of a return to the liberal programme outlined in the reform measures of 1861-1866. In order, however, to make this attempt with any prospect of success, it was manifestly necessary to secure a temporary suspension, at least, of the destructive activity of the extreme revolutionary party. Nothing could be accomplished by peaceful methods if the "terrorists" continued to alarm and exasperate the Government with threats and deeds of murderous violence. In the early part of 1879, therefore, some of the prominent liberals of Chernigof

and Kharkoff, including Professor Gordeënko (the mayor of the latter city) and Mr. Petrunkevitch (the presiding justice of one of the new courts, and a member of the Chernigof provincial assembly), decided to open communications with the "terrorists," urge upon them the dangers of the path on which they had entered, point out to them the calamities which they might bring upon Russia by this desperate, unreasonable, murderous policy, and ascertain upon what conditions they would agree to stop committing acts of violence. In pursuance of this resolution a committee of liberals, representing several of the zemstvos, or provincial assemblies, of central and southern Russia, made journeys to various parts of the empire, and had personal interviews with a number of the leaders of the "terroristic" or extreme revolutionary party. The commit

tee said to the latter:

"We believe that we can bring about reforms by peaceable and legal methods, and we desire now to make another attempt to do so, but we shall of course fail if you continue these political murders. Our object in coming to see you is to ask you to suspend your operations for a while and give us an opportunity to act. If we fail to attain our ends by reasonable and peaceful methods, and if you then think that you can accomplish something by your policy of 'terror,' proceed at your own peril; we shall disapprove and deplore your mistaken action, but we shall have nothing more to say; first, however, give us a chance."

The "terrorists" declared that their policy was not one of choice; that the Government had forced them to adopt it by closing to them all other avenues of escape from an absolutely intolerable position. They were willing, however, to listen to reason, and would solemnly promise not to commit any more acts of violence if the Government would even show a disposition to do three things—namely, first, remove the existing restrictions upon freedom of speech and of the press; second, guarantee personal rights against capricious, illegal, irresponsible action on the part of the executive authorities; and, third, allow the people to participate in some way in the national government. These, they said, were the things for which they were fighting, and if they could be satisfied that the Government would grant these demands, they as a party would refrain wholly from acts of violence and "maintain an attitude of expectancy."

The members of the liberal committee returned to their homes and held a consultation with their fellow-delegates as to the best means of carrying their plans into execution. The only basis upon which they could proceed in legal form was that furnished by the zemstvos, or provincial assemblies. These were legally authorized bodies, representative of the people and recognized by the Government, and it

was decided to have these zemstvos adopt and simultaneously forward memorials or petitions to the Crown setting forth the grievances of the people and asking for a constitutional form of government.

The first petition which went in was that of the provincial assembly of Kharkoff, which convened earlier than the others, and therefore took the lead. This address was not as clear in statement nor as definite in its demands as might have been desired, but nevertheless it produced a profound impression. The Minister of the Interior at once sent a circular letter to the Marshals of the Nobility, who presided over the provincial assemblies, directing them not to allow any memorials to be laid before the assemblies without previous submission to them (the marshals) for approval, and not to permit action of any kind upon such petitions as that from the assembly of Kharkoff. The next zemstvo to draw up a memorial was that of Chernigof. Its address to the Crown was respectful in form and tone, but extremely bold in expression. It declared that the Government itself was responsible for the revolutionary movement which it asked the people to oppose, because it had never executed faithfully its own laws; that by constantly violating those laws and resorting to administrative force to attain its illegal ends it had destroyed the people's respect for law, and had thus prepared the way for all sorts of anarchistic teaching; that it had not granted a single reform which on the very next day it had not tried to mutilate or nullify by administrative regulations and restrictions; that it had deprived the Russian people of the right to express its opinions, not only through the press and through public meetings, but even through the provincial assemblies; and, finally, that the only way to successfully combat revolution and anarchy was to create new national forms and adopt a constitution which would restrain illegal action not only on the part of individual citizens, but on the part of the Government.

At an informal meeting of all the delegates of the Chernigof provincial assembly this bold address was adopted with only two dissenting votes, and was then given to Mr. Ivan I. Petrunkevitch for formal presentation to the assembly at its regular session on the following day. In the meantime Mr. Petrunkevitch submitted it to the presiding officer for approval as required by the recent ministerial circular. The marshal after reading it said, "I cannot allow you to lay this paper before the assembly."

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"Why?" demanded Mr. Petrunkevitch. "Because it is forbidden."

"Can you show me any law of the empire which forbids a delegate to lay before the as

sembly of which he is a member a perfectly respectful petition to the Crown?

"No," replied the marshal, "but I have an order from the Minister of the Interior which has all the force of law so far as I am concerned, and I must obey it."

"If," said Mr. Petrunkevitch, "you cannot show me a law which forbids such action as that which I propose to take, I am acting within my legal rights, and I shall lay this petition before the assembly to-morrow unless I am prevented by force."

"Very well," replied the marshal, "I must then take my measures."

When, on the following morning, Mr. Petrunkevitch went to the assembly hall, he found the public for the first time excluded. There were gendarmes at the door to keep out all persons except delegates, and there were gendarmes in the hall itself. As soon as the assembly had been called to order, several members sprang to their feet and protested against the presence of the gendarmes, which they declared was a menace and an insult to a deliberative assembly. The presiding officer replied that the gendarmes were there by order of the governor. Amid a scene of great excitement and confusion, Mr. Petrunkevitch rose to present the address to the Crown, which had been almost unanimously adopted by the delegates at the informal session of the previous day. The presiding officer refused to allow it to be read or considered, and when Mr. Petrunkevitch persisted in his attempt to obtain formal action upon it, the marshal peremptorily declared the session of the assembly closed, and the hall was cleared by the gendarmes. The delegates, however, prepared copies of their address, and sent them to all the zemstvos in the empire, and many other assemblies-eight or ten, if I remember rightly-followed the example set by the zemstvos of Chernigof and Kharkoff, by drawing up memorials, and trying to get them acted upon. Their efforts, however, were rendered fruitless by ministerial prohibitions enforced by gendarmes, and on the 14th of April, 1879, this form of agitation was stopped by the attempt of Solivioff to assassinate the Tsar. Another spasm of alarm, reaction, and repression followed; martial law was declared throughout the greater part of European Russia, and executions, arrests, and the indiscriminate exile of all persons who dared to remonstrate or protest, silenced once more the voice of the Russian people. Mr. Petrunkevitch and other members of the provincial assemblies of Chernigof and Kharkoff were arrested and banished by administrative process, and, to

adopt the language of the official reports, "order was reëstablished in the disaffected provinces."

Thus ended another attempt of the Russian liberals to put a stop to violence and bloodshed, and to obtain for the people of the empire by peaceable methods the reforms which the whole protesting class demanded. Of the leaders in this temperate, courageous, patriotic movement only two are now living; one of them is in exile and the other is insane.

It is not necessary to pursue the history of the fierce conflict which took place between the "terrorists" on one side and the police and gendarmes on the other in the year 1879 and the first part of the year 1880. The liberals did not participate in that conflict, and only took the field again when on the 25th of February, 1880, the Tsar, finding that repressive measures alone were not adequate to cope with the volcanic social forces which were in operation, appointed a "Supreme Executive Commission" and put at the head of it General Loris Melikoff, an army officer, but a man who was believed to be in sympathy with the law-abiding branch of the protesting party. To Loris Melikoff the liberals determined to make a last appeal, and in March, 1880, twentyfive of the leading citizens of Moscow, including professors in the university, members of the Moscow Bar Association, a number of well-known authors and representative men from the educated classes generally, drew up, signed, and forwarded to the new Dictator of Russia a long and carefully prepared letter, in which they set forth temperately, but with great courage and frankness, their views with regard to the real nature of the evils from which the empire was suffering and the measures which, in their opinion, should be adopted to restore tranquillity to the country. I obtained from one of the signers a copy of that letter. In order to fully appreciate the weight and significance of this document the reader must bear in mind that it is not an editorial from a "Nihilistic" newspaper; it is not an anonymous proclamation intended to excite or encourage rebellion; it is not a letter designed to affect public opinion in any way, at home or abroad. It is a calm, temperate statement of facts and conclusions, written at a most critical moment in the history of Russia, signed by some of the ablest and most patriotic citizens of the empire, and carried personally by one of them to Loris Melikoff, with a request that it be laid before the Tsar. The rest of this article (except the final paragraph) is a translation of the letter:

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