The Nihilistic Movement in Russia

The nihilistic movement or the anarchist movement is a rather important Russian political current, although it is fragmented into different movements such as liberating communism, anarcho-syndicalism, individualist anarchism and nonviolent anarchism (Michael. A, 1866).

Friedrich Nietzsche is most known for coining the word nihilism to characterize the dissolution of conventional morality in twentieth-century Western civilization. (Michael. A, 1996). A conservative journalist, Mikhail Nikiforovich Katkov, understood nihilism as identical with revolution and portrayed it as a societal hazard owing to its rejection of all moral values (Lovell, 1998). Chernyshevsky strove to identify the good sides of nihilism at the time, and described it as a symbol of resistance to all forms of oppression, hypocrisy, artificiality, and for individual freedom; It established a view on scientific fact alone, and that science is the answer to all societal issues (Lovell, 1998). According to nihilists, all misfortunes stem from one source: ignorance, which science alone can remove (Petrov, 2019, p.71).

Among the most prominent symbols of the nihilistic movement are Nikolai Chernyshevsky, a pioneering nihilistic theorist and utopian socialist, Dmitry Pisarev, a prominent nihilist theorist and defender of natural sciences, Sergei Nechayev, a revolutionary nihilist often associated with propaganda for action and terrorism, and Leo Tolstoy, a great writer, considered by many to be a pacifist anarchist and a Christian anarchist, and "Nikolai Chernyshevsky" a Russian literary and social critic, journalist, novelist, and socialist philosopher, often identified as a utopian and a Russian socialist?(Scanlan, 1998).?

The nihilist movement rebelled against tradition and social order by abolishing any authority wielded by the state, religion, or family. As a result, student engagement increased, providing the backdrop for a series of educational changes performed by Alexander II under the supervision of Minister of Education Alexander Golovnin (Scanlan, 1998). These changes were rejected by the rebellious students, and the nihilism movement created significant social and economic turmoil throughout the country, providing the incentive for revolutionary activity among university students in Moscow and Saint Petersburg. Concurrent with these upheavals, a massive fire broke out in Saint Petersburg in the spring and summer of 1862, threatening to destroy the city. The arson spread throughout Russia as well. Fyodor Dostoevsky allegedly blamed Nikolai Chernyshevsky for inspiring revolutionaries to action and begged him to cease (Petrov, 2019, p. 73).

The nihilist movement also engaged in a campaign of political terror through clandestine anti-absolutist organizations. Sergei Nechayev was charged with the most significant political killings, most notable as King Alexander II's assassination in 1881 (Hingley 1969, p.90).

During 1863, Russia's revolutionary situation was nearly exhausted; a general peasant uprising began, but the revolutionary action began to fade, and many members of the assembly were arrested or forced to emigrate, and they failed in their attempts to arrange Chernyshevsky's escape from criminal slavery, who was detained as a political prisoner in the Peter and Paul Fortress. In the 1870s and early 1880s, Sergei Nechaev's pamphlet fueled revolutionary aggression within the movement and pushed for a violent confrontation with the tsarist authority, resulting in scores of attacks against the Russian state (Hingley 1969, p.92).

Eventually, the 1860s and 1870s nihilists were viewed as unkempt, unorganized, disobedient, and torn persons who revolted against tradition and social order. The concept of nihilism was thus incorrectly connected with the assassination of King Alexander II in 1881 and the political terror employed by individuals engaged at the time in underground anti-absolutist groups. For conservative elements, then, nihilists were the curse of the age (Gillespie, 1996, p. 140).

References

Gillespie, Michael Allen (1996). Nihilism Before Nietzsche. University of Chicago Press. pp. 140, 143, 160. ISBN 9780226293486.

Hingley, Ronald (1969). Nihilists; Russian radicals and revolutionaries in the reign of Alexander II, 1855-81. New York, NY: Delacorte Press. pp. 87–126

Lovell, S.(1998). Nihilism, Russian. In The Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Taylor and Francis. Retrieved 9 Oct. 2020, from https://www.rep.routledge.com/articles/thematic/nihilism-russian/v-1. doi:10.4324/9780415249126-E072-1

Petrov, K. ‘Strike out, right and left!’: a conceptual-historical analysis of 1860s Russian nihilism and its notion of negation. Stud East Eur Thought 71, 73–97 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11212-019-09319-4

Scanlan, J.(1998). Russian Materialism: ‘the 1860s’. In The Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Taylor and Francis. Retrieved 9 Oct. 2020, from https://www.rep.routledge.com/articles/thematic/russian-materialism-the-1860s/v-1. doi:10.4324/9780415249126-E050-1??