The Icon and the Axe

Railroads nevertheless became_a symbol of progress to the new »^^ateriali^ticaria^egalitarian stu^rentsjjT^the sixties, who generally enjoyed"" ?^7????*^?1?1????????1 rides. One of the most gifted young technologisTToT* thTs generation, Nicholas KiBalchich, came eagerly to St. Petersburg in order to study the engineering subjects that would equip him to participate in the railroad-building program, declaring:

For Russia railroads are everything. This is the most necessary, most

vital problem of our time. Covering Russia by sections with an inter

connected network of railroads such as exists for example in England,

we shall prosper and blossom forth [with] unheard-of progress . . . num

berless factories;_____

f~ Civilization will go rapidly fofwafa,""arid we--true, not all at"once^""--%

\ will overtake the rich and advanced nations of Western Europe.30,.---

Yet within a few years this apostle of progress and railroad building ???1 become a full-time revolutionary r whose talents were completely absorbed in

– the body of Tsar Alexander II himself. This sense of lost opportunity was given "added poignancy by the fact that he devoTeoThls last days in prison priorTo hls~rlanging_to designing _a_flying machine, which he felt was destin^to^siuDpJanttiie railroad as a bearer ofmajerjaJ__progrgss. To under-stand~why this giftedyouth became an apostle and technician of assassination, one must turn to the disturbed reign of Alexander II and the psychology of the new revolutionary generation.

Under Alexander the dilemma of the reforming despot was lifted to the

level of highkony as the virus of social thniign't"negnntri~mfer^ wirier

ckcleT^i^flbtejpopTnation!' "

DSFTnFTeign"'of Alexander JLJhat of Alexander II lasted almost

exactly a quarter of a cenluPLandcan be roughly divided ialalwrt hakteg^-a

period of reform and one of reaction. The period of expectation and reform

is generally referred to as "the sixties" even though it ran from 1856 to

1866. The periojLfifreaction followed the first attejn£t_onthelife_ of the _

Tsar in i866_and las^3ZjmBriii!e^-sggeCTStul assassination~of i88iTlinlike

Alexander I, Alexander Ilach^lyprornuhjgtedaseries of profound re

forms: freeing the serfsTTnstituting trial by jury, and creating zemstvos for

liffliteTTloc^^The

most important cultural and in1gflectulu"TIewlopm5it ofTneage was done outside of, and in opposition to, him and his court. Moreover, the period of most passionate rejection of official ideology occurred during the "sixties," the^perjod oJLgreatest liberalization; whereas the ?61111?????? affirmatioaa of the alienated intellectuals occurred _during the period of gpvernmenjgj reaction in the seventies.

Clearly the concerns of the thinking class were developing their own^ inde^end^nTdyn^mlcTTo understand it one musFconsider the psychology of the self-conscious, "new men of the sixties." This ic^oclastic^stud^e^ts^ generation effected in a few short years one of the~rnostthorough and far^J reaching rejections of past tradition in the history orrn^d^rrj^Eu^peTOut of this fermSTTfKsia produced in the later years of Alexander's reign a number of disturbing new ideologies of which the most important and original was theVpopulist movement, ^o central was this movement to the cultural accomplishments and aspu^ohs~oTthe'period that it is_more correct to sFpa^l^lJ^_r:T1ll1'''~^S thiil" Sjj age of Alexander II.

This newjgagrjition had been brought up in the harsh last years_pf Nicholas3"reign and had come to"stuorv in ^t"~1*etersbTirg amidst the grgaL. exftectafjo^Jar^elorniitiaLprevailed under JSeSajadjErJhev looked to the new regime with some of the optimism with which the reform-minded aristocracy a half century earlier had greeted the coming of Alexander I after the death of Paul But the new reformers lacked the broad aristocratic

1. l ?? ??? iv k»vwi

perspectives of earljer_reformers. ^he^Jn^lydMJ!mffi.^LXSHo^_jank£"

various minority groups. They included many provincial figures, who broiIgTu!«tnTrre!^

therlSSS "

merely tfietsar^^ himsdr=^w^s~m~arisrepute because of defeat in battle.

TEe^Sew-studditif-geHeration included an unusually large number of former seminarians, who brought with them a certain passion for absolute answers to the "cursed questions" which hypnotized and seduced many of their uprooted and impressionable fellow students. The most important among these were the "two Saint Nicholases," Chernyshevsky and Dobroliu-bov, two former seminarians who dominated an editorial staff known as "the consistory" of the journal with which Belinsky had ended his career, The Contemporary.

Taking the materialism of Feuerbach and the rationalism of the English utilitarians as their starting point", these influential critics helped lead the young generation into a systematic rejection of all past tradition and of the entire idealistic framework" within which the discussions of the aristocratic centm^ had ???? ????}?