The Icon and the Axe

Herzen's plea had already been answered to a considerable extent by the extraoniinary^^nchiy-school movement which flourished in Russia bgtgeen 1859-62 and may_£roperT3rbedesc7Ibed as the_first_of the large-scale penitential" effortsof the urbluTintelleHuluTto take the fruits of learnmgto the ordinary people? P. Pavlov, the proiessoTof Russian history at Kiev, was the "pioneer of this movemlmT"t5""providTTree p^irT3imejns4niction for the , indigent.40 He was but 6ne~of~artarge~number of provincial InstonarirTo build an aura of heroic dignity about Russian popular institutions and stimulate the desire of urban intellectuals to rediscover the richness and spontaneity of rural Russia. A. Shchapov and G. Eliseev, two of the most influential populist journalists of the seventies, both began their careers as students of the raskol at the Kazan theological seminary. Kostomarov, a veteran of Ukrainian radical activities and professor of Russian history at St. Petersburg, lent a new glamor to the tradition of peasant revolution and was perhaps the most popular of all lecturers among the radical new men of the sixties. Ivan Prvzhov wrote a History of Taverns, contending that the true commuriaTfeelings and revolutionary spirit of the simple people can

only be appreciated in their taverns. Herzen paid great attention to the Old Believers and printed up a special supplement for them. Even the rationalistic and utilitarian-minded Chernyshevsky began his journalistic career with an article in praise of the "fools for Christ's sake" and ended it with a defense of the Old Believers. This extraordinary interest in thepecuriarities . of Russian rural life-and particularly in the unique traditions of popular religious dissent-helped convince the urban intdle£tua]5_^iat=Russia hacTa" special destiny to fulfill and untapppd^popular_resources for^realizing^it.

_~'- ii in i *-'

developing in Russia since the 1840's, the populists believed that a special

path for Russian social development lay"~Tn" ext^ndin^ the, principles of

profit sharjng_and cormroinabendeavor still preyjulnigjn_the peasant com

mune. This peaceful transformation of society could be accomplished only

by dedicated servants of humanity who had no desire to. aggrandize_w_ealth in

the English manner or power in the German fashion. They saw little hope in

working through political media for reform, since European politics was

dominated by the meaningless parliaments and constitutions of Anglo-

French liberalism or the brutally centralizing tendencies of German mili

tarism. They vaguely hoped_for some kind of loose, decentralized federation

on the American pattern-the Ukrainian populist proup actually calling

themselves"the Americans." But their basic conviction was that ??????"

gunov's original Proclamation to the Young Generation of 1861 that "we

not only can, but we must. . . arrive at somejtiew order unknown^^mjto

America."41?"*"""**

TEejnajor source of foreign inspiration was French socialist thought. Louis Blanc,„jvho had irttemptea to set up actual socialist experiments am£Sff the.people of ????-? fW brit^thnr'a'JOLJiC^ daw£hjg,j£r2la£edthe"purery theoretical" Fourier and Owen as the socialist saint most revered by the populists. But the principal prophet ot ffienew order for the populists was the passionate figure of Pierre-JoseptiProudhon, who dominated French socialist thought from the failure of the revolution of 1848 until his death in 1865. Proudhon introducejLan elejnen|.of-pa§sipjiate egalitarianism and heroic, semi-anarchistic opposition to political authority

which" maderunT~a~ partic^lar]y^_sympathetic figure for survivors oYThe

iconoclastic revolution in Russia. ProudhorTwas, like Rousseau, a French provincial '????????^????? him to Paris a certain plebeian indignation against aristocratic elites and centralized authority. He opposed a proposed

constitution during the revolution of 1848, "not because it is bad, but because it is a constitution"; flatly labeled private property "theft"; and in his famojisjournals The People, The Representative oiihe People-and The Voice of the PTople^he"cteygtoped a kind of mystical belief in_"the people" as a mighty force capable ot rejuvenating Europe!

All of this appealed to the alienated intellectuals of the Alexandrian era, who were also provincial outsiders in many cases with an iconoclastic attitude toward authority, an incisive and disjointed polemic style, and an anguished desire to establish or re-establish links with "the people." Proudhon viewed himsatL moreover, as a kind of Christian socialist, work*-, ing mTBrmittently all his adult life on a never-completed study of Christ as a_J social reformer and frequently introducing apocalyptical language-all tend- 4 ing to increase his appeajjto the RussianywhQjsnded to view socialism as an 1 outgrwth of^uppressed traditions within heretical Christianity. BoJhjoTthe^ prophetic forerunners of the^eepwlisXJa«Kement, Herzen and Bakunin, were frieria