The Icon and the Axe

The rpg'Tr^JS13fi-.pf*rplffY'*4_and terrified by this "movement to the – people,"" arresting 770andmolesting many more in its effortjo crushjE?"' ~", ?????????? haijhypressjnn o"F~a non-yjplent movement only pushed

populism into more violent and extreme_j›aths. Mikhailovsky, the leading ‹- popularizer" of evolutionary populism in the seventies, always described populism as a middle way for Russia between the Scylla of reaction and the Charybdis of revolution. It was the fate of_populism in the late seventies to be first dashed against the rock to the right andjhen sucked into the whirlpool to thejeft T'oTmHirstand thlT|ate of pj›rajlisjn_MdJhe^ljrnacti£ events of thej,aj£jjeyenties and e^rly^ejght^,j3M^

nature of the reactionary and revolutionary traditions Itot^MJiOilfiMrgBtly-develo_p£dinRussia.

The Scylla of reaction was expressed not so much in the ruthless arrests of late 1874 as in the subsequent war with Turkey. This war wasj;he_direct_ result of the new imperialistic doctrine of messianic Pan-Slavism. It was a large"-"Sc"aTFdeE6erate war of aggrandizement, brutally foughtagainstabratal foe by a citizen's army that Russialiadjtssembled throu^fl^ritroHiigtioiur of a more^stemalic and muver¥aTconscription in 1874. Thiswar_gase_~~

for violence and

ideals of ???1?_????§? extraordinarily difficult.

Reactionary Pan-Slavism began in the second half of Alexander's reign to replace in many minds official nationality as the ideology of tsarist Russia. Faced with a many-sided ideological assault in the course of the sixties, the~tsarist regime had luTneaTrorn fts initial policy of prag--^ rhatic liber^rcrage'ssiorrs to a new Thiliiant nationalism. Great Russian chauvinism first proved its worth as an antidote to revolutionary enthusiasm

during the Polish uprising of 1863. The sejm^oJScJaLiellow press skillfully sou^httodiscredit the revolutionaries as traitors because of their sympathy with the Poles and to glorify iTseneToTT^ulisiari military leaders as popular folK"Eeroes. A former radical, Michael Katkov, championed this approach in his new newspaper, Moscow News, which he proudly designated "the organ of a party which may be called Russian, ultra-Russian, exclusively Russian."44

To compete in the idealistic atmosphere of the sixties, however, a

*-»1? iu rsiiw ??????

J /1?  ?   ?   II IKJ Jl/LlWl  X ftlVWg

played on classic Russian prejudices by denoundngnotonly_Jbe_Tj^ Gerrri3ns~but also tne Poles as Western trahoj^_jndMjh£_Jitmgaiiaiis_as^ "AsJ^rrmtertSpeTg"

.tera"E5fc

party bidding for public favor had to offer some noble, altruistic goal to the

public. Thus, the "exclusively Russian party" of Katkov resurrected the old

rornMticJd£alof_Slay^^it to theJRiissjan pjihljc^asji^

kind of latter-day crusade against both the "Romano-rieriT›an"-Mfest 4,pd _ the heathen Turks.

The center ofthis new reactionary PaJi-Slavisrn__was Moscow, in_ which__tEe^acobin externiits~6L^Z^ft were concurrently gathering strength in th^Jatesixties. The decisive event in the emergence of reactionary Pan-Slavism was the Moscow Slavic Congress of 1867, which was largely supported by the city of Moscow and loudly hailed by Aksakov's journal Moscow as well as Katkov's Moscow News. The only previous congress of Slavs had takenplacein Praguein 18^8_, with ????^?^^?" representatives being two outcasts: the revolutionary Bakunin and_an01d BelSve^ishop^^BuL the_new congress wasZgjyen lamb support aj_djs|›on-sorship by official Russia. Itbgcajne, in effejrt_Jbe first of those now-fanuliar ^cuTturaF festivals whose m^gJfSc(:ical re^Ttlt^isto^ad^ng^ RusjknpoMcaT^g^ves.^he writing that most perfectly expressed the views of reactionary Pan-Slavs in Russia was a hitherto unpublished treatise by an obscure Slovakian called Slavdom and the World of the Future, which was suddenly vaulted to prominence in the closing days of the congress. It

?

called for the.jmjficajtifin of the Slavs under Russian leadership, with

Moscow tobejthj^capjtaljjRu^to J›e

(he' religion.45 The idea__of_^yjoJeiU^jrjrcc^ncjkble conflict between the Slavic "and the "Romano-German worlds was given a__^mJ^jSvrafe-scientffic formulation by a biologist and former Petrashevets, Nicholas Da^ilevsky7inHhTs"T7SS«a and Europe, published serially in 1868, and as a book in 1871.

Pan-Slavism became ????_?^?? amp;???1 tdeolggyjhrough sughworks as the sho£ter^nd_jnofe_ blunLJuempxandum^jjf General Rostislav Fadeev, Opinion on the Eastern QuestiQUk. which was also published serially in thelate sixtiesanjiJu^_as_aJ3aatin -187.0. During the Russb-Turkish War of 1877-8, this frankl^xpansionistideoJbgyOTo^d^tq^ngly effective in rallying mass support for a successful war effort. This autocratic, imp^alillcTPafbSIavMrTbore little resemblance to the mellow and idealistic Slavophilism of an earlier generation, or even to the earlier Pan-Slav proclamations of men like Aksakov and Bakunin, who had linked Pan-Slavism with the federative principle and with support for the Polish efforts to break loose from the Tsarist yoke.