The Icon and the Axe

It was a brutal, but at the same time popular, doctrine. It provided a simple,**dramatic picture~cT^?^^j^rg^ffie^_J^nsn^^c^5rarM channeled off domesT™"*'

uroge. Pan-Slavism can be described as Moscow's jropheticalternative to the""" prophetic7"StT?etgrsBu"rg^~aleTr doctrine of populism. Like popuJisrn^JPan-SlavIsTfnai|fflsnge3j^^

Berlin, Paris, or Rome in search^Mnspjration. holding ouyhe_promise of a new destiny and deliverance in the East. But, whereas thepopulists pointed propheticallyto the Russian countryjjde, trie^Pm-SlavTTiarkeQDack to 1??~?? lffiperial "?????? of reooji^erin^^onstantinople. Like "the pulisIsTtne Pan^STavs offered ameory of history based on the application

m  . ~ -

of allegedly scientific principles "to" social 'proDTemsTblSt they^^g!e3To*flie

Darwiaistte-prrHclple of inevitable Struggle and survival of the fittest, which

the"^Q|nmusTS'^tea3fastry refused to recognize"as sclentiticatly~applicable to

humanity. The violent repression of the movementjo the people and the

violence and fanaticism ofth"e""Turkish war seems to have subtly convinced

many radicals that perhaps the Darwinistic image was right. In their desire

to swerve away" from the Scylla of reaction in the post-war years, they

found themselves increasingly drawn into the Charybdis of Jacobin revolu

tion, the opposite extremism of the Alexandrian period. The whirlpool of

professional reyojutionary actiyityhad frequently beckoned to confused

participants in the populist movement. But prior to the formation of a

nationwHe, populist revolutionary organization (the second organization to

bear the title "Land and Liberty") late in 1878 and the more explicitly

terrorist People's Will organization that supplanted it the following year,

populism hjj amp;Jje^nidjmjtffiejlj^with evolutionary rather than

revolutionary approaches.

The rejjoJivJiojiary Jacobinism of the left was, like the reactionary

Pan-Slavism of the right, a Muscovite outgrowth of the restlesslconoclasm

of the sixties. The first call for secret^e^hrtionarj^pj^^^

action ^as contained in the pamphlet "Youn£^ijsji3^!4mbiisJieiHnj562

by a iimeteeri^ear-ojd_jr^athematics student, at Moscow University, £,

Zaichnevsky^He was one of a group of about twenty Moscow students who

called themselves "The Society of Communists" and.jie^gje^thgn^lyes^

almost_ entirely to ~^^^^?\?^^^^^\\^^^?1^^^^?^^^^,?.?

literature^JThe most thoroughgoing program for nationwide revolutionary

organization was provided, curiously enough, by Herzen's old friend and

collaborator, Nicholas Ogarev, in connection with the efforts to make a

nationwide movement out of the Land and Liberty group of the early

sixties. The first Land and Liberty group was based in St. Petersburgjud

??????????????*^^^to trans-

courtroom revelations about his activities and the literary representatit given them in Dostoeysky'^jr^efSS^e^precipitated a vigorous" journe istiS^is^ulsionTE^asted throughout the early seventies

form it into a conspiratorial revolutionary organization ruajby a secret_ ?????^??????? with regional organization, veiled front groups as a mask for revolutionary organization, and a publication centej^brpa44oj)£oyide ideolo^cluH^ppc*rFffid theoretical direction.46 The first Land and Liberty group^wenrouTof existence in 1863 and never seems to have adopted a fully revolutionary program or organization. The^next stage in the development of ajrofessional revolutionary tradition occurred once ????~??" Moscow, with the formation of two new extremist circles in 1865, those "of N. ishutin and NTNefedov, respectively. The first group, known as "The'""' Organization," commissioned a young student, Dmitry Karakozov, to attempt an assassination of Tsar Alexander II the following year, thus launch-ing"the tradition of^actjye revolutionary terrorj'srn It also formed a secret circle within the revolutionary group known as Hell (Ad) to combat police provocateurs and conduct terrorist activities. Membejs^of_Jbe^Hell group were expectedTo'gTvtTup all family ties, assumg_new names^and be pre-pared to jsacrifice their lives. The counter-revolutionary white terror that followed the Kikrakozov attempt drove the leading protege of N. Nefedov, young Sergius Nechaev, to further extremes in outlining a course for professional revolutionaries.

Like the Ishutin group, Nechaev had visions of founding a professional

revolutionary cadre that was to be linked with a vast, Europe-wide conspira

torial organization. He journeyed abroad, received a measure of approval

from a fascinated Bakunin and Ogarev, and returned to Moscow in 1869 to

put his fantastic plans into practice. He brought^with him as a guide forjiis

revolutionary organization the famous* Revolutionary Catechism, with its

doctrine of a revdlutionary'assOciation (tovarishchestvo) that has "not just

in words, but in deed, broken every tie with the civil order,jrafji the edu

cated world and all laws, conventions . . . ethics."47 The professional

revolutionary wa£_t‹in)e""lm^sa^^the