NIHILISM.

[By Magister.]

Nihilism, like Socialism in Germany, Communism in France, Trades Unionism in Great Britain, and, to some extent, Fenianism in Ireland, owes its origin to what was recently called "a certain rough but widespread desire to set wrongs down and see right done." This, perhaps, will be doubted by those who see in Nihilism only a political movement, an agitation directed by men of all ranks against a corrupt autocracy. But, if we examine more closely, we cannot fail to see that it was the miserable condition of the subject classes which first called Nihilism into existence. Other causes have indeed aided in promoting its present strength by attracting men of position into its ranks ; but originally it was a branch of the great European social movement. A brief review of its history will convince us of this.
And, first, it is well to be guarded against the common error that the movement had its origin within the past twenty years, for we can find traces of its spirit so far back as the St. Petersburg insurrection of 1823. This occurrence was the outcome of the dissemination amongst the more educated clashes of the ideas which found their chief expression in the French Revolution. It was thought by Czar Nicholas that the leaders of this insurrection would be taught their mistake by means of such correctives as death and banishment to Siberia ; but, thirty years later, the release of the survivors gave an impetus to the cause of Russian freedom which can hardly be exaggerated. In the interval between 1825 and 1855 the revolutionary spirit in Russia was inflamed by the spread of foreign thought, especially German philosophy. About ten years after Nicholas's grape-shot had proved his divine right to autocracy a Club for studying Hegel's metaphysics was formed at Moscow by several Russian students. The leading men in this Club were Herzen and Bakunin. Both of these men were what we should call advanced thinkers. The first principle of Herzen's political creed was contained in the cry 'Let the whole world perish !' Nothing might be saved from the wreck, for all present institutions had been proved to be utterly bad, and even the smallest remnant might corrupt the new order of things. A still further step in advance was taken when Schopenhauer's doctrines of negation and annihilation were adopted as the gospel of the regenerate. Hear Michael Bakunin, the 'Father of Nihilism':— " The old world must be destroyed and replaced by a new one. The lie must be stamped out and give way to truth. The first lie is God. The second lie is Right. Might invented the fiction of Right, in order to ensure and strengthen her reign. Might forms the sole groundwork of society. It makes and unmakes laws, and that Might should be in the hands of the majority. When you have freed your minds from the fear of a God, and from that childish respect for the fiction of Right, then all the remaining chains which bind you, and which are called science, civilization, property, marriage, morality, and justice, will snap asunder like threads." Such wild pessimism as this is evidently the outcome of an intense disgust with the present state of society, linked to an utter despair of reforming it.
But we should be far from the truth were we to take such frenzied utterances as these to be a political creed to which all Nihilists would subscribe. In this, as in every confederacy, there are enthusiasts whose voices rise above the cries of the main body ; and, besides, it is important to notice that the name Nihilist strictly connotes nothing further than one discontented with the present state of society. There are two distinct classes of Nihilists. The one class contains men who are nothing more than advanced Liberals, who have an objection— rational, surely, and almost universal — to the Russian form of Government, and who wish to change it into a free constitution. The extreme opposite to this class is furnished by men driven frantic by oppression and goaded to despair by the accumulated wrongs of centuries.
These two classes are an evidence of the two streams which produced what we know as Nihilism. It is well to bear this in mind ; the only thing in which all agree is the necessity of completely abolishing autocracy. The one stream is that supplied by the higher classes. But their chief object is to obtain that political freedom which the rest of Europe owes to the French Revolution. Were that freedom once secured there can be but l ?  that they would secede from the revolutionary ranks. The tradition of their order would influence the nobility, the consideration of capital as against proletarianism would influence the middle class to withdraw from a Society whose doctrines cannot be milder than fraternity and equality. Nay, it is very probable, judging from the revelations made of the secret workings of the similar Society in Ireland, that there are even now numbered amongst the adherents of Nihilism many whose fidelity to the cause is only secured by dread of their associates' revenge. 

It was then a desire to set wrongs down and see right done that was the raison d'etre of Nihilism. For it will be remembered that it was nearly thirty years before the emancipation of the serfs that the Club of Russian students, which included Herzen and Bakunin, was formed at Moscow. This Club was composed entirely of members of the higher classes— the set of men that is whose object was a reformed constitution, not annihilation. The years between the dates of the foundation of this Club and of the return of the St. Petersburg rebels from Siberia were occupied by the study of advanced political writers, and by comparisons pointed by exiles between Russian and foreign systems of government. These comparisons could not fail to be in favour of foreign constitutions, and it was when the popular mind was inflamed by such considerations as these that Alexander II. released the surviving exiles. These were men of the highest social position, and they were, as was natural, received with great enthusiasm by the society of the capital. Nor had the liberal opinions of the nobles escaped the notice of the Government. Nicholas saw clearly that the only way to check the aristocracy was to elevate the proletariate; and so Alexander II., in obedience to his dying father's advice, took the step, which could no longer be delayed, of emancipating the serfs. This consideration ought always to be taken into account when the crime of assassinating Alexander is represented as further blackened by the sin of ingratitude to a liberal ruler — the consideration that in reality the emancipation of the 23,000,000 serfs was nothing more or less than an act of State policy rendered necessary by the disaffection of the upper classes. It was, political expediency apart, a tardy act of justice. That all men are born equal is not true ; that any man is born a slave is a monstrous anomaly. Czar Alexander, then, had no claim to the gratitude of the serfs for giving them that which, in the first place, was their own inherently, and, secondly, was extorted from him by the exigencies of his tyranny. This it is which renders surprising the heroics of indignation in which some portions of the English Press assailed the murderers of Alexander for ingratitude. All of us sincerely join in the assertion that that murder was a heinous crime. Politically there is no doubt that it was a mistake. But it is impossible to see in what the ingratitude of the serfs is manifested. In the first place, Nihilists are not all serfs, as has been shown above ; and, secondly, even if they were, they could hardly be expected to feel gratitude for an act which but conceded their rights— a concession which they knew was only made because it was a matter of political expediency, and could no longer be withheld.
But this plan which Alexander adopted to humble the nobles has unexpectedly tended to make them more powerful. The untaught minds of barbarians newly endowed with freedom are the most fruitful fields in which to sow the seeds of revolution. The first generations of emancipated slaves cannot free themselves at once from mental shackles. By one act they might be raised from serfdom to freedom, but the traditions of centuries of slavery can only be erased from their minds by a continued state of independence. Their former masters found in the peasantry the readiest tools for conspiracy. They had been absolutely ignorant; their finest instincts had been blunted by thorough despotism. It was easy to persuade them, as we find the Irish peasantry persuaded, that riches and influence could be only, but easily, obtained in the same way as past rights had been accorded— by loud and, if necessary, armed insistence on their rights. It was told them, and told them truly, that they would not have been freed were it not for the fact that they could be kept in slavery no longer ; and they were taught that before they gained power they must show that it would be dangerous to deny it to them.
The fact is we English cannot understand Nihilism, because we have no adequate idea of the state of life to which it owes its being. It arose from a sense of the wrongness of things. Our own victory over autocracy was consummated more than six hundred years ago. And even then Englishmen had no such wrongs to complain of as the Russian serfs of our own nineteenth century. Arbitrary imprisonment, insecurity of life and honour and property are common, in name at least, to Englishmen before Magna Charta was signed, and to Russians in our own time. True, Alexander II. introduced trial by Jury and a reformed judicial system, but they only agree in name with our institutions. It is true that the serfs have been freed, but since 1862 upwards of 17,000 persons have been exiled to Siberia for political offences. Why we sympathize so little with the Nihilists is due to two reasons. We are so ignorant of Russian mode of life and the present state of Russian civilization that we do not understand that we are hundreds of years in advance of them ; and, in the next place, their plan of operations is not in accordance with British love of fairplay.
To sum up briefly. Before the emancipation of the serfs we find a marked disaffection amongst the upper classes. They compared their position with that of the corresponding classes in foreign countries, and used means— legitimate and illegitimate —to improve their condition. Whilst engaged in this effort they were joined by a large body of their fellow-subjects, who, having won personal freedom, were striving to obtain a share in the government of their country, for these peasants in their turn saw how inferior their position was to that of the masses in other European countries. Of the future Nihilism takes no count. Its business is to annihilate the present order of things. When that is once done it will be time to deliberate on the form of the order which is to succeed. Nihilists are firmly convinced that nothing can be worse than the present ; but here their unanimity ends. Even the most sanguine of them cannot sketch a plan of government which will command the approbation of the Society. All of them feel that their wrongs must be set down, however roughly. They have not yet discovered the best way to see right done.
 

South Australian Register 21 May 1883,