Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 127.djvu/267

Rh Bakounin, the leader or prophet of the sect, having long been an exile, enjoys almost unlimited facility for producing lucubrations which are afterwards circulated by contraband methods within the empire. Even if the account is spurious, it probably represents a general belief which is in some degree founded on the actual state of facts. The principles of communism admit only of limited variety, although the preachers of the system naturally adapt their doctrines to the tastes and prejudices of the various communities which they address. In the western parts of the Continent and among English artisans the agitation is hostile to every form of religion. Among the agricultural labourers attacks on property are generally connected with phrases borrowed from the popular language of dissent. The hereditarily devout Russian peasant would probably refuse to listen to any demagogue who neglected to prove that the spoliation of the rich was the command of heaven as well as the interest of the poor. Neither religious fanaticism nor infidelity has any necessary connection with schemes for the abolition of social distinctions and for the equal partition of property. The object is in itself sufficiently atractive to large classes in every community, but experience shows that even selfish cupidity desires to veil itself in a theoretical or imaginative disguise. The anarchists and assassins of the Paris Commune professed to have discovered the secret of universal reformation; and they have so far succeeded in imposing on their contemporaries that even in England romances have since been written in their honour. Since the days of the first French Revolution Jacobins and Socialists have been rather a sect than a party, and it is by an accident that they have become irreconcilably hostile to the only form of Christianity which has been brought to their knowledge. Their tenets are substantially the same with those which the Anabaptists of Munster professed to derive from divine inspiration, or from a literal interpretation of selected Scriptural passages. Although the Russian peasantry know nothing of the Bible, demagogues who address them can have no difficulty in contending that spiritual and temporal equality ought to begin on this side of the grave. In more cultivated regions, and in higher social ranks, men are always ready to be convinced that the evils which they suffer are grievances or wrongs inflicted by others rather than unavoidable misfortunes.

The Russian heresy of Nihilism corresponds in character, as might be expected, rather with the theological communism of the sixteenth century than with the subversive atheism of modern French demagogues. The numerous nonconformist sects which have openly or secretly separated themselves from the orthodox Church in Russia are, like the earlier English Nonconformists, impelled by excess and not by defect of religious zeal to desert the lukewarm majority. Some of the sects practice or profess the wildest asceticism. The Nihilists fancy themselves to be a chosen people; and their religious and political opinions are closely connected. One doctrine which they hold in common with the anarchists of France, Spain, and Germany is recommended by indigenous tradition. The demagogues of the West projected an arbitrary and artificial return to barbarism in the abolition of central government, in the autonomy of local communities, and in the equal participation of property. The Russians have from time immemorial been familiar with the tenure of land in common by all the inhabitants of a village. Among them the institution of property is imperfectly developed, nor is it strengthened by the existence of minute social gradations. The neighbouring lord and his agents are probably regarded as strangers, if not as enemies; and when the illiterate village priest is no longer the representative of an inspired Church, he also is likely to be deemed an intruder. The emperor is probably still an object of loyal and superstitious reverence to the masses of the population; but it seems that the Nihilists recognize no authority beyond the limits of the parish, and that human regeneration in Russia, as at Paris, is to consist in a kind of cellular organization of society. It is probable that the conscription presents to the people the most tangible operation of imperial power. The Russian peasant, though he is capable of becoming an excellent soldier, abhors military service, which, until lately, involved a lifelong separation from home. The denunciation of capital which is common to anarchical reformers in all parts of the world probably assumes in rural Russia the form of hatred of money-lenders and Jews.

According to the alleged Act of Accusation, the Nihilists resemble in influence and in ubiquity the Jesuits of melodramatic fiction. Not confined to remote villages or restricted to the rank of peasants, they are, according to the supposed Act of 