Page:Siberia and the Exile System Vol 2.djvu/447

Rh it is my purpose, in this chapter, briefly to state it and give my reasons for it.

There is a widely prevalent impression in western Europe and the United States that the anti-Government party or class in Russia is essentially homogeneous; that its members are all nihilists; that they prefer violence to any other means of redressing wrongs; that they aim simply and solely at the destruction of all existing institutions; and that, in this so-called nihilism, there is something peculiar and mysterious — something that the Western mind cannot fully comprehend owing to its ignorance of the Russian character. This impression seems to me to be a wholly erroneous one. In the first place the anti-Government party in Russia is not, in any sense of the word, homogeneous. Its members belong to all ranks, classes, and conditions of the Russian people; they hold all sorts of opinions with regard to social and political organization; and the methods by which they propose to improve the existing condition of things extend through all possible