Page:Siberia and the Exile System Vol 2.djvu/448

432 gradations, from peaceful remonstrance, in the form of collective petition, to terroristic activity, in the shape of bomb-throwing and assassination. The one common bond that unites them is the feeling, which they all have, that the existing state of affairs has become insupportable and must be changed.

In the second place there is no anti-Government party in Russia to which the term nihilistic can properly be applied. This may seem, perhaps, like a very strange statement, in view of the fact that we have never heard of any other anti-Government party in Russia; but it is a true statement nevertheless. There is no party in the Empire that deliberately chooses violence and bloodshed as the best conceivable means of attaining its ends; there is no party that aims simply and solely at the overthrow of existing institutions; and there is no party that preaches or practises a philosophy of mere negation and destruction. I make these assertions confidently, because my acquaintance with so-called nihilists is probably more extensive and thorough than that of any other foreigner, and I have discussed these questions with them for many hundreds of hours. Liberals, reformers, socialistic theorists of the Bellamy type, political economists of the Henry George type, republicans, constitutionalists, revolutionists, and terrorists I have met in all varieties, both in European Russia and in Siberia; but a nihilist in the proper, or even in the popular, signification of that word — never. Of course, if you use the term nihilist as you would use the term "Know-nothing," merely to denote a certain social or political party, and without reference to the original significance of the appellation, you may apply it to any body of men — to the Knights of Labor for example, or to the Farmers' Alliance; but if you use the word with a consciousness of its primary signification, as you would use the word "yellow" to describe an orange, you cannot properly apply it to any branch of the anti-Government party in Russia.