Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 1.pdf/186

160 During this epoch of reaction, which was likewise an epoch of internal transformation, the revolutionaries seemed paralysed. For years after 1884 they did practically nothing. Typical of this crisis was the conduct of the revolutionary leader Tihomirov, who went over into Katkov's camp. The Spread of Marxist ideas contributed to the paralysis of the terrorist movement. As early as 1878 Stepniak, the man who had stabbed Mezencev, wrote: "We are not fighting the state but the bourgeoisie." In 1883 the first party of declared Marxists was founded, under the name Liberation of Labour. Provisionally established in Geneva, it remained in close touch with the intelligentsia and the working classes of Russia.

The whole of cultured Russia was occupied during the eighties and has been occupied to the present day in considering the problems forced upon the attention by Marxism. Above all were people interested in the dispute between the narodniki and the Marxists concerning the economic and capitalistic development of Russia. It is incontestable that Russian revisionism (Struve) developed under the influence of the narodniki. A return from materialism to philosophic idealism was associated with the growth of revisionism. "Idealism," was the cry heard on all sides, "idealism versus materialism!"

This appeal came not only from the revisionists, but from the jurists as well (Novgorodcev), and above all from the advocates of that literary idealism, of that mystical religious movement which during recent years has been associated with the teachings of Dostoevskii and of the philosopher Solov'ev. A peculiar position in this connection is occupied by Leont'ev the theocrat, a man of original mind.

The development of the poet Čehov was characteristic of the political and social fatigue that prevailed during the reign of Alexander III. He ushered in the literary decadence, the movement known as neoidealism or neoromantism. Merežkovskii and Volynskii may be mentioned as representatives of this school, the former as poet and essayist, and the latter as critic.