THE CHAKACTER OF POLITICAL EXILES 431

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 mem- bers 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, iu this so-called nihilism, there is something pe- culiar and mysterious — something that the Western mind cannot fully comprehend owing to its ignorance of the Russian character. 1 This impression seems to me to be a wholly erroneous one. In the first place the anti-Govern- ment 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 i The popular view of nihilism is F. C. Costelloe. MacmiUan's Magazine, shown in the following quotations, the March, 1882, p. 408.] number of which might be almost in- "A minority of decided socialists, definitely extended. left to themselves, . . . indulged " Nihilism, in its largest acceptation, i n the conviction of the necessity of is the flat negation of all faith and overturning all existing order ; of an- hope, whether in the social, political, nihilating property, state, church, or spiritual order." ["The Spell of marriage, society, etc., of placing com- the Russian Writers," by Harriet W. munism instead of socialism on the Preston. Atlantic Monthly Magazine, throne ; and of beginning this great August, 1887, p. 208.] work by the murder of the Tsar. This "Nihilism is an explosive compound small but fanatical party were called generated by the contact of the Sclav Nihilists because they would accept character with western ideas." . . . absolutely nothing, and only saw hap- The Nihilists, "like the maniacs of the piness in the destruction of every- French Terror, were too keenly alive thing existing." ["Modern Russia," to existing evils to see anyroad out of by Dr. Julius Eckhardt, p. 166.] them except by wholesale demolition. Compare the above quotations with A breach with the national past had no the declaration of principles of the terrors to them, because they had Russian revolutionists, and the letter broken with it already. Crime was of the terrorist executive committee to not repulsive, for the landmarks of Alexander III., which will be found in good and evil had been swept away." Appendix C.

["Russia and the Revolution," by B.