(3) A brief history of Russian revolutionaries and terrorists.

(Reading Victor Sebeschen's "Lenin: Power and Love")

We will continue with the memorable passages from "Lenin: Power and Love" by Victor Seveschen.

The end of the Russian Czarist regime, the era of assassinations

After the assassination of Tsar Alexander II in 1881, the reigns of the two emperors, Alexander III and Nicholas II, were marked by many terrorist assassinations anyway. Alexander II was an emperor who adopted liberal policies to some extent, including the emancipation of serfs. The assassination of Alexander II, however, led to the severe repressive policies of later emperors.

The despotic government saw the spread of any idea of modernizing Russia in the Western style as a direct challenge to the Romanov dynasty, which lasted nearly 300 years. The imperial court created all kinds of state institutions to root out any form of "subversive activity. As Count Sergei Uitte, who served as prime minister for three years under the last tsar, said, "The Russian Empire became a police state, ...... especially outstanding.

Russia's last two tsars both tightened repression and censorship, condemned even the most moderate political opponents to exile, and banned political activity of all kinds - thisold regimeAncien Regime (in France)The emperor thought that by doing so, he could further secure his rule, which lasted until almost the end of the 1920s and 1930s.

No idea was more misguided. The early Romanov dynasty rulers, such as Tsar Peter the Great and Yekaterina Nii, understood what power was and knew how to run a tyrannical state. So did Lenin.

The last two emperors, who were lousy judges, incompetent, and utterly lacking in imagination, were different. They had ruthlessness, but not skill or insight. At the threshold of the nineteenth century, their great desire was to take Russia back to the seventeenth century.

It is not surprising that they could not figure out how to do it. They both made a series of fatal mistakes. Worst of all, they drove middle-class moderate liberals who had no interest in revolution onto the path of radicalism.

The two allowed violent opposition to grow, and they were too weak and incompetent to crush it. It was, predictably, the students who spearheaded the opposition to the czarist tyranny. The regime was in a constant state of intergenerational conflict with the educated youth.
Some line breaks have been made.

Hakusuisha, Victor Sebeschen, translated by Motohiro Miura and Tsukasa Yokoyama, Lenin: Power and Love, p73-74

The fault of the two emperors was that the repression led to an unnecessary increase in discontent. What an irony that the repression turned even moderate liberals, who originally had nothing to do with the revolution, into terrorists.

During the last 25 years of imperial rule, nearly 20,000 people, including ministers, prefects, high-ranking officials, and high-ranking army officers, were assassinated by revolutionary groups. (omitted).

Several sniffy foreign observers had noticed that despite the daily assassinations, most people felt no anger toward the revolutionaries. They just shrug their shoulders and roar their dissatisfaction with the regime.

When the hated Minister of the Interior was blown up by a bomb in St. Petersburg, Baron Freud Lexa von Ehrenthal, Austria's ambassador to Russia, who was not a particularly liberal figure, wrote.

Most striking is ...... his complete indifference to an event that was a serious blow to the fundamental principles of government. As a minister who must have made many enemies because of his authoritarian tendencies, one could hardly expect sympathy. Even so, some degree of compassion, or at least anxiety and concern for the near future, would have been natural, but we find not a shred of it. People are either completely indifferent or cynical to the point of putting it out there that the assassination was a foregone conclusion. People are saying that it will take ...... more catastrophes to make the highest authorities change their minds."
Some line breaks have been made.

Hakusuisha, Victor Sebeschen, translated by Motohiro Miura and Tsukasa Yokoyama, Lenin: Power and Love, p74-75

It is nothing short of amazing that more than 20,000 people have been assassinated in 25 years, isn't it?

It is also noteworthy that the people were not angry about the situation, but rather tolerated it. There was already an atmosphere of hope for a revolution in Russia.

Peaceful means were taken from me."

Vera Figner was one of the first Russian women trained as a physician, but she led a revolutionary group and participated in two failed attempts to assassinate Tsar Alexander II and then in a successful plot. She escaped arrest and fled, but was finally taken into police custody in the Crimea in 1883. She was 31 years old at the time. She spent more than 20 years in prison and Siberian exile. At a trial held the year after her arrest, she made a statement, which was presented to Aleksandr Ulyanov (*Lenin's elder brother, who was later executed by the Czar). She was later executed by the Czar. Blog author's note) read and memorized it, it seems certain.

I was deprived of peaceful means. We had no freedom of speech or publication, and we could not conceive of communicating our ideas by means of the printed word. If some organ of society had pointed me to a way other than violence, I would have chosen it.

In later years, exiled to Switzerland and a fierce opponent of Lenin and the Bolsheviks, she wrote in retrospect of her life as a terrorist, "My faith in bombs and guns, in murder and the gallows, was irresistibly magical."
Some line breaks have been made.

Hakusuisha, Victor Sebeschen, translated by Motohiro Miura and Tsukasa Yokoyama, Lenin: Power and Love, p76-77

The repressive politics of the two emperors led to the creation of these terrorists.

If peaceful means had been left to me, I would have chosen them. I was shocked to hear such words coming from the mouth of the terrorist who carried out the assassination.

History of Revolutionary Groups (1) - "Into the People (Vu Narod)" Movement

Among the revolutionary groups, it was the popularists who first gained a modicum of influence. They initially adopted completely peaceful means. They were convinced that the revolution would come from the peasants. This led to a kind of rural socialism from the 1860s onward.Into the PeopleV. Narod.In the "I am the one" movement, a group of idealistic young men and women went out into the countryside and settled in communities there, trying to open first-aid centers and educate illiterate peasants.

Several archetypes of this type of people appear in Chekhov's plays and novels. Most of them came from privileged backgrounds and were awakened to their wealth. We have arrived at the universal truth only because of the long suffering of the people. We are in debt to the people, and this debt weighs heavily on our conscience," said one of them [social thinker Nikolai Mikhailovsky].

."Land and FreedomZemlya y Vorya.Almost without exception, such populist groups were rejected by the peasants they were trying to help. The peasants did not trust them because of their privileged status, were wary of socialism, and were uncomfortable with the disruption of rural life by their pretended protectors.

In many cases, villagers reported radical activists to the police or removed them from their neighborhoods. There were a few instances of them being attacked or even killed. Socialism hit the peas and bounced off them like peas against a wall. The peasants listened to the words of our people as they would to the words of the village priest, but their thinking and actions were not affected in the slightest.
Some line breaks have been made.

Hakusuisha, Victor Sebeschen, translated by Motohiro Miura and Tsukasa Yokoyama, Lenin: Power and Love, p80

Chekhov is mentioned here for his work on the V-Narod movement, but our blog has also previously mentioned Turgenev'sThe Land of the VirginsThe following is a brief introduction to the "The

This work also depicts a typical Narodniki young man, giving a sense of the atmosphere of the times.

However, the Narodniki movement was not trusted by the peasants and eventually fizzled out.

History of Revolutionary Groups (2) - Charismatic Leader Nechayev's Violent Revolution

The next tactic employed was to destabilize the state by resorting to violence. Believing, as ever, that revolution begins with the peasantry, they carried out targeted assassinations of imperial officials, provincial governors, policemen, and military officers in order to make Russia ungovernable. From their ruins, they said, a rural socialist republic would seize power and transform Russia.

The largest and most dangerous of these groups was the "People's Will PartyNarod v. Vorya." Its central theorist and leader was the charismatic Sergei Nechaev. The nihilist Verkhovensky of Dostoevsky's novel "Evil Spirits" is modeled on Nechaev.

Nechayev was a charismatic leader who inspired a generation of followers with his enthusiasm and asceticism. He died in the Petropavlovsk fortress as a prisoner after being kept in prison for ten years and subjected to prolonged hard labor. His political pamphlet, "The Doctrinal Questions and Answers of a Revolutionary," was banned, but was widely circulated and became a primer for young radicals who would become foot soldiers in the Tehkut organization.

Although this pamphlet encourages a spine-chilling lifestyle, its call for self-sacrifice and its logic of fighting violence with violence attracted many young people. The revolutionary is a dedicated human being. He has no personal interests, no private affairs, no feelings, no possessions, no name. Everything within him is subordinated to one single dedicated devotion, one single thought, one single passion: the revolution.

The revolutionary is aware in the deepest recesses of his being, not only in word but in deed, that he has severed all the ties that bind him to the social order and to the civilized world, along with all laws, morals, customs, and generally accepted practices. He is the irreconcilable enemy of these things, and if he continues to coexist with them, it is only to destroy them more quickly. He must be prepared to destroy every person and thing that stands in his way."

After the assassination of Alexander II, the "People's Will Party" was almost destroyed by the Ofrana (*the Czar's secret police. The "People's Will Party" was almost destroyed by the Offrana (*the Czar's secret police, see blog author's note). However, a small group of mainly students was formed under the same name and then disappeared. Aleksandr Ulyanov (*Lenin's brother. Later executed by the Czar. The group to which Aleksandr Ulyanov (*Lenin's brother, later executed by the Czar) belonged was one of these groups.

Near the end of the century, the Social Revolutionary Party (S.L.) would be founded on the ruins of the People'sists. Although more sophisticated as an organization, it still held the belief that individual acts of terror would advance the revolution.
Some line breaks have been made.

Hakusuisha, Victor Sebeschen, translated by Motohiro Miura and Tsukasa Yokoyama, Lenin: Power and Love, p81-82

Dostoevsky's masterpieceEvil Spirits."The main characters in the book are modeled on the real-life revolutionary Nechayev.

A charismatic leader, Nechayev was a major influence on later revolutionaries and would have a profound impact on Lenin.

History of Revolutionary Groups (3) - Marxist Revolutionaries

After the 1870s, several rival organizations were founded, inspired by Marxism, an idea from the West. They abandoned the idea that in a semi-medieval country like Russia, the revolution begins with the peasantry. The revolution, they believed, would be led by the working class, the proletariat.

There was one problem that plagued Marxist theorists and caused endless disputes with rural socialists. That was that Russia was far behind Western Europe as an industrial producer, and at the end of the 19th century had only a small working class compared to Great Britain, Germany, and France.

Ulyanov joined the Marxist camp. I fell in love with Marx and Engels," he told his sisters. Literally in love. This man would become the most famous of all Marxists, Lenin, and the founder of the first state based on Marxist principles.

But he and the object of his passion had a complicated relationship. He applied Marx's ideas to Russian conditions in a way that Marx would never have considered. Many historians have argued that Soviet-style communism developed the way it did because Lenin tried to bring Western doctrine and philosophy to a retarded country like Russia. Rather, the opposite is more accurate. Lenin transformed a series of European ideas into a very Russian product. Lenin's Marxism, with its intolerance, rigor, violence, and brutality, was shaped by his experience as a 19th century Russian. Lenin's Bolshevism has deep roots in Russia.

Marxism was the revolutionary ideology that took root in Russia after the Narodniki movement and Nechayev.

What is interesting here is not that Lenin brought Marx's ideas to Russia, but that Lenin transformed Marx's ideas into the Russian way.

It is impossible, according to Marx's theory, for a revolution to take place in Russia, where industry is not developed. (*It is said that Marx in his later years even tolerated it... for more details."(60) What did Marx think about the communist revolution in Russia?"(See article in)

But Lenin adapted Marxism to the Russian way of thinking to suit the Russian situation. This is a major point in understanding Lenin's characteristics.

be unbroken

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