dominated by the meaningless parliaments and constitutions of Anglo-
French liberalism or the brutally centralizing tendencies of German mili
tarism. They vaguely hoped_for some kind of loose, decentralized federation
on the American pattern-the Ukrainian populist proup actually calling
themselves'the Americans.' But their basic conviction was that ??????'
gunov's original Proclamation to the Young Generation of 1861 that 'we
not only can, but we must. . . arrive at somejtiew order unknown^^mjto
America.'41?'*'''**
TEejnajor source of foreign inspiration was French socialist thought. Louis Blanc,„jvho had irttemptea to set up actual socialist experiments am?Sff the.people of ????-? fW brit^thnr'a'JOLJiC^ daw?hjg,j?r2la?edthe'purery theoretical' Fourier and Owen as the socialist saint most revered by the populists. But the principal prophet ot ffienew order for the populists was the passionate figure of Pierre-JoseptiProudhon, who dominated French socialist thought from the failure of the revolution of 1848 until his death in 1865. Proudhon introducejLan elejnen|.of- pa§sipjiate egalitarianism and heroic, semi-anarchistic opposition to political authority
which' maderunT~a~ partic^lar]y^_sympathetic figure for survivors oYThe
iconoclastic revolution in Russia. ProudhorTwas, like Rousseau, a French provincial '????????^????? him to Paris a certain plebeian indignation against aristocratic elites and centralized authority. He opposed a proposed
constitution during the revolution of 1848, 'not because it is bad, but because it is a constitution'; flatly labeled private property 'theft'; and in his famojisjournals The People, The Representative oiihe People-and The Voice of the PTople^he'cteygtoped a kind of mystical belief in_'the people' as a mighty force capable ot rejuvenating Europe!
All of this appealed to the alienated intellectuals of the Alexandrian era, who were also provincial outsiders in many cases with an iconoclastic attitude toward authority, an incisive and disjointed polemic style, and an anguished desire to establish or re-establish links with 'the people.' Proudhon viewed himsatL moreover, as a kind of Christian socialist, work*-, ing mTBrmittently all his adult life on a never-completed study of Christ as a_J social reformer and frequently introducing apocalyptical language-all tend- 4 ing to increase his appeajjto the RussianywhQjsnded to view socialism as an 1 outgrwth of^uppressed traditions within heretical Christianity. BoJhjoTthe^ prophetic forerunners of the^eepwlisXJa«Kement, Herzen and Bakunin, were frieria
rand adroTr^rs nf ???????? fellow provincials^ so to speak, who had come to Paris, the Mecca of revolution in the late forties. Trigjuaccepted Pr'iHhj^rjX?^planaticjrthat the debacle of 1848-9 resulted from the failure of tbe revolutionaries to link themselves 'mrreservedly with the elemental power of the people. They, and Russian radical thought generally, had'
continued to hopeffiat socialist transformation might yet be accomplished on French soil through a working- class movement led by Proudhon i.bjiLthsy^ gradually began to place their hopes for change in the unspoiled Russian people! *''
This transfer_of hopesjrom West to East became complete in 1871
after Bismarck's Germany defeated France in the Frrmm-PriJssian W?r'and 'a repubUc_yyithout ideals' came into being over the ruins of the Paris Commune. France was now a center of fashions rather than 'the lighthouse of the world'; it had become, in the title of Mikhailovsky's famous essay of October, 1871, the land of 'Darwinism and the Operettas of Offenbach.' All of Europe is now ruled by jungle laws of the survival of the fittest and a culture whose highest symbol is the cancan; and Mikhailovsky pointedly ends his piece with the phrase novus rerurn mihi nascitur ordo.
s~
The new order of things as envisaged by the main line of populist thought as it developed from Herzen and Chernyshevsky through to Lavrov, Mikhailovsky, and Shelgunov was a unique Russian variant of the general European phenomenon of moralistic, 'utopian' socialism. The populists believed in 'subjective socialism' to be brought about by mormldeals rather thalT'^'ooTective socialism' th'at~is created irrespective~of human ~.*a
1. 1 ne 1 urn to social 1 nougni
theories about revolutionary organization and economic determinism gained almost no suggortamong Russians during the populis^rj^JJiojagh^^^ioraT outrage of his denuncmtionj3fj^a|›kalisr^
PoplffisTsocialism did not involve just a reconstitution of society on the
communal modHl)TThe^peaSarit obshchina, but a creative development of
the obshchina form itself TrTorder to guarantee the full dewlgpment of the
human personality, hferzen stressed the need for assuring indjvidualrights
within the new socialist society, Chernyshevsky the need for maintaining
individual incentives, and Mikhailovsky the need for preventing dehuman
izing overspecialization. For all of JhemJhe_full d^y^lo^mMjtjo?4luman
personality was^mjBdjnskj^sjvor^than the fate of the
whole world/^Mikhailovsky described all of history as an endless 'struggle for individuality' and describejjfcejcoming' golden age_as one of 'subjective anthropocentrism.' Nicholas Chaikovsky, whose circle in St. Petersburg was the real center of the populist movement, thought that he was founding a 'religion of humanity' and included in his group several members of a 'God-manhood sect' which taught that each individual was literally destined to become a god.42
The populists professed to accept industrial development but wished to_preservaJhg_ more moral type ofsocietv_foundJn^the commune, while m°v'ngj?jfog j?.J^S??E??5f civilization which scienu^c progress was bring- ing into beings Indeed, thefirst ofthe mass 'movementstojhepeople' in 1871-3 was direcgj^^el^'/ia^i^»^at^ie urbanworkers jjfjit. Peters- burg, who were thniightJ-oJinHjfbf^key to the future and be particularly^ capable of 'mental andjrjpral development.' This movement to the people appealed to intellectuals in other cities, who formed groups loosely affiliated with the Chaikovtsy in many major cities of the empire. This
