turn to terror and violence.49 Tjje_executive committee of the People's Will addressed its first action after the assassination, not to its own revolutionary affiliates or any potentially revolutionary segment of the populace^^ut^jto^ the new Tsar himself, urging him to summon a national assembly, to initiate reforms ande^^e^a3lie^eliTty!,^f%l6^a4rIEar-
TEeacceleration of the terrorist campaign which climaxed in the assassination of Alexander presents, however, one last piece of high irony. For this turn to_extrem^m_jim^ng_ttie^^u2istsoccurred at precisely the time thafAlexander had begun to turn away from extremism. Serious dis-cussionsJoT social and political reform jyere once more being^mjcUictecJx*5! among the Tsar's inner cjrpj^jjf^adviser?. On March I, the very day of his assassination, Alexander had tentatively approved a year-old project to include part of the intelligentsia and bourgeoisie in the machinery of government. The renewed interest and encouragement which the Tsar had shown the zemstvo movemenF(in an effort*to ehlisf*iTs''support'in combating terrorism) hadled to a rapid ??,??**?, in US-jjtality and political ambitions of this nationwide chain_flf_provincial administrative groups. Journalistic friends of populism, such as Mikhailovsky in St. Petersburg and Zaitsev and Sokolov in Ueneva, were actively working to encourage some kind of populist-liberal rapprochement. The objective possibilitiesjor a broadly basedjpo4?ratejreiprm movemeir?^ieejn/te4iave''bTe^ Populism ananberalism wereEoth St. Petersburg- basedmovements inherently opposed to extremism.
But the People's Will knew nothing about the secret constitutional project that the Tsar had'*approved; and tEeTsar's liberal advisers had no knowMlge'of the jnorejoderjrjsjtrends_that were still pres^mVwithin the
popijllst movemerrtJITie differencgs bj^eena populist intelligentand_a pragmatic liberal were in many ways even deeper^ than those between popu-lism and either^ of the Moscow-based extremist ideologies. Revolutionary Jacobinism, evolutionary populism, and reactionary Pan-Slav imperialism^ all developed out of the iconoclastic revolution. Each position contended that drainatic~^^Sg^^«,et^~afeaut^~raEeplace in*1ruTlrair-h1s'tdry; ancTIt was~gasier JOT-gropon5its crt oBe~SB«h-4dtiulugy tcnffiftnito anotji^tlianto. leave ideoloj›y ImSgeOlei for ? ??1? *???????1?????1~???????^?. Once begun, * the search for truth could not'beabandoried ioF~the ptrrsuirof pleasure or the consolation of half-truths. Fragmentary ideas of aristocratic intellectuals were becoming programs for action and articles ot taith in the hands of the new intelligentsia! Wllalevei It mlgMfcrvglMgn, the'Triteffigentsia was to become what katkov feared and' Tkachev hoped it would be: the herald
essel!re~oi4beT5a8^^s offgSus ChriST'. . . was my primary moral incentive' and was at pains to porn? outlibw reluctant all the populists were to
2. The Agony of Populist Art
1 he central fact of the populist era, which haunted the imagination of its creative artists, was that all of Russian life was being materially transformed by modernizing forces from the West. Even in its initial stages under Alexander II, this process had gone far deeper than the massive Westernization of aristocratic thought under Catherine and the extensive administrative and technological changes under Peter. The only previous confrontation comparable in psychological effect was that of the seventeenth century. Like that century, the populist era was distinguished by profound schism and search that affected all of society and culture. Just as the most dynamic and original movement of the seventeenth century was that of the schismatics and other defenders of the old ways, so the most arresting movement of the Alexandrian age was the heroic populist effort to defend the old patterns of life and culture. This similarity helps explain the peculiar fascination of the Russian populists with the Old Believers and the period of Russian history that stretched from the Time of Troubles to the advent of Peter the Great.
Both the Old Believers and the populists were defending a partially imagined and idealized past along with very real forms and practices of Old Russian life. Each was basically a peaceful, non-revolutionary movement which was, however, sometimes allied with violent insurrectionaries: the peasant rebels and student terrorists respectively. But there was a critical difference between the late seventeenth and the late nineteenth century. For the Old Believers and peasant rebels who defended Old Muscovy all had a clear religious faith and a clear idea of the enemy-whether it was the rituals and priests of the new church or the administrators and bureaucrats of the new state. The St. Petersburg populists, on the other hand, had no such clear faith and no agreed conception of what or who was the enemy. They were, for the most part, 'repentant noblemen' projecting the anguish of earlier aristocratic thought onto Russian society as a whole. They were determined to overcome their own 'superfluousness' by becoming active
agents of a new communal form of social life, anxious to overcome their alienation from the real world by establishing direct personal contact with Russia as it really was.
The desire for realism, for the remorseless honesty of the natural scientist, produced a sense of despair among the young intelligentsia as they went forth to discover the long-forgotten masses. But the certainty that Russia was somehow destined to produce a new kind of society, perhaps even a 'new Christianity,' rescued most of them from the total Welt-schmerz of the aristocratic century. Indeed, whereas suicide was the besetting moral illness of creative thinkers in the 'romantic' first half of the nineteenth century, insanity tended to be the curse of the 'realistic' second half. Many of the most original and imaginative figures of the populist age -revolutionaries like Khudiakov and Tkachev, writers like Garshin and Uspensky-went completely insane long before they died. The 'mad summer' of the mid-seventies seems at times like part of a confused dream sequence in which the main characters suffer from nervous tics, alcoholic addictions, aimless wanderings, epileptic fits, or neurotic oscillations between extreme exaltation and bleak depression. All of these disorders were widespread among the 'cultural pioneers' of the populist age.
One disturbing factor was the fact that the urban intellectuals were looking to the simple people at precisely the time when they were losing their sense of purpose and identity. The peasantry had been confused by the emancipation and was tending to lose confidence, not just in the Church, but in the entire animistic cosmology of Russian rural life. For the primitive peasant imagination of pre-industrial Russia, the world was saturated with religious meaning. God came to man not just through the icons and holy men of the Church but also through the spirit-hosts of mountains, rivers, and, above all, the forests. Each animal, each tree had religious significance like the details in a medieval painting. Belief in the magic power of words and names persisted; the fear of naklikanie, or bringing something upon oneself merely by mentioning its name, was widespread, and one always referred to the devil by such euphemisms as 'he,' 'the unclean,' or 'not
ours.'
Christianity had melted into and enriched this world of primitive nature worship without supplanting it. Religious rites, particularly the ever-repeated sign of the cross and the 'Christ have mercy' prayer in the orthodox liturgy, were often little more than an animistic effort at naklikanie-at summoning up God's power and force by endless repetitions of His name. Trees and birds were thought to have derived their present characteristics from their imagined relationship to the events of Christ's life and death. And the revered intermediaries of the gods of nature-swans or mountain
birds-were often brought in for the cure of a dying man when a 'wonderworking icon' had failed.
As the mentality of the Russian intelligentsia sought to enter into the plight of the masses, it tended to feel even more keenly than the peasants themselves the waning of these naive and superstitious but beautiful and ennobling beliefs. The vague pantheism of the peasantry was easier to accept than the doctrines of the Church, and it appealed to the romantic imagination of the populists. But they were forced to recognize at the same time that
