The latter regarded the village community as being, with autocracy and orthodoxy, an emanation of the Russian “national spirit.” These three institutions were predestined in their belief to prevent Holy Russ from entering upon the impious ways of the “rotten West,” with its class antagonism, extremes of luxury and poverty, intestinal discords and civil wars.

Precisely for the same reasons, considering the village community as an integral part of the prevailing system of paternalism, the “occidentalists,” opposed to autocracy and orthodoxy, strove for the abolition of the mir as well as of bond serfdom.

The archaic communism of the mir appeared to them to stand in acute contradiction to Western liberalism or individualism. The “epoch of emancipation,” however, that came to realize the aspirations of the occidentalists, brought about a fundamental change of public opinion in regard to the village community.

The intellectual development in Russia was ever going on under the steady influence of Western ideas. The “epoch of the forties” coincided with the era during which socialistic and communistic ideas were in full blast throughout France. Thanks to the many Russian tourists and students who became imbued with these ideas during their sojourn in Paris, socialism, towards the end of “the forties,” attained no inconsiderable popularity among the educated class in Russia. Not to speak of Herzen or Bakunin—who were at that time closely affiliated with Proudhon, Karl Marx and other prominent representatives of the social movements of the day—Belinsky, who was the foremost Russian critic and publicist, equally renowned among all parties (except, of course, the bureaucratic party), became in his latter years a socialist. “Secret circles,” or, as they would be called in this country, debating clubs, swarmed in every large centre of intellectual culture. Among the young men connected with this movement, there was one who was later on to play a part of extraordinary importance in Russian history; this was Nicholas Gavrielovitch Tchernyshefsky.

The influence of Tchernyshefsky upon the development of Russia was far wider, and far more many-sided, than might be supposed. Philosophy, ethics, æsthetics, criticism, political economy, politics, fiction:—these were the various fields of his activity; and everywhere his ideas determined the course of further development. It would require the elaborate study of a scholar to truly represent the historical value of Tchernyshefsky, who can justly be called the father of Russian Nihilism.

Nihilism was entirely misunderstood in Western countries. It will, perhaps, appear somewhat surprising to an English reader to learn that Jeremy Bentham’s doctrine of utilitarianism offered the philosophical foundation of Nihilism. The latter was in reality nothing but an attempt to construct socialism upon the basis of individual utility.

The village community, seen in the light of Nihilism, must evidently have presented quite a different aspect from that which it presented to both the slavophiles and the occidentalists of the preceding epoch. The first article of Tchernyshefsky upon the village community was written in 1857, on the eve of the emancipation of the peasants, and was in the form of a criticism on the papers that had appeared in the slavophile magazine Russkaya Beseda. Tchernyshefsky, though apparently an “occidentalist,” sided with the slavophiles, and in a series of brilliant articles laid down the basis of the so-called “peasantism” (narodnitchestvo) which since then, and until quite recently, has constituted the common ground of all liberal and radical aspirations in Russia, however greatly they may have differed upon other questions.

“Must Russian development of historical necessity follow in the tracks of Western Europe? Cannot Russia benefit by the lessons taught by the history of Western nations, and find out some new way of her own to avoid that evil of pauperism which necessarily accompanies private enterprise in production?”

These were the questions raised by Tchernyshefsky. Taking as a basis Hegel’s famous triad, he showed that Western Europe went from State regulation to individualism and laissez-faire, and now was entering upon a new path which tended toward coöperation and social regulation of economic phenomena. Why then should Russia pass through the intermediate phase, since she already possessed a national institution which permeated the whole economic life of the people, and embodied the principles of coöperation? The individualistic French farmer must inevitably succumb in the war of competition with the large landholder, for the latter is in a position to utilize all new agricultural improvements, while the former lacks all means of combination with his neighbors. On the other hand, supposing that the time has come for the introduction of improved machinery into Russian agriculture, would it require any revolution in the social relations prevailing in the Russian village? Not in the least; the land belongs to the community, and not to the individual; the forms of distribution of land are very various, and admit, not infrequently, even of collective mowing and subsequent distribution of the hay. If new machinery were to be introduced, the Russian community would combine at once the advantages of a large concern, and those of having each individual worker directly interested in his work. This latter, it is claimed, is the characteristic feature of small farm holding. Having thus proved the superiority of Russian communism in land, judged from the standpoint of individual utility, Tchernyshefsky goes on to the other very important question:

“Is it possible for Russia to leap over one phase of her historical development? Natura non agit per saltus.”

To answer this question he quoted the history of technical progress. There was a time when our forefathers produced fire by rubbing together pieces of dry wood. Man next found out how to strike the fire from flint, but centuries elapsed before matches were invented. Now suppose an African nation were to come into contact with European culture, would such a nation have to pass through all the inconveniences of the period of transition suffered by Europeans, or would it not rather adopt matches immediately? Applying the same principle to social institutions, Tchernyshefsky advocated nationalization of land, and communal landholding, as a basis for the emancipation of the peasants, which was then under the consideration of the government. In a paper entitled Is the Redemption of Land Difficult? he showed in figures the practicability of buying out the land by the government, and in a series of other articles he maintained that such a reform would prevent the formation of a proletariat in Russia.

The period that preceded the reform of 1861, was a time of universal enthusiasm for the liberal government on the part of the educated class. So much the greater was the disappointment when the reform was at last proclaimed. It has not been stated whether Tchernyshefsky himself was in any way connected with the “underground” agitation against the government, of which he was accused at so early a date as 1862. Tried in 1864, and exiled to Siberia, he was allowed to return to European Russia only in 1883, when the revolutionary party seemed to have been finally suppressed by the government. And yet for this whole period none but Tchernyshefsky was the spiritual leader of the social movement that sprang up from the disappointment caused by the manner in which the emancipation of the peasants had been carried out. It will be seen further that, owing to the origin and development of private ownership in land, nationalization of land became