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The Emigration and apostasy of Lev Tikhomirov
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 January 2017
Extract
The Apostasy of Lev Aleksandrovich Tikhomirov, one of the few surviving giants of the Executive Committee of Narodnaia volia, was among the most severe disasters which the Russian revolutionary movement sustained in the decade following the assassination of Alexander II. In the summer of 1888 Tikhomirov, the coeditor of Narodnaia volia's Geneva journal, published a pamphlet entitled Pochemu ia perestal byt' revoliutsionerom (Why I Ceased to Be a Revolutionary), and early the following year he returned to Russia, having received a full pardon from the tsar.
In the words of Nikolai Apollonovich Charushin, a friend and colleague since the old days of the Chaikovskii circle, Tikhomirov's recantation produced the effect of an “exploding bomb” in both the official Russian and the émigré press. According to the liberal historian Bogucharskii, rumors were rife around Moscow that Pobedonostsev had made Tikhomirov's return conditional on his retiring to a monastery to atone for his sins. The Moskovskie vedomosti, of which Tikhomirov was subsequently to become editor, greeted the prodigal son with joy. Referring to Why I Ceased to Be a Revolutionary, a Vedomosti writer noted that “here we find the frank confession of a man who took an important part in the criminal sedition of the last fifteen years, whose conscience has finally been awakened, and whose sanity has been restored, in place of that madness with which his comrades strive toward their absurd, impossible goals.”
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References
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4 Bogucharskii, p. 124.
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21 Reprinted in Revoliutsionnoe narodnichestvo 70-kh godov XIX veka (Moscow and Leningrad, 1965), II, 315-22.
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27 Revoliutsionnoe narodnichestvo, p. 387.
28 Vospominaniia, p. 137.
29 Ibid., p. 138.
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31 Vospominaniia, p. 140.
32 For Tikhomirov's connection with Shelgunov and the journal Delo, see Vospominaniia, p. 139; also “Zapiska Shelgunova,” Katorga i ssylka, No. 57, 1929, pp. 161-67.
33 For the consistency of his views, compare thelead article of No. 4 of the journal Narodnaia volia, which appeared on Dec. 5, 1880 (in Literatura sotsial'no-revoliutsionnoi partii ‘Narodnoi voli’ [n.p., 1905], pp. 289-93), a n d “Chto nam zhdat’ ot revoliutsii,” Vestnik Narodnoi voli, No. 2 (Geneva, 1884).
34 For two accounts of Tikhomirov's dealings with the nascent “Emancipation of Labor” group, see Baron, pp. 78-116, and Volk, pp. 392-403.
35 For a grotesquely amusing account of this rather dreadful episode, see Avrahin Yarmolinsky, Road to Revolution (New York, 1962), pp. 305-10.
36 Vospominaniia, pp. 188-89.
37 “Zaprosy vremeni,” Vestnik Narodnoi voli, No. 4 (Geneva, 1885), p. 225.
38 All this material appeared in an anthology entitled Na rodine, three numbers of which apparently were issued in 1882-83, in Geneva.
39 Paris, 1886. There is also an English edition, Russia Political and Social, trans. Edward Aveling (London, 1888).
40 Figner, “Po povodu zapisok L. Tikhomirova,” published as a preface to Tikhomirov's Vospominaniia, p. xxviii, and in her Polnoe sobranie sochineniia (Moscow, 1929), V, 282-99. This is a very perceptive essay.
41 Vospominaniia, pp. 287-88.
42 Ibid., p. 282.
43 Ibid., p. 284.
44 Ibid., p. 289.
45 Ibid., p. 291.
46 La Russie politique et sociale (2d ed.; Paris, 1888), p. xii.
47 Rusanov, pp. 172-74.
48 Ibid., pp. 168-69; 175-76.
49 [On title page : P. N. Lavrov], Revoliutsiia Hi evoliutsiia (n.p., 1888).
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51 Ibid., p. 70.
52 Vospominaniia, pp. 231-35; the petition is also in Krasnaialetopis', No. 23, 1923.
53 Vospominaniia, p. 264.
54 “One may state,” wrote the monarchist Maevskii, “that the Monarkhicheskaia gosudarstvennost’ of Lev Tikhomirov was the core of the monarchical counterrevolutionary movement” (Vladimir Maevskii, Revoliutsioner-monarkhist [Nowi Sad, 1934], p. 80). He is speaking of the period between 1905 and World War I.
55 Ibid. p. 51.