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From City Workers to Peasantry: The Beginning of the Russian Movement "To the People"

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Pamela Sears Mc Kinsey
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The student-led Russian working-class movement of the early 1870s, only lightly studied to date, is intimately connected with the beginnings of the famous “to the people” movement of 1874. The main purpose of this essay is to explore this connection. When radical students in the cities experienced unexpected limitations on their efforts to organize city workers, they reformulated their plan and eventually decided that direct contact with the peasantry was possible. Thus the populism of the movement “to the people,” generally considered a student phenomenon inspired by books alone, may in fact have been the result of practical work among city workers, characterized by much trial and error.

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Slavic Review , Volume 38 , Issue 4 , December 1979 , pp. 629 - 649
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Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1979

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References

I would like to thank the Russian and East European Center of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where much of the work on this article was done, for financing my stay as an associate in the summer of 1976.

1. Nikolai Chaikovskii, one of the original members of the circle, reported Natanson, 's intentions in “Cherez pol stoletiia,” Golos minuvshego na chuzhoi storone, 1926, no. 3, pp. 179–80.Google Scholar Also see his letter to Leonid Shishko written in 1902 in Liashchenko, K. G., “Versiia trebuet utochnenie,” Istoriia SSSR, 1968, no. 5, p. 132.Google Scholar The program is published in “Programma dlia kruzhkov samoobrazovaniia i prakticheskoi deiatel'nosti,” ed. la. B[aum], Katorga i ssylka, 1930, no. 6, pp. 95-106. Troitskii has demonstrated convincingly that this program originated in Mark Natanson's circle in St. Petersburg ( Troitskii, N. A., “O pervoi programme revoliutsionnogo narodnichestva 1870-kh godov,” Voprosy istorii, 1961, no. 6, pp. 208–10Google Scholar). It is interesting that, although the author of the program devoted separate sections to the city workers and to the peasantry, his recommendations for both groups were virtually the same (strikes and employment bureaus for peasantry, for example). This fact seems to indicate not that the author believed the two to be the same sort of “toiler,” but that he simply did not know how to approach the peasantry. Less sophisticated students did indeed tend to lump together city workers and peasantry. See, for example, Debagorii-Mokrievich, Vladimir I., Vospominaniia (Paris, 1894), pp. 14–15 Google Scholar; or Aksel'rod, Pavel B., Perezhitoe i peredumannoe (Berlin, 1932), p. 72.Google Scholar

2. A list of many of the books circulated is contained in Itenberg, B. S. et al., eds., Revoliutsionnoe narodnichestvo semidesiatykh godov XIX veka: Sbornik dokumentov, 2 vols. (Moscow, 1964-65), 1: 226–28.Google Scholar On the use of the term “radical,” see Morozov, Nikolai, Povesti moei zhizni, 2 vols. (Moscow, 1962), 1: 73.Google Scholar On the influences of the French Revolution, see Lev A. Tikhomirov, Vospominaniia (Moscow, 1927), pp. 30-31; Shishko, Leonid E., Sergei Kravchinskii i kruzhok chaikovtsev (St. Petersburg, 1906), pp. 6–7 Google Scholar; Aptekman, Osip V., Obshchestvo “Zetnlia i Volia” v 1870kh godov (Moscow, 1924), pp. 61 and 67Google Scholar; and Koval'skaia, E. N., “Po povodu pis'ma V. Maliutina,” Katorga i ssylka, 1926, no. 1, p. 137.Google Scholar

3. For a study of the Chaikovskyites’ earlier efforts to work within the zemstvo and cooperative institutions in the countryside, see Pamela Sears McKinsey, “The Chaikovskii Circle and the Origins of Russian Populism” (Ph.D. diss., University of Missouri, 1974), pp., 60-136, and my forthcoming history of the circle. On the meeting in January 1873, see Charushin, Nikolai A., O dalekom proshlom: Kruzhok chaikovtsev (Moscow, 1927), p. 115.Google Scholar

4. See Mark Natanson's memoir outline, in B. P. Koz'min, “S. G. Nechaev i ego protivniki v 1868-1869-kh gg.,” in Gorev, B. I. and Koz'min, B. P., eds., Revoliutsionnoe dvizhenie 1860-kh godov: Sbornik (Moscow, 1932), p. 132.Google Scholar Extravagant praise was heaped on the works of Lassalle by such leaders as Vladimir Debagorii-Mokrievich (Vospominaniia, p. 14), Charushin (O dalekom proshlom, p. 63), Pavel Aksel'rod (Perezhitoe, p. 73), and Kornilova-Moroz, Alexandra (“Perovskaia i osnovanie kruzhka chaikovtsev,” Katorga i ssylka, 1926, no. 1, p. 16).Google Scholar Lassalle's writings had a broad impact on Russian radicals of the early 1870s. Lassalle's Essence of a Constitution, which argued that a constitution imposed from above was worthless, coincided well with the Chaikovskyites’ own antielitist attitudes engendered originally by their opposition to Sergei Nechaev. Lassalle's writings on cooperative organizations, especially his essay against the Schulze von Delitzsch cooperatives in Germany, were also widely read and admired (McKinsey, “Chaikovskii Circle,” pp. 61-66, 126-33; see also, for example, Charushin, N. A., “Chto bylo na sobranii u professora Tagantseva,” Katorga i ssylka, 1925, no. 2, pp. 100–101Google Scholar; Itenberg et al., Revoliutsionnoe narodnichestvo, 1: 235 and 238; Deniker, I. E., “Vospominaniia,” Katorga i ssylka, 1924, no. 6, pp. 27 and 34Google Scholar; Aptekman, O. V., “Moskovskie revoliutsionnye kruzhki,” Russkoe proshloe, 1923, no. 2, p. 91).Google Scholar

5. Itenberg et al., Revoliutsionnoe narodnichestvo, 1: 122; Shishko, Leonid E., “K kharakteristike dvizheniia nachala 70-kh godov,” Russkoe bogatstvo, 1906, no. 10, p. 56.Google Scholar

6. Lassalle, Ferdinand, The Workingman's Programme, trans, and intro. by Peters, Edward (New York, 1899), pp. 46–50 Google Scholar; emphasis in the original.

7. Debagorii-Mokrievich, Vospominaniia, pp. 14—15.

8. Aksel'rod, Pereshitoe, p. 73.

9. Kropotkin, Peter A., Memoirs of a Revolutionist (New York, 1968), p. 1968 Google Scholar; Itenberg et al., Revoliutsionnoe narodnichestvo, 1: 230; memoirs of Alexandra Kornilova-Moroz, I., Entsiklopedkheskii slovar’ Russkogo bibliograficheskogo instituta Granat, 58 vols. (Moscow, 1912-40)Google Scholar, s.v. “Sotsializm,” vol. 40, col. 216.

10. In late 1873 and early 1874, one of the workers in Peter Kropotkin's worker circle on the Vyborg side was Villem Preisman who had been a leader of the Krengol'm strike. As far as I have been able to determine, the Chaikovskyites had not sought him out, but of course welcomed him into the circle (Shishko, Kravchinskii, pp. 27-28). For police reports and worker depositions on the strikes and agitation, see Korol'chuk, Esfir A., ed., Rabochee dvishenie semidesiatykh godov: Sbornik arkhivnykh dokumentov (Moscow, 1934), pp. 21–109 Google Scholar. Korol'chuk also includes bibliographies of the newspaper coverage. For reference to Preisman, see Korol'chuk, Rabochee dvishenie, pp. 53-57.

11. Several individuals who became members of the Chaikovskii circle or were close to it took part in Sunday schools in the late 1860s. As a gymnasium student in Samara, Dmitrii Klements taught in a Sunday school there. Alexander Kornilov, older brother of the Chaikovskyites Alexandra, Vera, and Liubov', taught in a Sunday school in St. Petersburg in 1867 or 1868. In 1871, la. I. Koval'skii, an acquaintance of Mark Natanson's circle, and E. M. Solntseva taught in a Khar'kov Sunday school founded by N. N. Beketov and personally organized additional instruction for workers ( Klements, D. A., Iz proshlogo [Leningrad, 1925], p. 85 Google Scholar; Kornilova-Moroz, “Perovskaia,” p. 12; Koval'skaia, “Po povodu pis'ma,” p. 136). Workers remembered and valued the Sunday schools (see Plekhanov, G. V., “Russkii rabochii v revoliutsionnom dvizhenii [Po lichnym vospominaniiam],” Sochineniia, 24 vols. [Moscow, 1923-28], 3: 138–39 Google Scholar; Leonid E. Shishko, Pamiati Leonida Emmanuilovicha Shishko [n.p., 1910], p. 52). The group of Vasil'evskii Island munitions workers taken over by the Chaikovskyites Anatolii Serdiukov and Nikolai Chaikovskii was previously gathered and given lessons by a student, K. K. Dovodchikov, in a purely instructional, Sunday school manner. Contacts were established with workers on the St. Petersburg side when the owners of a chemical plant sought out students to offer night classes to their workers (Gosudarstyennye prestupleniia v Rossii v XIX veke, 3 vols., ed. Bazilevskii [V. la. Iakovlev] [Paris, 1905], 3: 10-11; Sinegub, Sergei S., “Vospominaniia chaikovtsa,” in three parts, in Byloe, 1906, nos. 8, 9, 10, see no. 8, pp. 39–41).Google Scholar

12. “Programma dlia kruzhkov,” p. 97.

13. This plan is confirmed by a memoirist who wrote,” ‘our cause’ had to be [this]: to gather our forces in good time and to organize ourselves into a party with roots in the people themselves and the working class … ” (Itenberg et al., Revoliutsionnoe narodnichestvo, 1: 222).

14. “Programma dlia kruzhkov,” p. 103; emphasis in the original.

15. Charushin, O dalekom proshlom, p. 111. See also Itenberg et al, Revoliutsionnoe narodnichestvo, 1: 246. In an effort to stimulate autonomous activity among one group of skilled workers, the Chaikovskyites set up a library and a mutual aid fund, which they then turned over to the workers themselves to manage (Itenberg et al., Revoliutsionnoe narodnichestvo, 1: 247-48). Leonid Shishko expressed most succinctly the future goal of this worker activity: “The circle of Chaikovskyites posited as their future task the uniting of all these separate groups [of workers] with the goal of creating from them an autonomous worker organization; but they did not manage to realize this plan as a result of the arrests that soon began” (Shishko, Kravchinskii, p. 23). Kropotkin exhorted his worker pupils, “Agitate, organize” (Kropotkin, Memoirs, p. 327).

16. Among the historians who believe that the students saw workers as a means of access to the peasantry, see Levin, Sh. M., “Kruzhok chaikovtsev i propaganda sredi peterburgskikh rabochikh v nachale 1870-kh gg.,” Katorga i ssylka, 1929, no. 12, p. 7 Google Scholar; and Zelnik, Reginald E., “Populists and Workers,” Soviet Studies, 24, no. 2 (October 1972): 252–53 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

17. Charushin, O dalekom proshlom, pp. 115-20; Bukh, Nikolai K., Vospominaniia (Moscow, 1927), p. 42.Google Scholar See also the testimony of L. S. Gorodetskii, in Itenberg et al., Revoliutsionnoe narodnichestvo, 1: 297

18. “Pis'ma S. L. Perovskoi,” Krasnyi arkhiv, 1923, no. 3, pp. 246-47.

19. On the “American circle,” see “Vospominaniia N. K. Sudzilovskogo (Russelia)” in the International Institute for Social History, Amsterdam, typed copy, n.d., unpaginated; and Debagorii-Mokrievich, Vospominaniia, pp. 10-17. Evidence of a few attempts to distribute revolutionary proclamations among the peasantry throughout the decade has been compiled by Itenberg, Boris S. in Dvizhenie revoliutsionnogo narodnichestva (Moscow, 1965), pp. 268, 272-73, 161-71.Google Scholar The Chaikovskyites’ skeptical reaction to such acts is summed up by Dmitrii Rogachev's comment to the “Proclamationist” A. Dolgushin, “But are the people really ready?” (ibid., p. 164). See also Gosudarstvennye prestupleniia, p. 232.

20. Bukh, Vospominaniia, p. 51. Sokolovskii and his friends, A. A. Pypin and A. A. Charykov, had set out together to contact zavodskie and propagandize them. Pypin and Charykov became involved with workers of the Semiannikov plant (Gosudarstvennye prestupleniia, pp. 53-54). Thus it is possible, though there is no direct evidence, that Sokolovskii also was working among the Semiannikov workers. See below for the Chaikovskyites’ later experiences with these workers.

21. Gosudarstvennye prestupleniia, p. 51. Peter Kropotkin's lectures to the workers may have been too theoretical. One of Kropotkin's lecture outlines has been preserved and is published in Miroshnikov, I., Viktor Obnorskii-vydaiushchiisia rabochii-revoliutsioner (Moscow, 1960), p. 21.Google Scholar Conceivably, Bachin was responsible for the antistudent attitudes of the workers associated with Zemlia i volia in 1876-79. Mark Natanson, the founder of Zemlia i volia, later remarked that in order to suppress Bachin's agitation in 1876-77 they had to arrange his removal from St. Petersburg, under the pretext of having him contact provincial workers ( Golosov, G., “K biografii odnogo iz osnovatelei ‘Severo-Russkogo Rabochego Soiuza, ’ I. A. Bachin i ego drama,” Katorga i ssylka, 1924, no. 6, p. 57).Google Scholar

22. A. V. Nizovkin's statement to the prosecutor, undated, in vol. 11 of the inquest of the “Trial of the 193”; quoted in Levin, “Kruzhok,” p. 9, n. 2. (I have not been able to find this statement in the selected trial material published in Gosudarstvennye prestupleniia.)

23. Kropotkin, Memoirs, p. 325.

24. Miroshnikov, Obnorskii, p. 6; Golosov, “K biografii,” p. 60; Kropotkin, Memoirs, p. 325.

25. Kropotkin, Memoirs, p. 325.

26. Charushin, O daiekom proshlom, p. 152; but see Levin, “Kruzhok,” pp. 24 ff.

27. Levin, “Kruzhok,” p. 9, n. 2.

28. Shishko, Kravchinskii, p. 29; Sinegub, “Vospominaniia,” no. 9, p. 111; Charushin, O dalekom proshlom, p. 114.

29. Nizovkin's testimony is quoted in Levin, “Kruzhok,” p. 9; Kropotkin's remark is in Itenberg et al., Revoliutsionnoe narodnichestvo, 1: 53.

30. Sinegub, “Vospominaniia,” no. 8, p. 51.

31. Ibid., p. 52; Levin, “Kruzhok,” p. 9. Nizovkin continued, “The Chaikovskyites worked predominantly with the fabrichnye and they disdained the general mass of the zavodskie and considered them unsuitable for agitation for the welfare of the masses.” However, as we have seen above, Nizovkin also made a much more qualified (and more correct) statement regarding the Chaikovskyites’ beliefs in the fall of 1873. Shishko also noted that the workers on Vasil'evskii Island were “more independent and kept themselves separate from the factory workers” (Shishko, Kravchinskii, p. 31).

32. Kropotkin, Memoirs, p. 326.

33. Sinegub, “Vospominaniia,” no. 9, pp. 109-10.

34. Tikhomirov, Leon A., Conspirateurs et policiers (Paris, 1887), p. 47.Google Scholar Though later a reactionary, in 1885-86 when writing this book Tikhomirov was still a dedicated member of Narodnaia volia. See also Itenberg et al., Revoliutsionnoe narodnichestvo, 1: 234.

35. Tikhomirov, Conspirateurs, p. 47. The memoir literature fails to differentiate between those workers attracted by the educational work and those attracted by the propaganda. However, Tikhomirov commented that of the hundreds of workers with whom their circle came into contact “there was quite a small number, perhaps twenty” who became convinced socialists, and these were mostly the very educated workers (ibid., p. 50). Undoubtedly, he had in mind those zavodskie, such as Viktor Obnorskii, who were the founders of the Northern Russian Workers’ Union in 1877. Indeed, though the worker pupils included such fabrichnye as Peter Alekseev, later a member of the All-Russian Social Revolutionary Organization, we know of very few socialist fabrichnye.

36. See Leopold, Haimson, “The Problem of Social Stability in Urban Russia, 1905— 1917,” Slavic Review, 23, no. 4 (December 1964): 632.Google Scholar Haimson suggests that the mass of industrial workers in 1910-17 who were most active and prone to violence may have been recently uprooted from the countryside. Zelnik, Reginald E., in his Labor and Society in Tsarist Russia: The Factory Workers of St. Petersburg, 1855-1870 (Stanford, Calif., 1971), p. 6 Google Scholar, suggests that such a nontraditional schema may be true of mid-nineteenth-century workers. However, some of his evidence would seem to be at variance with this thesis (see pp. 342-43). Admittedly, this is not an easy question and Zelnik emphasizes that cases differ.

37. These students include a circle in Mikhailovskii Artillery Academy, a circle led by the student V. L. Ivanovskii, two circles drawn mainly from students of the technological institute, a circle of students from Tula, and a circle of students from Samara. Even members of circles that were hostile to the Chaikovskyites—such as N. I. Paevskii and A. K. Artamonov of the circle of Sergei Kovalik, a Bakuninist—followed the Chaikovskyites’ example. Infected with a “passion for a new cause,” Charushin wrote, “the young willingly went to meet the new tendency, taking an active part in the labor with the workers” and organizing into “autonomous auxiliary circles” (Charushin, O dalekom proshlom, p. 110). Concerning this activity, see Itenberg et al., Revoliutsionnoe narodnichestvo, 1: 250, 456-57, 449; Bukh, Vospominamia, p. 52; Perovskii, Vasilii, Vospominaniia o sestre (Sof'e Perovskoi) (Moscow-Leningrad, 1927), pp. 55–56 Google Scholar; N. F. Tsvilenev, Entsiklopedicheskii slovar1 instituta Granat, “Sotsializm,” cols. 518-19; Starik [Sergei F. Kovalik], “Dvizhenie revoliutsionnogo narodnichestva po bol'shomu protsessu (193-kh),” in three parts, Byloe, 1906, nos. 10, 11, 12, see no. 10, p. 77; Filippov, R. V., Is istorii narodnicheskogo dvisheniia na pervom etape khozhdeniia v narod 1863-1874 (Petrozavodsk, 1967), p. 188–93.Google Scholar

38. Sinegub, “Vospominaniia,” no. 8, p. 41.

39. Shishko, Kravchinskii, p. 29; see also Golosov, “K biografii,” p. 51, footnote.

40. Shishko, Kravchinskii, p. 29.

41. Ibid. Krylov, in peddling books, was imitating a wandering peddler in L'histoire d'un paysan, a popular novel of the time by E. Erckmann and A. Chatrian, published in Russian in 1870-72. An acquaintance of the Chaikovskyites, probably P. V. Zasodimskii, then condensed the two-volume work into a bulky booklet which was widely circulated.

42. Charushin, O dalekom proshlom, pp. 132-33; Shishko, K pamiati, p. 52. Workers continued to prepare to go to their homeland throughout the spring and summer of 1874. But by then it is likely that they were under the sway of the subsequent movement “to the people.” These workers included the savodskii Grigorii A. Shcheglov, who took a load of pamphlets to his homeland in Kostroma province, the worker P. G. Belilov, and the worker S. P. Zarubaev (Gosudarstvennye prestupleniia, pp. 50-51; Golosov, “K biografii,” p. 55; Itenberg et al., Revoliutsionnoe narodnichestvo, 1: 462).

43. Shishko, Kravchinskii, pp. 28-29. Tikhomirov suggests the same development, saying that it was the contacts with the workers that, by 1874, had awakened in the students the hope of “calling the popular masses to a conscious political life…” (Tikhomirov, Conspirateurs, p. xii).

44. Shishko, Kravchinskii, p. 33.

45. Sinegub practiced his “mass propaganda” on two or three occasions on some Tver stonemasons temporarily working in St. Petersburg (Itenberg et al., Revoliutsionnoe narodnichestvo, 1: 323 and 326; Shishko, Kravchinskii, pp. 32-33; Letter of Sinegub to Tikhomirov, in Katorga i ssylka, 1925, no. 4, pp. 83-84). See also Charushin, O dalekom proshlom, pp. 132-33, 153.

46. Tikhomirov, among others, described the general gathering of students. At the gathering, Tikhomirov and Kropotkin claimed that those students who felt that the workers were still “too little prepared” for organization were influenced by intelligentnye prejudices and habits (Tikhomirov, Conspirateurs, p. 61).

47. Itenberg et al., Revoliutsionnoe narodnichestvo, 1: 102-3 (on the dating of this program, see Charushin, O dalekom proshlom, p. 158).

48. Gosudarstvennye prestuplenia, p. 32. Memoirs also mention this new orientation, though without indicating specifically the date of its adoption. Alexandra Kornilova recalled, “we moved successively to: circle activity at first among the zavodskie, afterward the fabrichfiye, and subsequently to attempts to take mass propaganda among the peasants, in factories and artels” (Kornilova-Moroz, “Perovskaia,” p. 30). See also Chaikovskii, “Cherez pol stoletiia,” p. 182.

49. I have made a search of the literature, both documentary and memoir, in an effort to determine whether anyone had proposed the idea of a worker-emissary prior to the fall of 1873, but I have not found reliable evidence of any. Bakunin had written that intelligentnye revolutionaries should forge ties between the city workers and the countryside; the program of circle activity probably authored by Mark Natanson proposed that students recruit directly in the part of the rural population that came together to practice a trade; L. B. Gol'denberg's memoirs claim that in 1869 he suggested a plan for propagandizing mechanics in St. Petersburg, who in turn would propagandize others at work. Missing from all these schemes is the essential bit of information that many Russian workers felt close to some rural village, and thus might form a bridge between the two milieus (Bakunin's “Appendix A” to State and Anarchy, in Itenberg et al., Revoliutsionnoe narodnichestvo, 1: 53; “Programma dlia kruzhkov,” p. 105; Gol'denberg, L. B., “Vospominaniia L. B. Gol'denberga,” Katorga i ssylka, 1924, no. 3, p. 102)Google Scholar. In any case, as a result of circumstances, the Chaikovskyites found themselves the first to take the notion seriously.

50. On the earlier visit in August 1873, Kravchinskii had taken with him a lithograph machine, which he installed in the potato cellar, and working at night so that the peasants would not discover his activity and think he was counterfeiting money, printed a popular booklet. He returned shortly to St. Petersburg (Itenberg et al., Revoliutsionnoe narodnichestvo, 1: 320-21, 323, 325).

51. Ibid., p. 320.

52. Sinegub, “Vospominaniia,” no. 9, p. I l l; Kropotkin, Memoirs, p. 196.

53. Krylov's obituary in Vpered!, quoted in Levin, Sh. M., Dmitrii Aleksandrovich Klements (Moscow, 1929), p. 21.Google Scholar

54. Starik, “Dvizhenie,” no. 10, p. 66; Klements, Is proshlogo, pp. 21 and 122.

55. According to the Bakuninist student Sergei Kovalik, students—including members of his own circle—who desired access to the peasantry settled in the homes of city worker acquaintances who had returned to their villages to propagandize. Charushin and several others were arrested unexpectedly in January 1874, and their plan came to nothing. Shishko soon left for Moscow to avoid arrest (Itenberg et al., Revoliutsionnoe narodnichestvo, 1: 260- 61, 421, n. 118, 4S9; Gosudarstvennye prestupleniia, p. 32; Starik, “Dvizhenie,” no. 12, p. 66).

56. Starik, “Dvizhenie,” no. 10, p. 26; Itenberg et al., Revoliutsionnoe narodnichestvo, 1: 215.

57. Their reputation for firsthand acquaintance with the peasantry also helped the Chaikovskyites defeat in debate a small handful of Bakuninist students recently returned from Switzerland, including Sergei Kovalik, who claimed that the Russian peasantry was ready for revolution. Kovalik later described several gatherings where student respect for experience in the peasantry resulted in the “apparent defeat” of the Bakuninists: “This occurred when, concerning the problem of elucidating the conditions of peasant life,” from among the more moderate students stepped forward an orator (undoubtedly Klements) “who had been in the people and who knew how to cite appropriate concrete facts against the theoretical position of his opponents.” The experienced students insisted that above all one needed to “lounge about” the peasantry and study them firsthand before theorizing about them (Starik, “Dvizhenie,” no. 10, p. 26; no. 11, pp. 66-67). As far as Bakunin's influence on the other students is concerned, it suffices here to say that State and Anarchy, which became generally known only in the spring of 1874, was used to provide additional justification for a plan of action already decided upon (see McKinsey, “Chaikovskii Circle,” pp. 196-215).

58. McKinsey, “Chaikovskii Circle,” pp. 229-40.

59. Chaikovskii's letter was published in Vpered!: Neperiodicheskoe obosrenie, 5 vols. (Zurich, 1873-77), 3: 147-53.

60. Chaikovskii, “Cherez pol stoletiia,” pp. 182 and 186.

61. Shishko, Kravchinskii, pp. 32 and 29. On the religion of God-in-man, see, for example, Starik, “Dvizhenie,” no. 11, pp. 50-57.

62. Frolenko, Mikhail F., Sobranie sochinenii (Moscow, 1930), pp. 107-12, 185–88 Google Scholar; Gosudarstvennye prestupleniia, p. 145; Charushin, O dalekom proshlom, p. 118; Tikhomirov, Vospominaniia, p. 64; Morozov, Povesti, 1: 76. Early in December 1873, Kropotkin also visited Moscow, sent by his St. Petersburg friends to see if students in Moscow were also discouraged about activity among the workers, and if they felt that the activity was really necessary in the first place. (Kropotkin encountered Kravchinskii there, who had just escaped from Tver province.) After discussions, Moscow students decided “that we had to stop this kind of activity and begin to get ready to go to the people in the spring” (Kropotkin, Memoirs, pp. 266-67; Frolenko, Sobranie, p. 188). Martin Miller, in Kropotkin (Chicago, 1976), p. 94, puts this visit in the summer of 1873, mistakenly, it would seem. On Moscow students who accompanied workers into the countryside, see Morozov, Povesti, 1: 240-79; Gosudarstvennye prestupleniia, p. 192; and Frolenko, Sobranie, pp. 189-90.

63. Words of Semen Langans quoted in Lavrov, Peter L., Narodniki-propagandisty 1873- 1878 godov (St. Petersburg, 1907), p. 217 Google Scholar; Chudnovskii, Semen L., Iz davnikh let (Moscow, 1926), pp.77 and 81.Google Scholar The Kievan student leader Katerina Breshkovskaia during a visit to St. Petersburg fell under the spell of the growing enthusiasm for going “to the people” and found that her concepts on meaningful work in the countryside had changed drastically ( Breshkovsky, Catherine, The Little Grandmother of the Revolution, ed. Blackwell, Alice Stone [Boston, 1918], p. 37 Google Scholar; Breshkovskaia, Katerina, Hidden Springs of the Russian Revolution, ed. Hutchinson, Lincoln [Stanford, 1931], pp. 16–17, 22-24).Google Scholar