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The Russian Past and the Socialist Future in the Thought of Peter Lavrov

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Alan Kimball
Alan Kimball*
Affiliation:
University of Oregon
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Extract

The major ideological challenge faced by Russian revolutionists in the half century prior to 1917 was to find a way to adapt the principal tenets of West European socialism to Russia. The difficulty of answering this challenge lay in Russia's unique historical development and the consequent differences between Russia and the West. The proper adaptation of socialism required an understanding of these differences and their significance.

Type
Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 30 , Issue 1 , March 1971 , pp. 28 - 44
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1971

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References

1. The term “populism” is like most “isms.” It has only the broadest prescriptive meaning. Marxism, with all its varieties and factions, has a more precise meaning; at least it has locus in the tangible, written work of one scholar-activist (Marx) and his collaborator (Engels). Populism is an elastic term traditionally applied to a vast range of views and movements, ranging from the 1840s into the twentieth century, from the aristocratic litterateur and journalist, Alexander Herzen, to the terrorist of peasant stock, Alexei Zheliabov, from conservatives to revolutionists. Any attempt to give the term specific meaning must be tentative and skeptical. Any pretense to precise or absolute usage must exclude more than it includes, must obscure more than it illuminates. Witness the first chapter of Walicki, Andrzej's The Controversy Over Capitalism (Oxford, 1969)Google Scholar. The term was scarcely used at all in the years of most intense “populist” revolutionary activity, the 1870s. “Populism” has often been used freely and anachronistically to apply to men and movements that did not know the term.

2. See Sovetskaia istoricheskaia entsiklopediia, s.v. “Narodnichestvo,” 9: 922-23, where populism is described as “a special variety of Utopian socialism…. The main substance of the theory of Russian Utopian socialism is the faith in the possibility of a direct transition—passing over capitalism—to socialism by means of the peasant obshchina which is assigned a special role.” Returning to the source, the article quotes Lenin, who wrote that the fundamental characteristic of populism was “faith in a special configuration, in the communal [obshchinnyi] structure of Russian life.“

3. Many examples could be cited; two will suffice. Janko, Lavrin, “Populists and Slavophiles,” Russian Review, 21, no. 4 (October 1962): 307–17 Google Scholar, refers to populism as “secularized Slavophilism—with due reservations, of course.” But, reservations aside, both populists and Slavophiles “cherished a sincere love” for the unique “social” and “moral” significance of the peasant masses: “The populists, no less than the Slavophiles, hated the character of the capitalist Western civilization” and were as one in their “idealization of the obshchina.” Isaiah Berlin's introduction to Franco Venturi's monumental Roots of Revolution (London and New York, 1960), p. xxviii, concludes that all populists, of whatever shade, were “dominated by a single myth: that once the monster was slain, the sleeping princess—the Russian peasantry—would awaken and without further ado live happily for ever after.“

4. Leonid Shishko, who was active in the Russian movement from his youth (1873) until his death (1910), has maintained that Lavrov's influence was greater than Bakunin's. Bakunin, of course, made a strong impression on the Russian movement, but his influence was very brief, in essence only 1872-76; see Tkachenko, P. S., Revoliutsionnaia narodnicheskaia organizatsiia “Zemlia i Volia” (1876-1879 gg.) (Moscow, 1961), p. 39 Google Scholar. Tkachenko cites evidence to support Shishko's position. He emphasizes the broad and enduring influence of Lavrov's revolutionary thought. Vpered!, for example, “played a great role in the formation of the revolutionary consciousness not only of its strict adherents but even of those who stood far from the Lavristic position.” Tkachenko rightly and regretfully notes that Lavrov's influence on the Russian revolutionary movement remains almost totally neglected.

5. Vpered! was published in periodical and nonperiodical editions from 1873 to 1877, from the “going to the people” until the formation of the revolutionary organization Land and Liberty. Around two thousand copies per volume of the nonperiodical edition of Vpered! were published. In response to the significant increase in demand and circulation, the periodical edition increased production from two thousand copies per semimonthly issue in 1875 to three thousand per issue in 1876. The journal experienced a sharp increase in popularity when it shifted attention from the more academic issues (“knowledge and revolution,” etc.) to the hard-core problems of social analysis and revolutionary tactics. Testimony delivered at the two major trials of revolutionary activists in the 1870s reveals that Vpere! was widely distributed throughout Russia and was read with care. The journal had a prominent place in the libraries of underground organizations in St. Petersburg, Moscow, Kiev, Tula, Kharkov, Taganrog, Orenburg, Poltava, Samara, Nikolaevsk, and many other important centers of revolutionary activity. See Protsess 50-ti (London, 1877) and Protsess 193-kh (Moscow, 1906). On occasion, an especially important lead article would be hectographed for wider use (Protsess 193-kh, p. 127).

6. In addition to his major articles on this topic, listed in notes 11 and 15, Lavrov communicated his views throughout the last thirty years of his life in many places and publications. His apartment became a mecca for recently emigrated Russian radicals. There he conducted “seminars” on socialism which were attended by many future activists in the Russian movement (see my article on Plekhanov and Lavrov in 1877, to be published by the Academy of Sciences of the USSR in a sbornik on populism). And he continued to write on topics related to the international revolutionary movement. He was close to the editorial board of the French Marxist journal L'Égalité, which first appeared in November 1877, edited by Jules Guesde and supported by Cesar de Paepe and Benoit Malon. Later he was close to Clemenceau's Justice in 1880. In that year Plekhanov drew close to Lavrov again, and soon Lavrov was, de facto if not de jure, a member of the “Chernyi peredel” group. He wrote the important programmatic article, “Neskol'ko slov ob organizatsii partii,” for their journal, Chernyi peredel, no. 3 (1880).

When Plekhanov's group broke off relations with the People's Will in 1883, Lavrov chose to stay with that group, which he felt was prepared to continue the actual (as opposed to the theoretical) revolutionary cause. Lavrov became coeditor, with Lev Tikhomirov, of the major journal of the Russian revolutionary movement of the 1880s, Vestnik “Narodnoi voli,” from 1883 to 1886. His published lecture, Natsional'nosf i sotsialism (Geneva, 1887), was widely read. When the socialist movement began to stir again in the late 1880s, after almost ten years of decline, Lavrov was near the center of action. He wrote important programmatic articles for the journals Samoupravlenie (“Pis'mo v redaktsiiu P. Lavrova,” no. 2, 1888) and Sotsialist (“Pis'ma k russkim liudiam,” no. 1, 1889). He was the most highly esteemed Russian at the founding congress of the Second International in 1889; see Istoriia vtorogo intematsionala, 1 (Moscow, 1965): 144. When the central journal of the German Social Democratic Party, Vorwärts, was revived in 1891, Lavrov was invited to write on the Russian movement; see especially his series of articles, “Die revolutionaren Stromungen in Russland,” Vorwärts, nos. 107, 127, and 163 (May 10, June 4, and July 16, 1891). He remained a staunch supporter of the international socialist movement until his death. And he also remained in contact with Russian affairs. He was one of the organizers and leaders of the radical Committee for the Struggle with Hunger, with Plekhanov and P. B. Axelrod, in 1891-92. Lavrov helped launch one of the first journals of the future Socialist Revolutionary Party, Russkii rabochii, in 1894. And in response to a request for guidance on political issues, he wrote a long and detailed account of the current status and future needs of the Russian movement, “P. L. Lavrov o programnykh voprosakh,” Letuchii listok Narodovol'tsev, no. 4 (Dec. 9, 189S). He was the core of a Paris-based group of “Old Narodovoltsy,” and he coordinated and wrote part of their sixteen-volume Materialy dlia istorii russkago sotsial'no-revoliutsionnago dvizheniia (Geneva, 1893-96).

7. Strong and extensive evidence exists which indicates that Lavrov directly influenced almost every facet of the Russian revolutionary socialist movement from the 1870s until his death. For his influence on the movement in the 1870s, see M. G., Sedov, “P. L. Lavrov v revoliutsionnom dvizhenii Rossii,” Voprosy istorii, 1969, no. 3, pp. 55–72Google Scholar; Itenberg, B. S., Dvizhenie revoliutsionnogo narodnichestva (Moscow, 1965), pp. 194–217 Google Scholar; M. M., Karpovich, “P. L. Lavrov and Russian Socialism,” California Slavic Studies, 2 (1963): 21–38Google Scholar; T. M., Kirichenko, “K voprosu ob obshchestvenno-politicheskikh vzgliadakh P. L. Lavrova v 70-80-kh godakh XIX v.,” Trudy Moskovskogo gosudarstvennogo istoriko-arkhivnogo instituta, 18 (1963): 443–63Google Scholar; and Knizhnik-Vetrov, I., P. L. Lavrov (Moscow, 1930).Google Scholar

Lavrov's important role in the emergence of Russian Marxian socialism has yet to be assessed properly; on Plekhanov, see note 6 and Plekhanov's letters to Lavrov in 1880-81, in Deich, L. G., ed., G. V. Plekhanov: Materialy dlia biografii (Moscow, 1922), 1: 79 and 87Google Scholar; on Lavrov's general influence on the development of Marxism, see, for example, Steklov, Iu. M., Otkasyvaemsia li my ot nasledstva? K voprosu ob istoricheskom podgotovlenii russkoi sotsial-demokratii (Geneva, 1902)Google Scholar. P. B. Axelrod, who began his career as a Lavrist, credited Lavrov with introducing certain elements of Marxism and Social Democracy to Russia; see his Rabochee dvizhenie i sotsial'naia demokratiia (Geneva, 1884). It can be said that Lavrov “prepared the ground” for the eventual predominance of German Social Democratic ideas in the movement; see Boris, Sapir, “Unknown Chapters in the History of ‘Vpered, '” International Review of Social History, 2 (1957): 53 Google Scholar. The first Marxist group inside Russia, formed by the Bulgarian Dmitrii Blagoev, received as much inspiration from Lavrov as from any other Russian source; see Shnitman, A, “K voprosu o vliianii russkogo revoliutsionnogo dvizhenie v Bolgarii” Voprosy istorii, 1949, no. 1, p. 40 Google Scholar; Labelle, D, “Dmitrii Blagoev in Russia: An Autobiographical Letter,” International Review of Social History, 9 (1964): 286–97CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Is arkhiva P. B. Aksel'roda (Berlin, 1924), p. 108.

Lavrov's association with and influence on the Northern Union of Russian Workers and the Southern Russian Union of Workers, the two most important workers’ organizations in the 1870s, are attested to in Nevsky, V. I., Ot “Zemli i Voli” k gruppe “Osvobozhdenie Truda” (Moscow, 1930), esp. pp. 136-37 and 170–74 Google Scholar; O. V., Aptekman, Is istorii revoliutsionnogo narodnichestva (Rostov on the Don, ca. 1909), pp. 78–79 Google Scholar; Skveri, M. P., Pervaia rabochaia sotsialisticheskaia organizatsiia v Odesse (1875 god) (Odessa, 1921), pp. 45–50 Google Scholar; and Itenberg, B. S., “Iushnorossiiskii soius rabochikh“—pervaia proletarskaia organizatsiia v Rossii (Moscow, 1954), pp. 40–41 Google Scholar. Although the 1880s were not lively years in the movement, Lavrov continued to have some influence on the radical krushki in the capitals; see Popov, I. I., “Revoliutsionnye organizatsii v Peterburge v 1882-1885 godakh,” Narodovol'tsy posle logo Maria 1881 goda (Moscow, n.d.), esp. pp. 49–55 Google Scholar; and Tkachenko, P. S., Moskovskoe studenchestvo v Rossii vtoroi poloviny XIX veka (Moscow, 1958), p. 152.Google Scholar

Lavrov was one of the ideological fathers of the Socialist Revolutionary Party; see Stepan, Sletov, K istorii vosniknoveniia partii sotsialistov-revoliutsionerov (Petrograd, 1917), esp. pp. 29 ff.Google Scholar; and Nagortsev, P, “Lavrov kak teoretik sotsializma,” Sotsialist revoliutsioner, no. 1, 1910, pp. 151–78Google Scholar. Lavrov's role in the development of the socialist movement in Eastern Europe should be noted; for example, see R K. Zhigunov and Rashkovsky, E. B., “Iz istorii russko-pol'skikh revoliutsionnykh sviazei 1878-1880 gg. (P. L. Lavrov i pol'skie sotsialisty),” in Obshchestvennoe dvishenie v porejormennoi Rossii (Moscow, 1965), pp. 275–99 Google Scholar; and McClellan, W. D., Svetozar Marković and the Origins of Balkan Socialism (Princeton, 1964), pp. 188 ff.Google Scholar Lavrov learned a great deal from West European socialist literature, and, in turn, his socialist humanism and vast erudition had measurable impact on the French movement, on Lucien Herr and, through Herr, on Jean Jaurès; see Georges Lefranc, “Contribution á l'histoire du socialisme en France dans les dernières années du XIXe si ècle: Léon Blum, Lucien Herr, et Lavrov,” Information historique, September-October 1960; and Charles, Rappoport, Jean Jaurès, I'homme, le penseur, le socialiste (Paris, 1925)Google Scholar, especially the introduction. Despite the exaggerations normal in such documents, the extensive obituary which appeared in the important French radical periodical Le Mouvement socialiste, Feb. 15, 1900, pp. 193-99, and Mar. 1, 1900, pp. 274-86, might be quoted: “Dans le mouvement révolutionnaire de la seconde moitié de ce siècle, Lawroff est, après Marx, la figure la plus marquante et la plus élevée, autant par ses travaux et sa contribution au développement de la theorie socialiste, que par le rayonnement de sa personnalite morale et intellectuelle” (p. 194).

8. “P. L. Lavrov o sebe samom,” Vestnik Evropy, no. 11, 1910, pp. 98-99.

9. Lavrov enrolled as a member of the Ternes Section of the First International, wrote a series of popular, scientific brochures for the International in Paris, and actively participated in meetings. See G. N., Vyrubov, “Revoliutsionnyia vospominaniia (Gertsen, Bakunin, Lavrov),” Vestnik Evropy, no. 2, 1913, pp. 60–61Google Scholar; and Sazhin, M. P., Vospominaniia, 1860-1880 gg. (Moscow, 1925), p. 35 Google Scholar. Lavrov was very close to César de Paepe and other supporters of the Brussels journal L'Internationale, and he wrote for that journal. Both on the eve of the founding of the Paris Commune and after its fall, Lavrov conceived a plan to enter more actively into European socialist literary life. To a close friend he described a project which required that he write in French, live where French was spoken, and, more important, maintain personal contact “with individuals from that sphere for which the work is intended,” that is, with the European socialist movement (“Pis'ma k E. A. Shtakenshneider iz Parizha v 1870-73 gg.,” Golos minuvshego, 1916, no. 7-8, pp. 123-24).

10. “Istoriia i russkie revoliutsionery” (an unpublished article, dated July 31, 1887, a manuscript copy of which is held in the Hoover Institution at Stanford University), pp. 9-10.

11. Lavrov expressed views on Western Europe in several key studies. Early adumbrations of his later views can be seen in the Foreign Courier (Zagranichnyi vestnik), of which he was editor (1864-66), and in his important programmatic article for the journal Bibliographer (Bibliograj) in 1869; see Bert, Andreas, Le Manifeste Communiste de Marx et Engels: Histoire et Bibliographie, 1848-1918 (Milan, 1963), p. 39 Google Scholar; S. F. Librovich, “Petr Lavrovich Lavrov kak redaktor ‘Zagranichnago vestnika, '“ Vestnik literatury, 1913, pp. 295-304 and 315-21; and Belchikov, N., ‘“Bibliograf (1869 g.),” Russkaia shurnalistika: I. Shestidesiatye gody (Moscow, 1930), pp. 133–235 Google Scholar. He presented his point of view in expanded form many times in his journal Vpered! dvukhnedel'noe obosrenie, esp. nos. 16 (1875) and 26 (1876); and in volume 4 of Vpered! neperiodicheskoe obosrenie, which was published under the separate title Gosudarstvennyi element v budushchem obshchestve (London, 1876). His study of the Paris Commune is also revealing, 18 Marta 1871 goda (Geneva, 1880), especially part 3, on the lessons of the Commune (pp. 206-29). His analysis of the West European socialist movement was elaborated in his several studies on the history of the socialist movement (see note IS). The most complete statements on the historical origins of the socialist movement in the West were Vsgliad na proshedshee i nostoiashchee russkago sotsialisma (St. Petersburg, 1906; first published in Kalendar Narodnoi voli in 1883); and “Istoriia i russkie revoliutsionery“ (see note 10).

12. Chernyshevsky, N. G., Polnoe sobrame sochinenii, 16 vols. (Moscow, 1939-53), 5: 686–710 Google Scholar. On Chernyshevsky's analysis of Russian society, particularly the issue of the “special path” of Russia, see Vilenskaia, E. S., Revoliutsiotmoe podpol'e v Rossii (60-e gody XIX v.) (Moscow, 1965), p. 74–83.Google Scholar

13. Quoted in Lemke, M. K., Ocherki osvoboditel'nago dvisheniia “Shestidesiatykh godov” (St. Petersburg, 1908), pp. 7–13.Google Scholar

14. Lavrov, P. L., Filosofiia i sotsiologiia: Izbrannye proizvedeniia, 2 vols. (Moscow, 1965), 1: 350.Google Scholar

15. Lavrov wrote and periodically revised a short study of the condition of the Russian people, “Schety russkogo naroda: Istoricheskii ocherk P. Lavrova” (hectographed copy dated in the 1890s, held in the Museum of Books of the Lenin Library in Moscow). He turned to this issue often in the pages of his journal Vpered! dvukhnedel'noe obosrenie, esp. nos. 27-29 (1876). In 1879 he wrote on the history of the socialist movement in Russia for the first issue of the German socialist journal Jahrbücher für Sosialwissenschaft und Sosialpolitik; in 1887 he published Natsional'nosf i sotsialism; and in 1892 his Istoriia, sotsialism i russkoe dvishenie appeared. Lavrov devoted careful attention to the absence of an historical foundation for liberalism in Russia in Posledovatel'nyia pokoleniia: V pamiat’ G. Z. Eliseeva i N. V. Shelgunova (Geneva, 1893). His analysis of the origins of the revolutionary situation in Russia was also presented in his commentary published with the Russian translation of A. E. F. Schaeffle's study of socialism, Sushchnost' sotsialisma (Geneva, 1881), in his foreword to the Russian translation of Marx's critique of Hegel's philosophy of right, Vvedenie k Kritike filosofii prava Gegelia (Geneva, 1887), in his foreword to the Russian translation of Cesar de Paepe's Obshchestvennaia slushba v budushchem obshchestve (London, 1875), and in his centrally important study of the Russian revolutionary movement, “Narodniki 1873-1878 gg.” and “Narodniki-propagandisty 1873-1878 gg.,” Materialy dlia istorii russkago sotsial'norevoliutsionnago dvizheniia, vol. 10. However, at no point did he deal with the issue so completely as in Vsgliad na proshedshee i nastoiashchee russkago sotsialisma (1883) and in “Istoriia i russkie revoliutsionery” (1887) (see note 10). Of great importance is his long, analytical letter to an otherwise unknown correspondent, Alexandra Vasilievna [?], held in the Archive of Russian History and Culture of Columbia University (letter no. 5, dated July 23, 1876).

16. “Istoriia i russkie revoliutsionery,” p. 13.

17. Vzgliad, p. 8.

18. “Evropa i ee sily,” Vestnik Evropy, no. 1, 1870, pp. 235-71; no. 2, pp. 691-721; and no. 5, pp. 193-235.

19. Danilevsky's “Rossiia i Evropa” appeared first in the journal Zaria in the spring and summer of 1869; it was published in book form in 1871.

20. The programmatic lead article to the first issue of Vpered!, written by Lavrov, opened and closed with a clear indication that the journal was to be an organ of the inter national socialist revolutionary movement in the Russian language. Lavrov closed his article with a warning that those who invested their energies in chauvinistic political movements could not expect to serve the future; see “Nasha programma,” reprinted most recently in Itenberg, B. S., ed., Revolmtsionnoe narodmchestvo 70-kh godov XIX veka (Moscow, 1964), 1: 32.Google Scholar

21. The most direct statement of this analysis appeared in Vpered!, no. 27 (1876), pp. 66-67. See also Vpered! neperiodicheskoe obosrenie, vol. 3, pt. 1, pp. 19-21.

22. See Lavrov, 's Pereshivaniia doistoricheskago perioda (Geneva, 1898)Google Scholar, in which he analyzed historical continuity. Every era carries the indelible traces of that which preceded it.

23. Vpered!, no. 16 (1875). Also see Alexander, Gerschenkron, “The Problem of Economic Development in Russian Intellectual History of the Nineteenth Century,” in Simmons, E. J., ed., Continuity and Change in Russian and Soviet Thought (Cambridge, Mass., 1955), p. 31.Google Scholar

24. Quoted in Samuel, Baron, Plekhanov: The Father of Russian Marxism (Stanford, 1963), p. 163.Google Scholar

25. “Istoriia i russkie revoliutsionery,” p. 12.

26. Vpered!, no. 28 (1876), p. 105.

27. Ibid., no. 27 (1876), p. 70.

28. Lavrov to Alexandra Vasilievna [?], no. 40, written in the first half of 1877 from London (Archive of Russian History and Culture, Columbia University).

29. Lavrov, Gosudarstvennyi element v budushchem obshchestve, p. 120. The italics are mine.

30. Itenberg, ed., Revoliutsionnoe narodnichestvo, p. 27.

31. Ibid., p. 32. The italics are mine.

32. It should be remembered that the First International formulated a socialist agrarian program. At the Lausanne, Brussels, and Basel congresses of the International, the agrarian question was the major issue. Cesar de Paepe, a man much admired by Lavrov, led the fight for collective ownership in the countryside. The collectivists, with Marx's support, carried the day at the Basel Congress in 1869. J. Ph. Becker, a veteran of the socialist movement, wrote a “Manifesto to the Rural Laborer” in the name of the International. This manifesto stated that the agrarian ideal of the International was rural “communes” (Gemeinden). The manifesto was translated into the major European languages, including Russian. The Russian translation was printed in Narodnoe delo in 1870 and in subsequent separate editions throughout the first half of the 1870s. The Russian translation neatly renders Gemeinde as obshchina; see Narodnoe delo, no. 6, 1870. Lavrov and many other revolutionists of the 1870s gave their close attention to Narodnoe delo, the most important source of information on the First International in the Russian language prior to Lavrov's own journal; see “Pis'ma … iz Parizha,” no. 7-8, p. 112.

33. Vsgliad, p. 13.

34. Vpered!, no. 28, pp. 97-99. Also see 18 Maria 1871 goda, pp. 208-9.

35. In a letter written to Lavrov in early spring 1882 Plekhanov discussed his unwillingness to cooperate with other Russian revolutionists on the editorial board of the journal Vestnik “Narodnot volt.” In particular he complained that there was such a gulf between himself and Kravchinsky that no reconciliation was possible: “I am ready to make a Procrustean bedstead out of Kapital for all the collaborators on Vestnik ‘Narodnoi volt'“; Deich, ed., G. V. Plekhanov: Material's dlia biografii, p. 93. A few years earlier Kravchinsky shocked many of his colleagues by asserting, “The time has come to remove the German garb from socialism and to clothe it in the Russian peasant blouse [sermiagu]“; quoted in Kozmin, B. P., Is istorii revoliutsionnoi mysli v Rossii (Moscow, 1961), p. 642.Google Scholar

36. Lavrov's Last Will and Testament, which he wrote in French in the last year of his life (1899), is in the Nikolaevsky Collection at the Hoover Institution.

37. Two years after Lavrov's death, Lenin might be said to have availed himself of the Lavrov inheritance in his pamphlet, “What Is To Be Done?” With reference to Marx's preface to “A Contribution to a Critique of Political Economy,” Lenin addressed himself to the problem of planning a modern socialist revolution in backward Russia. Marx himself had stated explicitly that mankind always takes up only such problems as it can solve. Social problems arise only when the material conditions necessary for their solution already exist. There was some question whether the material conditions for socialism on a Marxist pattern existed in Russia. Lenin's solution to this problem was, “We must dream 1” (“nam nuzhno mechtat’ 1“). See Lenin, , Sochineniia, 3rd ed. (Moscow, 1937%), 4: 492–93.Google Scholar