of the Russians. To Feuerbach was added Marx and his socialism, which they received the more easily because they had been prepared for it by Fourier, Proudhon and the French socialists in general. Along with Hegel and Feuerbach, there arose a cult of French and English Positivism.
It was Nicholas’s Minister of Education, Count Ouvarov, who proclaimed the reactionary trinity of Orthodoxy, Autocracy and Nationality, and he was so convinced of the absolute power of his system that he solemnly propounded the doctrine that “There is no progress!” Nicholas, from his hatred of revolution, saved Austria in 1848–9. Dostojevski was sentenced to death for spreading Fourier’s ideas: then the débacle of Sebastopol showed the impossibility of the theocratic reaction, and Alexander inaugurated a liberal régime. The whole system of administration was changed and partially improved, and the first manifestation of the change was the liberation of the peasants.
Russia became conscious of the all-pervading antagonism between Modern Europe and Old Russia, between liberalism and democracy and theocracy; with the aid of German philosophy, the two antagonistic schools of the Westerners and Easterners and the principles of the two antagonistic political systems were formulated and organised. The radicals were obliged to emigrate to France and England.
The so-called Nihilism—in its essence positivism and realism—in literature, philosophy and politics became the philosophy of the “children,” whereas the “Fathers” (Turgenev’s “Fathers and Children,” 1862) joined forces with socialism and anarchism, and opposed the system of conservatism and reaction. After the crushing of the Polish revolution and the first attempt on the Tsar’s life (1866), the Nihilists succeeded in organising that peculiar system of revolution which relies on single “deeds” of terrorism. In the year 1881 Alexander II., the Tsar-liberator, was killed, and Alexander III, inaugurated a thorough-going and reckless policy of reaction which was continued by Nicholas II.
And again, the defeat in the war with Japan demonstrated the defects of absolutism. The revival of terrorism in 1902 ended in a complete revolution—the first mass revolution which enforced the grant of a constitution and the creation of the Duma—the old Duma of the Boyars being changed into a modern parliament. The sad history of this parliament is well
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