§ 126.
IT is not easy to ascertain Mihailovskii's attitude in political matters, and especially his views concerning Russian refugees and the Russian revolution, for very few sources of information on these matters have as yet been opened. Of late there has been a tendency to regard him as having been in truth, even though unoficially, on of the "ideologues" of the Narodnaja Volja, whilst some declare that even more that Lavrov he was a leader of the revolution.
My own view of Mihailovskii's relationship to practical politics is formed by a study of his works, and these suggest that his outlook was predominantly theoretical. As a sociologist, of course, he considered the political questions of the day; as a socialist and an adversary of liberalism he favoured the radical trends; but I do not believe that he was personally in the revolutionary camp.
Such is the general impression produced by his writings, even though, reading between the lines (as we must do in the case of all Russians who wrote under the pressure of the cencorship), I can discern passages containing extremely radical allusions to the misdeeds of powerful persons. It does not follow that Mihailovskii's influence was trifling because he was never banished to Siberia. In 1883, Pleve sent him to Viborg for a speech he had made to students at a ball, and it is said that sharper measures were contemplated.
Russia is subject, and if the Russians must traverse the same route as Europe, they can traverse it fully aware of what they are doing. But since Russian conditions differ from those that obtain in Europe, the development of capitalisation in Russia maz prove peculiar to that country. Mihailovskii drew attention to this possibility in 1872, shortly after the publication of Russian translation of Capital. Marx wrote an answer to Mihailovskii, but the reply did not appear until 1888, when it was published in the Russian periodical, The Legal Courier, as A Writing by Carl Marx. Marx explained that he had not formulated his law of evolution as universally valid, but that as soon as a country had entered this specific course of development it became subject to the formulated laws of evolution. In each individual case the matter must be considered in relation to the peculiarities of the historical extant conditions. There was no fatal necessity about the capitalist development of Russia, nor was it essential that in Russia the countryfolk should be proletarianised in order to become "free" industrial workers, as had happened in Europe. Mihailovskii referred to Marx's reply as late as 1892, insisting once more that in view of the special character of Russian historical condition it was certainly possible that Russian evolution would take a course peculiar to that country.
