p That was no Bakunin’s way of reasoning. He understood that the revolutionary intelligentsia could influence the people only if 149 certain historical conditions were to hand, only if there was among the people a more or less conscious desire for a socialist upheaval. That is why he proceeded from a comparison between the "ideals of the people" and the ideals of our intelligentsia, naturally of the anarchist trend.

p In his opinion, the two elements which can be indicated as the necessary conditions for the social revolution are present on the widest scale in the Russian people. "It can boast of its extraordinary poverty and also of its exemplary" (sic) "enslavement. Its sufferings are countless and it bears them not patiently but with a profound and passionate despair which has already been expressed twice in history by two fearful outbreaks: the rebellion of Stenka Razin and the Pugachov rebellion, and which incessantly manifests itself to the present day by an uninterrupted series of peasant rebellions."  [149•*  It is not the "lack of a common ideal, an ideal capable of comprehending a popular revolution and providing it with a definite aim”, which prevents the people from carrying out a victorious revolution. If there were no such ideal, "if it had not developed in the consciousness of the people, at least in its main lines, one would have to renounce all hope of a Russian revolution, because such an ideal is brought forth from the very depths of the people’s life, is necessarily the result of their historical trials, strivings, sufferings, protests and struggle, and at the same time it is in a way a figurative, understandable and always simple expression of their real demands and hopes ... if the people do not develop this ideal out of themselves, nobody will be able to give it to them”. But "there is no doubt" that such an ideal exists in the imagination of the Russian peasantry, and "there is not even any necessity to delve too deep into the historical consciousness of our people to determine its main features".

p The author of Statehood and Anarchy counts six "main features" of the Russian people’s ideal: three good ones and three bad ones. Let us examine this classification more closely, for Bakunin’s outlook has left its imprint on the views of many of those among our socialists who were never his followers or were even his opponents.

p "The first and main feature is the conviction of the whole people that the land, all the land, belongs to the people who water it with their sweat and fertilise it with their labour. The second, just as great, feature is that the right to make use of it belongs not to the individual, but to the whole village commune, mir, which divides it temporarily among individuals; the third feature is of equal importance to the first two; it is the 150 quasi-absolute autonomy, the self-government of the village commune, and the commune’s consequent resolute hostility to the state.

p "Those are the three main features underlying the ideal of the Russian people. In their substance they fully correspond to the ideal which is developing in recent times in the consciousness of the proletariat in the Latin countries, which are incomparably nearer to the social revolution than the German countries. However, the ideal of the Russian people is darkened by three other features which distort its character and extremely (nota bene) hinder and retard its realisation.... These three darkening features are: 1) patriarchalism, 2) the absorption of the individual by mir, 3) faith in the tsar.... As a fourth feature we could add the Christian faith, official orthodox or sectarian, but ... here in Russia this question is of far less importance than in Western Europe."  [150•* 

p It is against these negative features of the people’s ideal that Russian revolutionaries must fight "with all their strength”, and this fight is "all the more possible as it is already going on among the people themselves".

p The confidence that the people themselves have already taken up the fight against the negative “features” of their ideal formed a very characteristic “feature” of the entire programme of the Russian Bakuninists. It was the straw at which they clutched to save themselves from the logical conclusions from their own premises and from the conclusions of Bakunin’s analysis of the people’s ideal. "No individual, no society, no people, can be given what does not already exist in itself, not only in the embryo, but even at a certain stage of development,” we read in Note A, which we have already quoted so often. To remain consistent, the Russian Bakuninist should have "renounced all hope of a Russian revolution" if the people had not noticed the "darkening features" of their ideal and if their dissatisfaction at these features had not already attained a "certain stage of development”. It is therefore comprehensible that it was in this direction that all the dialectic power of the founder of Russian “rebellion” had to be directed.

p It must be noted, besides, that on this point Bakunin was not far from a perfectly correct formulation of the question of the social-revolutionary movement’s chances in Russia or from a serious, critical attitude to the character and “ideals” of our people. It was precisely this kind of critical attitude that was lacking in Russian public figures. Herzen was amazed in his time at the absence of any at all definite and generally accepted 151 characteristic of the Russian people. "Some speak only of the omnipotence of the tsar, of governmental tyranny, and of the slavish spirit of the subjects; others maintain, on the contrary, that Petersburg imperialism is not of the people, that the people, crushed under the double despotism of the government and the landlords, bear the yoke, but are not reconciled to it, that they are not annihilated, but only wretched, and at the same time they say that these same people give unity and strength to the colossal empire which oppresses them. Some add that the Russian people are a despicable mob of drunkards and knaves; others affirm that Russia is inhabited by a capable and richly gifted race."  [151•* 

p Thirty years have passed since the lines that I quote were first written, and yet to this very day not only the foreigners whom Herzen had in mind but even Russian public figures support diametrically opposite views on the character and “ideals” of the Russian people. Of course there is nothing surprising in every party being prone to exaggerate people’s sympathy for its own strivings. But neither in France, Germany nor any other Western country does one find the contradiction in views about the peasantry which amazes us in Russia. This contradiction occasionally leads to most amusing misunderstandings. The difference in the political and social outlooks of people belonging to the most opposite trends is often determined only by a difference in the conception of the "ideals of the people”. Mr. Katkov and Mr. Aksakov, for example, would agree with Mr. Tikhomirov that "a political programme ... must take the people as they are and only in that case will it be capable of influencing their life”. The editor of Rus, on the other hand, could accept that "out of 100 million inhabitants" in our country "there are 800,000 workers united by capital”, as Mr. Tikhomirov states in his article "What Can We Expect from the Revolution?”; but the editor of Moskovskiye Vedomosti would perhaps consider that estimate too low and point out many more inaccuracies in Mr. Tikhomirov’s statistical calculations.^^109^^ Nevertheless, both of them would be only too eager to subscribe to the opinion that Russia is an agricultural country and that the results of "the analysis of social relationships made ... in the capitalist countries of Europe" are not applicable to Russia, that talk about the political and economic significance of the Russian bourgeoisie is absurd and ridiculous, that the Russian Social-Democrats are doomed to "a truly tragic condition”, and finally, that when talking about the people "as they are”, it is our peasantry one must have in mind. However, despite the fact that the outlook 152 of the literary representatives of our extreme (in opposite directions) parties "includes views to a certain extent" identical with one another, the conclusions they draw from their premises turn out to be diametrically opposed. When Mr. Tikhomirov speaks about the people we learn with satisfaction that " disappointed in the autocracy of the tsars”, our people can pass over "only to the autocracy of the people”, that "at a revolutionary moment our people will not be split politically when the basic principle of state power is in question. In just the same way they will prove to be completely united economically on the land question, i.e., on the basic question for contemporary Russian production" (sic). We are finally overcome by mirth when we read that "in neither moral strength, clarity of social self-consciousness nor the resulting historical stability can we place a single of our social strata on a level with the peasant and worker class”, that "the intelligentsia are not deceived by their impression and that at the moment of the final unravelling of the contemporary tangle of political relationships the people will, of course, act with greater unity than even the exalted (by whom? ) bourgeoisie".^^110^^

p We see that the people "wish well”, as a Russian writer^^111^^ once assured the French, and overjoyed, we are already preparing to burst forth, "Roll, thunder of victory, make merry, brave Russian! "^^112^^ when suddenly Rus catches our eye and we drop down from heaven to earth. It appears that the people “wish” evil indeed. They deify the tsar, support corporal punishment, are not thinking on any revolution at all and are prepared to shatter Messrs, the lovers of the people as soon as they receive "a stern telegramme" about them. References to the present situation and even to history abound here just as in Mr. Tikhomirov’s articles. How strange! If we turn to students of the people’s life like Mr. Uspensky who are known for their impartiality, our disappointment only becomes deeper. We learn that our people are under "the power of the land"^^113^^ which forces them logically enough to conclude in favour of absolutism without even a hint at transition to "autocracy of the people”. Mr. Uspensky persuades us that not only such extreme opposites as Messrs. Aksakov and Tikhomirov, but people of approximately similar outlooks, hold diametrically opposed views about the people.

p What, then, is the cause of all this Babel, this tangle of concepts?

p Bakunin’s classification of the various aspects of "the people’s ideal" gives us a fairly likely explanation. The fact of the matter is that Mr. Tikhomirov bases all his social and political considerations on certain positive “features” of this 153 ideal (the same which "in their substance fully correspond to the ideal developing in the consciousness of the proletariat in the Latin countries”): "the conviction of the whole people that the land, all the land, belongs to the people and that the right to make use of it belongs not to the individual, but to the whole village commune, mir, which divides it temporarily among individuals”. And although the author of the article "What Can We Expect from the Revolution? " would not be particularly gratified by the third feature which is "of equal importance to the first two”, i.e., "the commune’s ... resolute hostility to the state”, this hostility, in Bakunin’s own classification, is only the consequence of "the quasi-absolute autonomy, the self-government of the village commune" on which many of Mr. Tikhomirov’s hopes rest.  [153•*  Our author either knows nothing or does not wish to tell his reader anything about the " darkening" features of the people’s ideal (patriarchalism, the absorption of the individual by mir, "the superstition of the people, naturally coupled with ignorance”, poverty, etc.). Mr. Aksakov proceeds the opposite way. He builds his arguments precisely on these last “features”, forgetting the contraries or passing them over in silence. Mr. Uspensky’s articles also cease to amaze us. He contrasted Ormuzd with Ahriman,^^114^^ the bad aspects of the ideal with the good, and landed in the blind alley of "the power of the land" from which there is no way out, apparently, either for the peasant or for the whole of Russia, which rests upon the peasant as the earth does upon the "three whales”; whereas the lovers of the people, as he represents them, saw, some the bright, others the “unfortunate” features of the people’s character and ideal, and therefore they could not come to any agreement. All this is quite understandable and we cannot but thank the late Bakunin for the key which he gave us to understand the one-sidedness of both his own followers and the majority of our Narodniks in general.

p But it was not to no effect that Bakunin once made a study of German philosophy. He understood that the classification of the "features of the people’s ideal" which he suggested—whether we take only the good ones or only the “unfortunate” ones or, finally, both the fortunate and the "unfortunate features"— explained only the Chinese side of the question.^^115^^ He understood that the people must be “taken” not "as they are" but as they are striving to be and are becoming under the influence of the given historical movement. In this respect Bakunin was much 154 closer to Hegel than to Mr. Tikhomirov. He was not satisfied with the conviction that the people’s ideal was "as it is”; he was concerned with the study of the “features” of that ideal in their development, in their mutual interrelations. And precisely in that point, as I said above, he was not far from the correct formulation of the question. Had he applied the dialectical method in the appropriate manner to explaining the people’s life and outlook, had he better mastered "the indubitable truth proved by Marx and corroborated by all the past and present history of human society, peoples and states, that the economic fact has always preceded and always does precede ... political right”, and consequently the social and political ideals of the “peoples”, had he remembered in time that "the proof of this truth is one of Mr. Marx’s great scientific services”,  [154•*  I would probably have no need to argue with Mr. Tikhomirov, for there would be no longer any trace of “Bakuninism”.

p But dialectics betrayed Bakunin, or rather he betrayed dialectics.

p Instead of proceeding from "economic facts" in his analysis of the Russian people’s social and political ideal, instead of expecting that old “ideal” to be refashioned under the influence of new tendencies in the economic life of the people, the author of Statehood and Anarchy sets up a completely arbitrary hierarchy of “defects” of the people’s ideal, trying to find a combination of its "unfortunate features" in which one is neutralised or even entirely removed by another. This changes his whole argument into a completely arbitrary playing with arbitrary definitions. The author, who seemed to be so close to the truth, suddenly strayed infinitely far from it simply because he only felt the necessity for a dialectical appraisal of the people’s world outlook but was either unable or unwilling to make it. Instead of the anticipated dialectics, sophistry appeared on the scene. " Bakuninism" was saved, but the elucidation of the tasks of the Russian revolutionary intelligentsia was not advanced a single step.

p The hierarchy of the various defects in the people’s ideal is established in the following way. "The absorption of the individual by mir and the worship of the tsar follow, properly speaking, as direct results ... from patriarchalism.” The village commune itself proves to be "nothing but the natural extension 155 of the family, the tribe”,  [155•*  and the tsar—"the common patriarch and ancestor, the father of the whole of Russia”. Precisely "for that reason his power is unlimited”. Hence it is understandable that patriarchalism is "the principal historical evil" which we are obliged "to fight with all our strength”. But how can an anarchist who has neither "the intention nor the slightest wish to impose on our people or another any ideal of social structure obtained from reading books or from his own imagination" fight "the historical evil"? In no other way than by basing himself on the historical development of the people’s ideal. But does the development of the Russian people’s ideal promote the elimination from it of the darkening feature of patriarchalism? Without any doubt, and in this way: "the war against patriarchalism is now being waged in nearly every village and every family, and the village commune, mir, has now been so transformed into an instrument of the hated state power and despotism of officialdom that the revolt against the latter is becoming at the same time a revolt against the despotism of the village commune, mir".  [155•**  Not embarrassed by the fact that the fight against the despotism of the village commune cannot fail to shake the very principles of communal land tenure, the author considers the question finally settled and assures us that "there remains the deification of the tsar”, which "has extremely palled on and weakened in the consciousness of the people in the last ten or twelve years”, not even because “patriarchalism” has been shaken, but "thanks to the wise policy of Alexander II the mild”, a policy prompted by love of the people. After many trials, the Russian people "have begun to understand that they have no worse enemy than the tsar”. The intelligentsia needs only to support and intensify this anti-tsar trend in the minds of the people. In conclusion the same intelligentsia is urged to fight one more "main defect”, not mentioned in the list of the features of the people’s ideal quoted above. This defect, "which has so far paralysed and rendered impossible a general rising of the people in Russia, is the exclusiveness of the peasant communes, the isolation and disjunction of the peasant mzrs".... If we consider that "the disjunction of the peasant mirs" results 156 from the circumstance that "every village commune forms a closed whole, in consequence of which not one commune has or even feels  [156•*  the necessity to have any independent organic link with the others”, that "they are united among themselves only through the intermediary of father tsar, only in his supreme, paternal authority”, we are obliged to admit that no easy task is imposed on the intelligentsia. "To establish a link between the best peasants in all villages, volosts and, as far as possible, regions, and, where possible, to establish a similar vital link between the factory workers and the peasantry”, ... to ensure "that the best or progressive peasants in every village, volost and region know the like peasants of all the other villages, volosts and regions”, ... to convince them that "in the people there lives an invincible strength which is powerful only when it is assembled and works simultaneously ... and that thus far it has not been assembled”, ... to establish a link between and organise "the villages, volosts and regions according to a general plan and with the concerted aim of emancipating the whole people”, ... briefly, to add several new and very good “features” to the people’s character and ideal and to remove from them several radical defects—that is a truly titanic work! And this gigantic work will have to be undertaken with the conviction that "one must be an unmitigated blockhead or an incorrigible doctrinaire to imagine that one can give something to the people, present them with any material good or new intellectual or moral content, a new truth, and arbitrarily give their life a new direction or, as ... the late Chaadayev maintained, write what one wishes on them, as on a blank sheet".  [156•**  ... Can one imagine a more crying contradiction between the theoretical propositions of a “programme” and the practical tasks it outlines?

People who did not want to break with logic for ever could do nothing but renounce the practical part of the programme while supporting its basic propositions, or follow its practical directions and try to find a reliable theoretical basis for them. That is what happened subsequently.