Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-2xdlg Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-17T00:35:34.107Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Russian Radicals and the West European Revolutions of 1848

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

Extract

The unsuccessful European revolutions and successful counter-revolutions of 1848–49 elicited complex and surprisingly little-studied responses in Russia. The court, the bureaucracy and the upholders of the status quo in general reacted much as they had to the great French Revolution of 1789. Their never banished fears of Western revolutionary contagion were fanned anew. This new paroxysm of anxiety was reflected in panicky domestic measures of repression, such as the arrest of a number of members of the relatively harmless Petrashevski discussion group, including the novelist Dostoievski, and in such foreign policy acts as Russian armed intervention against the Hungarian liberal revolution.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1949

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 The only full-scale monographic treatment is Nifontov, A. S., 1848 God v Rottii (Moscow, Leningrad, 1931).Google Scholar Chapter 4 of this monograph was published in Katorga i Sylka, Book 10 (71), (Moscow, 1930).Google Scholar

2 SirPares, Bernard, A History of Russia, 5th ed. (New York, 1947), p. 336.Google Scholar

3 Herzen, A. I., Polnoe obranie soch'menii i pisem, ed. Lemke, M. K., 22 vols. (Petrograd, 19171921).Google Scholar

Vol. XXI, p. 236. Hereafter referred to as Herzen, Soch. On the harmful effects of Nicholas's suppressionist policies, see inter alia, some interesting observations in Chizhevski, D., Hegel bet den Slaven (Reichenberg, 1934), p. 299.Google Scholar

4 See for example, Lenin's famous essay Pamyati Gertsena, in Lenin, V. I., Sochineniya, z danie vtoroe, Vol. XV (Moscow-Leningrad, 1929). (Ed. by Bukharin, , Molotov, , Savelev, ), pp. 464469.Google Scholar Lenin several times referred to the names of Herzen and Chernyshevski wirfi deep respect. One of his most important works, “What is to be Done,” was named after a famous novel by Chemyshevski.

5 Annenkov, P. V., Literaturnye vospominaniya (Leningrad, 1928), p. 291.Google Scholar From his series, Zamechatelnoe desyatiletie, first published in Vestnik Evropy in 1880.Google Scholar

6 Chagin, B. A., Proniknovenie idei Marksizizma V. Rossiyu (Leningrad, 1948), p. 10.Google Scholar

7 Dnevnik, N. G., Chernyshevskago, Chast. I, 1848–9 (Moscow, 1931), passim.Google Scholar

8 On this correspondence see, for example, Perepiska K. Marksa i F. Engelsa s russkimi politicheskimi deyatelyami (Moscow, 1947), pp. 720.Google Scholar

9 Annenkov, , op. cit., p. 277.Google Scholar

10 Shchedrin, N. (Saltykov, M. E.), Sochineniya, Vol. 6 (St. Petersburg, 1889), pp. 8891.Google Scholar

11 Quoted in Delo Petrashevtsev (2 vols., Moscow-Leningrad, 1937), I, p. XIII.Google Scholar

12 See for example, Belchikov, N. F., Dostoevski v protesse petrashevtsev (Moscow-Leningrad, 1936), pp. 2831.Google Scholar

13 For Bakunin's writings and letters during 1848 see Bakunin, M. A.Sobranie sochinenii i pisem, Volume III, 1840–1849 (Moscow, 1935), especially his article in the Paris Reforme, “The World Significance of die February Revolution,” and his “Appeal or a Russian Patriot to the Slavic Peoples.”Google Scholar

14 Herzen, , Soch, III, pp. 138140.Google Scholar For a bitterly hostile Slavophile criticism of Custine's book see Khomyakov's, A. S. article “Mnenie inostrantsev o Rossii,” in Polnoe sobranie sochinenii A. A. Khomyakova, Vol. I (Moscow, 1878).Google Scholar Originally published in Moskrityanin, 1845, no. 4. Trie book of course enraged Nicholas, and its author was vilified by the “patriotic” Russian press of Grech and Bulgarin which had close ties with the secret police.Google Scholar

15 See his Diary, for 1842, 43, 44, and 45, in Soch, III.

16 Quoted by Ivanov-Razumnik, , Istoriya russkoi obshchestvennoi mysli, Vol. I, second ed., St. Petersburg, 1908, p. 276.Google Scholar

17 Belinsfci, , Pisma (3 vols., St. Petersburg, 1914), III, 328–9.Google Scholar

18 The first four “letters” were published in the St. Petersburg magazine Sovremennik, in 1847. The remainder were published, together with some other writings dated 1848–49, at Hamburg, in 1850, under the title Vom Andern Ufer. Herzen, Soch, Vol. VI, contains letters Nos. 5–14, inclusive. The remaining works mentioned above, exclusive of the four letters published in the Sovremennik, are contained in Soch, V, under the title Stogo berega.

19 Soch, quoted by Labry, , Raoul, , Alexandre Ivanovic Herzen (Paris, 1928), p. 327.Google Scholar

20 Socb, VI, p. 50.Google Scholar

21 Soch, VI, pp. 5776.Google Scholar

22 Soch, V, pp. 411418.Google Scholar

23 Soch, VI, 7697.Google Scholar

24 Herzen, , Byloe i Dumy (Leningrad, 1946), especially pp. 465–67.Google Scholar The Byloe i Dumy are also included in Soch, Vol. XXI. They are also available in two good English translations.Google Scholar

25 Soch, pp. 298329.Google Scholar

26 Kozlovski, T. S., Gersten-publitsist (St. Petersburg, n. d.). See especially pp. 4950, and 66.Google Scholar

27 And yet, though he denied sarcastically that the West needed the help of Russia if it were to be “renewed,” he did except the peasant commune from his dictum that Russia had no institutions from which the West could learn. See, for example, Cherny-shevski, N. G., Polnoe bocranie socbinenii (10 vols., St. Petersburg, 1906), Vol. VIII, p. 173. Hereafter cited as Chern., Soch. In general, Chernyshevski, like Herzen, exalted the peculiarly Russian institutions of commune and artel, and tended to argue that Russia could skip the capitalist stage of social-economic development. Consideration of Cherny-shevski's “populist” views, so influential in Russia in the 1870's and 1880's, lies outside the scope of this paper.Google Scholar

28 Quoted by Alekseev, N. A. in N. G. Dnevnik Chernyshevskago (Part I, Moscow, 1931), Introduction, p. VIII.Google Scholar This edition covers only 1848 and 1849. Hereafter cited as Dnevnik, 1931 ed. For the remainder of the diaries, covering 1850–53, I have used Chernyshevski, N. G., Polnoe sobranie socbinenii (Vol. I, Moscow, 1939). Only three volumes of this Soviet edition of Chernyshevski's complete works have been published. Cited hereafter as: Chern., Soch, 1939 ed. The diaries were published in full only after the Bolshevik revolution.Google Scholar

29 Dntvnik, 1931 ed., pp. 9597.Google Scholar

30 Ibid., pp. 302–303.

31 Ibid., pp. 101–102.

32 Ibid., pp. 179–78, 213–14.

33 Ibid., pp. 305 and 315.

34 Chern, ., Soch, 1939 ed., Vol. I, pp. 354–58.Google Scholar

35 Chern, ., Soch, IV, pp. 149.Google Scholar

36 Ibid., p. 27.

37 Ibid., p. 49.

38 Ibid., pp. 14–15.

39 Ibid., pp. 35 and 45.

40 See especially his article Heine, Heinrich, in Sochineiya D. I. Pisareva (6 vols St. Petersburg, 1894), II, pp. 253304.Google Scholar

41 Lenin, , Sochineniya, 2nd ed., Vol. XV (Moscow, 1949), pp. 464–69.Google Scholar