The Making of Russian Revolutionary Terrorism

Abstract

When it was first published in 1882, Stepniak’s Underground Russia was recommended to Europeans interested in finding out more about a political phenomenon that had recently emerged in the east: revolutionary terrorism, or, as Europeans sometimes mistakenly referred to it, “nihilism.”¹ The preface informed readers that prior to the publication of Underground Russia, there was nothing of value on the subject to be found anywhere: In Europe, sensationalism and a lack of sources combined to produce mere “absurdities,” while in Russia authors twisted their views for fear of being exiled or imprisoned; moreover, most sources had been written by nihilism’s “furious enemies, by those who conscientiously consider it a horrible crime, or a monstrous madness.”² Hence the merit of Underground Russia: Stepniak was an insider, a veritable, real-life expert on nihilism. He had struggled alongside the Balkan Slavs against the Turks (1876), participated in the anarchist rebellion in Benevento (1877), then joined the Russian revolutionary organization Land and Freedom (Zemlia i Volia), and finally, in 1878, stabbed to death the head of the tsarist secret police on the streets of Saint Petersburg. So experience Stepniak certainly had—though it must be said that he was no stranger to myth making, as shows his dramatic description of the birth of terrorism in the late 1870s: Upon the horizon there appeared a gloomy form, illuminated by a light as of hell, who, with lofty bearing, and a look breathing forth hatred and defiance, made his way through the terrified crowd to enter with a firm step upon the scene of history. It was the Terrorist.³