I will pass by the duel cycle culminating in the powerfully portrayed suffering of the repenting victor. For us the nihilist cycle is more interesting, more Russian. "Nihilist" is, by-the-way, an abominable name for those noble young men and women who, staking their lives, go out among the common people to redeem them from their greatest enemies--ignorance and immorality. The real nihilists in Russia are those of the government who are not held back even by murder when it is of service to the system, the cynics with the motto, "Après nous le déluge"; surely not these noble-hearted dreamers who throw down the gauntlet to the all-powerful Holy Synod and to the not less powerful holy knout.
At the time when the "well-disposed" portion of Russian society had turned away in honor from the Russian youth because a few fanatics had believed that they could more quickly attain their aims by the propaganda of action than by the fully as dangerous and difficult work among the people, Ryepin painted his cycle which explains why among the young people there were a few who resorted to murder. Who does not know from the Russian novels those meetings of youths who spent half the night at the steaming samovar discussing the liberation of the people and the struggle against despotism, in debates that have no other result than a heavy head and an indefinite desire for self-sacrifice? The cycle begins with such a discussion. Men and women students are gathered together, unmistakably Russian, all of them, Slavic types, the women with short hair, the men mostly bearded and with long hair. In the smoky room, imperfectly lighted by the lamp, they are listening to a fiery young orator. We find this young man again as village teacher in the second picture. He had gone among the people. In one of the following pictures he has already been informed against, and the police search through his books and find forbidden literature. The police spy and informer, who triumphantly brings the package to light, is pictured to his very finger-tips as the gentleman that he is. In still another picture the young martyr is already sitting between gendarmes on his way to Siberia; and in the last he returns home old and broken, recognized with difficulty by his family, whom he surprises in the simple room. One may see this cycle in the Tretyakov Gallery, and copies of it in the possession of a few private individuals, persons in high authority, who are above fear of the police; and one is reminded of the saying so often heard in Russia, "We are governed by the scoundrels, and our upright men are languishing in the prisons." The nihilist has the features of Dostoyevski who was so broken in Siberia that he thanked the Czar, on his return, for his well-deserved punishment, and who had become a mystic and a reactionary. In another picture a young nihilist on his way to the scaffold is being offered the consolation of religion by the priest, but he harshly motions him back.