We have seen how the mind of Russian youth was prepared for these advanced gospels. The monotonous misery and poverty of the country in spite of every change of ruler, the corruption and brutality of officials, the harsh measures of Nicholas I, the disastrous issue of the Crimean War, the severity of the repression of the Poles, the disappointing results of the emancipation of the serfs, and the increasing perception that Russia lagged behind every other country in Europe put a mass of inflammable material into the minds of the educated. As early as 1862 a student was caught spreading a pamphlet in which he advocated a bloody revolution against the dynasty, and was exiled to Siberia. In the same year a series of mysterious fires in St. Petersburg increased the agitation. Conservatives ascribed them to the violent radicals: the radicals retorted that they were due to agents of the reactionaries who wanted to provide a ground for stringent action. The left wing of the reformers moved rapidly further west, and its language increased in violence. The authorities raised the fees at the universities and endeavoured to suppress the numerous students’ societies, but the agitation continued. Many of the nobles themselves were in sympathy with the intellectual revolt. In 1862 several gatherings of nobles and gentry passed a demand for parliamentary institutions.
At the other end of the movement the conviction increased that no form of centralised government would remain honest and disinterested, and the philosophy of anarchy was framed. At first it was moral rather than political, as it is in the minds of many Anarchists to-day. The individual was to be relieved of the swathing bonds of all religious and moral and other traditions, and the theory was that he would then develop healthily. To this theory was first applied the name “Nihilism,” which was afterwards, as Anarchy became more and more political in complexion, extended to the whole revolutionary movement; though Socialism gained considerably on Anarchy as time went on. It was the period of Karl Marx and the early German Socialists, and the imposing structure of Marx’s argument won large numbers of adherents.
One of the most disturbing features in the mind of conservatives was the way in which young women adopted the advanced creed. The attempts of Peter the Great to break down the barriers which confined the life of women had almost ceased at his death. In the world of wealth, as Tolstoi’s novels show, women kept the liberty of the reigns of Elizabeth and Catherine. The new austerity of the court was not accompanied by any general asceticism amongst the aristocracy. The philosophy of anarchy provided a principle for what had hitherto been an inconsistent defiance of religious traditions which were nominally respected. But the mass of Russian women and girls, above the level of the peasantry, had hitherto been unaffected by these liberties of the aristocracy. Now the cry of the emancipation of woman penetrated remote country houses, and many a girl broke loose from the control of a tearful mother or an infuriated father, and sought the centre of enlightenment in the city. The authorities refused to allow unmarried women to attend the higher schools. They retorted, as Roman women had done nearly two thousand years before, by entering into fictitious marriages. Gradually they won the right to attend certain lectures at the university, and many of them were found in the students’ circles where the reconstruction of the universe was heatedly discussed.