Nihilist movement

The Nihilist movement was a Russian movement in the 1860s which rejected all authorities. It is derived from the Latin , meaning "nothing". After the assassination of Tsar Alexander II in 1881, the Nihilists were known throughout Europe as proponents of the use of violence in order to bring about political change.

Russian nihilism (rus. "нигилизм") can be divided into two periods. The foundational period (1860-1869) where the 'counter-cultural' aspects of nihilism scandalized Russia, and even the smallest of indiscretions resulted in nihilists being sent to Siberia or imprisoned for lengthy periods of time, and where the philosophy of nihilism was formed. There followed the revolutionary period of Nihilism (1870-1881) when Sergei Nechayev's pamphlet The Catechism of a Revolutionist transformed the movement, which was waiting and only striking mild propaganda, into a movement-with-teeth and a will to wage war against the tsarist regime, with dozens of actions against the Russian state. The revolutionary period ends with the assassination of the Tsar Alexander II (March 13, 1881), and the consequential crushing of the nihilist movement.

Mikhail Bakunin's (1814-1876) "Reaction in Germany" (1842) included a famous dictum, "Let us therefore trust the eternal Spirit which destroys and annihilates only because it is the unfathomable and eternal source of all life. The passion for destruction is a creative passion, too!" This piece of literature anticipated and instigated the ideas of the nihilists. In Russia, Bakunin was considered a Westernizer because of his influences that spread the ideology of anarchism outside of his nation to the rest of Europe and Russia. While he is inexorably linked to both the foundational and revolutionary periods of nihilism, Bakunin was a product of the earlier generation whose vision, ultimately, was not the same as the nihilist view. He stated this best as "I am a free man only so far as I recognize the humanity and liberty of all men around me. In respecting their humanity, I respect my own." This general humanitarian instinct is in contrast to the nihilist proclamations of having a "hate with a great and holy hatred" or calling for the "annihilation of aesthetics".

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