Doubt, Atheism, and the Nineteenth-Century Russian Intelligentsia

5 Atheism and Apocalypse: Revolutionariesin the Provinces, 1856–1863

5 Atheism and Apocalypse Revolutionaries in the Provinces, 1856–1863 In provincial towns of the Russian Empire, from Kharkov and Kazan to Viatka and Perm, a revolutionary movement developed with extraordinary rapidity during the late 1850s and early 1860s. This movement was predicated on the conviction—widely shared among educated Russians—that the empire stood on the brink of an abyss and that continued poverty among Russia’s serf majority would lead to mass violence. Revolutionaries hoped such violence could be transformative, leading to the creation of an egalitarian, constitutional, democratic state, ruled along federalist lines by representative assemblies. In those assemblies , as the revolutionaries foresaw them, it would be the narod that would predominate, former serfs in their bast shoes and long tunics. The student revolutionaries who first came forward in the provinces in 1856 were not atheists. One such group, a circle in Kharkov, was largely composed of noblemen, most of whom considered themselves Orthodox Christians, and they felt that rebellion was fully compatible with their religious beliefs. Indeed, they expressed their convictions in a vocabulary heavily imbued with biblical allusions. Above all, they represented the impending revolution as the Apocalypse, a day of reckoning on which evildoers would be destroyed and the Russian people saved.1 Apocalyptic speech continued to dominate revolutionary propaganda in the provinces during the early 1860s, in Perm and Kazan, even as revolutionaries themselves came to embrace atheism and to argue that faith and revolution were incompatible. 153 Student radicals had been anticipating a large-scale peasant uprising since 1856. The failure of this eagerly anticipated event to take place undermined faith that the Apocalypse would come to fruition by God’s will. The revolution would only be successful if the population as a whole abandoned its belief that God would provide and came to understand that it must provide for itself through self-motivated action. That atheism was a precondition for successful revolution would remain a widely held assumption among Russian revolutionaries in the early twentieth century and became a central component of the ideology of the Soviet state. The young revolutionaries who came to promote atheism in the provinces were characterized by their modest social origins. Sons of priests, of deacons and subdeacons, of provincial school teachers and petty officers, almost none of these young men came from noble families. They found their point of entry into the revolutionary movement at Russian universities, where they arrived from the far-flung corners of the provinces, sometimes on foot, ill-kempt, uncouth, and impoverished. In the early reign of Alexander II, Russian universities grew markedly in size, though their social composition did not change: sons of priests and other commoners remained well below 50 percent of the total student population.2 Students from impoverished families were recognizable on campus for their worn-out student uniforms. By the early 1860s, however, they were not entirely unwelcome, at least not in the radical circles that had grown up in the last half decade. To signal their closeness to the people and disapproval of official norms of comportment , radical youths of all origins cultivated an unkempt appearance, often incorporating elements of peasant dress.3 Their circles embraced young provincials of obscure origins, offering them a new sense of identity. Participation in the radical movement allowed these commoners to feel that they could contribute to a higher cause, that they could assist in remaking their nation. Apocalyptic rhetoric expressed their faith that Russia was about to be transformed; atheist rhetoric expressed their conviction that this event would be wrought by human hands. Seminarians in particular read articles by Chernyshevsky and Dobroliubov, fellow raznochintsy and sons of priests from the provinces, with rapt attention.4 Chernyshevsky and Dobroliubov did not invent the rhetoric of revolution as apocalypse. The two journalists did, however, articulate the view that atheism was an essential component of taking charge of one’s life—and the fate of the nation. As revolutionaries in the provinces composed their broadsheets, combining religious rhetoric 154 Two Modes of Living without God with calls to abandon faith in God, they inserted Chernyshevsky and Dobroliubov’s ideas into them. These young men not only composed revolutionary tracts but also walked into the countryside to disseminate them among the peasants, evidently believing that they would be receptive to the words of fellow commoners. The lowly social status and provincial background of these young men, most of whom were...