Racism and Russian Revolutionists

Alexander Nikolaevich Radishchev , A Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow, in R. P. Thaler (ed.), (Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1958), pp. 148-9. See the introduction by R.P. Thaler , pp. 3-37, for the details of Radishchev's punishment by Catherine the Great (1762-96).

This was the argument of Prince Vladimir F. Odoevsky (1803-69), a predecessor of the later Slavophiles of the 1840s, who used the vocabulary of German romanticism to create a virtue out of the backwardness of Russia. Most of the Slavophiles opposed serfdom as economically and politically unstable, and most important, as degrading to a people of the Orthodox faith who would enserf their own Christian brothers. Several Slavophiles were leaders in the Tsarist emancipation of the serfs in 1861. For a general discussion of the Slavophiles, see Nicholas Riasanovsky , Russia and the West in the Teachings of the Slavophiles ( Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1952).

N.I. Turgenev , La Russie et les russes (3 vols., Paris, 1847), III, p. 270.

Ibid., II, p. 228.

Alexander Herzen , Sobranie Sochinenii (Collected Works) (30 vols., Moscow, Academy of Sciences , 1954-63), XII, pp. 7-15.

Russian radicals realized that the Russian serf did not suffer from the atmosphere of racism which permeated American slavery. Nonetheless, they liked to refer to the Russian serf as 'the white Negro' because it allowed them to compare directly the white and black slavery of Russia and the United States. The term 'white Negro' first appeared in the famous letter of 1847 of Vissarion Belinsky (1811-84) to Nikolai Gogol (1809-52) criticizing Gogol's reactionary views on the needs of Russian society. See V.G. Belinsky , Selected Philosophical Works (Moscow, Foreign Language Publishing House, 1956), pp. 537-8. It should be noted that while the Russian serf was in theory bonded to the land and technically not a slave, the distinction had no meaning in practice since serfs were auctioned both individually and in groups separate from the land to which they had been originally attached.

N.G. Chernyshevsky , What Is To Be Done ?, trans. by E. H. Carr (New York, Vintage Books, 1961), p. 348.

Istoriia Amerikanskoi literatury (History of American Literature) (Moscow, State Publishing House , 1947), p. 334.

Polnoe sobranie sochinenii N. G. Chernyshevskogo, (The Complete Works of N. G. Chernyshevsky) M. N. Chernyshevsky (ed.), (10 vols., St. Petersburg , 1906), V, pp. 440-6.

Ibid., 'O rasakh', (About races), X, Part 2, pp. 81-96.

The revolutionary anarchist, Mikhail A. Bakunin (1814-76), who had visited the United States in 1861, found in black slavery the greatest blot upon American civilisation. See Oeuvres de Michel Bakounine, J. Guillaume (ed.), (4 vols., Paris, 1907-13), I, p. 22. Peter L. Lavrov (1823-1900), a leading Russian socialist revolutionary, thought that slavery in the United States was indefensible because the United States Constitution had established equal rights among all the races of America. See his Istoricheskie pis'ma (Historical Letters) (St. Petersburg, 1870), pp. 220-42.

The translator was Sergei A. Rachinsky (1833-1902), professor of botany at the University of Moscow. It should be noted, however, that many Russians had already become acquainted with Darwin's theory through the first English edition of the Origin of Species of 1859, or the first German edition of 1860 translated by H. G. Bronn, or through the first French edition of 1862 translated by Mlle. Cleménce Royer.

These Russian naturalists and their various theories are covered in great detail in B.E. Raikov , Russkie biologi-evoliutsionisty do Darvina (Russian biological-evolutionists before Darwin) (4 vols., Moscow-Leningrad, Academy of Sciences, 1951-9).

Peter Kropotkin , Memoirs of a Revolutionist, James A. Rogers (ed.), (New York, Anchor Books, 1962), pp. 55-132.

The most widely read of the European popularizers of the natural sciences in Russia were Ludwig Büchner, Jacob Moleschott, and Karl Vogt. F. M. Dostoevsky in The Possessed (1871-2) has described a young Russian radical's attitude toward this European triumvirate of scientific materialism: 'He had thrown out of his apartment, for example, his landlady's two icons, and chopped up one of them with an axe; in his own room he had placed on three stands resembling lecterns, the works of Vogt, Moleschott and Büchner and before each he used to burn church candles.' Polnoe sobranie sochinenii (Complete Collected Works) (12 vols., Paris, YMCA Press, 1954), XII, p. 369.

The term, nihilism, was popularized by Ivan Turgenev in his novel of 1862, Fathers and Sons. See his Polnoe sobranie sochinenii i pisem (Complete collected works and letters) (28 vols., Moscow, Academy of Sciences, 1960-8), VIII, pp. 215-216; 243.

See, for example, N.N. Strakhov , 'Durnye priznaki', (Bad Signs), Kriticheskie stati (Critical articles) (2 vols., Kiev, 1902), II, pp. 379-97.

As quoted in George L. Kline , 'Darwinism and the Russian Orthodox Church' , in E. J. Simmons , ed., Continuity and Change in Russian and Soviet Thought ( Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1955), p. 308.

Dmitri Pisarev , 'Progress v mire zhivotnykh i rastenii', (Progress in the world of animals and plants) Sochineniia (Works) (6 vols., St. Petersburg, 1897), III, p. 360.

'I should premise that I use the term Struggle for Existence in a large and metaphorical sense, including dependence of one being on another, and including (which is more important) not only the life of the individual, but success in leaving progeny.' Morse Peckham (ed.), The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin. A Variorum Text (Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1959), III, p. 25. Professor Peckham's complex system of reference to the six editions of the Origin of Species is explained in the preface to his variorum edition. All references in this article to the Origin of Species are to Peckham's variorum edition.

Pisarev, op. cit., III, pp. 366-406.

Karl Vogt , Vorlesungen über den Menschen, seine Stellung in der Schöpfung und in der Geschichte der Erde (Geissen, 1863), Lecture VII.

Vogt (1817-95) had studied zoology and geology at Neufchâtel under Louis Agassiz (1807-73), the famous Swiss naturalist who later became professor of zoology at Harvard University in 1848. It was from Agassiz that Vogt had gained a conviction of the permanent inferiority of the black race to the white.

De Quatrefages' book was L'unité de l'espèce humaine (Paris, 1861). Zaitsev had learned of Vogt's views in reviewing Vogt's Vorlesungen über den Menschen for Russkoe slovo (Nos. 11-12, 1863; No. 3, 1864).

V.A. Zaitsev , Izbrannye sochineniia (Selected works) (2 vols., Moscow, State State Publishing House, 1934), I, pp. 228-231. The quotation is from p. 229. Zaitsev used interchangeably the terms, black, Negro, and coloured, to described any very darkly pigmented people.

Ibid., I, p. 230.

Ibid., I, pp. 230-231.

Sovremennik (January 1865), p. 163.

Zaitsev, op. cit., I, p. 236.

Ibid., I, pp. 428-42.

Ibid., I, p. 498.

Ivan Golovin , Stars and Stripes, or American Impressions (London , 1856), p. 101.

A good example is Charles Darwin who believed in the existence of 'higher and lower races' although he opposed at the same time slavery based upon such distinctions or upon any others. See The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Francis Darwin (ed.), (3 vols., London, 1887), I, pp. 114, 316; II, pp. 373-4.

For Dobroliubov's own account of the strong impact of Chernyshevsky on his thinking, see N.A. Dobroliubov , Sobranie sochinenii (Collected works) , B. Bursov (ed.), (9 vols., Moscow, Academy of Sciences , 1961-4), IX, p. 248.

Ibid., IX, p. 444. Dobroliubov did not use this viewpoint to defend slavery, however, and consequently his article raised no controversy among Russian radical thinkers.

Sovremennik (January 1865), p. 163.

The concept of mutual aid was developed in Proudhon's posthumously published work, De la capacité des classes ouvrières ( Paris, 1865). Proudhon used the concept, however, in a political, economic, and social sense rather than a biological one.

N.D. Nozhin , 'Po povodu statei Russkogo slova o nevol'nichestve', (Apropos of the articles in Russkoe slovo about slavery) Iskra (The Spark) (No. 8, 1865), pp. 114-117.

N.D. Nozhin , 'Nasha nauka i uchenye', (Our science and scientists) Knizhnyi vestnik (The Book Herald) (No. 7, 1866), p. 175.

Ibid., p. 178.

'The expression often used by Mr. Herbert Spencer of the Survival of the Fittest is more accurate and is sometimes equally convenient.' Darwin, Origin of Species, III, 15.1:e.

N.K. Mikhailovsky , 'Chto takoe progress?' (What is progress?) Sochineniia (Works) (4th ed., 10 vols., St. Petersburg, 1906-13), I, pp. 9-60.

Ibid., I, pp. 150-65.

The Marxist view of Darwinism was developed by Friedrich Engels in his Herrn Eugen Dühring's Umwälzung der Wissenschaft ( Leipzig, 1878). Engels' unfinished notes on the relationship of Darwinism to Marxism were published posthumously as Dialectics of Nature (Moscow, Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1954).

The Marxist dialectical view of Darwinism is a development of Engels rather than of Marx, who never promulgated any consistent interpretation of Darwinism from the Marxist point of view. See, for example, Shlomo Avineri , The Social and Political Thought of Karl Marx (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1970), pp. 69-70.

Examples of the opposition to biological determinism and therefore to any kind of racism from the socialist revolutionaries have been given above. Lenin summarized the Social Democratic position by emphasizing that 'the application of biological ideas in general to the domain of the social sciences is meaningless.' V.I. Lenin , Sochineniia (Works) (4th edn., 40 vols., Moscow, 1941-2 ), XIV, p. 315.

See Mikhailovsky, 'Chto takoe progress ?' for the Socialist Revolutionary point of view, and the correspondence of Marx and Engels in Historisch-Kritische Gesamtausgabe, Der Briefwechsel zwischen Marx und Engels ( Berlin, 1930), III, pp. 354-62, of Part 3, for the Social Democratic interpretation.