Circle of Tchaikovsky
Encyclopedia
Russian language
Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...
) was a Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
n literary society for self-education and a revolutionary
Revolutionary
A revolutionary is a person who either actively participates in, or advocates revolution. Also, when used as an adjective, the term revolutionary refers to something that has a major, sudden impact on society or on some aspect of human endeavor.-Definition:...
organization of the Narodniks in the early 1870s.
Background and origin
The intelligentsiaIntelligentsia
The intelligentsia is a social class of people engaged in complex, mental and creative labor directed to the development and dissemination of culture, encompassing intellectuals and social groups close to them...
of mid-nineteenth century Tsarist Russia were dissatisfied with what they saw as social stagnation of the nation and had begun to demand reform (their attitude was notably characterised by novelist Ivan Turgenev
Ivan Turgenev
Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev was a Russian novelist, short story writer, and playwright. His first major publication, a short story collection entitled A Sportsman's Sketches, is a milestone of Russian Realism, and his novel Fathers and Sons is regarded as one of the major works of 19th-century...
as nihilism
Nihilism
Nihilism is the philosophical doctrine suggesting the negation of one or more putatively meaningful aspects of life. Most commonly, nihilism is presented in the form of existential nihilism which argues that life is without objective meaning, purpose, or intrinsic value...
). The peak of this social activism gave rise to a number of secret organisations, among them Land and Liberty
Land and Liberty (Russia)
Land and Liberty was a Russian clandestine revolutionary organization of Narodniki in the 1870s...
, People's Revenge, and the Circle of Tchaikovsky.
The Circle was founded in St. Petersburg during student unrest in 1868-1869 as a group opposed to the reckless violence of Sergey Nechayev
Sergey Nechayev
Sergey Gennadiyevich Nyechayev was a Russian revolutionary associated with the Nihilist movement and known for his single-minded pursuit of revolution by any means necessary, including political violence.-Early life in Russia:...
. It was named after Nikolai Tchaikovsky
Nikolai Tchaikovsky
Nikolai Vasilyevich Tchaikovsky was a Russian revolutionary.Tchaikovsky was born in Vyatka, and while studying in St. Petersburg joined a radical student group which would later be known as the Circle of Tchaikovsky after its most famous member...
, one of its prominent members. A literary society for self-education within the Medical Surgical Academy was the heart of the organization, the initial purpose of which was to share books and knowledge that had been banned in the Russian Empire
Russian Empire
The Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was the successor to the Tsardom of Russia and the predecessor of the Soviet Union...
. It included students Mark Natanson
Mark Natanson
Mark Andreyevich Natanson was a Russian revolutionary and one of the founders of the Circle of Tchaikovsky, Land and Liberty, and the Socialist-Revolutionary Party...
, V. M. Aleksandrov, and Anatoly Serdyukov, who were joined by Nikolai Tchaikovsky and Feofan Lermontov. Besides self-education, the circle's main tasks were to unite students of Petersburg and other cities, and conduct propaganda
Propaganda
Propaganda is a form of communication that is aimed at influencing the attitude of a community toward some cause or position so as to benefit oneself or one's group....
among workers and peasant
Peasant
A peasant is an agricultural worker who generally tend to be poor and homeless-Etymology:The word is derived from 15th century French païsant meaning one from the pays, or countryside, ultimately from the Latin pagus, or outlying administrative district.- Position in society :Peasants typically...
s with the purpose of fomenting a social revolution
Social revolution
The term social revolution may have different connotations depending on the speaker.In the Trotskyist movement, the term "social revolution" refers to an upheaval in which existing property relations are smashed...
. The Tchaikovtsy set higher moral standards for their members in the face of Nechayev's unscrupulousness. They had a negative attitude towards struggle for political freedoms, which, in their view, were only advantageous to the arising Russian bourgeoisie
Bourgeoisie
In sociology and political science, bourgeoisie describes a range of groups across history. In the Western world, between the late 18th century and the present day, the bourgeoisie is a social class "characterized by their ownership of capital and their related culture." A member of the...
. These principles were formulated in the Программа для кружков самообразования и практической деятельности (Program for the circles of self-education and practical activity), put together by the Tchaikovtsy in late 1870 – early 1871.
Activities
One of the first tasks of the Tchaikovtsy was to organize the printing, publishing, and distribution of scientific and revolutionary literature with the help of publishers Nikolai Polyakov, Kozma Soldatyonkov, and others. These literary works included the first volume of Das KapitalDas Kapital
Das Kapital, Kritik der politischen Ökonomie , by Karl Marx, is a critical analysis of capitalism as political economy, meant to reveal the economic laws of the capitalist mode of production, and how it was the precursor of the socialist mode of production.- Themes :In Capital: Critique of...
by Karl Marx
Karl Marx
Karl Heinrich Marx was a German philosopher, economist, sociologist, historian, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. His ideas played a significant role in the development of social science and the socialist political movement...
, and books by others including Nikolai Chernyshevsky
Nikolai Chernyshevsky
Nikolay Gavrilovich Chernyshevsky was a Russian revolutionary democrat, materialist philosopher, critic, and socialist...
, Nikolai Dobrolyubov, Alexander Herzen
Alexander Herzen
Aleksandr Ivanovich Herzen was a Russian pro-Western writer and thinker known as the "father of Russian socialism", and one of the main fathers of agrarian populism...
, Pyotr Lavrov, Vasili Bervi, Ferdinand Lassalle
Ferdinand Lassalle
Ferdinand Lassalle was a German-Jewish jurist and socialist political activist.-Early life:Ferdinand Lassalle was born on 11 April 1825 in Breslau , Silesia to a prosperous Jewish family descending from Upper Silesian Loslau...
, Charles Darwin
Charles Darwin
Charles Robert Darwin FRS was an English naturalist. He established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestry, and proposed the scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection.He published his theory...
, and John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill was a British philosopher, economist and civil servant. An influential contributor to social theory, political theory, and political economy, his conception of liberty justified the freedom of the individual in opposition to unlimited state control. He was a proponent of...
. In the summer of 1871, the circle of Natanson merged with a female self-education circle of Alexandra Kornilova and Sophia Perovskaya. Soon, they were joined by Sergei Kravchinsky, Dmitry Klements, Sergei Sinegub, Nikolai Charushin, Leonid Shishko, and others. The central Petersburg circle comprised around 60 people. Circles in Moscow
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
(Nikolai Alexandrovich Morozov
Nikolai Alexandrovich Morozov
Nikolai Alexandrovich Morozov was a known Russian revolutionary who spent about 25 years in prison before turning his attention to various fields of science.- Revolutionary activities :...
, Lev Tikhomirov
Lev Tikhomirov
Lev Alexandrovich Tikhomirov , originally a Russian revolutionary and one of the members of the Executive Committee of the Narodnaya Volya, following his disenchantment with violent revolution became one of the leading conservative thinkers in Russia...
, Mikhail Frolenko), Odessa
Odessa
Odessa or Odesa is the administrative center of the Odessa Oblast located in southern Ukraine. The city is a major seaport located on the northwest shore of the Black Sea and the fourth largest city in Ukraine with a population of 1,029,000 .The predecessor of Odessa, a small Tatar settlement,...
(Felix Volkhovsky, Andrei Zhelyabov
Andrei Zhelyabov
Andrey Ivanovich Zhelyabov , Russian revolutionary, member of the Executive Committee of Narodnaya Volya....
), Kiev
Kiev
Kiev or Kyiv is the capital and the largest city of Ukraine, located in the north central part of the country on the Dnieper River. The population as of the 2001 census was 2,611,300. However, higher numbers have been cited in the press....
(Yakov Stefanovich, Pavel Axelrod
Pavel Axelrod
Pavel Borisovich Axelrod was a Russian Menshevik.- Early life and career :Born Pinches Borutsch in Potscheff near Chernigov and raised to Shklov, a small provincial town in and Mogilev, the biggest town of the three in the Russian Empire , Axelrod was the son of a Jewish innkeeper.In 1875 in...
) and other cities sided with the Petersburg cell on a federal basis. Altogether, the Tchaikovtsy numbered around 100 participants.
In 1872, the Tchaikovtsy began organizing circles of workers with the purpose of training propagandists for work in the countryside. These activities were most successful in Petersburg and Odessa, where the circles comprised around 400 workers. Some of these workers—including Viktor Obnorsky and Feodor Kravchenko—would later become the founders of the first proletarian organizations such as the Worker's Union of Southern Russia (Южнороссийский союз рабочих) and Northern Union of the Russian Workers (Северный союз русских рабочих). The results of this propaganda work were summarized in a report by Peter Kropotkin
Peter Kropotkin
Prince Pyotr Alexeyevich Kropotkin was a Russian zoologist, evolutionary theorist, philosopher, economist, geographer, author and one of the world's foremost anarcho-communists. Kropotkin advocated a communist society free from central government and based on voluntary associations between...
, which would be discussed in the Petersburg circle of the Tchaikovtsy in late 1873.
The final stage of activities of the Tchaikovtsy included the Call to the People campaign.