Nihilism is a term used to describe certain negative systems of philosophy. It was applied to some rationalists in the 12th century (Peter Lombard, q.v.), and in modern times to various negative systems of metaphysics, ethics, and atheist philosophy. Of late, however, it has become familiar as applied to Russian revolutionists, and especially (though improperly) to those of the 'terrorist' wing. In Russian life it was first introduced by Turgeneff (q.v.), in Fathers and Sons (1862), to characterise a new type appearing at that time among the Russian educated classes—men who, in Turgeneff's own words, 'bow before no authority of any kind, and accept on faith no principle, whatever veneration surround it.' Accordingly, they defied 'the fathers' 'to find out, in our present life, family and social, one single institution which would not deserve an absolute and pitiless negation;' and, 'abandoning all talk about art, unconscious artistic creation, parliamentarism, reformed tribunals, and what not else,' they put above all 'the question of daily bread for all,' repudiated art as long as it is not in the service of the masses, waged war against prejudices, and reformed their own lives according to truth and sincerity, assuming an outward roughness in their behaviour as a protest against the polished and insincere relations in civilised life. Turgeneff's eminently objective description of the new type having been misunderstood, Tchernyshevsky (q.v.) wrote the novel What is to be done? representing the Nihilists not as simple philosophers of negation, but as people engaged either in science, or in social reforms on Robert Owen's lines, or (a few of them) as popular revolutionists; and especially insisting upon their highly respectful relations to woman, whom they consider as an intellectually equal comrade in work. The two novels, both drawn from life, thus complete one another, and give a correct idea of Nihilism, which in its philosophical aspects is an outcome of the philosophy of the 18th century as modified by modern science (Buckle, Darwin, H. Spencer, and J. S. Mill being the most popular authors among Nihilists), while in social life it appears as a protest against 'the conventional lies of civilised mankind.' Nihilism is thus the Russian equivalent of the 18th century's Scottish and French Encyclopædist philosophical movements; but it differs from them by having transported their philosophical conceptions into everyday life. The teachings of Nihilism, which has its roots in all previous life of the Russian educated classes (Pushkin was already nicknamed Nihilist by his adversaries), found two very gifted expounders in the art-critic Dobroluboff (1836-61) and the political writer Pisareff (died 1872), and has created a very bulky literature, especially of novels propagating the same ideas. They have exercised a deep influence upon the life of the educated classes in Russia, and created in Russian literature and art a current which makes them differ so widely from literature and art in western Europe. They also contributed to the deep-reaching movement in favour of the higher education of Russian women, which, notwithstanding the opposition of government, is now further advanced in Russia than in any European country. The 324 non-classical gymnasias for girls—quite equal to the best institutions of the same kind—have now 90,000 pupils. Four women's universities and one medical academy, all supported by private contributions and quite equal to the best male universities, had an aggregate of 2000 students when closed by government in 1886-88 (one is reopened); besides, 830 ladies already have obtained doctors' degrees in Russia after having passed the same examinations as the male doctors.
'Nihilists' are now found in all classes of educated Russians, the great bulk taking no part whatever in the political struggle; while those revolutionists who are described in western Europe as Nihilists have political programmes directly borrowed from western Europe, and are known in Russia as Radicals, Socialists, Anarchists, Popularists, or Party of the Will of the People (the latter resorting to political terror in order to obtain a constitution).
The name of Nihilist has, however, been so much identified with the revolutionary movement in Russia that a brief account of the latter must be given under this heading. It was born, especially under the influence of Herzen (q.v.) about 1860, when the hopes of thorough reforms awakened by the proposed emancipation of the serfs were frustrated by the ascendancy acquired by the serf-owners' party in the councils of the czar. Proclamations appealing to the peasants to revolt were issued in 1861; and two secret societies—'The Great Russian' and 'Land and Liberty'—were organised. In 1861 the poet Mikhailoff (died in Siberia in 1867) and in 1864 Tchernyshevsky (died in 1887 at Astrakhan, after 20 years' confinement in Siberia) and several others were sent to hard labour in Siberia in connection with this movement. When, after the Polish insurrection (1863), the old party took the upper hand in the Winter Palace, new revolutionary circles made their appearance; they resulted in a peasants' outbreak at Kazan (1864), a revolutionary propaganda among workers, and an attempt by Karakozoff upon the life of the czar (1866). In 1870 a similar movement was started among the youth under the leadership of Netchaieff. The failure of these two movements led to the appearance all over Russia of circles for more serious self-education, which, however, soon took a more revolutionary character, chiefly under the influence of the powerful agitator, Michael Bakunin (q.v.), the ideas of the International Working-men's Association, which rapidly spread in Russia after the Paris Commune, and the socialist writings of Colonel Peter Lavroff. Young men and women of rich families abandoned their homes, and went to the villages and factories in the capacity of workers, schoolmasters in villages, medical helps, midwives, and so on, either simply to share with the people their life of privation or to carry on a revolutionary propaganda. More than 2000 persons were arrested (1873-76) in connection with the movement and kept for years in prison; but only 193 could be brought (end of 1877) before a supreme court. It could not but acquit most of them; yet even then they were sent into exile. Several smaller groups were tried and condemned during the same years.
The flogging of a prisoner in the St Petersburg prison by the then prefect of police, General Trépoft—a most influential person among the advisers of the czar—and the impossibility of otherwise bringing the fact to publicity, induced Vera Zasulitch to make an attempt upon General Trépoft's life (February 1878). She was sent as a common-law offender before a jury and acquitted (April 1878), the attempt at rearresting her as she left the court being baffled by a riot in the streets, during which one of her friends was shot. The trials for political offences were now withdrawn from the senate (which formerly used to judge them) and assigned to courts-martial; while on the other side the revolutionists, abandoning more and more the propaganda among the people, resorted to a policy of terror. They killed several spics, one police official, the governor-general of Kharkoff, and the chief of the state police, General Mezentsoff, in broad daylight in St Petersburg (August 1878).
Russia was then divided into general governorships, the governors receiving the power of confirming the sentences of death pronounced by the courts-martial, and freely using it. Several attempts against the life of the czar were made: by Solovioff (in April 1879), twice by wrecking imperial trains (November 1879), and finally by a destructive explosion in the Winter Palace (February 1880). Seventeen revolutionists were hanged and hundreds exiled to Siberia during the same twelve months. After the Winter Palace explosion Alexander II., who already more and more abandoned the direction of state affairs, nominated Count Loris-Melikoff president of a supreme commission for the management of the affairs of the state. Wide promises of constitutional reforms were circulated by the new ruler, but none of them were realised, and the nomination was cancelled a few months later. So the executive committee of the party of the 'Will of the People,' which had at that time very wide ramifications over Russia, and whose secret press always reappeared in spite of the seizure of its printing-offices, prosecuted its underground work, and Alexander II. was killed by bombs March 13, 1881, on the morning of which very day he had signed the convocation of what he himself described as the Assemblée des Notables. The new czar, Alexander III., after a six weeks' hesitation, dismissed his father's ministers and proclaimed his resolution to remain an absolute sovereign. He lived almost a prisoner in Paul I.'s palace at Gatchina, and fresh plots continued to be discovered, spreading also into the army and navy. Nicholas II., who succeeded his father in 1894, continued his policy and so became obnoxious to the revolutionists. Public discontent is stirred by the systematic demolition of the reforms conceded and other reactionary measures, and it penetrates among the peasants, who see in the abolition of the justices of peace (1889) and the restrictions imposed upon the provincial self-government so many steps towards the reintroduction of the manorial justice of the nobles, and who met these measures by a series of outbreaks in 1889-90.
See G. B. Arnaudo, Il Nihilismo (Turin, 1879; also trans. into French); S. Stepniak, Underground Russia (1883); Geschichte der revolutionären Bewegungen in Russland, an elaborate work by A. Thun (1883); Almanac of the Will of the People for 1883 (published at Geneva in Russian, contains all the names and dates, and an historical sketch of the movement); Stepniak, Russia under the Tsars (1885); E. Noble, The Russian Revolt (1885); 'Russia and the Siberian Exiles' (Century Magazine, 1887-89), by George Kennan; the present writer's In Russian and French Prisons (1887); Nihilism as it Is (1895, mainly by Stepniak); other works named at KROPOTKIN and STEPNIAK; also ANARCHISM.