Nihilists
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
a secret society of Russia. It is composed of radicals grown desperate. The object of the order is to overthrow despotism by a policy of terrorism. The membership includes people of all occupations-soldiers, sailors, clergymen, workingmen, engineers, and students. During the period from 1860 to 1878 a large number of university students betook themselves to trades in order to come into contact with workmen so as to give them new ideas. These enthusiastic men were hunted down by the police and sent to Siberia. Over 200 persons of education and culture were sent to labor in the mines. In despair of accomplishing a peaceful revolution in Russia by rational means the more determined leaders organized the Nihilist Society. Aside from the dissemination of revolutionary ideas its purpose is the assassination of Russian officials. Bombs are relied upon chiefly. It is the aim of the leaders to terrify the rulers of Russia into the adoption of a more liberal form of government. To this end every effort has been made to cause the czar, obnoxious generals, prominent police officials, and others to feel that their lives are in danger if they appear on the street or take a journey. Some of the more prominent assassinations may be mentioned. In 1878, General Mesentzoff; in the following year, Prince Kropotkin met his fate. In March, 1881, the czar himself, Alexander II, was assassinated. The police were so unremitting in their efforts to root out the nihilists that it seemed for a time as though they had been suppressed, but during the Russo-Japanese War the nihilists broke out again. In 1905 the hated governor of Finland was killed by a bomb, and a few months later other assassinations followed. It was due in part no doubt to terror of the nihilists that the Duma was summoned to meet. See Anarchist ; Socialist; Duma
What Has Changed in the Last Century
When Aiton's wrote this in 1910 it described a live conspiracy trying to "terrify the rulers of Russia" into liberal reform; seven years later the terror was overtaken by events, as Nicholas II abdicated in March 1917 and he and his family were shot at Yekaterinburg in July 1918. Historians no longer speak of a single "Nihilist Society": the killings listed here were the work of distinct groups, chiefly the People's Will, which assassinated Alexander II in 1881, and later the Socialist Revolutionaries' Combat Organisation. The word itself has largely left politics; coined in Russian debate and popularised by Turgenev's Fathers and Sons in 1862, "nihilism" today usually means the philosophical position that life has no inherent meaning or values, discussed above all through Nietzsche.
Written for this edition, 2026.