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A Nihilist's Career: S. M. Stepniak-Kravchinskij

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 January 2017

Charles A. Moser
Charles A. Moser*
Affiliation:
Yale University
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Extract

The historical figure and author Sergej Mikhajlovich Stepniak-Kravchinskij, one of the foremost participants in Russian political émigré circles during the final two decades of the last century, has been little studied in the West although rather more attention has been given him in Russia and the Soviet Union. This article makes no attempt to fill the gap in biographical studies of Kravchinskij in Western languages but rather is designed to dwell in some detail on two aspects of his life which can be illuminated through hitherto little-known or unknown materials to be found outside the Soviet Union. More specifically, I plan to speak of his most outstanding, although still minor, novel The Career of a Nihilist in connection with a previously unpublished letter of his containing a lengthy discussion of the book; and of his lecture tour of the United States in the years 1890-91, relying in large part on newspaper sources and manuscript materials to be found in this country.

Type
Articles
Information
American Slavic and East European Review , Volume 20 , Issue 1 , February 1961 , pp. 55 - 71
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies 1961

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References

1 Four studies in Russian covering the whole or parts of Kravchinskij&s career are the following: D. Juferev, “S. M. Kravchinskij” in Stepnjak-Kravchinskij, S., Sochinenija (Moscow, 1958), I, V–XLIV Google Scholar; L. Shishko, Sergej Mikhajlovich Kravchinskij i kruzhoh chajkovtsev(Petersburg, 1906); Lev Dejch, S. M. Kravchinskij (Petrograd, 1919); and K. Berkova, S. M. Kravchinskij (Moscow, 1925) (this latter is a brief and very popular biography, hardly worth consulting if the other three may be inspected) . In this article I take the liberty of an inconsistency and refer to Stepniak-Kravchinskij in section one as Kravchinskij but in the last two sections, where he is treated more nearly exclusively as a literary figure, as Stepniak.

2 P. Kropotkin, “Vospominanija o Kravchinskom,” S. M. Kravchinskij, Sobranije sochinenij(Petersburg, 1907), I, xi.

3 Shishko, op. cit., p. 4.

4 Georg Brandes, “Sergej Stepnjak,” in Kravchinskij, Sobranije sochinenij, IV, vii.

5 This episode was even introduced specifically into a novel by one of the most rabid of the antinihilist writers of the 1870's and early 1880's, B. M. Markevich. See his Bezdna (The Abyss) in Polnoe sobranie sochinenij (Moscow, 1912), VIII, 247-48.

6 S. Stepniak, “What Americans Can Do for Russia,” North American Review (November, 1891), p. 600.

7 Stepnjak-Kravchinskij, S. M., Sochinenija(Moscow, 1958), I, 637.Google Scholar The best discussion of the creation of and reaction to the novel is to be found here, pp. 637-41.

8 H. S. Blatch, “Stepniak at Home,” Boston Evening Transcript, May 18, 1889.

9 Ibid. The reference is to Mudie's Lending Library and to W. H. Smith and Son, booksellers.

10 V. Voronov and V. Zemskov, “Anglijskaja pressa ob Andreje Kozhukhove,” Novyjmir, No. 6 (June, 1956) , pp. 273-74.

11 The Nation, June 19, 1890, p. 491.

12 Fairfax Harrison, “Stepniak's ‘Career of a Nihilist’,” Yale Literary Magazine (March, 1890), pp. 277-80.

13 H. S. Blatch, “Stepniak at Home,” Boston Evening Transcript, May 18, 1889. The interview is dated May 9.

14 Letter to Kennan from London (original in English) : George Kennan papers, box 3, New York Public Library Manuscript Division. During these years Kennan was literally blanketing the United States with his lectures on the iniquities of the Russian political system; aside from this he was the author of various articles on Russia and of the famous two-volume work Siberia and the Exile System (1891).

15 Pease, Edward R., The History of the Fabian Society (New York, 1916), p. 94.Google Scholar

16 Letter of September 2, 1890, London (original in Russian). George Kennan papers.

17 New York Times,December 31, 1890; New York Tribune,December 31, 1890.

18 Boston Herald,January 1, 1891.

19 Letter to William Cooper Howells, Life in Letters of William Dean Howells, Howells, Mildred, ed. (Garden City, N. Y., 1928), II, 12.Google Scholar Stepniak claimed that the chance to meet Howells (whom he addressed in letters as “Caro Maestro“) was one of the main motives for his American journey: see Van Wyck Brooks, Howells. His Life and Work (New York, 1959), p. 205.

20 Boston Herald,January 6, 1891.

21 New York Times, January 9, 1891.

22 Letter to William Cooper Howells, January 11, 1891, op. cit.,p. 13.

23 New York Times, January 13, 1891.

24 Letter to J. B. Pond, January 27, 1891, Boston. Op. cit., pp. 13-14.

25 Boston Herald, January 18 and 25, 1891.

28 Chicago Tribune, February 18 and 19, 1891.

27 Boston Evening Transcript, March 21, 1891.

28 Stepniak explained his aims at length in an article, “What Americans Can Do for Russia,” North American Review (November, 1891), pp. 596-609.

29 Letter of March 29, 1891, Houghton Library, Harvard University.

30 Letter of April 7, 1891, Houghton Library.

31 Letter of April 13, 1891, Houghton Library.

32 Mark Twain-Howells Letters, Smith, H. N. and Gibson, W. M., eds. (Cambridge, Mass., 1960), II, 643.Google Scholar

33 On April 19 Stepniak penned from New York a note informing Mrs. Clemens that he had sent her husband a copy of Underground Russia and requesting permission to bring his wife and also a young boy of his acquaintance the next time he paid the Twains a call (Mark Twain Papers, University of California Library, Berkeley).

34 Letter of April 18, 1891 to Howells from New York, Houghton Library.

35 Paine, Albert B., Mark Twain (New York and London, 1912) , IV, 1350.Google Scholar

36 Letter of April 18, 1891.

37 S. Stepniak, “What Americans Can Do for Russia,” North American Review (November, 1891), pp. 606-07.

38 Excerpts from the appeal were published in Free Russia (June, 1891), pp. 7-8. The signers included all those given by Stepniak as members of the Society of Friends of Russian Freedom plus some others.

39 Free Russia (May, 1891), p. 9. In this case at least there should have been no complaints about his accent, as there were at his English-language lectures.

40 Boston Evening Transcript, April 24, 1891. It is curious that in his lectures Stepniak advanced the opinion that Turgenev would achieve more lasting fame than Tolstoy, whom he looked upon as a fanatic (Boston Post, April 21, 1891) . Marie Bashkirceva was a tendentious Russian emigree artist who died at age 24.

41 New York Times,May 16, 1891.

42 Free Russia (May, 1891), p. 9.

43 Boston Evening Transcript, March 7, 1891.

44 Stepniak, “The Movement in America,” Free Russia (July, 1891), pp. 8-10. This was probably the result of Howell's appeal to Charles A. Dana to support “the liberal cause in Russia by constant reporting of it to the world outside,” a plan put forth by Stepniak (Mark Twain-How ells Letters, II, 643).

45 Letter of December 30, 1891 from London, Houghton Library.