of
armed and frenzied men. Few observers, however, even in the Tsardom,
gaged the strength or foresaw the effects of the anarchist propaganda
which was being carried on suasively and perseveringly, oftentimes
unwittingly, in the nursery, the school, the church, the university, and
with eminent success in the army and the navy. Hence the widespread
error that the Russian revolution was preceded by no such era of
preparation as that of the encylopedists in France.

Recently, however, publicists have gone to the other extreme and
asserted that Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Gorky, and a host of other Russian
writers were apostles of the tenets which have since received the name
of Bolshevism, and that it was they who prepared the Russian upheaval
just as it was the authors of the "Encyclopedia" who prepared the French
Revolution. In this sweeping form the statement is misleading. Russian
literature during the reigns of the last three Tsars--with few
exceptions, like the writings of Leskoff--was unquestionably a vehicle
for the spread of revolutionary ideas. But it would be a gross
exaggeration to assert that the end deliberately pursued was that form
of anarchy which is known to-day as Bolshevism, or, indeed, genuine
anarchy in any form. Tolstoy and Gorky may be counted among the
forerunners of Bolshevism, but Dostoyevsky, whom I was privileged to
know, was one of its keenest antagonists. Nor was it only anarchism that
he combated. Like Leskoff, he was an inveterate enemy of political
radicalism, and we university students bore him a grudge in consequence.
In his masterly delineation[273] of a group of "reformers," in
particular of Verkhovensky--whom psychic tendency, intellectual anarchy,
and political crime bring under the category of Bolshevists--he
foreshadowed the logical conclusion, and likewise the political
consummation, of the corrosive doctrines which in those days were
associated with the name of Bakunin. In the year 1905-06, when the
upshot of the conflict between Tsarism and the revolution was still
doubtful, Count Witte and I often admired the marvelous intuition of the
great novelist, whose gallery of portraits in the "Devils" seemed to
have become suddenly endowed with life, and to be conspiring, shooting,
and bomb-throwing in the streets of Moscow, Petersburg, Odessa, and
Tiflis. The seeds of social revolution sown by the novelists, essayists,
and professional guides of the nation were forced by the wars of 1904