utenant Palma of the Guards, had designed a book of
laws, in which we are surprised to meet the following passage, quite
in the Anarchist vein: "The chief distinctive feature of man is that
he is a being endowed with a personality, _i. e._, with reason and
freedom, which is an end in itself, and ought not under any
circumstances to be regarded as a means or end for others. From the
idea of personality is derived the idea of right. I may do everything
that I please, because each of my actions is the result of my reason."
Petraschewski himself, in a satirical _Dictionary_ which he published
under the pseudonym of Kirilow, praised as one of the merits of early
Christianity the abolition of private property and so on. We can
easily recognise here the elements of Proudhon's and Stirner's
Anarchism.

In spite of the severe prohibitive system that came in force after
1848, the teachings of English and French Socialists penetrated into
Russia even in this period, and were disseminated by such eminent men
as Tschernichevsky, Dobrolinbow, Herzen, Ogarjow, and others, to wider
circles, and again we see that interest is chiefly taken in Proudhon's
doctrines. These found their way deep into the heart of the masses,
even to the peasants. It must not be forgotten that to the Russian
peasants, with their already existing collectivist village
communities, Proudhon's ideas were far more easy to understand than an
educated Frenchman or German found them. There is probably no country
in the world where the principles of "federative Socialism," as taught
by Proudhon and later by Bakunin, were better understood than in
Russia, and Bakunin even denied the necessity of a Socialist
propaganda among Russian peasants, because he said that they already
possessed a knowledge of its elements.

The broad, subterranean stream of Nihilism, which, swelling from these
small beginnings to a dread power and strength, has undermined both
feet of the Colossus of the Russian Empire, disappears here from our
view. We can only notice individual men who, separated from the main
body of the movement, made ready the path of revolution in their
native land while living as voluntary or involuntary exiles in Western
Europe. It may appear superfluous to remark upon the important _role_
played by Russians on the revolutionary committees of every country.
And in no revolutionary movement have they gained such a disastrous
influence or played such a leading part as in