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the liberation of the serfs was in the air, but thought,
which for a generation had been paralyzed, at once felt
itself free, unhampered, and unrestrained, and speech,
which so long had been the serf of the government, was
made free, or by a sort of inward necessity assumed
freedom. At that time, everything which had the ring of a
human voice was pure criticism, negation, revolt against
all ancient authority. With the wrath and enthusiasm
of youth, their inexperience ran away with them. The
young men showed their democratic proclivities by not
combing their long locks, not washing their hands, and
going about fantastically dressed; the young women
asserted their independence by wearing their hair short,
a plain dress, and using the blunt speech of the peasant.
Hatred of the old traditions of society, its hypocrisy and
its old customs, went so far that everything which had
hitherto been held sacred was despised on account of
the respect it enjoyed.
Yet this period was of short duration. Niekrásof (in the
“Cabinet of Reading”) makes a son answer his father’s
complaints in the following manner: “Nihilist is a
stupid word. But if you understand by it a man of liberal
ideas, who does not intend to live at the expense of others,
but works, seeks for the truth, is striving not to live a
useless life, looks every scoundrel straight in the eye,—nay,
sometimes gives him a thrashing,—in that sense I
do not see anything bad in it, and in that sense am I a
nihilist.”
At the present time, the discontented youth, in their
own language, call themselves Nyelegalni, — that is,
outlaws. To obtain a correct idea of them, you must, at
the outset, forget the old Bazárof (in “Fathers and
Sons”), who was at one time a true conception, but is
so no longer, as well as the young people in “Virgin
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