Free The Red Flag: A History of Communism by David Priestland

he is of mixed Eastern and Western – Tartar and Russian – blood. He also has the dual virtues of both the intellectual and the man of the people. Though well-read in French and German literature, he is also a self-strengthener. At seventeen he resolves to transform his physique, following a diet involving raw beefsteak, and even becomes a boat-hauler on the Volga. He then goes to university, where he meets Kirsanov, but he continues to lead an austere life, eating the diet of the common people – apples rather than apricots (though he does allow himself oranges in St Petersburg). He abstains from drink, and even subjects himself to self-inflicted tortures, lying on a bed of nails so that he can know what he is capable of. His whole life is dedicated to the service of the people. He reads only books that will be useful, spurning frivolous works such as Macaulay’s
History of England
. His utilitarianism also extends to personal relations. He only speaks to people who have authority with others, bidding a dismissive ‘Excuse me, I have no time’ to anyone less weighty. 17
    Rakhmetov deploys these single-minded qualities to foment revolution in Russia, and understandably many readers saw
What is to be Done?
as an appeal to emulate him. ‘Great is the mass of good and honest men, but Rakhmetovs are rare,’ the novel declares. ‘They are few in number, but they put others in a position to breathe, who without them would have been suffocated.’ 18 Chernyshevskii seemed to have been calling for an elite organization of modern, rational people, who also had an affinity with the common folk. They alone could overthrow the old weak and unequal order.
    Chernyshevskii’s characters were viciously satirized in Dostoyevsky’s
Notes from the Underground
, published in 1864. His ‘Underground Man’ emulates Lopukhov’s assertion of dignity by refusing to give way to an officer in the street. But after days of planning the confrontation, his attempts end in comic failure; when he finally does brush against the baffled officer, it is not clear that the arrogant grandee has even noticed his revolutionary gesture. 19
    Dostoyevsky’s cynical response, however, was unusual, at least among the young, and Chernyshevskii’s work became a holy book for generations of radical Russian students. Alexander II’s reforms liberalized and expanded the universities, opening the way for non-nobles to become students. The government hoped that they would make their way up the ranks of the imperial bureaucracy and bring new talent to government. In practice a new radical student culture emerged, intolerant of the tsarist regime’s obscurantism, committed to science, and determined to liberate the people. Radicalism in the 1860s and 1870s became a lifestyle, much as it did in Western universities in the 1960s and 1970s. Students challenged authority by using direct, disrespectful speech, and wearing shabby, ‘poor’ clothes. One remembered that the medical students were the most political group, and expressed their opinions openly: ‘Blue glasses, long hair, red shirts not tucked in but belted with sashes – these were surely medical students.’ Radical women students, meanwhile, wore puritanical black dresses and short cropped hair. This counter-uniform helped to forge a moral community, a group of ‘apostles of knowledge’, committed to using their privileged education to help the benighted people. 20
    However, sharp disagreements over how best to bring socialism emerged amongst the students. One remembered the two views competing for the students’ loyalty:
    It is a debt of honour before the people we want to serve that we receive a solid, scientific, well-rounded, and serious education; only then can we assume with a clear conscience the spiritual leadership of the revolution.
    ‘Continue to study!’ others jeered. [That means] to remove yourself from the revolutionary cause… It is not in the university or from books but in