Petr Tkachev short biography. Pyotr Nikitich Tkachev: biography, literary activity, pseudonyms, political views

But he was soon involved in one of the political cases (the so-called “Ballod case”; for participating in student riots) and spent several months in the (Kronstadt fortress?), First in the form of arrest of a person under investigation, then by sentence. When the university was reopened, Tkachev, without entering the number of students, passed the exam for a degree (1868).

Tkachev started writing very early. His first article ("On the trial for crimes against the laws of the press") was published in No. 6 of the magazine for 1862. Following this, in Vremya and Epoch, in 1862-64, several more articles by Tkachev were published on various issues related to judicial reform. In 1863 and 1864, Tkachev also wrote in P. D. Boborykin’s Library for Reading; Tkachev's first "statistical studies" (crime and punishment, poverty and charity) were placed here. At the end of 1865, Tkachev made friends with G. E. Blagosvetlov and began to write in the Russian Word, and then in the Delo that replaced it. For revolutionary propaganda among students, he was imprisoned and was constantly under police supervision. During the student unrest in St. Petersburg in 1868-69, together with S. G. Nechaev, he led a radical minority. In the spring of 1869 he was again arrested and in July 1871 sentenced by the St. Petersburg Judicial Chamber to 1 year and 4 months in prison. After serving his sentence, Tkachev was expelled to his homeland, from where he soon emigrated abroad.

Life in exile

Tkachev's journalism, interrupted by his arrest, resumed in 1872. He again wrote in the "Delo", but not under his own name, but under various pseudonyms ( P. Nikitin, P. N. Nionov, P. N. Lenten, P. Gr-li, P. Gracioli, All the same). In exile, he collaborated in the Vperyod! magazine, joined a group of Polish-Russian emigrants, after a break with P. L. Lavrov, he began publishing the Nabat magazine (1875-81), together with K. M. Tursky was one of the founders of " Society for the People's Liberation (1877), whose activity in Russia was insignificant. In the mid 1870s. became close with the French, collaborated in their newspaper "Ni dieu, ni maitre" ("Neither God nor Master"). Tkachev developed his political views in several pamphlets published by him abroad, and in a journal published under his editorship in Geneva in 1875-76. Tkachev sharply disagreed with the currents then dominant in emigre literature, the main spokesmen of which were and. He was a representative of the so-called "Jacobin" tendencies, opposite both Bakunin's anarchism and the direction of Lavrov's "Forward!". In the last years of his life, Tkachev wrote little. At the end of 1882, he fell seriously ill and spent the last years in a psychiatric hospital. He died in 1885 in Paris, aged 41.

Literary activity

Tkachev was a very prominent figure in the group of writers of the extreme left wing of Russian journalism. He possessed an undoubted and uncommon literary talent; His articles are written in a lively, sometimes fascinating way. Clarity and strict consistency of thought, turning into a certain straightforwardness, make Tkachev's articles especially valuable for getting acquainted with the mental currents of that period of Russian social life, to which the heyday of his literary activity belongs. Tkachev sometimes did not finish his conclusions only for censorship reasons. Within the limits allowed by external conditions, he put all the dots over and, no matter how paradoxical the positions he defended at times may seem, Tkachev was brought up on the ideas of the “sixties” and remained faithful to them until the end of his life. He differed from his other colleagues in the Russian Word and Delo in that he never took a great interest in natural science; his thought always revolved in the sphere of public questions. He wrote extensively on population statistics and economic statistics. The digital material that he had was very poor, but Tkachev knew how to use it. Back in the 1870s, he noticed that relationship between growth and the size of the land allotment, which was subsequently firmly substantiated (in his introduction to the "Statistics of Land Property in Russia"). The largest part of Tkachev's articles belongs to the field of literary criticism; in addition, for several years he led the department of New Books in the Delo (and earlier the Bibliographic Leaflet in the Russian Word). Tkachev's critical and bibliographic articles bear a purely character; it is an ardent preaching of well-known social ideals, a call to work for the realization of these ideals. According to his sociological views, Tkachev was an extreme and consistent "economic materialist." Almost for the first time in Russian journalism, a name appears in his articles. Back in 1865, in Russkoye Slovo (Bibliographic Sheet, No. 12), Tkachev wrote: “All legal and political phenomena are nothing more than direct legal consequences of the phenomena of economic life; this legal and political life is, so to speak, a mirror in which the economic life of the people is reflected ... Back in 1859, the famous German exile Karl Marx formulated this view in the most precise and definite way. To practical activity, in the name of the ideal of "social equality" ["At present, all people are equal, but not all are equal, that is, not everyone is gifted with the same opportunity to bring their interests into balance - hence the struggle and anarchy ... Put everyone in the same conditions with respect to to development and material security, and you will give everyone real, factual equality of rights, and not the imaginary, fictitious one invented by scholastic lawyers with the deliberate goal of fooling the ignorant and deceiving the simpletons "(Russian word. - 1865. - No. XI, II section. - 36-37 p.).], Tkachev called "the people of the future." It was not economic. The achievement of a social ideal, or at least a radical change for the better in the economic system of society, should have been, according to his views, the task of conscious social activity. "People of the future" in Tkachev's constructions occupied the same place as "thinking realists" in. Before the idea of ​​the common good, which should serve as the guiding principle of the behavior of people of the future, all the provisions of abstract morality and justice, all the requirements of the code of morality adopted by the bourgeois crowd, recede into the background. “Moral rules are established for the benefit of the hostel, and therefore observance of them is obligatory for everyone. But the moral rule, like everything in life, has a relative character, and its importance is determined by the importance of the interest for which it was created ... Not all moral rules are equal, and moreover, “not only different rules can be different in their importance, but even the importance of the same rule, in different cases of its application, can be modified indefinitely. When moral rules of unequal importance and social utility collide, one should not hesitate to give preference to the more important over the less important. This choice must be left to everyone; each person should be recognized "the right to treat the precepts of the moral law, in each particular case of its application, not dogmatically but critically"; otherwise, “our morality will be no different from the morality of the Pharisees who rebelled against the Teacher because on the Sabbath day he was engaged in healing the sick and instructing the people” (People of the future and heroes of the bourgeoisie // Delo. - 1868. - No. 3.).

Views of P. N. Tkachev

Tkachev's views were formed under the influence of the democratic and socialist ideology of the 50-60s of the XIX century. Tkachev rejected the idea of ​​the "originality" of the Russian social system and argued that the post-reform development of the country was taking place in the direction of capitalism. He believed that the only way to prevent the victory of capitalism was to replace the bourgeois-economic principle with a socialist one. Like all Narodniks, Tkachev linked the hope for a socialist future in Russia with the peasantry, communist "by instinct, by tradition", imbued with "the principles of communal ownership." But, unlike other Narodniks, Tkachev believed that the peasantry, due to its passivity and obscurity, was unable to make a social revolution on its own, and the community could become a “cell of socialism” only after the existing state and social system was destroyed. In contrast to the apoliticalism that prevailed in the revolutionary movement, Tkachev developed the idea of ​​a political revolution as the first step towards a social revolution. Following P. G. Zaichnevsky, he believed that the creation of a secret centralized and conspiratorial revolutionary organization is the most important guarantee of the success of a political revolution. The revolution, according to Tkachev, was reduced to the seizure of power and the establishment of the dictatorship of the "revolutionary minority", opening the way for "revolutionary-organizing activity", which, unlike "revolutionary-destructive", is carried out exclusively by persuasion. The preaching of political struggle, the demand for the organization of revolutionary forces, the recognition of the need for a revolutionary dictatorship distinguished Tkachev's concept from the ideas of M. A. Bakunin and P. L. Lavrov.

Tkachev called his philosophical views "realism", meaning by this "... a strictly real, reasonably scientific, and therefore very and highly human worldview" (Selected works on socio-political topics. T. 4. - M., 1933. - S. 27). Speaking as an opponent of idealism, Tkachev identified it epistemologically with "metaphysics", and socially - with an ideological apology for the existing system. Tkachev made the value of any theory dependent on its attitude to social issues. Under the influence of the works and partly of K. Marx, Tkachev assimilated certain elements of the materialist understanding of history, recognized the "economic factor" as the most important lever of social development, and considered the historical process from the point of view of the struggle of the economic interests of individual classes. Guided by this principle, Tkachev criticized the subjective method in the sociology of P. L. Lavrov and their theories of social progress. However, on the question of the role of the individual in history, Tkachev tended to be subjectivist. The qualitative feature of historical reality, according to Tkachev, is that it does not exist outside and apart from human activity. The individual appears in history as an active creative force, and since the limits of the possible in history are mobile, then individuals, the “active minority”, can and must contribute “... to the process of development of social life, a lot of things that not only are not determined, but sometimes even strongly contradict both previous historical prerequisites, and given social conditions ... ”(Selected essays on socio-political topics. T. 3. - M., 1933. - P. 193). Guided by this provision, Tkachev created his own scheme of the historical process, according to which the source of progress is the will of the "active minority". This concept became the philosophical justification for Tkachev's theory of revolution.

In the field of literary criticism, Tkachev was a follower of N. G. Chernyshevsky and D. I. Pisarev. Continuing the development of the theory of "real criticism", Tkachev demanded from a work of art a high ideological content and social significance. Tkachev often ignored the aesthetic merits of a work of art, mistakenly assessed a number of modern literary works, accused I. S. Turgenev of distorting the picture of people's life, rejected the satire of M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin, called L. N. Tolstoy "salon writer".

The populist revolutionaries of the late 1860s and early 1870s, who denied a political revolution in the name of a social one, rejected Tkachev's doctrine. Only at the end of the 1870s did the logic of the historical process lead the Narodnaya Volya to direct political action against the autocracy.

Bibliography

Compositions

• Tkachev, P. N. Works: in 2 volumes - M .: Thought, 1975-76. - 2 t.
• Tkachev, P. N. Selected works: in 6 volumes - M., 1932-37. - 6 t.
• Tkachev, P. N. Selected literary-critical articles. - M.; L., 1928.
• Tkachev, P. N. Storehouses of wisdom of Russian philosophers / Entry. article, compilation, preparation of the text and notes by B. M. Shakhmatov. - M., Pravda, 1990. - (From the history of Russian philosophical thought. Appendix to the journal "Questions of Philosophy").

Literature about P. N. Tkachev

• Plekhanov, G. V. Our disagreements // Selected Philosophical Works. T. 1. - M., 1956.
• Kozmin, B. P. P. N. Tkachev and the revolutionary movement of the 1860s. - M., 1922.
• Kozmin, B. P. From the history of revolutionary thought in Russia. - M., 1961.
• Kozmin, B. P. Literature and history. - M., 1969.
• Reuel, A. L. Russian economic thought of the 60-70s. 19th century and Marxism. - M., 1956.
• Shakhmatov, B. M. P. N. Tkachev. Sketches for a creative portrait. - M.: Thought, 1981 (1980?).
• Shakhmatov, B. M. Russian Gracchus - French "Nabat" (New about P. N. Tkachev) // Torch. 1989. - M., 1989.
• Shakhmatov, B. M. Petr Nikitich Tkachev // Tkachev, P. N. Storehouses of wisdom of Russian philosophers / Entry. article, compilation, preparation of the text and notes by B. M. Shakhmatov. - M.: Pravda, 1990. - (From the history of Russian philosophical thought. Appendix to the journal "Questions of Philosophy").
• Sedov, M. G. Some problems of the history of Blanquism in Russia. [Revolutionary doctrine of P. N. Tkachev] // Questions of history. - 1971. - No. 10.
• Rudnitskaya, E. L. Russian Blanquism. Petr Tkachev. - M., 1992.
• P. N. Tkachev // History of Russian literature of the XIX century. Bibliographic index. - M.; L., 1962. - S. 675-76.
• P. N. Tkachev // Populism in the works of Soviet researchers for 1953-70. Literature index. - M., 1971. - S. 39-41.
• P. N. Tkachev // History of Russian Philosophy. Index of literature published in the USSR in Russian for 1917-1967. Part 3. - M., 1975. - S. 732-35.

Links

Writer on economic and political issues and literary critic, editor of the foreign magazine "Nabat", was born in 1844 in the Pskov province, in a poor landowner's family. He received his secondary education at the 2nd St. Petersburg Gymnasium, after which he entered in 1861 the law faculty of St. Petersburg University. However, in the same year he was arrested in connection with unrest among students and imprisoned in the Kronstadt fortress; this arrest resulted in his dismissal from the university. At the end of the investigation, he was administratively exiled to the Pskov province, to his mother's estate on bail. Here T. prepared for the state exams at the Faculty of Law, which he passed at the university upon his return to St. Petersburg, receiving the title of candidate of law. On November 17, 1862, he was arrested a second time in connection with the case of the student Olshevsky; he was imprisoned in the Peter and Paul Fortress, but was soon released. At the end of 1864, the Senate found unproven the accusation of T. "of complicity with the student Olshevsky in his criminal plans", but nevertheless sentenced T. to imprisonment in a fortress for 3 months "for having an outrageous appeal entitled "What the people need" and for failure to inform about who should. Both the first and second arrests of T. were the result not of his direct participation in the revolutionary movement of the early 60s, but of personal acquaintance with some revolutionaries. He stood aside from the underground movement of that time, devoting his T. began to write very early, already in 1862, his article "On the trial for crimes against the laws of the press" was placed in No. 6 of the Vremya magazine. "In the "Epoch" his articles were placed on various issues related to judicial reform. At the same time, he also collaborated in the "Library for Reading", published by P. B. Boborykin. Initially, T. wrote on legal issues. These are his articles: "Prison and various systems of imprisonment" ("Epoch", 1864, No. 3; regarding the articles by A. Yu. various systems of imprisonment" ("Library for Reading", 1864, no. 2). But then he began to devote his articles to the development of economic issues. So, in the "Library for Reading" he published for 1864: "Russian City" (No. 4-5) and "Statistical Studies. Poverty and Charity, Crime and Punishment" (Nos. 10 and 12). When the "Library for Reading" ceased to exist, T. began to collaborate in the "Russian Word" by GE Blagosvetlov and in the magazine "Delo" that replaced it. His literary activity was not limited to journal articles alone; under his editorship, the scientific and literary collection "Ray" (St. Petersburg, 1866) was published and translations of the following books were made: "Judicial Mistakes" with the subtitle "Dedicated to Jurors" (St. Petersburg, 1867); "The labor question in its modern meaning and the means to resolve it" op. E. Becher (St. Petersburg 1869-1871); "History of the Peasants' War in Germany" Op. V. Zimmerman (St. Petersburg 1865-1868; 2nd ed. St. Petersburg 1872). On March 26, 1869, T. was arrested for the third time on charges of participating in the Nechaev conspiracy; he was credited with compiling the well-known proclamation "To Society", issued by the Nechaev organization. In addition, as stated in the indictment, "regardless of his participation in the conspiracy, he was brought to trial on two more charges: 1) in compiling a preface and notes of illegal content to a translation of Ernst Becher's book published under his editorship under the title "Working Question"; 2) in the publication of an article of criminal content under the title "Psychological Studies" in the collection "Luch" published by him. It remains unclear how close T.'s participation was in Nechaev's organization, but in any case he did not stand aloof from it, and the proclamation "Toward Society" was indeed compiled by him. After a two-year preliminary detention, the Senate sentenced him to 2 years in a fortress. Upon his release, in early 1873, he was administratively exiled to Velikie Luki, Pskov province. T. again resumed his journal activities, collaborating in the "Case" , but not under his last name, but under pseudonyms: P. N. Nionov, P. N. Postny, P. Nikitin, P. Gracioli, P. Gr-li, All the same. in Russia, T. had a remarkable literary talent; his articles are written in a lively and engaging manner and are distinguished by strict consistency. If in some places he did not speak to the end, this is due to the censorship conditions of the time. In his articles, T. pursued the idea that all aspects of social life, law, morality, all the achievements of culture and the dark sides of human society are determined by the economic life of society; he argued that a certain, strict pattern dominates the historical process of development, and denied the "harmony of interests" preached by the classical school of economists, arguing that the exploitation of the economically weak by the strong dominates in the sphere of the economic life of society. “This is what this harmony consists of,” he says in his review of Adam Smith’s book “On the Wealth of Nations”: “The self-interest of some is curbed by hunger, the self-interest of others is curbed by the limit of the minimum of human needs” (“Case”, 1868, No. 3, part II , page 77). T. is considered a supporter and the first preacher of the teachings of Karl Marx, but in his presentation this doctrine is simplified. T. worked hard on economic and population statistics and skillfully handled digital material, despite its extreme scarcity at that time. But most of his articles are devoted to literary criticism. He did not have a definitely developed literary views: on the one hand, he defended realism in art in the Pisarevian sense, and on the other, he reproached I. S. Turgenev for not being an esthetician enough. In his critical articles, he paid more attention to the analysis of the social phenomena affected by the work being analyzed than to the analysis of its literary merit. According to the censorship conditions of the time, it was almost only possible to talk about issues of a public nature in articles , externally dedicated to the criticism of literary phenomena; both Chernyshevsky and Dobrolyubov resorted to this form, and T. also used it. In his articles, he fought petty-bourgeoisness and conservatism, drew paths to a better future for mankind. He called the heralds in literature and the adherents in practice of such ideals "the people of the future." "For the people of the future," he says, "the realization of well-known good ideas, worked out by the fatal necessity of our civilization, is the only goal and enjoyment in life." He treated his opponents sharply and intolerantly: his polemics were always bloody and passionate.

Not being able to fully develop his views in the legal press, T. at the end of 1873, with the assistance of M. I. Kuprianov and others, emigrated abroad and settled in Geneva. Here he first collaborated in the Vperyod magazine, but soon ceased cooperation due to differences in views with the editor of the magazine P. Lavrov. His exit from the magazine was marked by a pamphlet written by him against P. Lavrov; in it he attacked the latter with no less harshness and denial, with which he had previously treated writers in Russkoe Slovo who did not agree with the direction of this journal. The sharpness of the pamphlet made a bad impression on readers of the foreign press and immediately put T. in an isolated position. In November 1875, he founded his own organ "Nabat", in collaboration with Tursky, Lakier, Grigoriev and Molchanov. According to his views, which were reflected in Nabat, T. occupied a separate position among the literary exponents of various trends in the Russian revolutionary world of the 70s. His views are rather accurately characterized by the nickname "Russian Jacobin" given to him; he was a supporter of the seizure of state power and then decreeing certain points of the program. Therefore, he also disagreed with his left-wing neighbors, for example. Bakunin, who, like an anarchist, denied any state and any power, and with the right, like Lavrov, who was in favor of a moderate course of action. Later, T. drew a people's duma, which gradually transforms the modern social system into a socialist one by modifying the peasant community into a commune (at which point he approached the populists), introducing institutions that eliminate the need for private mediation in exchange, the gradual socialization of the instruments of production, through public education in the spirit of the slogans of the French Revolution, the destruction of parental authority, the development of communal self-government and the derogation of the functions of the central government. T. had few supporters in the revolutionary environment. The successes of terror in Russia and the sharp turn towards political struggle towards the end of the 70s created somewhat more favorable ground for the propaganda of Nabat's ideas. In his articles of this time, T. recognized terror as a method of struggle, but his articles were so bloodthirsty, simplified to the point of vulgarity, that the terrorists themselves protested against the direction of the Nabat. In the autumn of 1880, Mr.. T. made an attempt to transfer the publication of Nabat to St. Petersburg, but immediately upon the arrival of the printing house, she was arrested. The publication of "Nabat", the existence of which was already supported with difficulty by its few supporters, ceased. T. in the same year went to Paris; in the revolutionary world he no longer enjoyed any influence. In Paris, in 1882, he became mentally ill and spent the rest of his life in the Parisian asylum for the mentally ill St. Anne. Here T. and died December 23, 1885.

During his stay abroad T. continued to cooperate in the "Case". He placed the following articles in this journal: for 1867 - "The productive forces of Russia. Statistical essays" (Nos. 2, 3 and 4); "New Books" (Nos. 7, 8, 9, 11 and 12); "German Idealists and Philistines" (in reference to Scherr's book "Deutsche Cultur und Sittegeschichte", nos. 10, 11, 12); for 1868: "People of the Future and Heroes of Philistinism" (on the novels of Shpilhagen, George Elliot, George Sand, Andre Leo; Nos. 4 and 5); "Rising Forces" (about the novels by V. A. Sleptsov, Marko-Vovchka, M. A. Avdeev; Nos. 9 and 10); "Broken Illusions" (about Reshetnikov's novels; Nos. 11 and 12); for 1872: "Unthinking thoughts" (about the writings of N. Uspensky; No. 1); "Untinted Antiquity" (about N. Stanitsky's novel "Three Countries of the World"; Nos. 11 and 12); "Unfinished People" (about Kushchevsky's novel "Nikolai Negorev"; No. 2-3); "Innocent Notes" (about the story "Spring Waters" by I. S. Turgenev; No. 1); "Statistical Notes on the Theory of Progress" (No. 3); "Saved and Saving" (in reference to Boborykin's novel "Solid Virtues"; No. 10); for 1873 "Statistical Essays on Russia" (Nos. l, 4, 5, 7 and 10); "Tendentious novel" (on the collected works of A. Mikhailov-Scheler; Nos. 2, 6 and 7); "Free People" (about "Demons" by F. M. Dostoevsky; Nos. 3 and 4); "Prison and Its Principles" (Nos. 6 and 8); for 1874: "Tashkent knights" (on the novels and stories of N. Karazin; no. eleven); for 1875: "Scientific Chronicle" (No. 1); "Empirical Fiction Writers and Metaphysical Fiction Writers" (about the writings of Kushchevsky, Gleb Uspensky, Boborykin, S. Smirnova; Nos. 3, 5 and 7); "The Role of Thought in History" (in connection with P. Mirtov's "Experience in the History of Thought", Nos. 9, 12); for 1876: "About the soil workers of the newest formation" (about the newspapers "Molva" and "Nedelya"; No. 2); "Literary Potpourri" (about the novels "Two Worlds" by Aleeva, "In the Wilderness" by Marko-Vovchka, "Teenager" by F. M. Dostoevsky and "Strength of Character" by S. Smirnova; Nos. 4, 5 and 6); "French Society at the End of the 18th Century" (on Taine's book; nos. 3, 5, 7); "Will a small loan help us?" (No. 12); for 1877: "The Idealist of Philistinism" (in connection with the writings of Avdeev; No. 1); "Balanced Souls" (in reference to Turgenev's novel "Nov"; Nos. 2, 3, 4); "On the Benefits of Philosophy" (on the writings of A. A. Kozlov and V. V. Lesevich; No. 5); "Edgard Quinet. Critical and biographical essay" (No. 6-7); for 1878: "Harmless satire" (about the book of Shchedrin-Saltykov "In the environment of moderation and accuracy"; No. 1); "Salon Art" (about the novel by Count L. N. Tolstoy "Anna Karenina"; Nos. 2, 4); "Minehouses of Wisdom of Russian Philosophers" (on the subject of "Letters on Scientific Philosophy" by VV Lesevich; Nos. 10 and 11); "Literary Trifles" (about the views of Suvorin, Dostoevsky and Eliseev on Nekrasov; No. 6); for 1879: "A Man in the Salons of Modern Fiction" (on the writings of Uspensky, Zlatovratsky, Zasodimsky and A. Potekhin; Nos. 3, 6, 7, 8 and 9); "Optimism in Science, Dedicated to the Free Economic Society" (No. 6); "The Only Russian Sociologist" (on de Roberti's "Sociology"; No. 12); for 1880: The Utilitarian Principle in Moral Philosophy (No. 1); "Rotten Roots" (about the works of V. Krestovsky - a pseudonym; Nos. 2, 3, 7, 8). Already from the titles of these critical literary articles of T. of the foreign period of his life, it is clear that not a single writer satisfied him. And to Tolstoy, and to Turgenev, and to the populists, and even to Shchedrin, he was sharply negative. His literary views of this period were dominated by his political, irreconcilable and extremely extreme views. In literature, he was looking for political tendencies and, of course, could not find them, but the artistry of the work, the truthfulness of everyday life, the personal experiences of the characters became indifferent to him. For several years, T. led the Bibliographic Sheet in the Russian Word and the New Books section in the Delo, usually signing only the initials P. T. Many reviews, especially about books of economic content, reach the size of a journal article. and sometimes more clearly reflect the economic views of T. than his articles.

A. Tun, "History of revolutionary movements in Russia", ed. "Libraries for All", St. Petersburg. 1906, pp. 113, 121-125, 166-107, 236-237, 381, 25 and 55. - D. D. Yazykov, "Review of the life and work of the late Russian writers and writers", Moscow 1907, ed. 2nd, no. 10, p. 96. - B. Bazilevsky (V. Bogucharsky), "State crimes in Russia in the 19th century", St. Petersburg. 1906, vol. I, pp. 159-161, 172-173, 176, 180-181, 182, 187, 188. - His own, "Revolutionary Journalism of the 70s in Russia", St. Petersburg. 1906. - His own, "Materials for the history of the revolutionary movement in Russia", St. Petersburg. 1906, - S. Svatikov, "Social movement in Russia, in 1790-1895", Rostov-on-D. 1905, part II, pp. 80-81. - S. A. Vengerov, "Essays on the history of Russian literature", St. Petersburg. 1907, ed. 2nd, p. 107. - M. Lemke, "To the biography of P. N. Tkachev", "Past", 1907, No. 8, p. 151. - "Materials for the biography of P. N. Tkachev", ibid. , p. 156. - Zemfir-Rally-Arbore, "S. T. Nechaev", ibid., 1906, No. 7, pp. 138, 142. - P. P. Suvorov, "Notes on the Past", "Russian Review" ", 1893, book. 9, pp. 144-145 et seq. edition, Moscow 1899, part I, p. 98. · - V. S. Kartsov and M. N. Mazaev, "Experience of the dictionary of pseudonyms of Russian writers", St. Petersburg. 1891, pp. 91 and 33. - "Government Bulletin", 1871, Nos. 155-206, - "Judicial Bulletin", 1870, No. 21. - "The Illustrated World", 1886, No. 2. - "New Time", 1885, No. 3535. - "The Past", 1907, No. 7, pp. 128-129. - V. I. Mezhov, "History of Russian and general literature", St. Petersburg. 1872, p. 261, no. 5811, p. 263, no. 5858; pp. 557, no. 14543.

(Polovtsov)

Tkachev, Petr Nikitich

Writer. Genus. in 1844 in the Pskov province., In a poor landowner's family. He entered the Faculty of Law of St. Petersburg. university, but soon ended up in the Kronstadt fortress for participating in student riots, where he spent several months. When the university was reopened, T., not entering the number of students, passed the exam for a degree. Attracted to one of the political cases (the so-called "Ballod case"), T. spent several months in the Peter and Paul Fortress, first in the form of arrest of a person under investigation, then by the verdict of the Senate. T. began to write very early. His first article ("On the trial for crimes against the laws of the press") was published in No. 6 of the journal "Vremya" for 1862. a few more articles by T. on various issues related to judicial reform. In 1863 and 1864, T. also wrote in P. D. Boborykin’s Library for Reading; here were placed, among other things, the first "statistical studies" T. (crime and punishment, poverty and charity). At the end of 1865, Mr.. T. made friends with G. E. Blagosvetlov and began to write in the "Russian Word", and then in the "Deed" that replaced it. In the spring of 1869 he was again arrested and in July 1871 sentenced in St. Petersburg. by a judicial chamber to 1 year and 4 months in prison (according to the so-called "Nechaevsky case"). After serving his sentence, T. was exiled to Velikiye Luki, from where he soon emigrated abroad. T.’s journalism, interrupted by his arrest, resumed in 1872. He again wrote in Del, but not under his last name, but under various pseudonyms (P. Nikitin, P. N. Nionov, P. N. Postny, P. Gr- Li, P. Gracioli, All the same). T. was a very prominent figure in the group of writers of the extreme left wing of Russian journalism. He possessed an undoubted and uncommon literary talent; His articles are written in a lively, sometimes fascinating way. Clarity and strict consistency of thought, turning into a certain straightforwardness, make T.'s articles especially valuable for getting acquainted with the mental currents of that period of Russian social life, to which the heyday of his literary activity belongs. T. sometimes did not finish his conclusions only for censorship reasons. Within the limits that were allowed by external conditions, he put all the dots over and, no matter how paradoxical the positions he defended at times may seem, T. was brought up on the ideas of the "sixties" and remained faithful to them until the end of his life. He differed from his other colleagues in the "Russian Word" and "Delo" in that he was never fond of natural science; his thought always revolved in the sphere of public questions. He wrote extensively on population statistics and economic statistics. The digital material that he had was very poor, but T. knew how to use it. Back in the 70s. he noticed the relationship between the growth of the peasant population and the size of the land allotment, which was subsequently firmly substantiated by P. P. Semenov (in his introduction to "Statistics of land ownership in Russia"). Most of T.'s articles belong to the field of literary criticism; in addition, for several years he led the department of "New Books" in the "Delo" (and earlier the "Bibliographic Sheet" in the "Russian Word"). T.'s critical and bibliographic articles are purely journalistic in nature; it is an ardent preaching of well-known social ideals, a call to work for the realization of these ideals. According to his sociological views T. was an extreme and consistent "economic materialist". Almost for the first time in Russian journalism, the name of Marx appears in his articles. As early as 1865, in Russkoye Slovo (Bibliograph. Sheet, No. 12), T. wrote: “All legal and political phenomena are nothing more than direct legal consequences of the phenomena of economic life; this legal and political life is, so to speak, , a mirror that reflects the economic life of the people ... Back in 1859, the famous German exile Karl Marx formulated this view in the most accurate and definite way. To practical activity, in the name of the ideal of "social equality" ["At present, all people equal, But not all are tantamount to, i.e. not everyone is gifted with the same opportunity to bring their interests into balance - hence the struggle and anarchy ... Put everyone in the same conditions in relation to development and material support, and you will give everyone valid actual equality, and not an imaginary, fictitious one, which was invented by scholastic lawyers with the deliberate goal of fooling the ignorant and deceiving the simpletons "(" Russian Word ", 1865, No. XI, II otd., 36-7).], T. called "the people of the future ". He was not an economic fatalist. Achieving a social ideal, or at least a radical change for a better economic system of society, should have been, according to his views, the task of conscious social activity. "People of the future" in the constructions of T. occupied the same place, as "thinking realists" in Pisarev. Before the idea of ​​the common good, which should serve as the guiding principle of the behavior of people of the future, all the provisions of abstract morality and justice, all the requirements of the code of morality adopted by the bourgeois crowd, recede into the background. and therefore observance of them is obligatory for everyone. But the moral rule, like everything in life, has a relative character, and its importance is determined by the importance of the interest for which it was created ... Not all moral rules are equal, "and, moreover," not only different rules can be different in their importance , but even the importance of the same rule, in different cases of its application, can change to infinity. "When moral rules of unequal importance and social utility collide, one should not hesitate to give preference to the more important over the less important. This choice should be given to everyone; for each person must be recognized "the right to relate to the prescriptions of the moral law, in each particular case of its application, not dogmatically A critical" ; otherwise, "our morality will not differ in any way from the morality of the Pharisees who rebelled against the Teacher because on the Sabbath day he was engaged in healing the sick and instructing the people" ("Delo", 1868, No. 3, "People of the Future and Heroes of Philistinism"). T. developed his political views in several brochures published by him abroad, and in the Nabat magazine, published under his editorship in Geneva in 1875-76. T. sharply diverged from the then dominant currents in emigre literature, the main spokesmen of which were P. L. Lavrov and M. A. Bakunin. He was the representative of the so-called. "Jacobin" tendencies, opposite both to Bakunin's anarchism and to the direction of Lavrovsky's "Forward". In the last years of his life T. wrote little. In 1883 he became mentally ill and died in 1885 in Paris, aged 41. Articles T., more characterizing his literary physiognomy: "Case", 1867 - "The productive forces of Russia. Statistical essays" (1867, Nos. 2, 3, 4); "New Books" (Nos. 7, 8, 9, 11, 12); "German Idealists and Philistines" (in reference to Scherr's "Deutsche Cultur und Sittengeschichte", Nos. 10, 11, 12). 1868 - "People of the Future and Heroes of Philistinism" (Nos. 4 and 5); "Rising Forces" (about the novels by V. A. Sleptsov, Marko Vovchka, M. V. Avdeev - Nos. 9 and 10); "Broken Illusions" (about Reshetnikov's novels - Nos. 11, 12). 1869 - "Regarding Daul's book "Women's Labor" and my article" The Women's Question" (No. 2). 1872 - "Unthinking Thoughts" (about the writings of N. Uspensky, No. 1); "Unfinished People" (about Kushchevsky's novel "Nikolai Negorev", Nos. 2-3); "Statistical Notes on the Theory of Progress" (No. 3); "The Saved and the Rescued" (on Boborykin's novel: Solid Virtues, No. 10); "Unpainted Antiquity" (about the novel " Three countries of the world" by Nekrasov and Stanitsky and about Turgenev's stories, Nos. 11-12). 1873 - "Statistical Essays on Russia" (Nos. 4, 5, 7, 10); "Tendentious Romance" [on the subject of "Collected Works" A Mikhailov (Scheller), Nos. 2, 6, 7]; "Sick people" (about "Demons" by F. M. Dostoevsky, Nos. 3, 4); "Prison and its principles" (Nos. 6, 8) 1875 - "Fictionists-empiricists and fiction writers-metaphysics" (about the work of Kushchevsky, Gl. Uspensky, Boborykin, S. Smirnova, Nos. 3, 5, 7); "The role of thought in history" (about the "Experience in the history of thought "P. Mirtova, Nos. 9, 12). 1876 - "Literary potpourri" (about the novels: "Two Worlds" by Aleeva, "In the Wilderness" by M. Vovchka, "Teenager" by Dostoevsky and "Strength of Character" by S. I. Smirnova , Nos. 4, 5, 6); "French Society at the End of the 18th Century" (regarding Tan's book, nos. 3, 5, 7); "Will a small loan help us" (No. 12). 1877 - "The Idealist of Philistinism" (in connection with the work of Avdeev, No. 1); "Balanced Souls" (in reference to Turgenev's novel "Nov", No. 2-4); "On the Usefulness of Philosophy" (in connection with the work of A. A. Kozlov and V. V. Lesevich, No. 5); "Edgar Quinet, critical biographical essay" (Nos. 6-7). 1878 - "Harmless satire" (about Prince Shchedrin: "In the environment of confidence and accuracy", No. 1); "Salon Art" (about "Anna Karenina" by Tolstoy, No. 2 and 4); "The Treasury of Wisdom of Russian Philosophers" (on the subject of "Letters on Scientific Philosophy" by VV Lesevich, Nos. 10, 11). 1879 - "A Man in the Salons of Modern Fiction" [on the essays. Ivanov (Uspensky), Zlatovratsky, Vologdin (Zasodimsky) and A. Potekhin, No. 3, 6, 7, 8, 9]; "Optimism in Science. Dedicated to Voln. Economic Society" (No. 6); "The Only Russian Sociologist" (on De Roberti's "Sociology", No. 12). 1880 - "The utilitarian principle in moral philosophy" (No. 1); "Rotten Roots" (about the composition of V. Krestovsky pseudonym., Nos. 2, 3, 7, 8).

N. F. Annensky.

(Brockhaus)

Tkachev, Petr Nikitich

employee of the "Library for Reading", "Russian Word" and "Delo", emigrant; R. 184? g., † on the 20th of December 1885, in Paris.

(Polovtsov)

Tkachev, Petr Nikitich

Publicist and literary critic. He came from a small noble family. In 1861 he entered St. Petersburg University; soon took part in the student movement, was arrested and, due to the closure of the university by the government, was forced to stop studying in it. Then T. took an active part in revolutionary circles, in connection? than in 1862 he was arrested and sentenced to three months in prison. In the same year, T.'s literary activity began; he collaborated in the "Library for Reading", "Time", "Epoch" and other magazines. From the end of 1865, T. became a permanent contributor to the Russkoe Slovo and its successor, Del. By the end of the 60s. T. as a publicist gained considerable popularity in the circles of the petty-bourgeois intelligentsia. Simultaneously with literary activities, he continued his revolutionary work, repeatedly subjected to searches and arrests. Having become close to S. G. Nechaev, T. together with him led the student movement of 1869 in St. Petersburg, wrote and printed a proclamation outlining student requirements (“To Society”), in connection with which he was again arrested and in 1871, according to the process of the Nechaevites, he was sentenced to 1 year 4 months prisons. After serving his sentence, T. was exiled to the Pskov province, from where at the end of 1873 he fled abroad. Settling in Switzerland, he tried to contribute to the magazine. P. L. Lavrov “Forward”, but soon, convinced of the differences regarding the tasks and methods of revolutionary activity, broke with Lavrov. Having become close to a group of Russian and Polish emigrants-Blanquists, T. together with them published the magazine Nabat, the organ of Russian Blanquism. T. participated in the French Blanquist body "Ni dieu, ni maître". Emigration did not prevent T. from continuing to cooperate in the "Case". In the 70s. he was one of the closest collaborators of this journal, appearing in it under various pseudonyms: Nikitin, Nionov, Postny, All the same, and others. In 1882, due to a serious illness, T.'s literary activity ceased. Adjacent in ideological terms to the Russian enlighteners of the 60s, T. nevertheless occupied a separate place among them. Acquaintance with the theory of K. Marx convinced T. that it is not the consciousness of people that determines their being, but their consciousness is determined by being. As early as 1865 T. declared himself an adherent of the teachings of Marx. Tkachev in his articles more than once made attempts to establish and explain the dependence of individual concrete phenomena of life on the economy. But this did not make T. a Marxist.

Marx's teachings remained incomprehensible to T. His economic materialism was saturated with psychologism and stood in direct connection with the utilitarian system of morality, of which T. was a supporter. The activity of both the individual and society is determined, according to T., by calculation, considerations about personal benefits; as a result, economic interest is of paramount importance. Understanding the opposition of class interests and the inevitability of struggle between different classes of society, T. considered it as a particular type of general struggle observed in the history of mankind: the struggle of states, nationalities, social groups and individuals among themselves. Marx's dialectics also remained alien to T., which was also connected with the general philosophical views of T. Not understanding Hegel's philosophy and speaking of it as "nonsense", T. acted as a supporter of social-scientific, mechanistic materialism in the spirit of Pisarev. Finally, Marx's views on the historical role of the proletariat also remained alien to T. The social revolution was portrayed by T. as a coup carried out by a "conscious" minority, seizing state power with the help of a conspiracy and establishing its dictatorship in order to implement a number of social reforms. In the field of literary criticism, T. acted as a supporter of realistic criticism of Chernyshevsky and his followers, but strongly vulgarized it. To "aesthetic criticism" and the theory of "art for art's sake" T. was sharply negative. He reproached such criticism with complete subjectivism. T. rejected the existence of a single aesthetic criterion, pointing out that aesthetic views not only change over time, but at the same time are legitimately different in people of different social status. Unlike aesthetic criticism, T. sought to prove the possibility of criticism based on scientific principles. T. believed that even Dobrolyubov and Pisarev failed to get rid of the influence of aesthetic criticism. Pisarev, according to T., evaluated works of art from the point of view of an abstract ideal, and this made his method of criticism idealistic. In order to become scientific, criticism must completely discard the question of the subjective sensations evoked in us by the work of the artist, and seek norms for evaluating it in the sum of social and historical factors. A literary critic must confine himself to an assessment of the "psychological" and "vital truth" of a work of art, leaving aside its "artistic truth." Accordingly, in the work of art by T. First of all, they are interested in such questions as the influence of living conditions on the artist's work, the social meaning of his works, the correspondence to reality of the characters and relationships depicted by the artist. These questions were of interest to T. especially because, in his eyes, artistic creativity was of value insofar as it was useful to society. T. even declared that fiction is necessary for society only because in its midst there are people who, due to the state of their mental development, are inaccessible to the influence of science. Such people easily perceive ideas if they are presented to them in a fictional form. This determined the attitude of T. to the question of tendentiousness in artistic creativity. T. believed that the presence in a work of art of a certain trend is not only useful, but inevitable.

Demanding from art that it "teach and admonish", T. had an extremely negative attitude towards that fiction, which seeks to limit itself to dispassionate recording and copying of reality. Moreover, T. greatly expanded, and arbitrarily, the range of this latest literature. So, he spoke with condemnation of fiction such as N. Uspensky and V. Sleptsov, whom he called "empiricists", as well as the naturalistic school of E. Zola. Even more sharply assessed T. noble literature, accusing Turgenev, Pisemsky and others of distorting people's life and that they dealt with irrelevant problems.

Thus, T. bluntly denied many of the most significant writers from the nobility and even the revolutionary-democratic camp, thereby sharply reducing the role of literature in public life. The weak side of T.'s aesthetic views was also the complete denial of the possibility of an aesthetic evaluation of a work, due to his denial of any obligatory objective criteria. Despite this, the literary-critical activity of T. was at one time of great social importance, ch. arr. in view of the fact that he constantly defended real criticism against all attempts at an idealistic revision of the literary heritage of the Enlightenment, which were repeatedly undertaken in the 70s. literary critics of the populist camp.

Bibliography: I. Selected works. Ed., entry. article and note. B. P. Kozmina, vols. I - III and V - VI, M., 1932-1937, Selected literary-critical articles. Ed., entry. article and note. B. P. Kozmina, M. - L., 1928.

II. Kozmin B., P. N. Tkachev and the revolutionary movement of the 1860s, M., 1922.

B. Kozmin.

Great Definition

Incomplete definition ↓

Revolutionary of the 19th century - P.N. Tkachev.

The name of this man gave its name to a whole trend in the revolutionary movement in Russia in the 19th century.
However, even in the 20th century, "kachevshchina" continues to mean conspiratorial tactics as a means to accomplish the revolution, as well as the construction of a new society under the leadership of a revolutionary organization.
This is not news...
But the fact that some theorists, both past and present, consider Lenin and the Bolsheviks, in fact, followers of Tkachev - this already deserves to study the ideological heritage of P.N. Tkachev himself.
“Tkachev considered the political struggle a necessary prerequisite for revolution, but underestimated the decisive role of the popular masses. According to Tkachev, the revolutionary minority should seize political power, create a new state and carry out revolutionary changes in the interests of the people, who can only take advantage of the ready-made results. . ."
This is how Soviet historians characterized Tkachev's views. F. Engels also criticized the petty-bourgeois views of Tkachev in his articles “Emigrant Literature”.
But in what way did Lenin and the Bolsheviks become "continuers" of the Tkachev doctrine?
Basically, as their critics point out, that the Bolshevik Party was originally built as an organization of "professional revolutionaries." After the October Revolution, it was the Bolshevik Party that concentrated political (and therefore economic) power in its hands, which they used to "carry out revolutionary changes in the interests of the people, who can only take advantage of the ready-made results ..."
Approximately so argue those who identify Tkachev's theory with Bolshevik practice.
But are they right?
Let the reader draw his own conclusion.
To this end, the editors of the MRP website begin publishing material about Tkachev and his revolutionary theory.

Petr Nikitich TKACHEV

Philosophers, theoreticians and practitioners should be really connected with each other by close, inseparable ties. As long as their antagonism continues, humanity cannot move forward.

P. N. TKACHEV

The immediate aim of the revolution must be the seizure of political power, the creation of a revolutionary state. But the seizure of power, being a necessary condition for a revolution, is not yet a revolution. This is just her foreplay. The revolution is carried out by the revolutionary state.

P. N. TKACHEV

Pyotr Nikitich Tkachev, the ideologist of Russian revolutionary populism, was born on June 29 (July 11), 1844 in the village of Sivtsovo, Velikolutsky district, Pskov province, into a family of small landed nobles ... He was brought up in the 2nd St. Petersburg gymnasium, from which he entered the 5th grade in 1861 . to the Faculty of Law of St. Petersburg University. However, he did not have to study: student unrest began, the university was closed, and Tkachev, among the active participants in the unrest, was imprisoned in October, first in the Peter and Paul Fortress, and then in the Kronstadt Fortress, from which he was released in December and, by order of the tsar, left in the capital on bail mother. Not being able to continue his studies at the university, nevertheless, after seven years, he passed the external exams for the full course, submitted a dissertation and received a PhD in law. Later, criticizing Lavrov for being isolated from the practice of the revolutionary movement, Tkachev wrote about himself this way: “From the gymnasium, I did not know any other society, except for the society of young men, either addicted to student gatherings, or mysteriously conspiring, or organizing Sunday schools and reading rooms, or starting artels and communes, now again clutching at public education, at the idea of ​​rapprochement with the people, and again and again conspiring; I was always with them and among them - always when the thick walls of the casemate of the Peter and Paul Fortress did not separate me from them” (2. T. 2. C. 10). This focus on the immediate practical solution of the problems of the revolutionary movement determined the characteristic features of Tkachev's socialist concept.

Even in his gymnasium years, Tkachev got acquainted with socialist literature, and above all with the publications of Herzen and Ogarev, with the articles of Chernyshevsky and Dobrolyubov. Already in his youthful poems of the years 1860-62, some of which (“December 14, 1861 in memory of M. L. Mikhailov”, etc.) were in the lists, he preached the idea of ​​a peasant revolution. Since 1861, having embarked on a revolutionary path, Tkachev took an active part in the student movement, in the activities of the underground of the 60s, as a result of which he was repeatedly subjected to searches, arrests, interrogations, was constantly under police supervision, and served a prison sentence almost every year. In 1862, his involvement in L. Olszewski's circle, which was preparing to issue several proclamations calling for the overthrow of tsarism, was discovered. he was close to the organization of N. A. Ishutin - I. A. Khudyakov, in 1867-68 - to the "Ruble Society", which had the goal of propaganda among the people under the guise of itinerant teachers, in 1868 - to the commune "Smorgon" - the predecessor of the organization S. G. Nechaev, in 1868-69. Together with Nechaev, he was a member of the Steering Committee of the student movement in St. Petersburg.

Tkachev's literary activity began in June 1862, and in the 60s his literary talent was revealed. As one of the ideologists of revolutionary populism, a brilliant publicist and literary critic, he contributed to a number of progressive journals. Already his first articles (in the magazines Vremya and Epoch by the brothers F. M. and M. M. Dostoevsky, in the Library for Reading by P. D. Boborykin), devoted to criticism of the proposed judicial reform of the government, were oppositional, revolutionary -democratic character. In 1862-64. in a number of articles, Tkachev puts forward the idea of ​​changing social relations in Russia on a socialist basis with the help of organizing a network of land-industrial educational associations (especially on uninhabited lands). Approximately by this time, he became acquainted with some of the works of K. Marx.

In December 1865, in Russkoye Slovo (at that time he was already a regular contributor to the democratic journals Russkoye Slovo and Delo and actually took the place of Pisarev, who was imprisoned in the Peter and Paul Fortress), Tkachev was for the first time in the Russian legal press (in a review of books by Yu. G. Zhukovsky) sets out the main thesis of the materialistic understanding of the history of K. Marx from the preface to his “On the Critique of Political Economy”, promoting it further in his simplified interpretation. In 1868, in an appendix to Becher's book, he published a translation of the statutes of the First International, together with the statutes of the People's Bank of Proudhon. By the end of the 60s, Tkachev's views took shape in the concept of a political and social revolution in Russia, which found expression in the "Program of Revolutionary Actions", which emerged from the circle of Nechaev and Tkachev. In general, much of what Tkachev wrote was either forbidden, or could not see the light of day due to censorship conditions, or was taken away during arrests, so when in March 1869, during student unrest, Tkachev was arrested again, the investigation was conducted immediately on three literary charges: for writing and publishing the appeal “To Society!”, containing the demands of students, for the publication of the collection “Ray” (issued to replace the banned “Russian Word”) and for the publication of the book by E. Becher “Working Question”. This time he spent almost four years in prison in the Peter and Paul Fortress, and at the beginning of 1873 he was sent into exile to his homeland, to Velikiye Luki, from where, at the end of 1873, with the help of the revolutionary M. V. Kupriyanov, he fled abroad.

In Geneva and London, Tkachev tried for some time to collaborate with P. L. Lavrov in the publication of the Vperyod! magazine. However, even Tkachev’s first steps in exile were marked by a sharp controversy with Lavrov and F. Engels (“The tasks of revolutionary propaganda in Russia. A letter to the editor of the Vperyod!” magazine and “An open letter to Friedrich Engels”, published in the form of brochures in London and Zurich in 1874), which immediately placed him in an isolated position in exile.

„Tkachev considered political struggle a necessary prerequisite for revolution, but underestimated the decisive role of the masses. According to Tkachev, the revolutionary minority should seize political power, create a new state and carry out revolutionary changes in the interests of the people, who can only take advantage of the ready-made results. He mistakenly believed that the autocratic state had no social ground in Russia and did not express the interests of any class. F. Engels criticized the petty-bourgeois views of Tkachev in the articles “Emigrant Literature”“, - this is how the Soviet Institute of Marxism-Leninism characterized the views of Tkachev in the comments to the PSS V.I. Lenin.

Coming out of Vperyod!, Tkachev found supporters among a small circle of Russian-Polish emigrants called Cercle Slave (Slavic Circle), with the help of which, at the end of 1875, he began publishing the Nabat magazine in Geneva, occupying position of the editor. "Nabat" became the organ of a new Jacobin trend close to Blanquism in revolutionary populism. During this period, Tkachev openly expounded his socialist views, considering the problems of theoretical substantiation of the socialist ideal, strategy and tactics of the revolutionary struggle. On the pages of "Nabat" he argued with M. A. Bakunin and P. L. Lavrov. Tkachev's ideas, which at first had no influence and even caused irritation, began to find supporters by the end of the 70s, as a turn was made among Russian revolutionaries towards political and social demands and methods of revolutionary struggle. In 1877, Tkachev and his followers managed to create, with the help of the French Communards-Blanquists (E. Vaillant, E. Grange, F. Cournet, and others), a strictly conspiratorial “People’s Liberation Society”, which relied on some circles in Russia (in particular, Zaichnevsky in Orel, I. M. Kovalsky in Odessa). In 1880, Tkachev collaborated with O. Blanca's newspaper "Ni Dieu, ni Maitre" ("Neither God nor Master"),

However, the prejudice against Tkachev remained so strong that Narodnaya Volya, whose activity, according to V. I. Lenin, was prepared by Tkachev’s theoretical sermon (see: Lenin V.I. Full coll. cit., vol. 6, p. 173), rejected the proposed alliance with "Nabat" and the latter, after a short release in 1881 in the form of a newspaper, ceased to appear. P. N. Tkachev died in 1885/86 in Paris.

The ideology of P.N. Tkachev

Tkachev's theoretical ideas developed in line with the revolutionary democratic materialist tradition. He called his system of views "critical realism". A characteristic feature of the thinker's attitude to philosophy was the desire to see it as a tool for realizing the practical tasks of the social movement. Philosophy, in his opinion, should not lead away, not distract from real life, but reveal the essence of ongoing processes. Hence the sharp rejection of idealist philosophy. So, according to Tkachev, Hegel's philosophy, apart from purely historical significance, has no meaning, setting “unsolvable tasks for itself, wandering in the unknown world of “causes and essences” that are inaccessible to human understanding, philosophy, obviously, has nothing to do with positive science” (2 T. 1. S. 112).

Positivism, which became widespread in the 60s and 70s, did not go unnoticed by Tkachev. The attitude of the thinker to this direction of philosophy was ambiguous; Undoubtedly, he was impressed by the support of positivism on science and scientific knowledge, in him he saw a philosophy opposed to objective idealistic concepts. At the same time, compared with P. L. Lavrov, P. N. Tkachev’s perception of positivism was more critical, and as this direction developed in Russia, the thinker increasingly focused on its reactionary, idealistic character.

Tkachev's philosophical views were objectively based on anthropological materialism, although he himself did not consider himself to be in this direction.

Marxism had a great influence on Tkachev, he perceived it, like other ideologists of revolutionary populism, in the form of economic materialism, the metaphysically understood conditionality of all phenomena of social life by economic relations, the economic factor. “The forms of community life are generally reduced to forms of economic life; it has been proved that the latter determine the former, that whatever economic relations are, such will be social, political, moral and all other relations; it has been proved that economic relations, in turn, are determined by the relations of labor to production. Thus the social question, with all its intricate complexity, was reduced to the question of the relation of labor to production, i.e. to the working question” (2. Vol. 1, pp. 303-304). However, Tkachev could not apply this principle dialectically within the framework of anthropological philosophy and metaphysical thinking. Hence the inconsistency, possible exceptions, suggesting that, under certain specific historical conditions, the initial ones can be psychological, moral, i.e. ideal factors of social development.

It should be noted that Tkachev more often and more persistently than other ideologists of revolutionary populism turned to the economic principle, which in a number of cases led to certain results. Based on an analysis of economic development, he revealed the process of transition from feudal to capitalist socio-economic relations in Europe from a materialist position, and correctly revealed the contradictions of capitalism. “The collective labor of the many is now the main and even the only means of increasing the livelihood of the few, so it goes without saying that perhaps the most profitable for my and least beneficial for your the exploitation of this labor serves for the “few” as the most reliable and powerful instrument of mutual struggle,” the thinker concluded (3. T. 4. P. 295).

The concept of social development.

Tkachev's theory of progress is, in fact, the theoretical justification for his socialism. The thinker developed the theory of progress as a result of the analysis of social phenomena, polemics with positivist sociology, with Lavrov's concept of progress.

Tkachev strove for a materialistic understanding of social development. Based on the economic principle, he criticized the idealism of O. Comte's theory of historical development. “Comte's initial point of view leads him to the conclusion that the laws of thought are at the same time the laws of social development” (2. Vol. 1. P. 202). Nature and society, according to Tkachev, develop within the framework of an objective, logical process. However, the laws of development have their own specific features. He criticized Spencer's organicism, believing that the identification of the laws of nature and society leads to a fatalistic understanding of social development. If the laws of nature are eternal, uniform, strictly determined, then, “on the contrary, the laws that govern society do not differ in any of these properties, being always products of society itself, i.e. products of human will and human calculation” (2. Vol. 1. S. 183-184).

In revealing the specifics of social laws, the thinker's desire is obvious to go beyond mechanistic determinism, to reveal the specifics of social development, to justify the active role of man as a subject endowed with consciousness and will. Man is significant because he is “not a lizard or an ant, that he should not be an ass, that he can always change the conditions of life around him at his own will, that the laws of the development of civil society do not have a single feature of that immutability, eternity and immutability, which imprinted the laws of nature” (2. Vol. 1. S. 385). The problem for Tkachev was to overcome fatalism in the understanding of social development, to substantiate the role of man as a subject within the framework of the natural process of social development.

Tkachev tried to solve this problem by arguing, on the one hand, with organicism and social Darwinism, and on the other hand, with Lavrov's “subjective” sociology. Tkachev denied the possibility of applying to society the criterion of the development of the organic world proposed by the organists - the differentiation of organs. He argued that society, "bringing the specialization of labor to a certain point (in the period of the manufacturing industry), then seeks to generalize, to uniformize specialized labor, to make the division between people unnecessary, superfluous" (2. T. 1. C. 390). Although Tkachev was critical of organicism, he was at the same time influenced by it.

In his own way, he also treated social Darwinism. The struggle for existence in relation to society, Tkachev believed, is the struggle for the possession of the means of production, for capital, it “constitutes the same outstanding and characteristic feature in the history of civil society as the struggle for existence in the history of organic nature” (2. T. 1. S. 432). If in nature the struggle for existence is a source of progress, then in society it does not go beyond the “legal framework” that allows exploiting the labor of others and leads to the degradation of man as a species. “Indeed, among the working population, the antagonism of individuality and genesis disintegrates, as we see, into a regression of the individuality, into the degeneration of the race; it leads to the exhaustion of the physical and mental forces of the body, to poverty, disease and excessive mortality” (2. T. 1. P. 450). Consequently, in an exploitative society, the struggle for existence leads to the regression of man as a species.

In nature, according to the thinker, the struggle for existence is the regulator of the individual needs of individuals. In society, society itself should take on this function, “then there will be no reason to fight, because everyone will and - most importantly - will wish to have only as much as he can have, without violating anyone's rights, without encroaching on the shares of his neighbors ”(2. T. 1. C. 459). This means that progress in society, according to Tkachev, is possible only as a result of the elimination of the struggle for capital, as a result of a social revolution and the realization of the socialist ideal.

An antagonistic society is regressive; social progress can only take place in a socialist society in which the struggle for capital disappears.

“... To imagine world history going smoothly and accurately forward, without sometimes gigantic leaps back,” wrote V. I. Lenin, “is undialectical, unscientific, theoretically incorrect” (1. T. 30. P. 6). Tkachev correctly stated the contradictory nature of social development, the growth of material production, and the intensification of exploitation. However, by progress he understood the gradual evolution of the individual, hence the denial of material production as a criterion for progress, the rejection of progress as a contradictory process, manifested in the form of social struggle.

Tkachev singled out three elements of progress - movement, a certain direction and purpose. In inorganic nature, only the first two elements are present, the purpose is absent. But already at the level of biological development, all three elements are present, including the goal. “In other words, life is a certain movement of the particles of the organism, constantly following a certain direction in order to maintain its mobile balance, to adapt to the movements of the external particles surrounding the organism” (2. T. 1. P. 485). To study social development, it is necessary “to find a criterion for the historical, social process, we only need to know goals social forms, and not the laws of their movement” (2. T. 1.-S. 496). Tkachev believed that in social development only goals can be known, but the laws of development cannot, which means that the criterion of progress is identical to its goal. That is, Tkachev, taking his goal as a criterion of social progress, considered progress not as an existent, objectively necessary, but as a matter of course, as an ideal developed by an individual.

Trying to overcome subjectivism, Tkachev argued that the goal, which is the criterion of progress, must have an objective character. Such an objective basis can be a person's desire for happiness. “Everyone also agrees that the totality of all these life goals of a person can be reduced, or better to say, enclosed in one goal - in a person’s striving for a happy life, for happiness”(2. T. 1. S. 499). In turn, the question arose: what is the objective basis of human happiness? Tkachev answered him: “The human community cannot have another task than to contribute to the realization of the life goals of the individuals that form it. The vital goal of each individual is to preserve and maintain his individuality” (2. T. 1. P. 507). Thus, he relied on Spencer's ideas of organicism. The objective criterion of social progress is not the level of development of material production, but the naturalistically understood maintenance and preservation of the individual, the satisfaction of his needs.

From the methodological positions of anthropological materialism, relying on naturalistically understood human needs, it was theoretically impossible to overcome subjectivism in understanding social development. Criticizing Lavrov's subjectivism, Tkachev remained within it; criticizing Spencer's organicism, Tkachev is forced to rely on his concepts. “So, the establishment of the possible complete equality of individuals (this equality should not be confused with political and legal or even economic equality - this is equality organic, physiological, due to the unity of upbringing and common living conditions) and bringing the needs of everyone and everyone into complete harmony with the means to satisfy them - this is the ultimate, only possible goal of human society, this is the supreme criterion of historical social progress, ”the thinker concluded (2. T. 1 pp. 508).

It would be wrong to make an unambiguous conclusion about Tkachev's subjectivity on the basis of the foregoing, although the methodological basis for this is obvious. However, it should be noted that the tendency towards realism, towards objective analysis, towards a materialistic understanding of social development is quite clearly expressed in him. While stating the antagonism of private interests in capitalist society as a regressive phenomenon, Tkachev also singled out progressive elements. “Such an element is the proletariat in the economic field, in the political and legal spheres - those institutions that are based on the concept of legal and political equality of all citizens. Finally, one of these elements can be considered the striving of the masses to develop in themselves some mental abilities - a striving that logically follows from the position in which the latest industry places urban workers ”(2. Vol. 1. P. 511). Here there is a clear tendency to present social development as a dialectically contradictory process - a tendency that orientated the thinker towards overcoming social utopianism.

Analyzing Tkachev's theory of social development, we can conclude that due to the limited methodological base, he could not overcome the subjectivism he criticized. This means that there was certainly a tendency leading to voluntarism, it cannot be denied, and it largely determined his doctrine of social revolution, although B. M. Shakhmatov is certainly right in that it is unlawful to identify Tkachev and Blanca -222). However, under the influence of Marxism, Tkachev sought to reveal the objective basis of social development, to consider it as an objectively determined, regular, dialectically contradictory process, but, we repeat, he could not overcome subjectivism.

(To be continued).

Pyotr Nikitich Tkachev (July 11, 1844, the village of Sivtsovo, Velikolutsky district, Pskov province - January 4, 1886, Paris) - Russian literary critic and publicist, ideologist of the Jacobin trend in populism.
He comes from a poor landowning family. He entered the law faculty of St. Petersburg University, but was soon involved in one of the political cases (the so-called “Ballod case”; for participating in student riots) and spent several months in the Peter and Paul Fortress, first in the form of arrest of a person under investigation, then by Senate verdict. When the university was reopened, Tkachev, without entering the number of students, passed the exam for a degree (1868).
Tkachev started writing very early. His first article ("On the Trial for Crimes Against the Laws of the Press") was published in Vremya, No. 6, 1862. Following that, in "Vremya" and "Epoch" in 1862-64, several more articles by Tkachev were published on various issues related to judicial reform. In 1863 and 1864, Tkachev also wrote in P. D. Boborykin’s Library for Reading; Tkachev's first "statistical studies" (crime and punishment, poverty and charity) were placed here. At the end of 1865, Tkachev made friends with G. E. Blagosvetlov and began to write in the Russian Word, and then in the Delo that replaced it. For revolutionary propaganda among students, he was imprisoned and was constantly under police supervision. During the student unrest in St. Petersburg in 1868-69, together with S. G. Nechaev, he led a radical minority. In the spring of 1869, he was again arrested and in July 1871 sentenced by the St. Petersburg Court of Justice to 1 year and 4 months in prison. After serving his sentence, Tkachev was sent to his homeland, to Velikiye Luki, from where he soon emigrated abroad.
Tkachev's journalism, interrupted by his arrest, resumed in 1872. He again wrote in the "Case", but not under his own name, but under various pseudonyms (P. Nikitin, P. N. Nionov, P. N. Postny, P. Gr-li, P. Grachioli, All the same). In exile, he collaborated with the Vperyod! magazine, joined a group of Polish-Russian emigrants, after a break with P. L. Lavrov, he began publishing the Nabat magazine (1875-81), together with K. M. Tursky was one of the founders of " Society for the People's Liberation (1877), whose activity in Russia was insignificant. In the mid 1870s. became close to the French Blanquists, collaborated in their newspaper "Ni dieu, ni maitre" ("Neither God nor Master"). Tkachev developed his political views in several pamphlets published by him abroad, and in the Nabat magazine, published under his editorship in Geneva in 1875-76. Tkachev sharply diverged from the then dominant currents in emigre literature, the main exponents of which were P. L. Lavrov and M. A. Bakunin. He was a representative of the so-called "Jacobin" tendencies, opposite both Bakunin's anarchism and the direction of Lavrov's "Forward!". In the last years of his life, Tkachev wrote little. At the end of 1882, he fell seriously ill and spent the rest of his life in a psychiatric hospital. He died in 1886 in Paris, aged 41.
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Beginning of life

He comes from a poor landowning family. He entered the law faculty of St. Petersburg University, but was soon involved in one of the political cases (the so-called “Ballod case”; for participating in student riots) and spent several months in the Peter and Paul Fortress, first in the form of arrest of a person under investigation, then by Senate verdict. When the university was reopened, Tkachev, without entering the number of students, passed the exam for a degree (1868).

Tkachev started writing very early. His first article ("On the trial for crimes against the laws of the press") was published in No. 6 of the magazine "Time" for 1862. Following that, in the "Time" and in the "Epoch" were placed in the years 1862-64 several more articles by Tkachev on various issues related to judicial reform. In 1863 and 1864 he also appeared in P. D. Boborykin's "Library for Reading"; Tkachev's first "statistical studies" (crime and punishment, poverty and charity) were placed here. At the end of 1865, he got along with G. E. Blagosvetlov and began to write in the Russian Word, and then in the Delo that replaced it. For revolutionary propaganda among students, he was imprisoned and was constantly under police supervision. During the student unrest in St. Petersburg in 1868-69, together with S. G. Nechaev, he led a radical minority. In the spring of 1869 he was again arrested and in July 1871 sentenced by the St. Petersburg Court of Justice to 1 year and 4 months in prison. After serving his sentence, he was exiled to his homeland, to Velikiye Luki, from where he soon emigrated.

Life in exile

Tkachev’s journalism, interrupted by his arrest, resumed in 1872. He again wrote in Del, under various pseudonyms ( P. Nikitin, P. N. Nionov, P. N. Lenten, P. Gr-li, P. Gracioli, All the same). In exile, he collaborated with the magazine Vperyod! ", joined a group of Polish-Russian emigrants, after a break with P. L. Lavrov, he began publishing the Nabat magazine in Geneva (1875-81), together with K. M. Tursky, he was one of the founders of the People's Liberation Society (1877 ), whose activity in Russia was insignificant. In the mid 1870s. became close to the French Blanquists, collaborated in their newspaper "Ni dieu, ni maitre" ("Neither God nor Master"). He expounded his political views in the Nabat magazine, published under his editorship in 1875-76, as well as in several brochures published abroad. Tkachev sharply diverged from the currents then dominant in emigre literature, the main spokesmen of which were P. L. Lavrov and M. A. Bakunin. He was a representative of the so-called "Jacobin" tendencies, opposite both Bakunin's anarchism and Lavrovsky's "Forward!" trend. I have written little in recent years. At the end of 1882, he fell seriously ill and spent the rest of his life in a psychiatric hospital. He died in 1886 in Paris, 41 years old ...

Literary activity

Tkachev was a very prominent figure in the extreme left wing of Russian journalism. In literature, he followed the ideas of the "sixties" and remained faithful to them until the end of his life. He differed from his other colleagues in the Russian Word and Delo in that he never took a great interest in natural science; his thought always revolved in the sphere of public questions. He wrote extensively on population statistics and economic statistics. The digital material that he had was very poor, but Tkachev knew how to use it. Back in the 1870s, he noticed that relationship between the growth of the peasant population and the size of the land allotment, which was subsequently firmly substantiated by P.P. The largest part of Tkachev's articles belongs to the field of literary criticism; in addition, for several years he led the department of "New Books" in "Delo" (and earlier "Bibliographic Sheet" in "Russian Word"). Tkachev's critical and bibliographic articles are purely journalistic in nature; it is an ardent preaching of well-known social ideals, a call to work for the realization of these ideals. According to his sociological views, Tkachev was an extreme and consistent "economic materialist." Almost for the first time in Russian journalism, the name of Karl Marx appears in his articles. Back in 1865, in the Russian Word (Bibliographic Sheet, No. 12), Tkachev wrote:

“All legal and political phenomena are nothing more than direct legal consequences of the phenomena of economic life; this legal and political life is, so to speak, a mirror in which the economic life of the people is reflected ... Back in 1859, the famous German exile Karl Marx formulated this view in the most precise and definite way.

To practical activities, in the name of the ideal of "social equality" Tkachev called "people of the future":

At present, all people are equal, but not all are equal, that is, not all are gifted with the same opportunity to bring their interests into balance - hence the struggle and anarchy ... Put everyone in the same conditions in relation to development and material security, and you will give everyone real actual equality , and not an imaginary, fictitious one, which was invented by scholastic lawyers with the deliberate goal of fooling the ignorant and deceiving the simpletons.

Russian word. - 1865. - No. XI, II section. - pp. 36-37

He was an ethical fatalist. The achievement of a social ideal, or at least a radical change for the better in the economic system of society, should have been, according to his views, the task of conscious social activity. "People of the future" in Tkachev's constructions occupied the same place as "thinking realists" in D. I. Pisarev. Before the idea of ​​the common good, which should serve as the guiding principle of the behavior of people of the future, all the provisions of abstract morality and justice, all the requirements of the code of morality adopted by the bourgeois crowd, recede into the background. “Moral rules are established for the benefit of the hostel, and therefore observance of them is obligatory for everyone. But a moral rule, like everything in life, has a relative character, and its importance is determined by the importance of the interest for which it was created... Not all moral rules are equal, and moreover, “not only different rules can be different in their importance, even the importance of the same rule, in different cases of its application, can be modified indefinitely. When moral rules of unequal importance and social utility collide, one should not hesitate to give preference to the more important over the less important. This choice must be left to everyone; each person should be recognized "the right to treat the precepts of the moral law, in each particular case of its application, not dogmatically but critically"; otherwise, “our morality will be no different from the morality of the Pharisees who rebelled against the Teacher because on the Sabbath day he was engaged in healing the sick and instructing the people” (People of the future and heroes of the bourgeoisie // Delo. - 1868. - No. 3.).

Views of P. N. Tkachev

Tkachev's views were formed under the influence of the democratic and socialist ideology of the 50-60s of the XIX century. Tkachev rejected the idea of ​​the "originality" of the Russian social system and argued that the post-reform development of the country was taking place in the direction of capitalism. He believed that the only way to prevent the victory of capitalism was to replace the bourgeois-economic principle with a socialist one. Like all populists, Tkachev linked the hope for the socialist future of Russia with the peasantry, communist "by instinct, by tradition", imbued with the "principles of communal ownership." But, unlike other populists, Tkachev believed that the peasantry, due to its passivity and obscurity, was unable to make a social revolution on its own, and the community could become a “cell of socialism” only after the existing state and social system was destroyed. In contrast to the apoliticalism that prevailed in the revolutionary movement, Tkachev developed the idea of ​​a political revolution as the first step towards a social revolution. Following P. G. Zaichnevsky, he believed that the creation of a secret centralized and conspiratorial revolutionary organization is the most important guarantee of the success of a political revolution. The revolution, according to Tkachev, was reduced to the seizure of power and the establishment of the dictatorship of the "revolutionary minority", opening the way for "revolutionary-organizing activity", which, unlike "revolutionary-destructive", is carried out exclusively by persuasion. The preaching of political struggle, the demand for the organization of revolutionary forces, the recognition of the need for a revolutionary dictatorship distinguished Tkachev's concept from the ideas of M. A. Bakunin and P. L. Lavrov.

Tkachev called his philosophical views "realism", meaning by this "... a strictly real, reasonably scientific, and therefore very and highly human worldview" (Selected works on socio-political topics. - M., 1933. - T. 4. - S. 27). Speaking as an opponent of idealism, Tkachev identified it epistemologically with "metaphysics", and socially - with an ideological apology for the existing system. Tkachev made the value of any theory dependent on its attitude to social issues. Under the influence of the works of N. G. Chernyshevsky and, in part, K. Marx, Tkachev assimilated certain elements of the materialist understanding of history, recognized the “economic factor” as the most important lever of social development, and considered the historical process from the point of view of the struggle of the economic interests of individual classes. Guided by this principle, Tkachev criticized the subjective method in the sociology of P. L. Lavrov and N. K. Mikhailovsky, their theories of social progress. However, on the question of the role of the individual in history, Tkachev tended to be subjectivist. The qualitative feature of historical reality, according to Tkachev, is that it does not exist outside and apart from the activities of people. The individual appears in history as an active creative force, and since the limits of the possible in history are mobile, then individuals, the “active minority”, can and must contribute “... to the process of development of social life, a lot of things that not only are not determined, but sometimes even strongly contradict both previous historical prerequisites, as well as given social conditions ... ”(Selected essays on socio-political topics. - M., 1933. - T. 3. - P. 193). Guided by this provision, Tkachev created his own scheme of the historical process, according to which the will of the "active minority" is the source of progress. This concept became the philosophical justification for Tkachev's theory of revolution.

In the field of literary criticism, Tkachev was a follower of N. G. Chernyshevsky, N. A. Dobrolyubov and D. I. Pisarev. Continuing the development of the theory of "real criticism", Tkachev demanded from a work of art a high ideological content and social significance. Tkachev often ignored the aesthetic merits of a work of art, erroneously assessed a number of modern literary works, accused I. S. Turgenev of distorting the picture of folk life, rejected the satire of M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin, called L. N. Tolstoy "salon writer".

The populist revolutionaries of the late 1860s and early 1870s, who denied political revolution in the name of social revolution, rejected Tkachev's doctrine. Only at the end of the 1870s did the logic of the historical process lead the Narodnaya Volya to direct political action against the autocracy.