Nikolai
Morozov,
the illegitimate son of a landowner near Yaroslav, was born in 1855.
His interest in politics started early and he was expelled from secondary
school when he was accused of subversive activity.
Morozov
joined the Land and Liberty group and co-edited
the journal Land and Liberty with
Sergei Kravchinskii.
In October,
1879, the Land and Liberty group split into
two. One faction, Black Repartition, rejected
terrorism and supported a socialist propaganda campaign among workers
and peasants. However, Morozov became a member of People's
Will, the group that favoured a policy of terrorism.
In 1880
there was strong disagreement in People's Will
about the purposes of terrorism. One group that included Morozov argued
that the main objective was to force the government to grant democratic
rights to the people of Russia. However, another faction, led by Lev
Tikhomirov, who had been deeply influenced by the ideas of Sergi
Nechayev,
believed that it was possible for a small group of revolutionaries
to capture power and then hand over its powers to the people.
Morozov
and Olga Liubatovich strongly disagreed
with the ideas of Lev Tikhomirov.
They argued that this was an example of Jacobinism and would result
in the kind of dictatorship that had taken place after the French
Revolution.
In 1880
Morozov and Olga Liubatovich left
the People's Will and went to live in Geneva.
While in exile Morozov wrote The Terrorist
Struggle, a pamphlet that explained his views on how to
achieve a democratic society in Russia. Based on ideas developed with
Liubatovich, Morozov advocated the creation of a large number of small,
independent terrorist groups. He argued that this approach would make
it more difficult for the police to apprehend the terrorists. It would
also help to prevent a small group of leaders gaining dictatorial
powers after the overthrow of the Tsar.
Morozov
returned to Russia in order to distribute The
Terrorist Struggle but was arrested in November, 1880.
Found guilty in 1882 he served seventeen years in Peter and Paul Fortress
until being released following the 1905 Revolution.
It is not known when Nikolai
Morozov died.
(1)
Olga
Liubatovich first met Nikolai Morozov in 1876.
Sergei Kravchinskii came by with his close friend
Nikolai Morozov, whom he introduced as "our young poet".
Morozov blushed like a girl. Apart from his literary work, he was
one of the party's most ardent advocates of partisan revolutionary
warfare - terrorist struggle - and he was always heavily laden with
guns, nearly bent over from their weight.
He was
above average in height, with large, pensive eyes and very delicate,
miniature features. His body, thin and frail, seemed underdeveloped,
and his weak, high-pitched voice reinforced my image of him as a sapling
that had grown up far from fresh air and open fields. He seemed very
young to me, and unwittingly I adopted an almost patronizing manner.
Strangely enough, this made us feel closer to each other.
Morozov
had repudiated without regret the privileges that lesser people cling
so tenaciously. Clothing himself in a course caftan and bark shoes,
he travelled over nearly all of Great Russia, talking with the people
and distributing revolutionary pamphlets. Inexperienced and impetuous,
he ignored all precautions; he was eventually seized and turned over
to the authorities by the peasants themselves.
(2)
Nikolai Morozov and Olga
Liubatovich left the People's
Will over the issue of Jacobinism in 1880.
During the debates, the question of Jacobinism - seizing
power and ruling from above, by decree - was raised. As I saw it,
the Jacobin tinge that Tikhomirov gave to his program for the Executive
Committee gave to his program for the Executive Committee threatened
the party and the entire revolutionary movement with moral death;
it was a kind of rebirth of Nechaevism, which had long since lost
moral credit in the revolutionary world. It was my belief that the
revolutionary idea could be a life-giving force only when it was the
antithesis of all coercion - social, state, and even personal coercion,
tsarist and Jacobin alike. Of course, it was possible for a narrow
group of ambitious men to replace one form of coercion or authority
by another. But neither the people nor educated society would follow
them consciously, and only a conscious movement can impart new principles
to public life.
At this
point, Morozov announced that he considered himself free of any obligation
to defend a program like Tikhomirov's in public. I too, declared that
it was against my nature to act on the basis of compulsion; that once
the Executive Committee had taken on a task - the seizure of state
power - that violated my basic principles, and once it had recourse
in its organizational practice to autocratic methods fraught with
mutual distrust, then I, too, reclaimed my freedom of action.
(3)
After the arrest of Nikolai Morozov in 1881, Olga
Liubatovich
returned to Russia to try and help him escape from prison. This meant
that she had to leave their young baby behind with friends. The baby
died of meningitis when it was six months old.
By early morning, I was at Kravchinskii's. Sergei
was remarkably thoughtful: he had already obtained a crib for my little
girl and set it up in a clean, light room. He left me alone with the
child. For a long time I stood like a statue in the middle of the
room, the tired baby sleeping in my arms. Her face, pink from sleep,
was peaceful and filled with the beauty of childhood. When I finally
decided to lower her into the bed, she opened her eyes - large, serious,
peaceful, still enveloped in sleep. I couldn't bear her gaze. Not
daring to kiss her lest I wake her up. I quietly walked out of the
room. I thought I'd be back; I didn't know, didn't want to believe
that I was seeing my little girl for the last time. My heart was numb
with grief.
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