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93-531: Nicholas I, alarmed at the prospect of the revolutions of 1848 spreading to Russia, saw great danger in organisations like the Petrashevsky Circle. In 1849, members of the Circle were arrested and imprisoned. A large group of prisoners, Dostoevsky among them, were sent to Semyonov Place for execution. As they stood in the square waiting to be shot, a messenger interrupted the proceedings with notice of

186-440: A constitution , universal manhood suffrage , press freedom , freedom of expression and other democratic rights, the establishment of civilian militia, liberation of peasants, liberalization of the economy, abolition of tariff barriers and the abolition of monarchical power structures in favour of the establishment of republican states , or at least the restriction of the prince power in the form of constitutional monarchies. In

279-512: A bicameral parliament called the Rigsdag . It is said that the Danish king's first words after signing away his absolute power were, "that was nice, now I can sleep in the mornings". Although army officers were dissatisfied, they accepted the new arrangement which, in contrast to the rest of Europe, was not overturned by reactionaries. The liberal constitution did not extend to Schleswig , leaving

372-485: A dangerous criminal since many of the Petrashevsky Circle members' only fault had been participation in the dissemination of the text of the letter. The letter was a passionate and extreme denunciation of Nikolai Gogol 's loyalty to the autocracy and the Russian Orthodox Church . It claimed, for example, that the church "has always served as the prop of the knout and the servant of despotism." The letter

465-461: A desire for reform, and agreed on many of the specific aims. Their participation in the revolutions, however, differed. While much of the impetus came from the middle classes, the physical backbone of the movement came from the lower classes. The revolts first erupted in the cities. The population in French rural areas had risen rapidly , causing many peasants to seek a living in the cities. Many in

558-501: A judicial error had been made and that all the remaining prisoners should be executed. However, when submitting the sentence to the Tsar they included a plea for mercy and a list of lesser sentences. The Tsar agreed to the lesser sentences, but gave explicit instructions that only after the entire ritual of preparation for execution had been completed should the prisoners be told that their lives had been spared by an act of imperial grace. On

651-636: A lively discussion in Vestnik Evropy , Russkaya Mysl and Istorichesky Vestnik magazines. Later a large article on this work was published by Akim Volynsky in his Russian Critics series. According to the Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary , Maykov "wasn't a gifted writer in the common sense of the word," his style of writing was "anemic and occasionally murky", his analysis of Herzen and Tyutchev 's works not original. Yet author Semyon Vengerov credited Maykov with being arguably

744-623: A major analysis of Maykov's works. Critics argued, though, that the author, Aleksander Skabichevsky greatly exaggerated the degree of disagreement between him and Belinsky. In 1886 a large article by K. K. Arsentyev on Maykov and his political activities was published by Vestnik Evropy . The years 1891 and 1892 saw a renewed interest in Maykov's set of ideas when A. N. Tchudinov published in Literary Pantheon (Пантеон Литературы) his Critical Exercises (Критические опыты), which inspired

837-515: A national bank, a Hungarian army, the withdrawal of foreign (Austrian) troops from Hungary, the freeing of political prisoners, and union with Transylvania . On that morning, the demands were read aloud along with poetry by Sándor Petőfi with the simple lines of "We swear by the God of the Hungarians. We swear, we shall be slaves no more". Lajos Kossuth and some other liberal nobility that made up

930-426: A plan was made to reproduce the articles on a lithograph, Palm and Durov became anxious about continuing the circle, and its activities wound down. When Petrashevsky heard about the plans he too voiced his opposition, arguing that revolts could lead to despotism and that judicial reform should be their primary goal. The conflict brought into the open a clear division in the circle between activists and moderates. Two of

1023-414: A reprieve. As part of a pre-planned intentional deception, the Tsar had prepared a letter to general-adjutant Sumarokov, commuting the death sentences to incarceration. Some of the prisoners were sent to Siberia, others to prisons. Dostoevsky's eight-year sentence was later reduced to four years by Nicholas I. In the early 1840s, Petrashevsky had attended Viktor Poroshin's lectures on socialist systems at

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1116-413: A stroke while swimming. He was buried in a village graveyard of Ropsha nearby Saint Petersburg. After a barrage of obituaries all mourning Russian literature's heavy loss there came ten years of oblivion. In 1861 Fyodor Dostoyevsky wrote warmly of Maykov's short legacy, then in 1868 Ivan Turgenev published a piece on him in his Literary Memoirs . In 1972 the magazine Otechestvennye Zapisky published

1209-539: The Regulamentul Organic regime, and, through many of its leaders, demanded the abolition of boyar privilege. Led by a group of young intellectuals and officers in the Wallachian military forces , the movement succeeded in toppling the ruling Prince Gheorghe Bibescu , whom it replaced with a provisional government and a regency , and in passing a series of major liberal reforms, first announced in

1302-719: The Diet appealed to the Habsburg court with demands for representative government and civil liberties. These events resulted in Klemens von Metternich , the Austrian chancellor and foreign minister, resigning. The demands of the Diet were agreed upon on 18 March by Emperor Ferdinand . Although Hungary would remain part of the monarchy through personal union with the emperor, a constitutional government would be founded. The Diet then passed

1395-721: The Habsburg Austrian Empire , the Republic of San Marco later joined the Kingdom of Sardinia in an attempt, led by the latter, to unite northern Italy against foreign (mainly Austrian but also French) domination. However, the First Italian War of Independence ended in the defeat of Sardinia, and Austrian forces reconquered the Republic of San Marco on 28 August 1849 following a long siege. Based on

1488-547: The National Liberals , ended with a popular march to Christiansborg on 21 March. The new king, Frederick VII , met the liberals' demands and installed a new Cabinet that included prominent leaders of the National Liberal Party . The national-liberal movement wanted to abolish absolutism, but retain a strongly centralized state. The king accepted a new constitution agreeing to share power with

1581-480: The Proclamation of Islaz . Despite its rapid gains and popular backing, the new administration was marked by conflicts between the radical wing and more conservative forces, especially over the issue of land reform . Two successive abortive coups weakened the new government, and its international status was always contested by Russia. After managing to rally a degree of sympathy from Ottoman political leaders,

1674-772: The Prussians in the Grand Duchy of Posen (or the Greater Poland region), a part of Prussia since its annexation in 1815. The Poles tried to establish a Polish political entity, but refused to cooperate with the Germans and the Jews. The Germans decided they were better off with the status quo, so they assisted the Prussian governments in recapturing control. In the long-term, the uprising stimulated nationalism among both

1767-592: The Schleswig-Holstein Question unanswered. The Duchy of Schleswig , a region containing both Danes (a North Germanic population) and Germans (a West Germanic population), was a part of the Danish monarchy, but remained a duchy separate from the Kingdom of Denmark. Spurred by pan-German sentiment, the Germans of Schleswig took up arms in protest at a new policy announced by Denmark's National Liberal government which would have fully integrated

1860-593: The Sonderbund ("separate alliance") in 1845 led to a short civil conflict in November 1847 in which around 100 people were killed. The Sonderbund was decisively defeated by the Protestant cantons, which had a larger population. A new constitution of 1848 ended the almost-complete independence of the cantons, transforming Switzerland into a federal state . Polish people mounted a military insurrection against

1953-712: The Venetian Lagoon , the Republic of San Marco extended into most of Venetia , or the Terraferma territory of the Republic of Venice , suppressed 51 years earlier in the French Revolutionary Wars . In the Duchy of Modena and Reggio , Duke Francis V attempted to respond militarily to the first attempts at armed revolt, but faced with the approach of Bolognese volunteers to support the insurgents, in order to avoid bloodshed he preferred to leave

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2046-752: The bourgeoisie feared and distanced themselves from the working poor . Many unskilled laborers toiled from 12 to 15 hours per day when they had work, living in squalid, disease-ridden slums. Traditional artisans felt the pressure of industrialization , having lost their guilds . The liberalization of trade laws and the growth of factories had increased the gulf between master tradesmen, and journeymen and apprentices, whose numbers increased disproportionately by 93% from 1815 to 1848 in Germany. Significant proletarian unrest had occurred in Lyon in 1831 and 1834 , and Prague in 1844. Jonathan Sperber has suggested that in

2139-560: The serfs . It started on 15 March 1848, when Hungarian patriots organized mass demonstrations in Pest and Buda (today Budapest) which forced the imperial governor to accept their 12 points of demands , which included the demand for freedom of press, an independent Hungarian ministry residing in Buda-Pest and responsible to a popularly elected parliament, the formation of a National Guard, complete civil and religious equality, trial by jury,

2232-864: The springtime of the peoples or the springtime of nations , were a series of revolutions throughout Europe over the course of more than one year, from 1848 to 1849. It remains the most widespread revolutionary wave in European history to date. The revolutions were essentially democratic and liberal in nature, with the aim of removing the old monarchical structures and creating independent nation-states , as envisioned by romantic nationalism . The revolutions spread across Europe after an initial revolution began in Italy in January 1848. Over 50 countries were affected, but with no significant coordination or cooperation among their respective revolutionaries. Some of

2325-485: The " Belgian Legion " attempted to cross the Belgian frontier. There were two divisions which were formed. The first group, travelling by train, were stopped and quickly disarmed at Quiévrain on 26 March 1848. The second group crossed the border on 29 March and headed for Brussels. They were confronted by Belgian troops at the hamlet of Risquons-Tout and defeated. Several smaller groups managed to infiltrate Belgium, but

2418-674: The Americas. Peasant discontent in the 1840s grew in intensity. Peasant occupations of lost communal land increased in many areas; those convicted of wood theft in the Rhenish Palatinate increased from 100,000 in 1829–30 to 185,000 in 1846–47. In the years 1845 and 1846, a potato blight caused a subsistence crisis in Northern Europe , and encouraged the raiding of manorial potato stocks in Silesia in 1847. The effects of

2511-516: The April laws that established equality before the law, a legislature, a hereditary constitutional monarchy, and an end to the transfer and restrictions of land use. The revolution grew into a war for independence from the Habsburg monarchy when Josip Jelačić , Ban of Croatia , crossed the border to restore their control. The new government, led by Lajos Kossuth , was initially successful against

2604-517: The Czech Nation , which emphasised a national lineage of conflict with the Germans, or the popular patriotic Liederkranz (song-circles) that were held across Germany: patriotic and belligerent songs about Schleswig had dominated the Würzburg national song festival in 1845. 'Socialism' in the 1840s was a term without a consensus definition, meaning different things to different people, but

2697-738: The Habsburg forces. Although Hungary took a national united stand for its freedom, some minorities of the Kingdom of Hungary, including the Serbs of Vojvodina, the Romanians of Transylvania and some Slovaks of Upper Hungary supported the Habsburg Emperor and fought against the Hungarian Revolutionary Army. Eventually, after one and a half years of fighting, the revolution was crushed when Russian Tsar Nicholas I marched into Hungary with over 300,000 troops. As result of

2790-573: The House of the Dead , a novel based on his experiences in katorga and exile. In 1871 he published Demons , a novel that drew to some extent on his experiences with the Petrshevsky Circle and Speshnev's conspiratorial group. The central character of the novel, Nikolai Stavrogin, was inspired by Speshnev. Revolutions of 1848 The revolutions of 1848 , known in some countries as

2883-934: The Netherlands. The revolutions were most important in France, the Netherlands, Italy , the Austrian Empire , and the states of the German Confederation that would make up the German Empire in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The wave of uprisings ended in October 1849. The revolutions arose from such a wide variety of causes that it is difficult to view them as resulting from a coherent movement or set of social phenomena. Numerous changes had been taking place in European society throughout

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2976-532: The Petrashevsky 'Fridays' in 1847, at the time seeing the discussions as ordinary social occasions with nothing particularly conspiratorial about them. There was a wide diversity of points of view, from atheistic socialists influenced by Hegel and Feuerbach to deeply-religious poets and literary artists, but all held in common a desire for greater freedom in Russian social life and a passionate opposition to

3069-585: The Poles and the Germans and brought civil equality to the Jews. A Romanian liberal and Romantic nationalist uprising began in June in the principality of Wallachia . Its goals were administrative autonomy, abolition of serfdom, and popular self-determination. It was closely connected with the 1848 unsuccessful revolt in Moldavia , it sought to overturn the administration imposed by Imperial Russian authorities under

3162-486: The Prussian victory in 1864 . From March 1848 through July 1849, the Habsburg Austrian Empire was threatened by revolutionary movements, which often had a nationalist character. The empire, ruled from Vienna , included German-speaking Austrians , Hungarians , Czechs , Poles , Croats , Ukrainians , Romanians , Slovaks , Slovenes , Serbs and Italians , all of whom attempted in the course of

3255-490: The Revolution split, and in the end, the conservative aristocracy defeated it, forcing many liberal Forty-Eighters into exile. Denmark had been governed by a system of absolute monarchy ( King's Law ) since the 17th century. King Christian VIII , a moderate reformer but still an absolutist, died in January 1848 during a period of rising opposition from farmers and liberals. The demands for constitutional monarchy, led by

3348-622: The Revolution was ultimately isolated by the intervention of Russian diplomats. In September 1848 by agreement with the Ottomans, Russia invaded and put down the revolution. According to Vasile Maciu, the failures were attributable in Wallachia to foreign intervention, in Moldavia to the opposition of the feudalists, and in Transylvania to the failure of the campaigns of General Józef Bem , and later to Austrian repression. In later decades,

3441-564: The University of St Petersburg. He was particularly impressed by the utopian ideas of Charles Fourier , and "devoted himself to propagating his new faith". He began accumulating a large library of forbidden books and invited friends to visit for the purpose of discussing the new ideas. By 1845 the circle had grown considerably, and Petrashevsky became a well-known figure in Petersburg social and intellectual life. Dostoevsky began attending

3534-592: The arrests began. All those associated with the letter were treated harshly, some merely for 'failure to report' on those who took part in publishing it. Among these was the poet Pleshcheyev who, according to the verdict, "for distributing Belinsky's letter, was deprived of all rights of the state and sent to hard labor in factories for 4 years." Some members escaped prosecution. These included V. A. Èngel (later an active participant in Herzen 's Polar Star ), Dostoevsky's brothers Andrey and Mikhail (who had strenuously opposed

3627-477: The basis of information supplied by Antonelli, and documents confiscated at the time of the arrest. The trial was to take place according to military law rather than the far more lenient civil law. Of the sixty men originally arrested, fifteen were sentenced to execution by firing squad, others to hard labour and exile. Reviewing the decision the highest military court, the General-Auditariat, ruled that

3720-402: The best-known writers associated with the Petrashevsky Circle, Valerian Maykov and Vissarion Belinsky , died before it was broken. Maykov was very close to Petrashevsky and took a large part in the compilation of Kirillov's work Dictionary of Foreign Words , which became part of the corpus delicti of the trial process. Belinsky, the author of Letter to Gogol , would have been classified as

3813-866: The blight were most severely manifested in the Great Irish Famine , but also caused famine-like conditions in the Scottish Highlands and throughout continental Europe . Harvests of rye in the Rhineland were 20% of previous levels, while the Czech potato harvest was reduced by half. These reduced harvests were accompanied by a steep rise in prices (the cost of wheat more than doubled in France and Habsburg Italy). There were 400 French food riots from 1846 to 1847, while German socio-economic protests increased from 28 from 1830 to 1839, to 103 from 1840 to 1847. Central to long-term peasant grievances were

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3906-770: The borders of the Habsburg Empire, and formation of a separate region with a political self-governance. During 18–19 March, a series of riots known as the March Unrest ( Marsoroligheterna ) took place in the Swedish capital of Stockholm. Declarations with demands of political reform were spread in the city and a barricade at Norra Smedjegatan was stormed by the military. In the end, there were 18–30 casualties in total. Switzerland, already an alliance of republics, also saw an internal struggle. The attempted secession of seven Catholic cantons to form an alliance known as

3999-467: The circle and reported to his superiors. The government's concerns were not without foundation. The aristocrat Nikolay Speshnev , who began attending the Fridays in early 1848, was resolutely in favour of promoting the socialist cause by any means possible, including terrorism, and sought to form his own secret society within the circle. According to Speshnev, infiltration, propaganda and revolt should be

4092-403: The circle increased, but discussions became more serious, formal and secretive. Petrashevsky, who had always tended to flaunt his iconoclasm , had for some time been a person of interest to the secret police, but they now decided to place him under close surveillance. An agent, Antonelli, was deployed in Petrashevsky's department in January 1849, ingratiated himself, began attending the meetings of

4185-553: The circle led to the formation of a number of satellite groups, most notably the Palm-Durov Circle which met at the shared apartment of the writers Alexander Palm and Sergey Durov . According to Dostoevsky, the original purpose of this group had been to publish a literary almanac. Speshnev follower Pavel Filippov convinced them to actively produce and distribute anti-government propaganda, and two works of this kind were in fact produced, both of which were later discovered by

4278-668: The city promising a constitution and amnesties. On 21 March 1848 he left for Bolzano. A provisional government was established in Modena. In the Papal States , an internal revolt ousted Pope Pius IX from his temporal powers and led to the establishment of the Roman Republic . The municipalities of Menton and Roquebrune united and obtained independence as the Principality of Monaco . The "February Revolution" in France

4371-556: The conversations, consistently urged against the adoption of violent methods. Speshnev, therefore, continued the formation of the society without him and succeeded in recruiting a number of talented members, including Dostoevsky. Although no real action was taken by the group, Dostoevsky had no doubt that there was a "conspiracy in intent", which included promoting dissatisfaction with the current order and establishing connections with already discontented groups such as religious dissidents and serfs. Found among Speshnev's papers after his arrest

4464-450: The course of 1847. With the exception of the Netherlands, there was a strong correlation among the countries that were most deeply affected by the industrial shock of 1847 and those that underwent a revolution in 1848. The situation in the German states was similar. Parts of Prussia were beginning to industrialize. During the decade of the 1840s, mechanized production in the textile industry brought about inexpensive clothing that undercut

4557-422: The defeat, Hungary was thus placed under brutal martial law. The leading rebels like Kossuth fled into exile or were executed. In the long run, the passive resistance following the revolution, along with the crushing Austrian defeat in the 1866 Austro-Prussian War , led to the Austro-Hungarian Compromise (1867), which marked the birth of the Austro-Hungarian Empire . The center of the Ukrainian national movement

4650-421: The duchy into Denmark. The German population in Schleswig and Holstein revolted, inspired by the Protestant clergy. The German states sent in an army, but Danish victories in 1849 led to the Treaty of Berlin (1850) and the London Protocol (1852) . They reaffirmed the sovereignty of the King of Denmark, while prohibiting union with Denmark. The violation of the latter provision led to renewed warfare in 1863 and

4743-400: The enslaved status of the Russian peasantry. As Tsar Nicholas had made it clear that he too opposed enslavement, there was not much sense of political conspiracy in the circle at that time. That changed after the 1848 revolutions in Europe, when it became apparent that the kinds of social transformation occurring there would be aggressively stifled by the ruling classes in Russia. Membership of

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4836-416: The first "theoretical" critic in Russia who, unlike most of his colleagues, was interested not so much in analysis of particular literary works as with the way these works fitted into his own "rather neat and elaborate aesthetic theory". In fact, Maykov himself (in a letter to Turgenev) admitted that he'd "never meant to become a critic in terms of evaluating "other people's literary works". "I always dreamt of

4929-470: The first half of the 19th century. Both liberal reformers and radical politicians were reshaping national governments. Technological change was revolutionizing the life of the working classes. A popular press extended political awareness, and new values and ideas such as popular liberalism , nationalism and socialism began to emerge. Some historians emphasize the serious crop failures, particularly those of 1846, that produced hardship among peasants and

5022-475: The handmade products of German tailors. Reforms ameliorated the most unpopular features of rural feudalism , but industrial workers remained dissatisfied with these reforms and pressed for greater change. Urban workers had no choice but to spend half of their income on food, which consisted mostly of bread and potatoes. As a result of harvest failures, food prices soared and the demand for manufactured goods decreased, causing an increase in unemployment. During

5115-433: The increased popularity of the older Morgenbladet in Norway and the Aftonbladet in Sweden. 'Nationalism' believed in uniting people bound by (some mix of) common languages , culture , religion , shared history , and of course immediate geography ; there were also irredentist movements. Nationalism had developed a broader appeal during the pre-1848 period, as seen in the František Palacký 's 1836 History of

5208-560: The language of the 1840s, 'democracy' meant replacing an electorate of property-owners with universal male suffrage . 'Liberalism' fundamentally meant consent of the governed , restriction of church and state power, republican government , freedom of the press and the individual. The 1840s had seen the emergence of radical liberal publications such as Rheinische Zeitung (1842); Le National and La Réforme (1843) in France; Ignaz Kuranda 's Grenzboten (1841) in Austria; Lajos Kossuth 's Pesti Hírlap (1841) in Hungary, as well as

5301-414: The loss of communal lands, forest restrictions (such as the French Forest Code of 1827), and remaining feudal structures, notably the robot (labor obligations) that existed among the serfs and oppressed peasantry of the Habsburg lands . Aristocratic wealth (and corresponding power) was synonymous with the ownership of farmlands and effective control over the peasants . Peasant grievances exploded during

5394-754: The main thesis of his whole literary legacy: the need for science and arts to be organically linked with social reality. The second part of the article was to be a critical analysis of "the progressive thought in Russia," focusing on Vissarion Belinsky, but got banned and later appeared in miscellaneous fragments. Maykov's article has been noticed in literary circles, and in 1846 Andrey Krayevsky (on Ivan Turgenev 's recommendation) invited Maykov to become an editor of critical department of Otechestvennye Zapiski , where Belinsky worked. In his first major article, on poet Aleksey Koltsov , Maykov came into direct conflict with Belinsky, accusing him of "biased and unfounded criticism" and "literary dictatorship". Belinsky's reply

5487-477: The major contributing factors were widespread dissatisfaction with political leadership, demands for more participation in government and democracy, demands for freedom of the press , other demands made by the working class for economic rights, the upsurge of nationalism , and the European potato failure , which triggered mass starvation, migration, and civil unrest. The uprisings were led by temporary coalitions of workers and reformers, including figures from

5580-422: The middle and upper classes (the bourgeoisie ); however, the coalitions did not hold together for long. Many of the revolutions were quickly suppressed, as tens of thousands of people were killed, and even more were forced into exile. Significant lasting reforms included the abolition of serfdom in Austria and Hungary, the end of absolute monarchy in Denmark, and the introduction of representative democracy in

5673-500: The middle class reformers and the working class radicals. German reformers argued endlessly without finalizing their results. Caught off guard at first, the aristocracy and their allies plot a return to power. The revolutions suffer a series of defeats in summer 1849. Reactionaries returned to power and many leaders of the revolution went into exile. Some social reforms proved permanent, and years later nationalists in Germany, Italy, and Hungary gained their objectives. The first of

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5766-524: The morning of December 22 the prisoners were taken from their cells without explanation and transported to Semonovsky Square. The sentence of death by firing squad was read out over them, and the first three prisoners—Petrashevsky, Mombelli and Grigoryev—were seized and tied to stakes in front of the firing squad. A minute elapsed before the drum roll indicating retreat was heard and the soldiers lowered their rifles. Grigoryev, who in prison had been showing signs of derangement, completely lost his senses, and spent

5859-454: The numerous revolutions to occur in 1848 in Italy came in Palermo, Sicily, starting in January 1848 . There had been several previous revolts against Bourbon rule; this one produced an independent state that lasted only 16 months before the Bourbons came back. During those months, the constitution was quite advanced for its time in liberal democratic terms, as was the proposal of a unified Italian confederation of states. The revolt's failure

5952-470: The old governments rushed home to seize the moment. In France, the monarchy was once again overthrown and replaced by a republic . In a number of major German and Italian states, and in Austria, the old leaders were forced to grant liberal constitutions. The Italian and German states seemed to be rapidly forming unified nations. Austria gave Hungarians and Czechs liberal grants of autonomy and national status. In France, bloody street battles exploded between

6045-484: The peasantry; local officials were expected to understand it and the Ruthenian clergy was to be equalized in their rights with the clergy of all other denominations. On 2 May 1848, the Supreme Ruthenian Council was established. The council (1848–1851) was headed by the Greek-Catholic Bishop Gregory Yakhimovich and consisted of 30 permanent members. Its main goal was the administrative division of Galicia into Western (Polish) and Eastern (Ruthenian/Ukrainian) parts within

6138-417: The period after 1825, poorer urban workers (particularly day laborers, factory workers and artisans) saw their purchasing power decline relatively steeply: urban meat consumption in Belgium, France and Germany stagnated or declined after 1830, despite growing populations. The economic Panic of 1847 increased urban unemployment: 10,000 Viennese factory workers lost jobs, and 128 Hamburg firms went bankrupt over

6231-409: The police. The first—a sketch entitled "A Soldier's conversation"—was an exhortation of the popular uprising in France aimed at a peasant audience, and was written by another Speshnev associate, the army officer Nikolay Grigoryev. The second, by Filippov, was a rewriting of the Ten Commandments that characterized various acts of revolt against oppression as being in conformity with the will of God. When

6324-596: The prisoners' sentences were commuted to exile and service in the army. The members of the circle exiled to Siberia and the Kazakh steppe influenced the nascent Kazakh intelligentsia. One of the most notable interlocutors of Dostoevsky during his time of exile was the Kazakh scholar and military officer Chokan Valikhanov . Speshnev edited a newspaper in Irkutsk from 1857 to 1859. Some, such as Petrashevsky, died in exile, but both Speshnev and Dostoevsky were allowed to return to Petersburg in late 1859, exactly ten years after their departure. In 1860 Dostoevsky published Notes From

6417-401: The profit. In 1842 Maykov graduated from the university and joined the governmental Department of Agriculture. Soon he quit it due to ill health and spent half a year in Germany , France and Switzerland , where he studied extensively political economy, philosophy and chemistry. On his return to Saint Petersburg , Maykov became close to the Petrashevsky circle and took part in compiling

6510-400: The publication of provocative material), well-known Slavophile theorist Nikolai Danilevsky , writer Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin , and the poet Apollon Maykov (Valerian's brother). After the arrests on April 22, 1849, the members of the circle were at first detained at the Peter and Paul Fortress . The Commission of Inquiry headed by General Nabokov questioned the prisoners individually on

6603-434: The rebels returned and gained their goals. Belgium did not see major unrest in 1848; it had already undergone a liberal reform after the Revolution of 1830 and thus its constitutional system and its monarchy survived. A number of small local riots broke out, concentrated in the sillon industriel industrial region of the provinces of Liège and Hainaut . The most serious threat of revolutionary contagion, however,

6696-479: The reinforced Belgian border troops succeeded and the defeat at Risquons-Tout effectively ended the revolutionary threat to Belgium. The situation in Belgium began to recover that summer after a good harvest, and fresh elections returned a strong majority to the governing party. Valerian Maykov Valerian Nikolayevich Maykov ( Russian : Валериа́н Никола́евич Ма́йков ; September 9 1823 — July 27, 1847 )

6789-664: The remainder of his days as a helpless mental invalid. Dostoevsky, who had been next in line, recalled the experience twenty years later in The Idiot : "The uncertainty and feeling of aversion for the new thing which was going to overtake him immediately, was terrible". An aide-de-camp arrived carrying the Tsar's pardon and the commuted sentences. Swords were broken over the heads of the prisoners, signifying exclusion from civilian life henceforth. They were placed in shackles, and preparations began for their transport to Siberia. After serving four to six years of imprisonment and hard labour,

6882-570: The revolution to achieve either autonomy, independence, or even hegemony over other nationalities. The nationalist picture was further complicated by the simultaneous events in the German states, which moved toward greater German national unity. The Hungarian Revolution of 1848 was the longest in Europe, crushed in August 1849 by Austrian and Russian armies. Nevertheless, it had a major effect in freeing

6975-451: The revolution, to address the problem of unemployment, workshops were organized for men interested in construction work. Officials also set up workshops for women when they felt they were excluded. Artisans and unemployed workers destroyed industrial machines when they threatened to give employers more power over them. Rural population growth had led to food shortages, land pressure, and migration, both within and from Europe, especially to

7068-794: The revolutionary year of 1848, yet were often disconnected from urban revolutionary movements: the revolutionary Sándor Petőfi 's popular nationalist rhetoric in Budapest did not translate into any success with the Magyar peasantry, while the Viennese democrat Hans Kudlich reported that his efforts to galvanize the Austrian peasantry had "disappeared in the great sea of indifference and phlegm". Despite forceful and often violent efforts of established and reactionary powers to keep them down, disruptive ideas gained popularity: democracy , liberalism , radicalism , nationalism , and socialism . They demanded

7161-468: The so-called Pocket Dictionary of Foreign Words Now Part of the Russian Language (1845–46) along with N.Kirillov and Mikhail Petrashevsky himself. There he wrote some major articles: "Analysis", "Criticism", "Ideal", "Drama", "Journal". The Kirillov's Dictionary, the most obvious result of French Revolution influence (and an analogue of Voltaire 's Philosophy Dictionary), in the late 1840s

7254-455: The south and the west of Germany, with large popular assemblies and mass demonstrations. Led by well-educated students and intellectuals, they demanded German national unity , freedom of the press , and freedom of assembly . The uprisings were poorly coordinated, but had in common a rejection of traditional, autocratic political structures in the 39 independent states of the German Confederation . The middle-class and working-class components of

7347-527: The three methods of illegal action for a secret society. He and Petrashevsky held meetings with a charismatic Siberian figure, Rafael Chernosvitov, to discuss the possibility of co-ordinated armed revolts. Speshnev's associate, the army lieutenant Nikolay Mombelli, initiated a series of conversations promoting the idea of organised infiltration of the bureaucracy to counter government measures. Mombelli suggested that all members should submit their biography and that traitors be executed. Petrashevsky, though party to

7440-477: The unified Kingdom of Italy and remained in force, with changes, until 1948 ) and by Pope Pius IX (Fundamental Statute). However, only King Charles Albert maintained the statute even after the end of the riots. Revolts broke out throughout the Kingdom of Lombardy–Venetia , such as the Five Days of Milan which marked the beginning of the First Italian War of Independence . After declaring independence from

7533-530: The working urban poor. Large swaths of the nobility were discontented with royal absolutism or near-absolutism. In 1846, there had been an uprising of Polish nobility in Austrian Galicia , which was only countered when peasants, in turn, rose up against the nobles . Additionally, an uprising by democratic forces against Prussia , planned but not actually carried out, occurred in Greater Poland . The middle and working classes thus shared

7626-471: Was elected as president . In 1851, he staged a coup d'état and established himself as a dictatorial emperor of the Second French Empire . Alexis de Tocqueville remarked in his Recollections of the period, "society was cut in two: those who had nothing united in common envy, and those who had anything united in common terror." The "March Revolution" in the German states took place in

7719-522: Was a Russian writer and literary critic, son of painter Nikolay Maykov , brother of poet Apollon and novelist Vladimir Maykov. Valerian Maykov, once a Petrashevsky Circle associate, was considered by contemporaries as heir to Vissarion Belinsky 's position of Russia's leading critic, and later credited for being arguably the first in Russia to introduce scientific approach to the art of literary criticism. Valerian Maykov, son of painter Nikolay Maykov,

7812-411: Was a prototype "oath of allegiance" in which the signer would pledge obedience to a central committee and a willingness to be available at any time for whatever violent means were deemed necessary for the success of the cause. Speshnev's secret society was never discovered by the authorities, but under threat of torture he confessed to the original discussions within the Petrashevsky Circle. The growth of

7905-539: Was banned and put out of circulation. In 1849 Ivan Liprandi who investigated the Petrashevsky case, was saying that the dictionary "was full of such daring things which were worse than those in hand-written copies that were circulating around". In 1845 Maykov became a co-editor of the Finsky vestnik (The Finnish Herald) magazine, founded by Fyodor Dershau. The first volume of it opened with Maykov's large (unfinished) article "Social Sciences in Russia" in which he formulated

7998-606: Was born in Moscow and received a high-quality home education: Ivan Goncharov , the family's friend, taught him Russian language and literature. He studied in the Saint Petersburg University and later cited professor Viktor Poroshin who taught political economy as a major influence. In his first article, called "Productivity as Related to Wealth Distribution" (1842), he critically analyzed Adam Smith 's theory and suggested an idea of workers' receiving shares of

8091-810: Was harsh and this made the relationship between Otechestvennye Zapisky and Sovremennik , a Belinsky circle's unofficial base, strained. In spite of this Maykov in 1847 started to collaborate with Sovremennik . The same year he organised his own circle, close to that of Petrashevsky, with Vladimir Milyutin and Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin among its members. By this time Maykov's philosophy changed: inspired by Ludwig Feuerbach and Western Socialists he came up with his own concept of "harmonical man" and "ideal civilisation", seeing, among other things, national and ethnic differences as totally superfluous. Valerian Maykov’s promising career suddenly came to an end on July 15, 1847. While guesting in Petergof region, he died of

8184-706: Was in Galicia , which is today divided between Ukraine and Poland. On 19 April 1848, a group of representatives led by the Greek Catholic clergy launched a petition to the Austrian Emperor. It expressed wishes that in those regions of Galicia where the Ruthenian (Ukrainian) population represented the majority, the Ukrainian language should be taught at schools and used to announce official decrees for

8277-718: Was posed by Belgian émigré groups from France. In 1830 the Belgian Revolution had broken out inspired by the revolution occurring in France, and Belgian authorities feared that a similar 'copycat' phenomenon might occur in 1848. Shortly after the revolution in France, Belgian migrant workers living in Paris were encouraged to return to Belgium to overthrow the monarchy and establish a republic. Belgian authorities expelled Karl Marx himself from Brussels in early March on accusations of having used part of his inheritance to arm Belgian revolutionaries. Around 6,000 armed émigrés of

8370-416: Was read aloud by Dostoevsky and produced a response of universal approval and excitement that transcended the deepening divisions within the circle. Filippov and Mombelli made copies and began distributing them, but Petrashevsky again tried to calm the rising sense of urgency by insisting that judicial reform was the best way forward for the peasantry. Shortly after the meetings centering on Belinsky's letter,

8463-602: Was reversed 12 years later as the Bourbon Kingdom of the Two Sicilies collapsed in 1860–61 with the unification of Italy . On 11 February 1848, Leopold II of Tuscany , first cousin of Emperor Ferdinand I of Austria , granted the Constitution, with the general approval of his subjects. The Habsburg example was followed by Charles Albert of Sardinia ( Albertine Statute ; later became the constitution of

8556-479: Was sparked by the suppression of the campagne des banquets . This revolution was driven by nationalist and republican ideals among the French general public, who believed the people should rule themselves. It ended the constitutional monarchy of Louis-Philippe , and led to the creation of the French Second Republic . After an interim period, Louis-Napoleon , the nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte ,

8649-461: Was typically used within a context of more power for workers in a system based on worker ownership of the means of production . These concepts together—democracy, liberalism, nationalism and socialism, in the sense described above—came to be encapsulated in the political term radicalism . The world was astonished in spring 1848 when revolutions appeared in so many places and seemed on the verge of success everywhere. Agitators who had been exiled by

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