ng the
Government with them in their endeavours to realise their patriotic
aspirations. Police supervision over the young generation was increased,
and all kinds of association, whether for mutual instruction, mutual
aid, or any other purpose, were discouraged or positively forbidden. And
it was not merely in the mind of the police that suspicion was aroused.
In the opinion of the great majority of moderate, respectable people
the young enthusiasts were becoming discredited. The violently seditious
proclamations with which they were supposed to sympathise, and a series
of destructive fires in St. Petersburg, erroneously attributed to them,
frightened timid Liberals and gave the Reactionaries, who had hitherto
remained silent, an opportunity of preaching their doctrines with
telling effect. The celebrated novelist, Turgeneif, long the idol of the
young generation, had inadvertently in "Fathers and Children" invented
the term Nihilist, and it at once came to be applied as an opprobrious
epithet, notwithstanding the efforts of Pissaref, a popular writer of
remarkable talent, to prove to the public that it ought to be regarded
as a term of honour.

Pissaref's attempt at rehabilitation made no impression outside of his
own small circle. According to popular opinion the Nihilists were a
band of fanatical young men and women, mostly medical students, who had
determined to turn the world upside down and to introduce a new kind of
social order, founded on the most advanced principles of social equality
and Communism. As a first step towards the great transformation they had
reversed the traditional order of things in the matter of coiffure: the
males allowed their hair to grow long, and the female adepts cut their
hair short, adding occasionally the additional badge of blue spectacles.
Their unkempt appearance naturally shocked the aesthetic feelings of
ordinary people, but to this they were indifferent. They had raised
themselves above the level of popular notions, took no account of
so-called public opinion, gloried in Bohemianism, despised Philistine
respectability, and rather liked to scandalise old-fashioned people
imbued with antiquated prejudices.

This was the ridiculous side of the movement, but underneath the
absurdities there was something serious. These young men and women, who
were themselves terribly in earnest, were systematically hostile not
only to accepted conventionalities in the matter of dress, but to all