2. The Making of a Revolutionary

This chapter examines Volkhovskii’s early life from his birth in 1846 down to his third arrest in 1874. Volkhovskii was born into a comparatively impoverished noble family in modern-day Ukraine. He was at a young age scarred by seeing the harsh treatment of the serfs on his grandfather’s estate, which prompted his sympathy for the plight of the Russian people, and he was while still a teenager already well-versed in the ideas expressed in radical literature (both legal and illegal). He initially came under police supervision in 1866, in part because of his role in running a student organisation suspected of fostering Ukrainian national sentiment, before being arrested two years later for his part in setting up the Ruble Society that sought to build closer links between the intelligentsia and the peasantry. Volkhovskii was eventually released without charge, but within a few months he was arrested again, in part because he was suspected of having ties to Sergei Nechaev, the enfant terrible of the mid-nineteenth-century Russian revolutionary movement, whose sadism and penchant for melodramatic pronouncements alienated many of his fellow revolutionaries. Volkhovskii was again acquitted, after two years in prison, subsequently moving south to Odessa where he established one of the most active groups that made up the Chaikovskii movement. Volkhovskii’s group was extremely well-organised, insisting on the complete commitment of its members, and directed much of its attention to agitation among urban workers rather than the peasantry. Volkhovskii believed for a short time in the late 1860s that a successful revolution could be brought about by a small group committed to seizing power to bring about social and economic revolution. He was, though, for the most part convinced that real change would only come about through a programme of agitation designed to foment a radical outlook among the Russian narod.