ABSTRACT
The revolutionary mood of the 1860s passed into popular parlance both in Russia and abroad under the name of nihilism. Few terms have had as dazzling and long-lasting careers. Nihilism, not without a strong contribution from such writers as Katkov, who should have and did know better, became a stereotype for everything which was deemed revolutionary, anarchist, and antisocial in Russia, especially among the young. Real nihilism in the beginning meant something quite different. Its prototype was of course Eugene Bazarov, the hero of Turgenev's Fathers and Sons, which appeared in 1862 and created a veritable storm in the intellectual and radical establishment. Bakunin himself spent several months in Sweden trying to recruit natives for the revolutionary cause, but in October he too skulked back to London.
