Scholarly record

THE "RUSSIAN TERRORIST MOVEMENT" IN A BETWEEN XIX-XX CENTURIES AS CHALLENGE FOR AMERICAN POLITICAL THOUGH

S. Spartak

Abstract

Topicality. Russia was always one of the main subjects of political thought as one of influential factor in world policy. However, despite the efforts of populists, Russian nihilism and revolutionary movement with its terrorist elements was totally alien and not understandable for the American political thought. And the emergence in Russia of an army of nihilists, destroyers of the foundations of society was explained by the lack of civility. And till now days the political education is understood in USA from this context as civic education. Aim: to reconstruct the history of this political fundaments of the negative image of Russia in America. Hypothesis: The Russian nihilism and revolutionary terrorist movement in a between centuries was concerned in USA in a contradictory way – the ambivalence of its interpretation was due to the wish of Russian changes and the fear of radical changes. Discussion: In 1886, when Buckley's work about Russian revolutionary movement was released, a bomb was detonated during a rally in Chicago, that caused an extraordinary stir around Russian immigrants and everything connected with Russia. About this incident, an article was published in “The New York World”, which said that the bomb took the lives of police officers during a rally of anarchists, socialists and nihilists, - it exploded not somewhere in Russia, where “the tyranny of the tsarist government brought people to madness, but in a country for which the personal freedoms of a citizen are in the first place.” This is not the first and not the last time that the demonic image of Russian nihilist bombers was used in the American press, in the end, this image is firmly rooted in the public consciousness. Method: Historical reconstruction of political events and its theoretical interpretations and contemporary issues in the frame of the USA-Russian relations and strategic communications. Results: As the American socio-political thought turned more deeply to the Russian reality, the views of the Americans about Russia acquired a more multidimensional character, growing attention was paid to the state structure, the entire system of Russian society, where the critical perception and negative assessments intensified, respectively, the nihilists were presented in a more favorable light, as a force capable of leading the renewal of Russia on the way to freedom on the American model.

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