Narodovolets in the general rank

In the Soviet historical canon, which largely inherited the traditions of liberal and populist pre-Soviet historiography, there was a special category of literature-about "revolutionaries-research by Siberia", about their cultural, scientific and educational work. This kind of texts represented a kind of biography of Post Mortem - the true biography of the revolutionary, of course, belonged to the years of his struggle, usually very short -lived. But if he did not die on the scaffold, and after a more or less prolonged conclusion was in exile, then the second part of its existence began.

The main question, pursuing not only historians, but also the heroes themselves - from whom the former were inherited - was how true to their revolutionary ideals they remained in exile, in the subsequent life of them, and where the border of the compromise with the conditions of existence; As far as possible, without renouncing his ideals, without changing himself, to conduct "peaceful work". But the peculiarity of Soviet historiography, as it developed since the 1930s, was that the entire revolutionary movement was interpreted in the future of October 1917 and the winning party-those who found or leafed through the texts of these years, the characteristics of "approaching", "underestimation", "errors", etc., which were endowed with the predecessors of the Bolsheviks. The history of the populism of the 1870s and 80s was not only tightly imprisoned in a strict framework, but also turned out to be a deaf to the biographical, since the concrete with any careful examination immediately called into question the general frame. And it is equally explainable that for the first post -Soviet decades, the biographies of the Narodniks and Narodnaya Volya were of little interesting - they seemed to be familiar with the Soviet canon, unlike their liberal or conservative contemporaries, and at the same time passed with it to the archive.

But everything is changing-in recent years, various versions of Russian non-communist socialism, radicalism, anarchism, etc. movements are attracted to more and more interest - it turns out that we have no less unfamiliar, unexplored land, than, for example, the history of conservative publicists. However, one does not always confront another - so, in 2011 A.V. Repnikov and O.A. Milevsky released a detailed biography of Leo Tikhomirov, according to the authors who lived the “two lives”, the theoretician of “popular will” and the author of “monarchical statehood”. This year O.A. Milevsky, now in collaboration with A.B. Panchenko, published the first detailed biography of another revolutionary of the 1870s-Dmitry Klementz.

The biography of the Clemenz (1848–1914) is fascinating at least in that it allows you to personally see the complexity and interweaving of many threads of Russian history of the XIX century. He was one of the creators of the "Earth and Will", the first editor of the "People’s Will", he also happened to become one of the organizers of the ethnographic department of the Russian museum of Emperor Alexander III, to rush to the general rank - and this is despite the fact that there was a conclusion, and a link to Siberia, and then, already by liberation, many years of work in Irkutsk, an expedition to the expedition to the expedition Mongolia, Yakutia, etc. His biography not only accommodates almost incompetition, but also-through family history-it goes already in Soviet times: his brother, daughter of his brother (the Clemente did not have children), will marry, after the death of Clementess, Sergey Oldenburg, with whom he was associated with the closest relations-the indispensable secretary of the Academy of Sciences, an intermediary between the Academy and the Soviet government in the 1920s.

The unambiguity of history is acquired only when consideration from a height, when people are not visible - while the life of a particular person is so curious, which does not fit into any simple scheme

The case of the Clemente is characteristic of the plan that he, in fact, becomes a researcher - a great scientist who did a lot for world science - precisely in Siberia. Having fallen into exile, he strives for two simple things-firstly, to find a livelihood, and secondly, to engage in what makes sense and significance in his own eyes. To understand the situation, it is important that the exile, especially after the toughenings introduced in the early years of Alexander III, was not able to earn teaching labor, it was almost impossible to attach to any state-owned institutions. And at the same time, Siberia was not enough qualified employees, those who could not only carry out any independent scientific projects, but also be a suitable local counterparty for central institutions. The fact that around the local branches of the Russian Geographical Society was an environment of "dysfunctional" from a political point of view of persons is associated not so much with the special liberalism of society, but with the fact that it was not particularly from whom to choose. The East Siberian Department of the Russian Academy of Sciences, located in Irkutsk, was not only largely consisted of such persons, but also led them-the Imperial Center, interested in obtaining information about the outskirts, was forced to rely on them, but, in turn, this activity turned out to be those where the beliefs and ideas about their duty for exiles did not diverge from imperial policy.

It is in the last attitude that the biography of the Clementys is of particular interest, allowing you to see not only stress, but also coincidences with imperial policy. So, one of the questions in the focus of the Klementyz’s attention from the late 1880s is a potential threat from China and the question of how possible to attract the nations of the border guards to their side is that if Przhevalsky thinks the situation rather within the framework of expansion, including with a preventive goal, in order to take advantage of the current weakening of China, then the issue is determined by the logic of defense. Unlike the Siberian regionalists, with whom he was close (in particular, in Irkutsk, he moved largely on the initiative of Grigory Potanin), Clementz remains in Siberia “visitors”, albeit not of his own free will - the local population for him and the subject of description, and potential managerial impact, but at the same time, thanks to the Narodnic optics, something that has “its own life”. In this aspect, Clementz is noteworthy, as susceptible to two languages at the same time and seeking to find a compromise between them - local residents, whose heterogeneity he sees and seeks to understand, without perceiving them as a kind of impersonal object of influence, and at the same time - the logic and language of central management.

The life of the Clemente in the presentation of his latest biographers is notable for not forming a rupture on “before” and “after”: he is as a revolutionary and he, as an exile and a scientist, does not resist each other. The authors emphasize the diversity of interests, emphasis in his life of the 1870s-what Russian populism is built from, passing through the Tchaikovites circle to the "land and will": revolutionaryness, radicalism-in many ways, the peculiarity of the situation, the moment not arising from the doctrine-and this forms the logic of the transition to the subsequent activity of the Clemen already in Siberia and St. Petersburg. Interest in the concrete, private allows you to see a reality far from unambiguousness - a variety of options from which only one is destined. Thus, the Cleminza, arrested in 1879, was waiting for a death sentence - but history loves paradoxes, and terror of 1880–1881, and especially the death of Alexander II on March 1, 1881, everything was changed - now the crimes that he was accused did not seem so significant - and he went into exile, not under the official court, not to avoid the official court, so that he was avoided so as to avoid avoid Unnecessary publicity and thereby not promote radical moods. The unambiguity of history is acquired only when consideration from a height, when people are not visible - while the life of a specific person is so curious that does not fit into any simple scheme, which is happy for whom, as in the case of a Clement, and for whom - tragic irony.

Milevsky O.A., Panchenko A.B. "Restless Clemens": the experience of intellectual biography. - M.: Political Encyclopedia (Rosspen), 2017. - 695 p.

Andrey Teslya - Khabarovsk historian and philosopher

The "Opinion" expressed in the heading of the point of view may not coincide with the position of the editorial office