‎TCHERNICHEWSKY N.-G. ( Nikolaï Gavrilovitch TCHERNYCHEWSKY ) ‎
‎LA POSSESSION COMMUNALE DU SOL ‎

‎La possession communale du sol. Traduction et notice biographique de E. Laran-Tamarkine.‎

‎Paris, M. Rivière, 1911. (4), 26, 265, (3) pp. 8vo. Modern half morocco, raised bands with gilt lettering, marbled boards, original covers preserved (Études sur le devenir social, IX). Zaleski, i, 469; Stammhammer, iii, p. 331. Second French edition. Includes the famous Lettres sans Adresse.'Herzen created Populism; Chernyshevski was its politician. He provided Populism with its most solid content, and not only gave it ideas but inspired its main course of action. This course was modified during the 'sixties and 'seventies, but it undoubtedly originated in the short but brilliant publicizing activities undertaken by Chernyshevsky between 1853 and 1862' (Franco Venturi, Roots of Revolution, chapter 5).The author was born in 1829 and he was mainly active around the period of the reforms by Alexander II around 1860. He worked for the journal "Sovremenik" (the Contemporary) which was founded in 1847 among others by Nekrassoff. It is in this journal that he introduces the work of John Stuart Mill: in 1869 he published the first part of Mill's work to which he adds notes and comments. He also wrote political reviews and mainly through his inspiration and energy the journal became a voice of the opposition, reason why Tourgeneff had already stopped working for the journal. While his initial inspiration was Hegel, although he became acquinted with his thought through reading Feuerbach, he steadily became more and more inspired by the French anarchist P.-J. Proudhon. Tchernichewsky belonged more to the socialist tradition as was common before 1850; he was no adherent of Marx. During the revolutionary troubles in 1861 in Petersburg, Tchernichewsky was arrested and placed in the Peter-Pauls prison where he stayed for two years and where he wrote his famous book What's to be done. He was exiled to Siberia in 1864 where he stayed to 1884. Shortly after his release he died, in 1889, at the age of 60, of which he had spent 23 years in prison and exile.The present work is a reply to the liberal economists who claimed that with the abolition of servitude the communal ownership of the soil would dissappear. Tchernichewsky, who stood sympathetic to the institution of communal ownership, opposes this thesis. The basis of the reforms of 1861 was to maintain this ancient institution of communal ownership. ‎