4. Selling Revolution

Abstract

This chapter examines Volkhovskii’s activities in the years immediately following his flight from Siberian Exile. After a few months in Canada, where he gave lectures to audiences about the plight of Russians who opposed the tsarist government, he moved to England where he was reunited with his old friend Sergei Stepniak. Stepniak had over the previous few years worked hard to encourage more positive views about Russian revolutionaries among the British public, helping to set up the Society of Friends of Russian Freedom and its newspaper Free Russia. The Society attracted much of its support from Liberal nonconformists like the influential solicitor Robert Spence Watson, although many Fabians also joined the Society, along with a small number of radical socialists such as William Morris. Following his arrival in London, Volkhovskii quickly became an important contributor to Free Russia, writing pieces on subjects ranging from the Russian police through to the plight of Siberian exiles, and often served as de facto editor in place of Stepniak. He also became close to some important literary figures in Britain, including Edward and Constance Garnett, encouraging Constance to learn Russian, which in turn set her on the path to becoming the leading translator of Russian literature in Britain. Volkhovskii was also active in the Russian Free Press Fund, which produced radical literature for distribution among Russian émigré communities and for smuggling into Russia itself. He edited the newssheet Letuchie listki which was designed to appeal to all elements in the Russian opposition movement, reflecting Volkhovskii’s view that greater unity was required among all those critical of the tsarist government, a perspective shared by Stepniak. Both men were careful when writing for a western audience to argue that members of the Russian revolutionary movement were typically interested in securing political reform rather than wholesale social and economic revolution.