Circle of Tchaikovsky
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The Circle of Tchaikovsky, also known as Tchaikovtsy, Chaikovtsy, or the Grand Propaganda Society (Чайковцы, Большое общество пропаганды in Russian) was a Russian literary society for self-education and a revolutionary organization of the Narodniks in the early 1870s.
The Circle of Tchaikovsky was born in St.Petersburg during student unrests in 1868-1869 as a group in opposition to Sergey Nechayev. It was named after one of its members Nikolai Tchaikovsky. A literary society for self-education within the Medical Surgical Academy was the heart of the organization, the initial purpose of which was to share books and knowledge that had been banned in the Russian Empire. It included students Mark Natanson, V. M. Aleksandrov, and Anatoly Serdyukov, joined by Nikolai Tchaikovsky and Feofan Lermontov. Besides self-education, the circle's main tasks were to unite students of Petersburg and other cities, and conduct propaganda among workers and peasants with the purpose of preparing a social revolution. The Tchaikovtsy set off higher moral standards for their members against Nechayev's unscrupulousness. They had a negative attitude towards struggle for political freedoms, which, in their view, were only advantageous to the arising Russian bourgeoisie. These principals were formulated in the Программа для кружков самообразования и практической деятельности (Program for the circles of self-education and practical activity), put together by the Tchaikovtsy in the late 1870 - early 1871.
One of the first tasks of the Tchaikovtsy was to organize printing, publishing, and distribution of scientific and revolutionary literature with the help of publishers Nikolai Polyakov, Kozma Soldatyonkov, and others. These literary works included the first volume of Das Kapital by Karl Marx, books by Nikolai Chernyshevsky, Nikolai Dobrolyubov, Alexander Herzen, Pyotr Lavrov, Vasili Bervi, Ferdinand Lassalle, Charles Darwin, John Stuart Mill, and others. In the summer of 1871, the circle of Natanson merged with a female self-education circle of Alexandra Kornilova and Sophia Perovskaya. Soon, they were joined by Sergei Kravchinsky, Dmitry Klements, Sergei Sinegub, Nikolai Charushin, Leonid Shishko, and others. The central Petersburg circle comprised around 60 people. Circles in Moscow (Nikolai Morozov, Lev Tikhomirov, Mikhail Frolenko), Odessa (Felix Volkhovsky, Andrei Zhelyabov), Kiev (Yakov Stefanovich, Pavel Axelrod) and other cities sided with the Petersburg cell on a federative basis. Altogether, the Tchaikovtsy numbered around 100 people.
In 1872, the Tchaikovtsy began organizing circles of workers with the purpose of training propagandists for work in the countryside. These activities were most successful in Petersburg and Odessa, where the circles comprised around 400 workers, some of whom (Viktor Obnorsky, Feodor Kravchenko, and others) would later become the founders of the first proletarian organizations, such as the Worker's Union of Southern Russia (Южнороссийский союз рабочих) and Northern Union of the Russian Workers (Северный союз русских рабочих). The results of this propaganda work were summarized in a report by Peter Kropotkin, which would be discussed in the Petersburg circle of the Tchaikovtsy in late 1873.
The final stage of activities of the Tchaikovtsy included the Call to the people campaign.
