A Forerunner of Lenin: P. N. Tkachev

Abstract

f |^H E name of Peter Tkachev is virtually unknown outside of Russia.Even in Russia his importance in the history of the Russian revolutionary movement received but belated recognition. During his lifetime, he met with strong opposition on the part of the majority of Russian revolutionaries. A hostile attitude towards his personality and his ideas remained predominant in revolutionary circles for a long time after his death (1886). It was only after the revolution that he began to attract more sympathetic attention. 1 And yet he deserves a serious study from two points of view. First, in connection with the evolution of the revolutionary movement in Russia in the 1870's. Tkachev was among the first to advance the program of a direct assault upon the government by an organized revolutionary minority, in preference to attempts at socialist propaganda among the masses or reliance on a general peasant uprising to be provoked by "agitation". He maintained this position in the face of a strong and widespread negative attitude, and towards the end of his career he was able to state with satisfaction that the main principles of his program had been accepted by the most active group among the Russian revolutionaries even if they did not admit it themselves. 2The other point of view from which Tkachev appears as a significant and interesting figure is that of his historical relationship with Lenin. As I see it, some of his fundamental concepts in the field of revolutionary strategy and tactics anticipate, in a striking fashion, Lenin's design for a revolution in Russia. It is this latter problem that I propose to discuss in the present article. 1 See in particular B. Kozmin's P. N. Tkachev i revoliutsonnoe dvizhenie 1860-lfh godov. (Moscow, 1922) and M. Pokrovsky's Oc/ier^i po istorii revoliutsionnogo dvizheniia V Rossit 19 i 20 ve£ov (Moscow 1924). Under Mr. Kozmin's editorship, six volumes of Tkachev's selected writings (Jzbrannye sochmeniia, subsequently cited as Soch.) were published in 1932-37. 2 Tkachev had in view the members of the People's Will party. Substantially, the validity of Tkachev's claim has been recognized by both Lenin (Soc/iiiieniia, 3d ed., IV, p. 494) and Plekhanov (Sochmeniia, II, pp. 147-48). 336

The Respiratory System

“…Additional reports are given on decompression sickness and bends in relation to the following: descent from high altitudes (105,106,108), diving operations (107, 108), "chokes" in high al titude fiying (109), bone lesions in submarine personnel (110), traumatic calcifications (111), relief by arterial compression (113), control by pr�selection and by denitrogenation (114,115), pre vention by pre oxygenation (116), effect of environmental tempera ture on incidence (125,126), and relation to physical fitness (127). A number of papers (131 to 136) deal with the effects of rapid de compression in man and animals.…”