"Man exploits man. Under Communism, it's just the opposite." – Russian saying

THAT HISTORY REPEATS ITSELF IS NOT JUST A CLICHE. For conservative students of history, it's a nightmare. There was a 100-year span of time between the 1860s hippies in Russia and our own 1960s hippies. While the latter thought they had come up with a bright "new" idea, their "youth revolution" was a mirror-image of Russian nihilism. And the Nihilists assassinated a Tsar in 1881, 100 years to the month from the Reagan shooting. Reagan's shooter was mentally ill, but today our Nihilists openly "joke" about assassinations. Seriously.

Both the 1860s and 1960s hippies came out of academe. Both used an unsuccessful war to stir up discontent among the young. Both movements used the same "uniform": long hair among the males and short hair for females, plus grungy fashions and quirky granny glasses. They loved to tweak people who believed in "proper" standards and values. Both movements sold "free love" over the traditional family (the term "free love" was published at least as early as 1910 by the Encyclopaedia Britannica in the article, "Nihilism").

Someday I may fully quote the Britannica article, but before getting to the old facts of what the Nihilists did, we need to more fully understand their underlying motives. Raw Power, of course, was their objective – only not just power for the sake of power. The leaders of the Nihilists – the pioneers of the Bolshevik movement – had demonic motivations (even while preaching "reform" and "social justice"). Under today's professional public relations experts, politicians still exploit those same-old foibles of human nature. The Nihilists' and Bolsheviks' favorite boogey-man was "the rich man" – meaning anyone making more money than AVERAGE.

A friend lent me a book entitled "The Most Brilliant Thoughts of All Time (In Two Lines or Less)" edited by John M. Shanahan, 1999. SO – as an introduction to the upcoming series on Russian Nihilism, here are some of the Most Brilliant Thoughts bearing on the subjects of envy, power, propaganda, and the History of the World:

• "Ambition drove many men to become false; to have one thought in the breast, another ready on the tongue." – Gaius Sollustius Crispus (86-34 BC)

• "Nothing is more despicable than a professional talker who uses his words as a quack uses his remedies." – Fenelon (1651-1715)

• "There is not a passion so strongly rooted in the human heart as envy." – Richard Sheridan (1751-1816)

• "Education makes people easy to lead, but difficult to drive; easy to govern, but impossible to enslave." – Baron Henry Peter Brouham (1775-1868)

• "Envy slays itself by its own arrows." – anonymous

Our so-called "Youth Revolution" of the 1960s was preceded by Russia's Nihilism movement by exactly 100 years. The Encyclopaedia Britannica (1910) says:

"It originated in the early years of the reign of Alexander II, and the term [nihilism] was first used by Turnueniev in his celebrated novel, Fathers and Children, published in 1862. Among the students of the universities and the higher technical schools Turgueniev had noticed a new and strikingly original type — young men and women in slovenly attire, who called in question and ridiculed the generally received [traditions] of social life, and who talked of reorganizing society on strictly scientific principles. They reversed the traditional order of things even in trivial matters of external appearance, the males allowing the hair to grow long and the female adepts cutting it short, and adding sometimes the additional badge of blue spectacles . . .

"Thanks to Turgueniev, these young persons came to be known in common parlance as 'Nihilists,' though they never ceased to protest against the term as a calumnious nickname. According to their own account, they were simply earnest students who desired reasonable reforms . . . Among the antiquated institutions which had to be abolished as obstructions to real progress were, religion, family life, private property [etc] . . Religion was to be replaced by the exact sciences, family life by FREE LOVE, private property by collectivism [etc, my emphasis] . .

"The programme of the government was extensive enough and liberal enough to satisfy, for the moment at least, all reasonable reformers, but the well-intentioned, self-confident young people to whom the term Nihilists was applied were not reasonable. They wanted an immediate, thorough-going transformation of the existing order of things according to the most advanced socialistic principles, and in their youthful, reckless impatience they determined to undertake the work themselves, independent of and in opposition to the government . . .

"They began, therefore, a propaganda among the working population of the towns and the rural population in the villages . . Some disguised themselves as artisans or ordinary labourers, and sought to convert their uneducated fellow-workmen in the industrial centres, whilst others settled in the villages as school-teachers, and endeavoured to stir up disaffection . . . Landed proprietors and officials, it was suggested, should be got rid of, and then the peasants would have arable, pastoral and forest land in abundance, and would not require to pay any taxes.

"To persons of a certain education the agitators sought to prove that the general economic situation was desperate . . . " [my emphasis]

DOES ANY OF THIS SOUND familiar yet?

P.S. For the term "exact sciences," you can substitute the modern version: "Settled science." You know: "mask up, stay home, get vaccinated to flatten the curve," so on and so forth.

PPS: Free love isn't free.