360 T_owards a Modern Army, 1825-1874
from Lithuania or White Russia, 15 per cent from the Ukraine or the south-
west, and 8 per cent from the Congress kingdom.^41 At their evening gatherings
they would break up into small groups to exchange news, read books and jour-
nals, or discuss various current problems. A surviving photograph shows ten
earnest young men, most of them in uniform, and one holding a book to sym-
bolize their intent.^42
Shortly afterwards smaller circles came into being at the Engineering and
Artillery academies. Their members were on average a few years younger, but
there was a certain amount of overlap.^43 The engineers, some 60 strong, had a
higher concentration of Russians (and Baltic Germans) than the General Staff
Academy group; the artillerymen were mostly ethnic Russians or Ukrainians,
75 per cent of the members stating their religion as Orthodox. At the latter
institution a leading role was played by two professors, both colonels aged
about 40: S. A. Usov, editor of the pro-reform Artilleriyskiy zhurnal, and
P. L. Lavrov, who would eventually become one of Russia's best-known
mcialist theorists; at that time he could be termed a liberal.^44 A combination of
legal and clandestine activity was characteristic of dissidents in this relatively
easy-going era. The teachers at the various military colleges had a circle of
their own; among those who attended these gatherings were Anichkov, assis-
tant editor of Voyennyy sbornik, and M. I. Dragomirov, later one of Russia's
leading strategists.^45
At a lower level groups were formed in the Konstantinovsky Cadet Corps,
which trained officers ~ for. the artillery, and in the First Cadet Corps, which
was conveniently situated next to the university.^46 Also important was the
riflemen's training regiment at Tsarskoye Sela, just outside the capital: the
course there lasted only one year, so that a number of men who picked up
advanced political ideas while in training subsequently transmitted them to
units in the provinces.^47 In one Moscow military college the mood was such
that 'we knew Chernyshevsky by heart and swore by his name' -or so at least
one cadet later claimed; he and his friends belonged to a secret society to which
neophytes were admitted after rites performed with daggers and a human
skull, in the best Romantic tradition, but they also had their own printing-
press.48
In the autumn of 1860 a minor incident at the Engineering Academy alerted
the authorities to the security problem. A student named Nikonov, asked to
apologize for 'inappropriate' remarks he had made about his superiors, refused
to do so and faced expulsion. More than one hundred of his comrades rallied
41 D'yakov, 'Peterburgskiye ofitserskiye organizatsii', pp. 278-9, 348-9, 352.
42 Smirnov, Revol. svyazi narodov, pp. 156, 161.
43 D'yakov, 'Peterburgskiye ofitserskiye organizatsii', pp. 281, 349, 352.
44 Ibid., pp. 282-3, 295.
4S Ibid., p. 286.
46 Ibid., pp. 286, 295.
47 Ibid., pp. 284-5.
48 Ashenbrenner, 'Vospominaniya', p. 5; Figner, 'Ashenbrenner', p. 193.