shadow on my faith or on the certainty of my convictions. Remember that the highest example of the love of humanity and self-sacrifice was, undoubtedly, the Savior. Yet even he prayed, “Take this cup away from me.” Consequently, how can I not pray for the same thing? Like him, I tell myself: If no other way is possible, if for the triumph of socialism it is necessary that my blood be shed, if others can make the transition from the present order to a better one only by trampling over our dead bodies, then let our blood be shed, let it redeem humanity—for I do not doubt that our blood will fertilize the soil from which the seed of socialism will sprout and that socialism will triumph, and triumph soon. This is my faith. Here again I recall the words of the Savior: “Truly, I say unto you, not many of those present here relish death as the coming of the heavenly kingdom”— of this I am convinced as much as I am convinced that the earth moves. And when I climb the scaffold and the rope tightens around my neck, my last thought will be: “And still it moves and nothing in the world can stop its movement.” 67 Over the next four decades, direct references to religion among revolutionaries became less frequent, the image of the peasant girl became less radiant, and even the Nadson cult had trouble outliving Mandelstam’s mother’s youth, but the fire of self-sacrifice kept burning, and the combination of universal salvation, violence, and Galileo remained meaningful—until it hardened into Marxism. The switch of allegiance in some (not all!) intelligentsia quarters from Populism to Marxism (beginning in the 1890s) involved a reallocation of redeemer status from the Russian peasant to the international proletariat. Urban collectivism and vertical cityscape replaced rural communalism and horizontal pastoral as the reflection of future perfection, and the angular male worker replaced the peasant girl (or the often feminized—“rotund”—peasant man) as the intellectual’s corporal better half. Universal Mercurianism was going to be defeated not by traditional Apollonianism but by Mercurianism itself—or rather, by its quasi-Apollonian bastard child. The proletariat of the Marxist iconography was peculiar in that it was undeniably Apollonian and thus desirable (heart to the intelligentsia’s head, body to its soul, spontaneity to its consciousness), while being just as undeniably Mercurian and thus modern (rootless, homeless, global). Eventually, Lenin would transform Marxism into a real social force by taking it halfway back to Populism: modern socialism was possible in backward Russia both in spite and because of its backwardness.