e people, and consequently
the revolutionary agitation must be extended to the masses. So far there
was complete agreement among the revolutionists, but with regard to the
modus operandi emphatic differences of opinion appeared. Those who were
carried away by the stirring accents of Bakunin imagined that if
the masses could only be made to feel themselves the victims of
administrative and economic oppression, they would rise and free
themselves by a united effort. According to this view all that was
required was that popular discontent should be excited and that
precautions should be taken to ensure that the explosions of discontent
should take place simultaneously all over the country. The rest might
safely be left, it was thought, to the operation of natural forces and
the inspiration of the moment. Against this dangerous illusion warning
voices were raised. Lavroff, for example, while agreeing with Bakunin
that mere political reforms were of little or no value, and that any
genuine improvement in the condition of the working classes could
proceed only from economic and social reorganisation, maintained
stoutly that the revolution, to be permanent and beneficial, must be
accomplished, not by demagogues directing the ignorant masses, but by
the people as a whole, after it had been enlightened and instructed as
to its true interests. The preparatory work would necessarily require a
whole generation of educated propagandists, living among the labouring
population rural and urban.

For some time there was a conflict between these two currents of
opinion, but the views of Lavroff, which were simply a practical
development of academic Nihilism, gained far more adherents than the
violent anarchical proposals of Bakunin, and finally the grandiose
scheme of realising gradually the Socialist ideal by indoctrinating the
masses was adopted with enthusiasm. In St. Petersburg, Moscow and other
large towns the student association for mutual instruction, to which
I have referred in the foregoing chapter, became centres of popular
propaganda, and the academic Nihilists were transformed into active
missionaries. Scores of male and female students, impatient to convert
the masses to the gospel of freedom and terrestrial felicity, sought
to get into touch with the common people by settling in the villages as
school-teachers, medical practitioners, midwives, etc., or by working
as common factory hands in the industrial centres. In order t