etof--the youth who led an ascetic life and subjected himself
to privation and suffering as a preparation for future revolutionary
activity--now appeared in the flesh. If we may credit Bakunin, these
Rakhmetofs had not even the consolation of believing in the possibility
of a revolution, but as they could not and would not remain passive
spectators of the misfortunes of the people, they resolved to go
in among the masses in order to share with them fraternally
their sufferings, and at the same time to teach and prepare, not
theoretically, but practically by their living example.* This is, I
believe, an exaggeration. The propagandists were, for the most part of
incredibly sanguine temperament.

* Bakunin: "Gosudarstvennost' i Anarkhiya" ("State
Organisation and Anarchy"), Zurich, 1873.

The success of the propaganda and agitation was not at all in proportion
to the numbers and enthusiasm of those who took part in it. Most
of these displayed more zeal than mother-wit and discretion. Their
Socialism was too abstract and scientific to be understood by rustics,
and when they succeeded in making themselves intelligible they awakened
in their hearers more suspicion than sympathy. The muzhik is a very
matter-of-fact practical person, totally incapable of understanding what
Americans call "hifalutin" tendencies in speech and conduct, and as
he listened to the preaching of the new Gospel doubts and questionings
spontaneously rose in his mind: "What do those young people, who betray
their gentlefolk origin by their delicate white hands, their foreign
phrases, their ignorance of the common things of everyday peasant life,
really want? Why are they bearing hardships and taking so much
trouble? They tell us it is for our good, but we are not such fools and
simpletons as they take us for. They are not doing it all for nothing.
What do they expect from us in return? Whatever it is, they are
evidently evil-doers, and perhaps moshenniki (swindlers). Devil take
them!" and thereupon the cautious muzhik turns his back upon his
disinterested self-sacrificing teachers, or goes quietly and denounces
them to the police! It is not only in Spain that we encounter Don
Quixotes and Sancho Panzas!

Occasionally a worse fate befell the missionaries. If they allowed
themselves, as they sometimes did, to "blaspheme" against religion or
the Tsar, they ran the risk of being maltreated on the spot. I have
heard of one case in which the punish