erals
and urged them to more energetic action; but before anything could be
arranged the more impatient revolutionists--notably the group called
the Narodovoltsi (National-will-ists)--intervened, denounced what they
considered an unholy alliance, and proposed a policy of terrorism
by which the Government would be frightened into a more conciliatory
attitude. Their idea was that the officials who displayed most zeal
against the revolutionary movement should be assassinated, and that
every act of severity on the part of the Administration should be
answered by an act of "revolutionary justice."

As it was evident that the choice between these two courses of action
must determine in great measure the future character and ultimate fate
of the movement, there was much discussion between the two groups; but
the question did not long remain in suspense. Soon the extreme party
gained the upper hand, and the Terrorist policy was adopted. I shall let
the revolutionists themselves explain this momentous decision. In a long
proclamation published some years later it is explained thus:

"The revolutionary movement in Russia began with the so-called 'going
in among the people.' The first Russian revolutionists thought that the
freedom of the people could be obtained only by the people itself, and
they imagined that the only thing necessary was that the people should
absorb Socialistic ideas. To this it was supposed that the peasantry
were naturally inclined, because they already possess, in the rural
Commune, institutions which contain the seeds of Socialism, and which
might serve as a basis for the reconstruction of society according to
Socialist principles. The propagandists hoped, therefore, that in the
teachings of West European Socialism the people would recognise its own
instinctive creations in riper and more clearly defined forms and that
it would joyfully accept the new teaching.

"But the people did not understand its friends, and showed itself
hostile to them. It turned out that institutions born in slavery could
not serve as a foundation for the new construction, and that the man who
was yesterday a serf, though capable of taking part in disturbances, is
not fitted for conscious revolutionary work. With pain in their heart
the revolutionists had to confess that they were deceived in their hopes
of the people. Around them were no social revolutionary forces on which
they could lean for support, and yet they could not r