f
action came upon the scene. Like the Nihilists, they desired political,
social, and economic reforms of the most thorough-going kind, but they
believed that such things could not be effected by the educated classes
alone, and they determined to call in the co-operation of the people.
For this purpose they tried to convert the masses to the gospel of
Socialism. Hundreds of them became missionaries and "went in among
the people." But the gospel of Socialism proved unintelligible to the
uneducated, and the more ardent, incautious missionaries fell into the
hands of the police. Those of them who escaped, perceiving the error
of their ways, but still clinging to the hope of bringing about a
political, social, and economic revolution, determined to change their
tactics. The emancipated serf had shown himself incapable of "prolonged
revolutionary activity," but there was reason to believe that he was,
like his forefathers in the time of Stenka Razin and Pugatcheff, capable
of rising and murdering his oppressors. He must be used, therefore, for
the destruction of the Autocratic Power and the bureaucracy, and then
it would be easy to reorganise society on a basis of universal equality,
and to take permanent precautions against capitalism and the creation of
a proletariat.

The hopes of the agitators proved as delusive as those of the
propagandists. The muzhik turned a deaf ear to their instigations, and
the police soon prevented their further activity. Thus the would-be
root-and-branch reforms found themselves in a dilemma. Either they must
abandon their schemes for the moment or they must strike immediately at
their persecutors. They chose, as we have seen, the latter alternative,
and after vain attempts to frighten the Government by acts of terrorism
against zealous officials, they assassinated the Tsar himself; but
before they had time to think of the constructive part of their task,
their organisation was destroyed by the Autocratic Power and the
bureaucracy, and those of them who escaped arrest had to seek safety in
emigration to Switzerland and Paris.

Then arose, all along the line of the defeated, decimated
revolutionists, the cry, "What is to be done?" Some replied that the
shattered organisation should be reconstructed, and a number of secret
agents were sent successively from Switzerland for this purpose.
But their efforts, as they themselves confessed, were fruitless, and
despondency seemed to be settling down pe