agitators among the operatives, the Government
resolved to go a step further; it would organise the workers on purely
trade-unionist lines, and would thereby combat the Social Democrats,
who always advised the strikers to mix up political demands with their
material grievances. The project seemed to have a good prospect of
success, because there were many workmen, especially of the older
generation, who did not at all like the mixing up of politics, which so
often led to arrest, imprisonment and exile, with the practical concerns
of every day life.

The first attempt of the kind was made in Moscow under the direction of
a certain Zubatof, chief of the secret police, who had been himself a
revolutionary in his youth, and afterwards an agent provocateur. Aided
by Tikhomirof, the repentant terrorist whom I have already mentioned,
Zubatof organised a large workmen's association, with reading-rooms,
lectures, discussions and other attractions, and sought to convince
the members that they should turn a deaf ear to the Social Democratic
agents, and look only to the Government for the improvement of their
condition. In order to gain their sympathy and confidence, he instructed
his subordinates to take the side of the workmen in all labour disputes,
while he himself brought official pressure to bear on the employers. By
this means he made a considerable number of converts, and for a time the
association seemed to prosper, but he did not possess the extraordinary
ability and tact required to play the complicated game successfully,
and he committed the fatal mistake of using the office-bearers of the
association as detectives for the discovery of the "evil-intentioned."
This tactical error had its natural consequences. As soon as the workmen
perceived that their professed benefactors were police spies, who
did not obtain for them any real improvement of their condition, the
popularity of the association rapidly declined. At the same time, the
factory owners complained to the Minister of Finance that the police,
who ought to be guardians of public order, and who had accused
the factory inspectors of stirring up discontent in the labouring
population, were themselves creating troubles by inciting the workmen
to make inordinate demands. The Minister of Finance at the moment was
M. Witte, and the Minister of Interior, responsible for the acts of the
police, was M. Plehve, and between these two official dignitaries, who
were already in