hey hope to overthrow the Autocratic Power and bring
about the great economic and social revolution to which the political
revolution would be merely the prologue.

Therein lies a serious danger.

After the failure of the propaganda and the insurrectionary agitation
in the seventies, it became customary in revolutionary circles to
regard the muzhik as impervious to Socialist ideas and insurrectionary
excitement, but the hope of eventually employing him in the cause never
quite died out, and in recent times, when his economic condition in many
districts has become critical, attempts have occasionally been made to
embarrass the Government by agrarian disturbances. The method usually
employed is to disseminate among the peasantry by oral propaganda, by
printed or hectographed leaflets, and by forged Imperial manifestoes,
the belief that the Tsar has ordered the land of the proprietors to be
given to the rural Communes, and that his benevolent wishes are being
frustrated by the land-owners and the officials. The forged manifesto
is sometimes written in letters of gold as a proof of its being genuine,
and in one case which I heard of in the province of Poltava, the
revolutionary agent, wearing the uniform of an aide-de-camp of the
Emperor, induced the village priest to read the document in the parish
church.

The danger lies in the fact that, quite independent of revolutionary
activity, there has always been, since the time of the Emancipation, a
widespread belief among the peasantry that they would sooner or later
receive the whole of the land. Successive Tsars have tried personally
to destroy this illusion, but their efforts have not been successful.
Alexander II., when passing through a province where the idea was very
prevalent, caused a number of village elders to be brought before him,
and told them in a threatening tone that they must remain satisfied with
their allotments and pay their taxes regularly; but the wily peasants
could not be convinced that the "General" who had talked to them in this
sense was really the Tsar. Alexander III. made a similar attempt at the
time of his accession. To the Volost elders collected together from all
parts of the Empire, he said: "Do not believe the foolish rumours and
absurd reports about a redistribution of the land, and addition to your
allotments, and such like things. These reports are disseminated by your
enemies. Every kind of property, your own included, must be inviolab