Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 1.pdf/197

Rh of the schools, of scientific corporations, and of the press, were officially restricted. Before long it was generally recognised that the tsar, unlike his father, had no will of his own, and that Nicholas was in effect a prisoner in the hands of Pobědonoscev and the sordid clique of Bezobrazov, Saharov, Aleksěev, etc., whose mouthpiece was Katkov's newspaper.

A more irritable and revolutionary mood began to prevail, not among the intelligentsia alone, but likewise among the operatives and the peasantry. During and after 1895 there were serious labour troubles; in 1896, the great strike of 30,000 textile workers took place in St. Petersburg; the Jewish workman became organised in the social democratic "Bund." In Minsk, during the year 1898, was constituted the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party.

Remarkable and characteristically Russian was the opposition movement in the universities, for by 1899 these had become positively impregnated with revolutionary feeling. The government retaliated by repressive measures, students who participated in the movement were forcibly enrolled as soldiers, and this increased the ferment.

Professors and writers of advanced views now took their places boldly in the front ranks of the opposition. I may recall the protest of the literati against the inhuman treatment of the people by the police and the Cossacks on March 17, 1901.

The socialists were opposed to individual revolutionary acts, their aim being to promote the economic organisation and strengthening of their party ("the economists") ; but as the number of organised workers increased, ideas of a mass movement for political revolution began to prevail. The various opposition parties drew closer together, so that a peculiar political alliance resulted, and constitutionalist liberals cooperated more harmoniously with the working class and with the resurgent terrorists than had seemed possible in previous campaigns. The terrorist groups of the Narodnaja Volja had undergone disintegration, but in the year 1901 this body became renascent as the Social Revolutionary Party. In contradistinction to the Social Democratic Labour Party, the Social Revolutionary Party advocated the weapon of terrorism, reviving in its "fighting organisation" (boevaja organizacija) the traditions of the "executive committee." Under pressure of this party, whose propagandist activities were pursued