Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 2.pdf/118

Rh evitable fatalism." Lavrov declares in conclusion that for Russia, too, the revolutionary path is "the most probable."

For Lavrov, likewise, the mir seems the social and economic foundation upon which the socialistic transformation of society as a whole can be based. But it is necessary that, as a preliminary, the peasants shall receive enlightenment, for otherwise, even should the revolution prove successful, they would be exploited by the minority.

Marx and Comte versus Bakunin, such is the gist of this revolutionary program. In view of the lust of battle which animates the young Bakuninist revolutionaries, Lavrov voices the exhortation, "Look before you leap!" As against the secret society men (buntari), Lavrov emphasises the advantages of propaganda, and the opponents of the Lavrovists therefore spoke of them contemptuously as "progressives."

"Nabat" (The Alarm Bell), a periodical published in Geneva, and edited by Tkačev, was the organ of Lavrov's adversaries. Tkačev was a Blanquist who took part in the opening political demonstrations of the early sixties, and was sentenced in the NačaevNečaev [sic] trial. His aim was to continue and outbid the radicalism of Bakunin and Nečaev, so that for him not Lavrov merely but even Bakunin were "bourgeois pseudo-revolutionaries" in the sense of Nečaev's Catechism, Tkačev denominated his system, jacobinism. The immediate aim of the revolution is to seize political power, but this seizure of power is not itself the revolution, to which it is no more than a preliminary. The revolution will first be realised by revolutionary state, which will attain to the negative and positive aims of the revolution.

The revolutionary state will strengthen itself by summoning a national assembly (narodnaja duma), and will conduct revolutionary propaganda, will, that is to say, guide education in accordance with the principles of the new order. Whereas Lavrov laid the principal stress upon the education of the people for the revolution, and made the revolution dependent upon such education, Tkačev taught that the forcible overthrow of the old order would precede the revolutionary propaganda.

In matters of detail Tkačev recapitulates Bakunin's ideals. The existing mir with private ownership will be transformed into a completely communistic local community; all private tools and machinery for production will be expropriated;