Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 2.pdf/128

102 many disputes concerning the differences between propaganda and agitation, but since in practice both the opposing groups adopted the same methods, the distinction between Lavrovist propaganda and Bakuninist agitation was fluid.

Its socialist program notwithstanding, terrorist radicalism, in virtue of its whole practice and in view of the character of its secret organisation, was political rather than socialist. The goal of the movement was the abolition of absolutism, and when practical questions concerning political and social institutions came under consideration, the views of the radical terrorists were, after all, not so remarkably radical. In the letter to Alexander III which the executive committee of the Narodnaja Volja issued after the death of Alexander II, it was conceded as possible that the national assembly would legalise the monarchy; the revolutionists would accept this if the election of the deputies had been effected freely and in due form of law.

N Europe, and in Russia as well, revolutionary terrorism was from the first identified with nihilism. One who was in the movement and who suffered personally under the white terror, Šiško, who was writer as well as revolutionist, tells us that after Karakozov's attempt, the accused were asked whether they belonged to the sect of nihilists, and that many had to sign a declaration renouncing the errors of nihilism, of the periodical "Sovremennik," and of socialism.

Nihilism was and was not identical with terrorism. Nihilism was the aspiration for new men and the new social order, was the attempt to attain to the philosophy and to the mode of life of these new men and of this new social order; terrorism is merely a means to an end, and may be a means to this end. But not all the terrorists were nihilists in theory or in practice. Kropotkin says with perfect justice that nihilism was far more profound than terrorism.

Philosophically considered, the revolutionary programs are based upon materialistically formulated positivism; we encounter in them the thoughts of Feuerbach, Comte, Mill, Vogt, Büchner, and Moleschott. Marx, too, begins to exercise an influence; so also, through Lavrov's instrumentality, do Kant and Schopenhauer; whilst the teaching of Spencer and the doctrine of evolution (Darwin) play their part. Among