Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 2.pdf/191

Rh in pieces, whilst with the other he gobbled up the peasants. "Aim, therefore, at both heads of the bird of prey! Vogue la galère!"

Mihailovskii's writing was signed "Grognard." It certainly lacks clarity. What were the revolutionaries really to do? How were they to conduct the desiderated political struggle side by side with the social struggle? Were the two campaigns distinct, and if so in what respect? The second writing was somewhat clearer. Mihailovskii declared that he did not himself feel able to kill a human being in cold blood, and that he had never thought it right to teach others who was to be killed and how. He desired to undertake a logical investigation, from the outlook of those who claimed a right to kill, to ascertain what practical meaning the assassination of such men as Mezencev could have. The revolutionaries said that the Russian revolution was of an exclusively social character. They did not want a constitution, for this would merely impose a new yoke upon the people. They contended that the assassinations were nothing more than a defence against spies, against the Mezencevs. Blood must be paid for with blood.

The reader will recall Stepniak's theory, against which Mihailovskii now directed his arguments. Mihailovskii insisted, in the first place, that the alleged self-defence was, after all, nothing but a political struggle; the terrorist murders had no specifically socialist character; the same means were employed by aristocrats, clericalists, liberals, intriguers of all kinds. Hence, continued Mihailovskii, it is not the Mezencevs who ought to be killed, but the idea of autocracy. He therefore demanded a political struggle of a different kind. The terrorist method was too episodic and unsystematic; there was no clear consciousness at the back of it; the revolutionists, he complained, understood how to die but did not wish to live. His conclusion was that the revolutionists ought to combine with the liberals for a systematic political struggle, not a struggle waged on their own behalf, but for the sake of the whole country and to win the whole country. For Mihailovskii, the constitutionalist regime in Russia was merely a question of the morrow, though this morrow, it was true, would not bring the solution of the social problem. Human peace and wellbeing belonged to a remoter future.

Among other clandestine essays I must mention a vigorous