Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 2.pdf/318

292 The terrorist Narodnaja Volja crumbled away after the assassination of Alexander II, and the party of the Černyi Pereděl developed into the Social Democratic Party upon a Marxist basis, the social democrats tending more and more to constitute a working-class party.

It is a very difficult matter to furnish in Europe a history of the Russian social democracy which shall even approach to accuracy; the sources of information are inaccessible and have hitherto been subjected to little critical examination, while even in Russian literature but little has been written upon the history of the Russian social democracy. I can, therefore, attempt here no more than an incomplete sketch. Should I make any mistakes regarding facts, I must excuse them by the explanation that the Russian theorists and historians of the Russian social democracy differ among themselves as to points of the first importance in respect of chronological and other data.

The evolution of Russian manufacturing industry and the growth of the operative population during the reigns of Alexander II and Alexander III, rendered possible the development of a spontaneous labour movement with which the socialist intelligentsia made common cause. From 1878 onwards, notable strikes began to occur. The strikes were non-political, for the workers did not formulate any political demands. The opening years of the accentuated reaction during the reign of Alexander III were characterised by an arrest of movement among factory operatives no less than elsewhere, but at this time the government took the first steps in the way of factory legislation.

The organisation of the Social Democratic Party in 1883 was fraught with weighty consequences. This organisation was first effected abroad, members of the Černyi Pereděl coming together under Plehanov's leadership and styling themselves Group for the Liberation of Labour (gruppa osvoboždenija truda). In St. Petersburg the first social democratic group was formed in 1885.

The political quiescence of the eighties was broken in 1891 owing to the famine and the cholera, and a great ferment occurred among the working classes. The intelligentsia of all trends and of all shades of opinion shook off the apathy of the preceding decade. In 1891 was established the Party of