Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 2.pdf/352

326 all lies in this, that both were compromise programs. The Russian program was that of the terrorist executive committee, restated in Marxist terminology; it it was really Marxist in so far only as concerned the nature of its hopes for the future, seeing that for the present it recommended the tactics of the terrorist Narodnaja Volja.

Plehanov, who with Véra Zasulič and P. Akselrod, was the leader of the group, subsequently admitted the inconsistencies of the program, and agreed that unduly extensive concessions were made to the narodniki. Personally he endeavoured to make good the defect and to expound clearly the principles of social democracy.

In articles and other writings published during the eighties, Plehanov followed the lines of the Communist Manifesto, doing this notably in Socialism and the Political Struggle (1883) and Our Differences (1884). Subsequently, during the nineties, he was guided rather by the tactics of the German social democracy.

Plehanov was critical of his socialist predecessors, the Bakuninists, the Blanquists, the Lavrovists, and the Narodnaja Volja. He described Herzen, Bakunin, Tkačev, and Černyševskii as narodniki, and he rejected the doctrines of the narodničestvo. He anticipated the further development of Russian capitalism, already fairly strong by 1884, and at the same time he hoped that the socialist ideal would be realised through the work of the Social Democratic Labour Party. An ex-narodnik and ex-member of the Narodnaja Volja, he regarded as mere utopianism the hopes that had hitherto been centred in the Russian mužik. It was, he said, positively childish utopianism to imagine that ninety per cent of the members of a national assembly elected by universal suffrage would decide in favour of the socialist (communist) program. The only goal for Russian socialists who desired to keep their fancies within bounds must be, he said, to secure a democratic constitution upon the basis of universal suffrage, and to prepare the elements for the future socialist party of the workers. To this end, the sympathy of society at large was essential, and he therefore warned his fellow socialists against needlessly alarming men of moderate views by the display of the "red phantom." The peasant mentality was not socialist, and therefore the preliminary work must be done by the socialists among the intelligentsia and by the urban operatives. It will be seen that Plehanov assigned to the