Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 2.pdf/388

362 teristic of the decay of the old era, with its satiety and debility. Plehanov, we remember, regards scepticism (itself, too, an outcome of subjectivism) as a symptom of bourgeois decadence. Bakunin wrote against scepticism in a quite similar manner. So did Mihailovskii, who, in addition, referred to the symptomatic significance of suicide. Quite recently (January, 1912), the epidemic of suicide among the Russian youth was analysed by Gor'kii in an animated attack upon "the fathers" who drive their "children" to suicide. We can readily understand that some of the decadents will turn for sensational stimulation to social democracy and the revolution. The decadent vacillates between the church and the lupanar, and in his physical and mental debility he may also find his way to the barricade.

But however much I admire the democratic aspirations of Marxism and the social democracy, however gladly I accept socialism (not communism!), I deplore the scholasticism of Marxist orthodoxy, and lament the philosophic and scientific sterility of the doctrine.

N our historical sketch we gave an account of the development of the revolutionary parties in Russia, and we have made acquaintance with the radical program and with the essential features of the terrorist revolution which came to its climax with the assassination of Alexander II.

After the tsar's death the members of the Narodnaja Volja remained organised in small local circles. These circles were continually breaking up and being reorganised, and in some cases small new centres of the party came into existence. The relationships of the Narodnaja Volja with the growing social democratic organisation were friendly in some places, hostile in others.

During the autumn of Igor, the various revolutionary elements amalgamated to form the Social Revolutionary Party with a central committee. Side by side with this central committee there was soon formed a more or less independent "fighting organisation" (boevaja organizacia). Bogolěpov, Sypjagin, Pleve, Sergius, Šuvalov, and others, were its victims.