Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 2.pdf/390

364 This exposition shows plainly that the program of the social revolutionaries is the program of the narodniki in a socialist dress; the folk-socialists (social-narodniki) and the neonarodniki developed pari passu and in association with the social revolutionaries. Since the question of tactics was the main interest of the social revolutionaries, since they advocated the fomenting of revolution by terrorist methods, it was natural that they should pay comparatively little heed to economic questions; these matters were left to the narodniki and their leading periodical ("Russkoe Bogatstvo"). The menace to the existence of the mir involved by the law of November 9, 1906, aroused little discussion among social revolutionaries, although from time to time it was frankly recognised that the working of this law would completely destroy the mir within two or three decades, and that the hopes based upon Russian socialism by the narodničestvo were therefore tending to prove illusory.

The experiences that followed the revolution of 1905 wrought much confusion in the ranks of the social revolutionaries, a confusion manifested by the cleavage of the party into numerous factions, whose existence was often ephemeral. We have already learned that the social revolutionaries, like the social democrats, split into maximalists and minimalists; for a short time there was a section known as "initiativists," who advocated radical terrorism as it had been practised by the narodovolcy. There were several social revolutionary periodicals which preached a boycott of the duma, but there was another organ which opposed this boycott. In three of the elections to the duma, the boycott was actually practised, but the second duma was not boycotted.

Upon the question of revolutionary terrorism the party was disunited, and failed to formulate clear views. It was not by its constitution outspokenly terrorist. After certain terrorist activities and after the revolution, at a congress held in June 1906 it was decided to abandon the terrorist struggle until further notice. The party was here yielding to the general sentiment. The first terrorist acts had been at least tacitly approved by persons of all parties and trends, but after the revolution, terrorism was decisively condemned.