Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 2.pdf/571

Rh After the attempted blowing up of the Winter Palace, when many soldiers were killed, the executive committee issued a proclamation (February, 1880) deploring the deaths of the victims, but declaring that such tragic incidents would remain inevitable as long as the army continued to protect the tsar. At the same time, the proclamation insisted that terrorism was armed defence against the tyranny and the cruelty of the government, and it held the government and the tsar accountable for all that was done.

As late as March 10, 1881, the terrorists issued a proclamation to Tsar Alexander II declaring that they would instantly and unconditionally submit to a government appointed by a national assembly. The same year, after the assassination of President Garfield, the "Narodnaja Volja," the organ of the terrorists, published the following declaration (No. 6, October 23, 1881): "The executive committee, expressing its profoundest sympathy with the American people on account of the death of James Abram Garfield, feels it to be its duty to protest in the name of the Russian revolutionaries against all such deeds of violence as that which has just taken place in America. In a land where the citizens are free to express their ideas, and where the will of the people does not merely make the law but appoints the person who is to carry the law into effect, in such a country political assassination is the manifestation of a despotic tendency identical with that to whose destruction in Russia we have devoted ourselves. Despotism, whatever may be the parties or whoever may be the individuals that exercise it, is always blameworthy, and force can be justified only when employed to resist force."

The ethical perils of systematic terrorism were plainly displayed in the combination of Jesuitism and Machiavellianism characteristic of Nečaev's underground activities. We have seen that Nečaev's tactics were condemned by Lavrov, Kropotkin, and others. It is true that certain European authorities (Mazzini, for instance) have condoned and even recommended assassination as a political weapon, but an honest and straightforward revolutionary finds it difficult to adapt himself to terrorist occultism. This is why the Russian terrorists were accustomed to pass death sentences on their victims by formal resolution and to announce the sentence to the condemned.

The secret tactics of the revolutionaries and their adversaries in the state police produce, in addition to vulgar Rh