In the latter part of the 1860s, students formed circles to discuss public questions and their role in society. These circles initially showed no political, let alone revolutionary, inclinations. Influenced by French positivism, they identified progress with science and enlightenment, and saw their mission as spreading the gospels of materialism and utilitarianism. At this time, thousands of Russian youths who had neither interest in nor talent for science enrolled at the scientific faculties in the belief that by peering into microscopes or dissecting frogs they were advancing the cause of human happiness.
This naïve scientism soon ran its course: it was only the first of the enthusiasms a French visitor found characteristic of Russian intellectuals, who were quickly captivated by new ideas and just as quickly grew bored with them.36 The fresh ideas that penetrated the universities in the early 1870s already had activist and, in the Russian context of the time, revolutionary implications. The emancipation of the serfs, the centerpiece of the Great Reforms, had transformed twenty million Russians from chattel into subjects. This gave the students a mission: to carry the message of positivism and materialism to the rural masses. In the spring of 1874, hundreds of students left the lecture rooms and dispersed in the countryside. The majority were “propagandists,” followers of Peter Lavrov, who took it upon themselves to enlighten the peasants about the injustices of the regime, in the expectation that this knowledge would stir them into action. The smaller body of “agitators,” followers of Bakunin, believed the peasants were instinctive rebels and would turn to violence once they were told they had large company. For the major part, the young “socialists-revolutionaries” who participated in this first “going to the people” crusade were still committed to the idea of change through enlightenment. But the persecution to which the authorities, frightened of peasant unrest, subjected them turned many into full-time revolutionaries. By 1877, when the second “going to the people” movement took place, Russia had several hundred experienced radical activists. Supporting them were thousands of sympathizers at the universities and in society at large.
Face-to-face contact with the “people” proved to be a bewildering experience for the radical youths. The muzhik turned out to be a very different creature from the one they had imagined: a “noble savage” steeped in communal life, an egalitarian, and a born anarchist who required only encouragement to rise against the Tsar, landlords, and capitalists. The following excerpt from the recollections of a “propagandist” of the 1870s reflects this bewilderment. A peasant is speaking:
As far as land goes, we’ve got little. No place to put a chicken. But the Tsar will give. Absolutely. There is nothing doing without land. Who will pay taxes? How fill the treasury? And without the treasury, how can one rule? We will get the land! Ab-so-lute-ly! You will see.
The author noted with dismay the effects of radical propaganda on the peasants:
How curiously our speeches, our concepts were interpreted by the peasant mind!… their conclusions and comparisons utterly astonished me. “We have it better under the Tsar.” Something struck me in the head, as if a nail had been driven into it.… There, I said, are the fruits of propaganda! We do not destroy illusions but reinforce them. We reinforce the old faith of the people in the Tsar.37
The disillusionment with the people pushed the most determined radicals to terrorism. While many of the disappointed Socialists-Revolutionaries abandoned the movement and a handful adopted the doctrines of German Social-Democracy, a dedicated minority decided to carry on by different means. In the fall of 1879 this minority formed a secret organization called the People’s Will (Narodnaia Volia). The mission of its thirty full-time members, banded in an Executive Committee, was to fight the tsarist regime by means of systematic terror: on its founding, it passed a “sentence” of death on Alexander II. It was the first political terrorist organization in history and the model for all subsequent organizations of this kind in Russia and elsewhere. Resort to terror was an admission of isolation: as one of the leaders of the People’s Will would later concede, terror
requires neither the support nor the sympathy of the country. It is enough to have one’s convictions, to feel one’s despair, to be determined to perish. The less a country wants revolution, the more naturally will they turn to terror who want, no matter what, to remain revolutionaries, to cling to their cult of revolutionary destruction.38
The stated mission of the People’s Will was to assassinate government officials, for the twin goal of demoralizing the government and breaking down the awe in which the masses held the Tsar. In the words of the Executive Committee:
Terrorist activity … has as its objective undermining the fascination with the government’s might, providing an uninterrupted demonstration of the possibility of struggling against the government, in this manner lifting the revolutionary spirit of the people and its faith in the success of the cause, and, finally, organizing the forces capable of combat.39
The ultimate political goal of the People’s Will was the convocation of a National Assembly through which the nation would express its wishes. The People’s Will was a highly centralized organization, the decisions of the Executive Committee being binding on all followers, known as “vassals.” Members were expected to dedicate themselves totally to the revolutionary cause, and if called upon, to sacrifice to it their properties and even their lives.
The emergence of the People’s Will marked a watershed in the history of the Russian Revolution. For one, it established violence as a legitimate instrument of politics: enlightenment and persuasion were rejected as futile and even counterproductive. But even more important was the arrogation by the revolutionary intelligentsia of the right to decide what was good for the people: the name People’s Will was a deceptive misnomer, since the “people” not only did not authorize an organization of thirty intellectuals to act on their behalf but had made it unmistakably clear that they would have no truck with anti-tsarist ideology. When the terrorists defined as one of their tasks “lifting the revolutionary spirit of the people,” they were well aware that the real people, those tilling the fields and working in the factories, had no revolutionary spirit to lift. This attitude had decisive implications for the future. Henceforth all Russian revolutionaries, whether favoring terrorism or opposed to it, whether belonging to the Socialist-Revolutionary or the Social-Democratic Party, assumed the authority to speak in the name of the “people”—an abstraction without equivalent in the real world.
The terrorist campaign launched by the People’s Will against a government entirely unprepared for it—the Third Department, in charge of state security, had about as many personnel as the Executive Committee—succeeded in its immediate objective: on March 1, 1881, Alexander II fell victim to a terrorist bomb. The political benefits of this outrage were nil. The public reacted with horror and the radical cause lost a great deal of popular support. The government responded with a variety of repressive measures and counterintelligence operations which made it increasingly difficult for the revolutionaries to function. And the “people” did not stir, unshaken in the belief that the land which they desired would be given them by the next Tsar.