p But is such a merger possible at present? Is propaganda among the workers at all possible in the present political circumstances?

p Impossibility is a particular case of difficulty. But there are two forms of difficulty which occasionally become impossibility. One type of difficulty depends on the personal qualities of the agents, on the dominant character of their strivings, views and inclinations. This type of difficulty is created by social surroundings through the intermediary of individuals, and therefore its shades are as varied as the qualities of individuals. What was difficult for Goldenberg was easy for Zhelyabov; what is impossible for a man of one type of character and convictions may appear necessary and therefore possible, though perhaps difficult, for another with different habits and views.^^228^^ The impossible is often not what is in itself impossible, but what, in the opinion of a certain individual, brings profits which do not compensate for the efforts exerted. But the appraisal of the profits a given political matter brings depends entirely on the agent’s view of the matter. Mr. V. V., being convinced that the government itself will undertake the organisation of national production which he thinks desirable, will naturally consider superfluous the sacrifices and efforts which propaganda among the workers will cost at present. Similarly, the conspirator who relies mainly on some “committee” or other will declare without great inner struggle that propaganda is impossible among the workers, who, in his opinion, are important "for the revolution" but are far from being the only representatives of the revolution.^^229^^ This is by no means the way the Social-Democrat speaks; he is convinced that it is not a case of the workers being necessary for the revolution , but of the revolution being necessary for the workers. For him propaganda among the workers will be the main aim of his efforts, and he will not give it up until he has tried all means at his disposal and exerted all the efforts he is capable of. And the more our revolutionary intelligentsia become imbued with truly socialist views, the more possible and the easier work among the workers will seem to them, for the simple reason that their desire for such work will be all the greater.

p We do not wish and would not be able to deceive anybody. Everybody knows how many difficulties and persecutions await the propagandist and popular agitator in our country today. But those difficulties must not be exaggerated. Every kind of revolutionary work without exception is made very difficult in our country today by persecution from the police, but that does not mean that the white terror has achieved its aim, i.e., that it has "rooted out sedition”. Action calls for counteraction, persecution gives birth to self-sacrifice, and no matter how energetic the 346 reactionary steps taken by the government, the revolutionary will always be able to evade them if only he devotes the necessary amount of energy to that purpose. There was a time when the blowing up of the Winter Palace and the undermining in Malaya Sadovaya would have seemed unpracticable and unfeasible to the revolutionaries themselves. ^^23^^° But people were found who did the impossible, carried out the unfeasible. Can such persistence be unthinkable in other spheres of revolutionary work? Are the spies that track down the “terrorists” less skilful and numerous than those who guard our working class against the "pseudo-science of socialism and communism"? Only he can affirm that who has made up his mind to avoid any kind of work that is unpleasant for him.

p As far as the qualities of the working class itself are concerned, they do not by any means justify the gloomy prophecies of our pessimists. Properly speaking, hardly anybody has ever undertaken propaganda among the workers in our country with any consistency or system. And yet experience has shown that even the scattered efforts of a few dozen men were sufficient to give a powerful impulse to the revolutionary initiative of our working class. Let the reader remember the Northern Union of Russian Workers, its Social-Democratic programme and its organisation, which was very far-flung for a secret society. This Union has disintegrated, but before accusing the workers of that our intelligentsia should recall whether they did much to support it. ^^231^^ Yet it was quite possible and not even so very difficult to support it. In their "Letter to the Editors of Zemlya i Volya " representatives of the Union even defined the type of help that was desirable and indispensable for them. They requested co-operation in setting up a secret printshop for the publication of their working-class paper. The " intellectual" society Zemlya i Volya considered it untimely to fulfil that request. The main efforts of our “intellectual” socialists were then aimed in a completely different direction. The result of those efforts was not support for the workers but intensification of the police persecutions whose victims, among others, were the workers’ organisations. Is it astonishing that, left to their own resources in a conspiracy which they were by no means accustomed to, the Workers’ Union broke up into small sections not linked by any unity of plan or of action? But those small circles and groups of socialist workers have still not ceased to exist in our industrial centres; all that is needed to unite them again in one impressive whole is a little conviction, energy and perseverance.

p Needless to say the workers’ secret societies do not constitute a workers’ party. In this sense, those who say that our programme is meant far more for the future than for the present are quite right. But what follows from that? Docs it mean we need not set to work immediately on its implementation? The exceptionalists 347 who argue in that way are again being caught in a vicious circle of conclusions. A widespread working-class movement presupposes at least a temporary triumph of free institutions in the country concerned, even if those institutions are only partly free. But to secure such institutions will in turn be impossible without political support from the most progressive sections of the people. Where is the way out? West European history broke this vicious circle by slow political education of the working class. But there is no limit to our revolutionaries’ fear of punctilious old woman history’s slowness. They want the revolution as soon as possible, cost what it may. In view of this one can only wonder at them not remembering the proverb: If you want to ride the sledge, pull it up the hill—a proverb whose political meaning amounts to the irrefutable proposition that anyone who wishes to win freedom quickly must try to interest the working class in the fight against absolutism. The development of the political consciousness of the working class is one of the chief forms in the struggle against the "principal enemy which prevents any at all rational approach" to the question of creating in our country a workers’ party on the West European pattern. What, indeed, is the meaning of the assurances given by historians that in such and such a historical period the bourgeoisie—or, what comes to almost the same, society—was fighting against absolutism in such and such a country? No more and no less than that the bourgeoisie was inciting and leading the working class to fight, or at least was counting on its support. Until the bourgeoisie were guaranteed that support they were cowardly, because they were powerless. What did the republican bourgeoisie—deservedly deprived of that support—do against Napoleon III? All that they could do was to choose between hopeless heroism and hypocritical approval of the accomplished fact. When did the revolutionary bourgeoisie show courage in 1830 and 1848? When the working class was already getting the upper hand at the barricades. Our “society” cannot count on such support from the workers; it does not even know who the insurgent workers will aim their blows at—the defenders of absolute monarchy or the supporters of political freedom. Hence its timidity and irresoluteness, hence the leaden, hopeless gloom that has come over it now. But if the state of affairs changes, if our “society” is guaranteed the support from at least the city suburbs, you will see that it knows what it wants and will be able to speak to the authorities in the language worthy of a citizen. Remember the Petersburg strikes in 1878-79. Reports about them were far from interesting to the socialists alone. They became the event of the day and nearly all the intelligentsia and thinking people in Petersburg showed an interest in them.^^232^^ Now imagine that those strikes had expressed, besides the antagonism of interests between the employers and the 348 workers of a given factory, the political discord which was appearing between the Petersburg working class and the absolute monarchy. The way the police treated the strikers gave occasion enough for such political discord to be manifested. Imagine that the workers at the Novaya Bumagopryadilnya Mill had demanded, besides a wage rise for themselves, definite political rights for all Russian citizens. The bourgeoisie would then have seen that they had to consider the workers’ demands more seriously than before. Besides this, all the liberal sections of the bourgeoisie, whose economic interests would not have been immediately and directly threatened had the strikers been successful, would have felt that their political demands were at last being provided with some solid foundation and that support from the working class made the success of their struggle against absolutism far more probable. The workers’ political movement would have inspired new hope in the hearts of all supporters of political freedom. The Narodniks themselves might have directed their attention to the new fighters from among the workers and have ceased their barren and hopeless whimpering over the destruction of the “foundations” they cherished so much.  [348•* 

p The question is who, if not the revolutionary intelligentsia, could promote the political development of the working class? During the 1878-79 strikes even the self-reliant intelligentsia could not boast of clear political consciousness. That was why the strikers could not hear anything at all instructive from them about the connection between the economic interests of the working class and its political rights. Now, too, there is much confusion in the heads of our "revolutionary youth”. But we are’ willing to entertain the hope that confusion will at last give way to the theories of modern scientific socialism and will cease to paralyse the success of our revolutionary movement. Once that fortunate time comes, the workers’ groups, too, will not delay in adopting the correct political standpoint. Then the struggle against absolutism will enter a new phase, the last; supported by the working masses, the political demands of the progressive section of our “society” will at last receive the satisfaction they have been waiting for so long.

p Had the death of Alexander II been accompanied by vigorous action of the workers in the principal cities of Russia, its results would probably have been more decisive. But widespread agitation among the workers is unthinkable without the help of secret societies previously set up in as large numbers as possible, which 349 would prepare the workers’ minds and direct their movement. It can, therefore, be said that without serious work among the workers, and consequently without conscious support from the secret workers’ organisations, the terrorists’ most daring feats will never be anything more than brilliant sorties. The "principal enemy" will only be hit, not destroyed by them; that means that the terrorist struggle will not achieve its aim, for its only aim must be the complete and merciless destruction of absolutism.

p Thus, far from the political situation in Russia today compelling us to renounce activity among the workers, it is only by means of such activity that we can free ourselves from the intolerable yoke of absolutism.

p Let us now consider another aspect of the matter. The foregoing exposition has once more confirmed for us the truth that the working class is very important "for the revolution”. But the socialist must think first and foremost of making the revolution useful for the working population of the country. Leaving the peasantry aside for the time being, we shall note that the more clearly the working class sees the connection between its economic needs and its political rights, the more profit it will derive from its political struggle. In the "West European countries" the proletariat often fought absolutism under the banner and the supreme leadership of the bourgeoisie. Hence its intellectual and moral dependence on the leaders of liberalism, its faith in the exceptional holiness of liberal mottoes and its conviction in the inviolability of the bourgeois system. In Germany it took all Lassalle’s energy and eloquence to do as much as only to undermine the moral link of the workers with the progressists. Our “society” has no such influence on the working class and there is no need or use for the socialists to create it from scratch. They must show the workers their own, working-class banner, give them leaders from their own, workingclass ranks; briefly, they must make sure that not bourgeois “society”, but the workers’ secret organisations gain dominating influence over the workers’ minds. This will considerably hasten the formation and growth of the Russian workers’ socialist party, which will be able to win itself a place of honour among the other parties after having, in its infancy, promoted the fall of absolutism and the triumph of political freedom.

p In order thus to contribute to the intellectual and political independence of the Russian working class, our revolutionaries need not resort to any artificial measures or place themselves in any false or ambiguous position. All they need is to become imbued with the principles of modern Social-Democracy and, not confining themselves to political propaganda, constantly to impress upon their listeners that "the economical emancipation of the working classes is ... the great end to which every political 350 movement ought to be subordinate as a means".^^233^^ Once it has assimilated this thought, our working class will itself be capable of steering between Scylla and Charybdis, between the political reaction of state socialism and the economic quackery of the liberal bourgeoisie.

p In promoting the formation of the workers’ party, our revolutionaries will be doing the most fruitful, the most important thing that can be pointed to a "progressive man" in present-day Russia. The workers’ party alone is capable of solving all the contradictions which now condemn our intelligentsia to theoretical and practical impotence. We have already seen that the most obvious of those contradictions is at present the necessity to overthrow absolutism and the impossibility of doing so without the support of the people. Secret workers’ organisations will solve this contradiction by drawing into the political struggle the most progressive sections of the people. But that is not enough. Growing and strengthening under the shelter of free institutions, the Russian workers’ socialist party will solve another, not less important contradiction, this time of the economic character. We all know that the village commune of today must give place to communism or ultimately disintegrate. At the same time, the economic organisation of the commune has no springs to start it off on the road to communist development. While easing our peasants’ transition to communism, the commune cannot impart to them the initiative necessary for that transition. On the contrary, the development of commodity production is more and more undermining the traditional foundations of the commune principle. And our Narodnik intelligentsia cannot remove this basic contradiction in one fell swoop. Some of the village communes are declining, disintegrating before their eyes and becoming a "scourge and a brake" for the poorest of the commune members. Unfortunate as this phenomenon may seem to the intelligentsia, they can do absolutely nothing to help it at present. There is absolutely no link whatever between the " lovers of the people" and the “people”. The disintegrating commune is still alone on its side, and the grieving intelligentsia are alone on theirs, neither being able to put an end to this sad state of affairs. How can a way out of this contradiction be found? Will our intelligentsia indeed have to say Bah! to all practical work and console themselves with “utopias” of the kind Mr. G. Uspensky likes? Nothing of the sort! Our Narodniks can at least save a certain number of village communes if only they will consent to appeal to the dialectics of our social development. But such an appeal is also possible only through the intermediary of a workers’ socialist party.

p The disintegration of our village commune is an indisputable fact. But the speed and intensity of the process differ according to 351 localities in Russia. To halt it completely in places where the commune is freshest and most stable, our Narodniks must use the forces now being freed by the breaking up of communes in gubernias where industry is more developed. These forces are nothing else than the forces of the rising proletariat. They, and they alone, can be the link between the peasantry and the socialist intelligentsia; they, and they alone, can bridge the historical abyss between the “people” and the “educated” section of the population. Through them and with their help socialist propaganda will at last penetrate into every corner of the Russian countryside. Moreover, if they are united and organised at the right time into a single workers’ party, they can be the main bulwark of socialist agitation in favour of economic reforms which will protect the village commune against general disintegration. And when the hour of the final victory of the workers’ party over the upper sections of society strikes, once more that party, and only that party, will take the initiative in the socialist organisation of national production. Under the influence of—and, if the case presents itself, under pressure from that party—the village communes still existing will in fact begin the transition to a higher, communist form. Then the advantages offered by communal land tenure will become not only possible, but actual, and the Narodnik dreams of our peasantry’s exceptional development will come true, at least as far as a certain portion of the peasantry is concerned.

p Thus the forces which are being freed by the disintegration of the village commune in some places in Russia can safeguard it against total disintegration in other places. All that is necessary is the ability to make correct and timely use of those forces and to direct them, i.e., to organise them as soon as possible into a SocialDemocratic party.

p But, the champions of exceptionalism may object, the small landowners will offer vigorous resistance to the socialist tendencies of the workers’ party. Most probably they will, but, on the other hand, there will be somebody to fight that resistance. The appearance of a class of small landowners is accompanied by the growth in numbers and strength of the revolutionary proletariat, which will at last impart life and movement to our clumsy state apparatus. Resistance need not be feared where there is a historical force capable of overcoming it; this is just as true as, on the other hand, a presumed absence of resistance is by no means a fact to rejoice at when the people are not capable of beginning the socialist movement, when the heroic exertions of separate individuals are shattered by the inertia of the obscure and ignorant masses.

p It must be borne in mind, moreover, that this workers’ party will also be for us a vehicle of influence from the West. The working man will not turn a deaf ear to the movement of the European 352 proletariat, as could easily be the case with the peasant. And the united forces of the home and international movement will be more than enough to defeat the reactionary strivings of the small landowners.

p So once more: The earliest possible formation of a workers’ party is the only means of solving all the economic and political contradictions of present-day Russia. On that road success and victory lie ahead; all other roads can lead only to defeat and impotence.

p And what about terror? the Narodovoltsi will exclaim. And the peasants? the Narodniks, on the other hand, will shout. You are prepared to be reconciled with the existing reaction for the sake of your plans for a distant future, some will argue. You are sacrificing concrete interests for the victory of your doctrines like narrowminded dogmatists, others will say horrified. But we ask our opponents to be patient for a while and we shall try to answer at least some of the reproaches showered on us.

p First of all, we by no means deny the important role of the terrorist struggle in the present emancipation movement. It has grown naturally from the social and political conditions under which we are placed, and it must just as naturally promote a change for the better. But in itself so-called terror only destroys the forces of the government and does little to further the conscious organisation of its opponents. The terrorist struggle does not widen the sphere of our revolutionary movement; on the contrary, it reduces it to heroic actions by small partisan groups. After a few brilliant successes our revolutionary party has apparently weakened as a result of the great tension and cannot recover without an affluence of fresh forces from new sections of the population. We recommend it to turn to the working class as to the most revolutionary of all classes in present-day society. Does that mean that we advise it to suspend its active struggle against the government? Far from it. On the contrary, we are pointing out a way of making the struggle broader, more varied, and therefore more successful. But it goes without saying that we cannot consider the cause of the workingclass movement from the standpoint of how important the workers are "for the revolution”. We wish to make the very victory of the revolution profitable to the working population of our country, and that is why we consider it necessary to further the intellectual development, the unity and organisation of the working population. By no means do we want the workers’ secret organisations to be transformed into secret nurseries rearing terrorists from among the workers. But we understand perfectly that the political emancipation of Russia coincides completely with the interests of the working class, and that is why we think that the revolutionary groups existing in that class must co-operate in the political struggle of our intelligentsia by propaganda, agitation, and 353 occasionally open action in the street. It would be unjust to leave all the hardships of the emancipation movement to be borne by the working class, but it is perfectly just and expedient to bring the workers, as well as others, into it.

p There are other sections of the population for whom it would be far more convenient to undertake the terrorist struggle against the government. But outside the workers there is no section that could at the decisive minute knock down and kill off the political monster already wounded by the terrorists. Propaganda among the workers will not remove the necessity for terrorist struggle, but it will provide it with opportunities which have so far never existed.  [353•* 

p So much for the terrorists. Let us now speak to the Narodniks.

p They are grieved at all programmes in which revolutionary work among the peasants is not given the chief place. But although such work is all that their own programme contains, the result is that

p The people’s gains are still but small, Their life’s not easier yet at all!

p Since the late seventies, i.e., since the splitting of the Zemlya i Volya society, revolutionary work among the peasants, far from being extended, has become increasingly narrow. At present it would not be a great error to rate it at nil. And yet all this time there has been no lack of people who assumed that the main stress of our entire revolutionary movement should be immediately transferred to the peasantry. Whence this contradiction? It would be unjust to suspect the Narodniks of inactivity, cowardice or lack or resolution. So one must think that they have set themselves a task which they cannot carry out in the present circumstances, that it is not with the peasantry that our intelligentsia must begin its merger with the people. That is in fact what we think. But that is far from meaning that we attribute no importance to revolutionary work among the peasants. We note the fact and try to understand what it really means, convinced that once they have understood the true reasons for their failure the Narodniks will manage to avoid repeating it. It seems to us that the formation of a workers’ party is what would free us from the contradiction as a result of which in Russia Narodniks have been able to exist for the last seven years only in a state of complete alienation from the people.

p How the workers’ party will do this can be seen from what has been set forth above. But it will do no harm to say a few words more on this subject.

p To have influence on the numerous obscure masses one must have a certain minimum of forces without which all efforts of separate individuals will never achieve any more than absolutely negligible results. Our revolutionary intelligentsia have not that minimum, and that is why their work among the peasants has left practically no trace. We point out to them the industrial workers as the intermediary force able to promote the intelligentsia’s merger with the “people”. Does that mean that we ignore the peasants? By no means. On the contrary, it means that we are looking for more effective means of influencing the peasantry.

p Let us continue. Besides the definite minimum of forces necessary to influence the sections in question, there must be a certain community of character between the sections themselves and the people who appeal to them. But our revolutionary intelligentsia has no community with the peasantry either in its way of thinking or its fitness for physical labour. In this respect, too, the industrial worker is an intermediary between the peasant and the “student”. He must, therefore, be the link between them.

p Finally, one must not lose sight of still another, far from negligible, circumstance. No matter what is said about the alleged exclusively agrarian character of present-day Russia, there is no doubt that the “countryside” cannot attract all the forces of our revolutionary intelligentsia. That is unthinkable if only because it is in the town, not in the countryside, that the intelligentsia is recruited, that it is in the town, not in the countryside, that the revolutionary seeks asylum when he is persecuted by the police, even if it is for propaganda among the peasants. Our principal cities are, therefore, the centres in which there is always a more or less considerable contingent of the intelligentsia’s revolutionary forces. It goes without saying that the intelligentsia cannot avoid being influenced by the town or living its life. For some time this life has assumed a political character. And we know that despite the most extreme “Narodnik” programmes our intelligentsia have not been able to hold out against the current and have found themselves forced to take up the political struggle. As long as we have no workers’ party, the revolutionaries "of the town" are compelled to appeal to “society”, and therefore they are, in fact, its revolutionary representatives. The “people” are relegated to the background and thus not only is the establishment of a link between them and the intelligentsia delayed, but even the link which formerly existed between the intellectual revolutionaries "of the town" and those "of the countryside" is severed. Hence the lack of mutual understanding, the disagreements and differences. This 355 would not be the case if the political struggle in the towns were mainly of a working-class character. Then the only difference between the revolutionaries of the town and those of the countryside would be in the place, and not the substance of their activity; both types of revolutionaries would be representatives of the popular movement in its various forms, and the socialists would not need to sacrifice their lives in the interests of a “society” which is alien to their views.

p Such harmony is not an unfeasible Utopia. It is not difficult to realise in practice. If at present it is impossible to find ten Narodniks who have settled in the countryside because of their programme, because of their duty to the revolution, on the other hand, there are quite a number of educated and sincere democrats who live in the countryside because of their duty in the service of the state, because of their profession. Many of these people do not sympathise with our political struggle in its present form and at the same time do not undertake systematic revolutionary work among the peasantry for the simple reason that they see no party with which they could join efforts, and we know that a single man on a battlefield is not a soldier. Begin a social and political movement among the workers, and you will see that these rural democrats will little by little come over to the standpoint of Social- Democracy and in their turn will serve as a link between the town and the countryside.

p Then our revolutionary forces will be distributed in the following very simple manner: those who are obliged by professional duties to be in the countryside will go there. It goes without saying that there will be a fair number of them. At the same time, those who have the possibility of settling in towns or industrial centres will direct their efforts at work among the working class and endeavour to make it the vanguard of the Russian SocialDemocratic army.

Such is our programme. It^does not sacrifice the countryside to the interests of the town, does not ignore the peasants for the sake of the industrial workers. It sets itself the task of organising the social-revolutionary forces of the town to draw the countryside into the channel of the world-wide historic movement.