the peasants; but we know what the Emancipation really was.  The best land was taken away and the taxes were increased, lest the muzhik should get fat and lazy.  The Tsar is himself the richest landed proprietor and manufacturer in the country.  He not only robs us as much as he pleases, but he has sold into slavery (by forming a national debt) our children and grandchildren.  He takes our sons as soldiers, shuts them up in barracks so that they should not see their brother-peasants, and hardens their hearts so that they become wild beasts, ready to rend their parents.  The nobles and traders likewise rob the poor peasants.  In short, all the upper classes have invented a bit of cunning machinery by which the muzhik is made to pay for their pleasures and luxuries.  The people will one day rise and break this machinery to pieces.  When that day comes they must break every part of it, for if one bit escapes destruction all the other parts of it will immediately grow up again.  All the force is on the side of the peasants, if they only knew how to use it.  Knowledge will come in time.  They will then destroy this machine, and perceive that the only real remedy for all social evils is brotherhood.  People should live like brothers, having no mine and thine, but all things in common.  When we have created brotherhood, there will be no riches and no thieves, but right and righteousness without end.  In conclusion, Stepan addresses a word to “the torturers”:  “When the people rise, the Tsar will send troops against us, and the nobles and capitalists will stake their last rouble on the result.  If they do not succeed, they must not expect any quarter from us.  They may conquer us once or twice, but we shall at last get our own, for there is no power that can withstand the whole people.  Then we shall cleanse the country of our persecutors, and establish a brotherhood in which there will be no mine and thine, but all will work for the common weal.  We shall construct no cunning machinery, but shall pluck up evil by the roots, and establish eternal justice!”

The above-mentioned distinction between Propaganda and Agitation, which plays a considerable part in revolutionary literature, had at that time more theoretical than practical importance.  The great majority of those who took an active part in the movement confined their efforts to indoctrinating the masses with Socialistic and subversive ideas, and sometimes their methods were rather childish.  As an illustration I may cite an amusing incident related by one of the boldest and most tenacious of the revolutionists, who subsequently acquired a certain sense of humour.  He and a friend were walking one day on a country road, when they were overtaken by a peasant in his cart.  Ever anxious to sow the good seed, they at once entered into conversation with the rustic, telling him that he ought not to pay his taxes, because the tchinovniks robbed the people, and trying to convince him by quotations