The hopes of the agitators proved as delusive as those of the propagandists.  The muzhik turned a deaf ear to their instigations, and the police soon prevented their further activity.  Thus the would-be root-and-branch reforms found themselves in a dilemma.  Either they must abandon their schemes for the moment or they must strike immediately at their persecutors.  They chose, as we have seen, the latter alternative, and after vain attempts to frighten the Government by acts of terrorism against zealous officials, they assassinated the Tsar himself; but before they had time to think of the constructive part of their task, their organisation was destroyed by the Autocratic Power and the bureaucracy, and those of them who escaped arrest had to seek safety in emigration to Switzerland and Paris.

Then arose, all along the line of the defeated, decimated revolutionists, the cry, “What is to be done?” Some replied that the shattered organisation should be reconstructed, and a number of secret agents were sent successively from Switzerland for this purpose.  But their efforts, as they themselves confessed, were fruitless, and despondency seemed to be settling down permanently on all, except a few fanatics, when a voice was heard calling on the fugitives to rally round a new banner and carry on the struggle by entirely new methods.  The voice came from a revolutionologist (if I may use such a term) of remarkable talent, called M. Plekhanof, who had settled in Geneva with a little circle of friends, calling themselves the “Labour Emancipation Group.”  His views were expounded in a series of interesting publications, the first of which was a brochure entitled “Socialism and the Political Struggle,” published in 1883.

According to M. Plekhanof and his group the revolutionary movement had been conducted up to that moment on altogether wrong lines.  All previous revolutionary groups had acted on the assumption that the political revolution and the economic reorganisation of society must be effected simultaneously, and consequently they had rejected contemptuously all proposals for reforms, however radical, of a merely political kind.  These had been considered, as I have mentioned in a previous chapter, not only as worthless, but as positively prejudicial to the interests of the working classes, because so-called political liberties and parliamentary government would be sure to consolidate the domination of the bourgeoisie.  That such has generally been the immediate effect of parliamentary institutions is undeniable, but it did not follow that the creation of such institutions should be opposed.  On the contrary, they ought to be welcomed, not merely because, as some revolutionists had already pointed out, propaganda and agitation could be more easily carried on under a constitutional regime, but because constitutionalism is certainly the most convenient, and perhaps the only, road by which the socialistic ideal can ultimately be attained.  This is a dark saying, but it will become clearer when I have explained, according to the new apostles, a second error into which their predecessors had fallen.