Chapter 35

SOCIALIST PROPAGANDA, REVOLUTIONARY AGITATION, AND TERRORISM

Closer Relations with Western Socialism--Attempts to Influence the Masses--Bakunin and Lavroff--"Going in among the People"--The Missionaries of Revolutionary Socialism--Distinction between Propaganda and Agitation--Revolutionary Pamphlets for the Common People--Aims and Motives of the Propagandists--Failure of Propaganda--Energetic Repression--Fruitless Attempts at Agitation--Proposal to Combine with Liberals--Genesis of Terrorism--My Personal Relations with the Revolutionists--Shadowers and Shadowed--A Series of Terrorist Crimes--A Revolutionist Congress--Unsuccessful Attempts to Assassinate the Tsar--Ineffectual Attempt at Conciliation by Loris Melikof--Assassination of Alexander II.--The Executive Committee Shows Itself Unpractical--Widespread Indignation and Severe Repression--Temporary Collapse of the Revolutionary Movement--A New Revolutionary Movement in Sight.