http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/history/franks/classes/131b/perm/radicalsdocuments.html#nechaev

Documents on the Revolutionary Movement, c. 1861-1881
1. Revolutionary Proclamations of 1861 and 1862
2. Nechaev's Program, 1869
3. Nechaev's "Catechism of a Revolutionary," 1869
4. Petr Lavrov, 1870-1873
5. Palen's Description of the Movement "To the People," 1875
6. Program of the "Land and Freedom" Group, 1878
7. Program of the "People's Will" Group, January 1, 1880
Document 1. REVOLUTIONARY PROCLAMATIONS OF 1861 AND 1862
Although Russia's Emancipation of 1861 went further than that of the same period in the United States, some of the radicals were disappointed. They voiced their anger in revolutionary proclamations like the two excerpted here. The novelist M. I. Mikhailov, who helped write the first, was arrested in September 1861 for distributing subversive literature and was sentenced to hard labor in Siberia. The second proclamation, widely distributed in Saint Petersburg in May 1862, caused a great stir and is considered to be historically significant in the development of the Russian revolutionary movement. P. G. Zaichnevskii, who wrote it with a group of fellow prisoners and sent it to the underground printer via a sentry, said later that as of 1862 neither he nor his coauthors had yet read the Communist Manifesto.
Reference: Mikhail K. Lemke, Politicheskie protsessy v Rossii 1860-kh gg., 2d ed. (Moscow: Gosizdat, 1923), pp. 63-64, 69, 70, 74-75 [1861 item], 508-10, 514-18 [1862 item]. The Lemke volume has recently been reprinted: The Hague: Mouton, 1969.
[From the proclamation "To the Younger Generation" (K molodomu pokoleniiu), written by M. I. Mikhailov and N. V. Shelgunov in September 1861, and published that same month in Saint Petersburg without having gone through the censor: I
The sovereign has betrayed the hopes of the people; the freedom he has given them is not real and is not what the people dreamed of and need.
We do not need a tsar, or an emperor, or the Lord's anointed, or a robe of ermine covering up hereditary incompetence; we want to have as our head an ordinary mortal, a man of the soil, who understands life and the people who have elected him. We do not need an emperor anointed with oil in the Cathedral of the Dormition, but rather an elected elder [starshina] who receives a salary for his services.
Are the economic conditions and the land situation in Europe the same as they are here? Does the agricultural commune exist there, and is it a possibility? Can every peasant and every citizen there own landed property? No, but here he can. We have enough land to last us tens of thousands of years.
We are a backward people and in this lies our salvation. We should thank our good fortune that we have not lived the life of Europe. Her misfortunes and desperate straits are a lesson to us. We do not want her proletariat, her aristocracy, her state principle, or her imperial power.
We are advancing to meet the revolution boldly; we even desire it. We believe in our youthful strength; we believe that we are called upon to introduce a new principle into history, to have our own say, and not to parrot the words of Europe. There is no salvation without faith, and our faith in our strength is very great.
If we have to slaughter a hundred thousand landowners in order to realize our aspirations-the distribution of the land among the common people-we would not be afraid of that either. Nor would this really be such a terrible thing.
We want the authority that governs us to be an intelligent authority which understands the needs of the country and acts in the interests of the people. And in order to be such, it must come from our own midst; it must be elective and limited.
We want freedom of speech, i.e. the abolition of all censorship.
We want the development of the principle of self-government, which already exists to a certain extent among our people. If the peasants have this right, if they can elect elders and heads from their own midst, if communes have the right of administering justice in civil cases and of police enforcement, why should the rest of Russia not enjoy these same rights of election and self-government? ... Our rural commune is the basic cell, and these cells together make up Russia. There should be a single principle throughout. That is what we need.
We want all citizens of Russia to enjoy equal rights; we do not want privileged classes to exist; we want ability and education, rather than birth, to confer the right to high position; we want appointments to public office to follow the elective principle. We do not want a nobility and titles. We want everyone to be equal in the eyes of the law and equal in [the assessment of] exactions, taxes, and obligations by the state.
We want the land to belong to the nation and not to individuals; we want each commune to have its allotment, without the existence of private landowners; we do not want land to be sold like potatoes and cabbage; we want to give every citizen, whoever he may be, the opportunity of becoming a member of an agricultural commune, i.e. either by joining an existing commune or by forming a new commune with several other citizens. We want to preserve communal possession of the land, with periodic redistribution at long intervals.
Naturally, we would like to avoid a violent upheaval. But if there is no other way, we not only shall not renounce it but will willingly call for a revolution to help the people.
[From the proclamation "Young Russia" (Molodaia Rossiia), written by P. G. Zaichnevskii and others and published in Saint Petersburg, in or just before May of 1862, without having gone through the censor:]
We demand that all regions be granted the opportunity to decide by majority vote whether or not they wish to join the federated Russian republic.
We fully realize that the clause in our program concerning regional federation cannot be carried into effect immediately. We are even firmly convinced that the revolutionary party that takes over the government-if the movement is successful-must retain the present system of political (although naturally not administrative) centralization, so that by this means the other basic elements of economic and social life can be introduced in the shortest possible time. The party must seize dictatorial power and stop at nothing. The elections to the national assembly must take place under the influence of the government, which will then see to it that its membership does not include any supporters of the present regime (if there are any such left alive).
Soon, soon will come the day when we shall unfurl the great banner of the future, the red banner; and with a loud shout--"Long live the social and democratic Russian republic!"--we shall march on the Winter Palace and destroy those who live there. It may happen that the whole affair will end simply with the extermination of the tsar's family, that is, a hundred or so people; but it may happen-and this is more likely-that the entire imperial party will stand behind the tsar as one man, because this will be a question of its very existence.
In the latter case, with complete faith in ourselves, in our strength, in the sympathy of the people toward us, and in the glorious future of a Russia whose destiny it is to be the first to accomplish the great work of socialism, we need only shout: "Take up your axes!" and then-then kill the men of the imperial party without pity, as they do not pity us now, kill them on the square if that foul scum dares to come out, kill them in their houses, kill them in the narrow alleys of the towns, kill them in the wide streets of the capital cities, kill them in the villages and hamlets!
Remember that when this time comes, he who is not with us will be against us, and he who is against us is our enemy; and enemies must be destroyed by all possible means.
But do not forget to repeat upon every new victory in every battle: "Long live the socialist and democratic Russian republic!"
Document 2. NECHAEV'S PROGRAM, 1869
Sergei Gennadievich Nechaev (1847-82), one of the most fanatic Russian revolutionaries of any generation, rose to notoriety in the late sixties and at that time founded a revolutionary organization called "The People's Retribution" (Narodnaia Rasprava), of which seventy-nine members were brought to trial in 187 1. Nechaev himself, turned over by Switzerland to Russia and convicted of the murder of his follower Ivanov, spent the last decade of his life in confinement. While abroad he published in Geneva a small revolutionary journal (also called Narodnaia rasprava, 1869-71 ). The leading article of its first number, in 1869, contained Nechaev's program, reading in part as follows.
Reference: Glinskii, Revoliutsionnyi period, pt. 1, p. 411; Vladimir L. Burtsev, comp. and ed., Za sto let, 1800-1896.Shornik po istorii politicheskikh i obshchestvennykh dvizhenii v Rossii (London, 1897), pp. 91, 92, 94. See also B. P. Koz'min, ed., Nechaev i nechaevtsy, sbornik materialov (Moscow, 1931).
The nationwide revolt of the martyred Russian people is inevitable and imminent! ... We, that is, that part of our nation's youth which has managed in one way or another to obtain an education, must clear a path for it; that is, we must remove all the obstacles in its way and prepare all the favorable conditions.
In view of this inevitability and imminence, we consider it essential to unite all the separate revolutionary forces in Russia into a single and indissoluble whole; in consequence, we have decided to publish, in the name of the Revolutionary Committee, leaflets from which all those who think as we do, scattered in various parts of Russia, all those who work for the sacred cause of regeneration, even if we do not know them, will always be able to see what we want and where we are going.
These leaflets obviously have neither a literary nor a scholarly purpose. Let those who have plenty of leisure time continue to console themselves and mislead others by idle talk of literature and science, of education and upbringing, of progress and civilization!
We have no time!
A thought has value for us only to the extent that it can serve the great cause of radical and universal destruction. But none of the books available today contains such thoughts. Those who learn the science of revolution from books will always be worthless as revolutionaries. A thought capable of serving a people's revolution can only develop out of the revolutionary actions of the people and must be the result of a series of practical experiments and manifestations which are directed in every way and always unswervingly toward the same goal of merciless destruction. Anything that does not follow this path is for us alien and hostile.
Bakunin is right in urging us to leave our academies, universities, and schools and go to the people. This idea is correct but far from new. The question is how to go to the people and what to do among the people.
We have but a single negative, unalterable plan-merciless destruction.
We refuse outright to work out a plan for future conditions of life, for such planning is incompatible with the present state of things.
We therefore consider any purely theoretical thinking to be fruitless.
We consider the work of destruction to be such an enormous and difficult task that we are devoting all our efforts to it, and we do not intend to delude ourselves by thinking that we will have sufficient strength and ability left for creation.
For that reason we are undertaking solely the destruction of the existing social system; the task of creating is not for us but for those who follow us.
Keeping in mind our aim of exterminating the tsar and all his family, servants, and retainers . . . we will nevertheless leave Aleksandr Nikolaevich [Alexander II] alone for the time being, and here is why:
A storm of popular indignation and hatred is already beginning to gather over the head of this weak-minded and colorless despot, who is dependent upon the minds and will of his mistresses and loathsome favorites. The defrauded, despoiled, and hungry people are beginning to open their eyes; they will soon see clearly the cause of their intolerable sufferings.... After nine years of their new form of slavery [the peasant emancipation], in 1870, on the anniversary of [the rebellions of] Razin and Pugachev, this well-founded hatred will break like the wrath of God upon the high and mighty, who wallow in debauchery and turpitude. But let him live, this executioner, despoiler, and tormentor of the people, who dares to call himself a liberator-, let him live until that time, until that moment, when the wrath of the people bursts forth, when the lowly masses he now tortures awaken from their long, agonizing sleep and solemnly pass sentence on him; when the free peasant, having broken the chains of bondage, personally smashes his skull and with it the odious crown, on the day of the people's retribution.
Yes, we will let the tsar live until the day when the peasants pass judgment upon him.
... We will preserve him for a solemn and agonizing execution before the liberated common people on the ruins of the state.
For the present we will set about without delay to exterminate his Arakcheevs- those monsters, considered to be the pillars of the state, who are dressed in resplendent uniforms bespattered with the people's blood.
Document 3. NECHAEV'S "CATECHISM OF A REVOLUTIONIST, 1869
The famous "Catechism of a Revolutionist," written in code, was taken by Nechaev to Russia when he returned from Switzerland in 1869 and is commonly attributed to him. It expresses ideas that he advocated, and it was found by the police when they arrested some of his followers. But it also seems quite possible that the aging Bakunin, temporarily attracted by the twenty-twoyear-old zealot, had a hand in its composition. From the excerpts below one can perceive the importance of this document for the subsequent development of certain strains of revolutionary thought in Russia-and one can also understand why the government itself, having deciphered the document, took the initiative in publishing it.
Reference: VasiIii Iakovlevich Iakovlev [known under the pseudonyms B. Bazilevskii and V. Bogucharskii], ed., Gosudarstvennye prestupleniia v Rossii v XIX veke, sbornik .... 3 vols. (St. Petersburg, 1906), 1:183-85; translation based on Max Nomad, Apostles of Revolution (Boston, 1939), pp. 228-33.

The Revolutionist's Attitude toward Himself
1. The revolutionist is a doomed man. He has no personal interests, no pursuits, sentiments, attachments, property, not even a name. Everything in him is absorbed by a single exclusive interest, a single thought, a single passion-the revolution.
2. In the very depth of his being, not merely in word but in deed, he has broken every connection with the social order and with the entire educated world, with all the laws, proprieties, generally accepted conventions, and morality of that world. He is its ruthless foe, and should he continue to live in it, it would be solely for the purpose of destroying it the more surely.
3. The revolutionist despises every sort of doctrinairism and has renounced all human knowledge, leaving it to future generations. He knows only one science, the science of destruction. For this purpose and for this purpose alone he now makes a study of mechanics, physics, chemistry, and possibly medicine. For this purpose he studies day and night the living science of human beings, their characters, situations, and all-the conditions of the present social system in all its various strata. There is but a single goal-the quickest possible destruction of that vile system.
4. He despises public opinion. He despises and hates present-day social morality in all its impulses and manifestations. For him whatever side aids the triumph of the revolution is moral; whatever hinders him is immoral and criminal....
6. Severe toward himself, he must also be severe toward others. All tender, softening sentiments of kinship, friendship, love, gratitude, and even honor itself must be suppressed in him by a single cold passion for the revolutionary cause. For him there exists only one comfort, one consolation, one reward, and one satisfaction- the success of the revolution. Day and night he must have one thought, one goal-ruthless destruction. Striving coolly and tirelessly toward this goal, he must be ready to perish himself and to destroy with his own hands everything that hinders the realization of his goal....
The Relations of the Revolutionist toward His Revolutionary Comrades
10. Each comrade must have at hand several revolutionists of the second and third degree, i.e. such as are not entirely dedicated. He must regard them as part of the total revolutionary capital placed at his disposal. He must spend his portion of the capital economically, always striving to extract the greatest possible use from it....
The Revolutionist's Relations with Society
13. The revolutionist enters the world of the state, of classes, and of so-called educated men and lives in it believing only in its fullest and quickest destruction. He is not a revolutionist if he is attached to anything in this world. If he can, he will undertake the destruction of any existing condition, relationship, or person belonging to this world; everybody and everything must be equally hateful to him....
14. With the aim of ruthless destruction, the revolutionist may and frequently must live in society, pretending to be something entirely different from what he is. The revolutionist must penetrate everywhere, into all of the lower and middle classes, into the merchant's store, into the church, into the nobleman's home, into the bureaucratic and military world, into literature, into the Third Department [the secret police], and even into the Winter Palace....
The Attitude of the Association toward the People
22. The [revolutionary] association has no aim other than the complete liberation and happiness of the people, i.e. of the people who live by manual labor. But, convinced that this liberation and the attainment of this happiness are possible only through an alldestroying popular revolution, the association will exert all its efforts and all its resources to further the development and extension of those misfortunes and those evils that must at length exhaust the patience of the people and drive them to a general uprising.
23. By popular revolution the association does not have in mind a regulated movement after the classical Western model, a movement that, always bowing to property rights and to the traditions of the social systems of so-called civilization and morality, has heretofore limited itself everywhere to overthrowing one political form in order to replace it by another and has striven to create a so-called revolutionary state. The only revolution that will bring salvation to the people is one that completely eradicates any sort of state structure and annihilates all of Russia's state traditions, institutions, and classes.
24. Therefore the association does not intend to foist on the people any sort of organization from above. The future organization will no doubt evolve out of the popular movement and out of life itself. But this is the task of future generations. Our task is terrible, complete, universal, and merciless destruction.
25. Therefore, in getting closer to the people, we must first of all join with those elements of national life which, since the foundation of the Muscovite state power, have never ceased to protest, not in word but in deed, against everything that is directly or indirectly connected with the state: against the nobility, the bureaucracy, the clergy, the merchants' world, and the blood-sucking kulak. Let us join hands with the savage world of the bandits-the only genuine revolutionists in Russia.
26. To unite this world into one invincible, all-destroying force-this is the purpose of our organization, our conspiracy, our cause.
Document 4. LAVROV'S VIEWS CA. 1870-1873
Petr Lavrovich Lavrov (1823-1900), artillery colonel, mathematics professor, and influential ideologist of Russian populism, published his "Historical Letters" in the Petersburg journal Nedelia at the end of the sixties, and in 1870 they appeared in book form. Some of the ideas the censor permitted "Mirtov" (his pen name) to express are presented in the first group of excerpts below. The second group of excerpts is from his article "Our Program," printed in an irregular journal called Vpered (Forward), which Lavrov published from 1873 to 1877, first in Zurich and then in London.
Reference: P. L. Mirtov (P. L. Lavrov), Istoricheskie pis'ma (St. Petersburg, 1870), pp. 30, 43, 63, 108-10, 116, 158- 59, 206, 207; Burtsev, Za sto let, pp. 106-12 [ "Our Program"]. A scholarly translation of the letters has recently appeared: Peter Lavrov, Historical Letters, trans. with an introduction and notes by James P. Scanlan (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1967).
[From "Historical Letters," ca. 1870:]
The physical, mental, and moral development of the individual, the incorporation of truth and justice in social relationships--this is the brief formula that encompasses, I believe, everything that can be regarded as progress.
Just as in our own day the overwhelming majority of mankind is doomed to ceaseless physical labor, dulling the mind and blunting the moral sense, and to probable death from starvation and disease, so in all times has the majority been in a similar situation. The evertoiling human machine, often hungry and always anxious for the morrow, is hardly better off today than it was in any other period. For it there has been no progress.
I will absolve myself of the responsibility for the cost in blood of my own cultural development only by using this very cultural development to lessen the amount of evil, present and future. If I am a truly cultured person, it is my duty to do this; nor does this duty weigh heavily, since it coincides exactly with what brings me the greatest enjoyment: in seeking out and spreading the truth, in determining for myself the most equitable form of society, and in striving to make it a reality, I increase my own enjoyment, and at the same time I do all I can for the suffering majority, present and future.
What is needed are energetic, fanatical people ready to take any risk and ready to make any sacrifice. We need martyrs, whose legend would outgrow by far their true worth, their actual merit.... Their legend would inspire thousands with the energy that is needed for the struggle....
. . . Individuals who can think critically and strive energetically must fight, not for the sake of fighting alone, but to win victory. ... They must join forces, assume the leadership of a party, and give guidance to others. Thus an organized force will emerge.
The organization of a party is essential t attain victory.
Critical thought organizes the struggle of labor associations against monopoly capital and sets up a new economic ideal. It acknowledges the need for economic security, but it demands a social order within which individuality would be guaranteed.... This is an idealization of labor.... It means labor that provides the worker with security and obtains for him full personal development and political importance; it is labor that enjoys all the amenities and even luxuries of life.
The ideal of a state is ... a union in which the contract is binding only on those who have had the means and the opportunity to discuss it, who have weighed and accepted the contract freely, and who can as freely withdraw from it and renounce everything that follows from it.
However broad the franchise, however great the difference between the political system of the United States of America and the rule of an Asiatic khan, nevertheless both these systems, just like all intermediate forms, have one feature in common: the subjection of a considerable number of people to a contract they have not deliberately chosen, or with which they have declared themselves in disagreement. The state remains everywhere a compulsory obligation for a more or less considerable part of the population of a given territory.
[From "Our Program," ca. 1873:]
For us at the present time there are two overall aims, two struggles in which every thinking person must take part by siding with either progress or reaction.... First, there is the struggle of the realistic world outlook against the theological world outlook, of clearly recognized human needs against all idols, theological and metaphysical, theoretical and moral; in short, the struggle of science against religion. Second, there is the struggle of toil against the idle enjoyment of the good things of life, the struggle of complete equality of the rights of the individual against monopoly in all its forms and manifestations, the struggle of free association against a compulsory state system; in short, the struggle to attain a completely equitable social order.
The social question is of primary importance to us. We see in it the most important problem of the present time, and the only possibility for a better future. For us the only visible means of realizing this future is through the union of a majority of workers into a free association, through the organization of the union for joint and powerful action, through the victory of this organization, and through the establishment of a new social system on the ruins of the industrial- legal states and classes of the present time.
The political question is for us subordinate to the social and, particularly, the economic questions. States in the form in which they exist are hostile to the working class movement, and they must all break up once and for all in order to give way to a new social order in which the greatest freedom of the individual will not stand in the way of solidarity among persons with equal rights nor of broad cooperation for the common goal. But this is in the distant future and is a social ideal that should continually be borne in mind without the self-deception of hoping that it can be realized either today or tomorrow.
The national question, to our mind, should completely disappear in the face of the important tasks of the social struggle.... Any encouragement of rivalry between races or nations is a direct denial of the international character of the social question and the unity of the struggle of the oppressed classes of society against their oppressors....
...For the Russians, the communal ownership of land by the peasantry provides the special basis on which the future of the majority of the Russian population can develop in the way indicated by the common tasks of our time. To develop our commune in the direction of communal cultivation of the land and communal utilization of its products, to make the communal assembly the basic political element of the Russian social system, to make private property communal, and to give the peasantry the education and understanding of their social needs without which they will never be able to make use of their legal rights, no matter how extensive they may be, and will never rid themselves of exploitation by a minority, even in the event of the most successful revolution -these are the specific Russian aims that every Russian seeking progress for his native land must promote.
In our opinion, the contemporary Russian public leader must give up the antiquated notion that revolutionary ideas elaborated by a small section of the more developed minority can be foisted upon the people, or that revolutionary socialists, having overthrown the central government by a single successful blow, can step into its shoes and establish by legislation a new system, conferring benefits upon the unprepared masses. We do not want another regime ruling by force....
... Those who desire the welfare of the people should aim, not at taking power through a successful revolution and then leading the people toward a goal that is clear only to the leaders, but at creating among the people a conscious conception of their goals and a conscious aspiration toward those goals, while making themselves no more than the executors of those social aspirations when the time comes for the social revolution.
Only by strict and intensive personal training can one develop in oneself the capability of useful activity among the people.
Only by gaining the confidence of the people in oneself as an individual can one create the conditions necessary for such activity.
Only by explaining to the people what their needs are, and by preparing them for independent and conscious activity aimed at attaining clearly understood goals, can one consider oneself a truly useful participant in the present preparation for a better future for Russia.
Only when the course of historical events itself shows that the time for the revolution has come and that the Russian people are prepared for it can one consider that one has the right to call upon the people to bring about this revolution....
... Revolutions cannot be brought about artificially, for they are the product, not of the individual will, nor of the activity of a small group, but of a whole series of complex historical processes.
Document 5. PALEN'S DESCRIPTION OF THE MOVEMENT "TO THE PEOPLE," 1875
In a memorandum of 1875, the minister of justice, Count Konstantin Ivanovich Palen (or Pahlen, 1833-1912), gave this revealing description of the character of the movement "to the people."
Reference: Burtsev, Za sto let, pp. 113-23.

The investigation has established that many young people, in some cases abandoning their studies, donned peasant garb, provided themselves with false identification papers, and went under the guise of common laborers "to the people," as they put it, with the purpose of implanting revolutionary ideas in them by means of printed pamphlets and word of mouth propaganda.
Early in 1872 there began to circulate among students, in rather considerable quantities, books and publications printed abroad, of an openly revolutionary character, aimed at subverting the existing political system in Russia. These publications, mainly the work of Russian 6migr6s closely connected in their turn with the International Society [Marx's and Bakunin's First International], either were smuggled into Russia or else were brought in personally by Russian travelers returning from abroad who had absorbed there the theories of Bakunin and other extreme democrats and socialists, and who thereafter spread the poison of these criminal doctrines and democratic aspirations to all parts and classes of Russia.
It was natural for the Russian revolutionary party, steadily growing, supported and guided in all its aspirations by its continuing relations with the outside world, to turn its attention to the Russian students and, after insinuating itself among them under the guise of "friends of the people," to assume their leadership as "the heralds of truth and good." The first party formed to this end was the so-called party of the Chaikovtsy [followers of N. V. Chaikovskii], which began its activities in Saint Petersburg but later carried them farther afield.
... From 1873 on, the "self-education" groups began to lose their original theoretical character and gradually became assemblages with a clearly defined social and democratic trend. This tendency was intensified under the influence of the journal Vpered, published abroad by Lavrov (Mirtov), the first issues of which appeared around this time. Early last year, in 1874, these groups, both in Moscow and Saint Petersburg, became convinced that the time had come "to go to the people," and to begin to act.
At the beginning of 1874 the carriers of revolutionary propaganda began their criminal activities simultaneously in various areas and spheres of our society.... By the end of 1874 they had succeeded in covering the greater part of Russia with a network, as it were, of revolutionary groups and individual agents. The investigation has uncovered propaganda in thirty-seven guberniias.
The total number of defendants brought up for investigation in those guberniias adds up to 770, of whom 612 are men and 158 are women. Two hundred sixty-five are under arrest; 452 are at liberty and subject to other measures; the whereabouts of 53 are unknown. The inquests have established that many persons no longer young, fathers and mothers of families, who enjoy material security and a more or less honored social position, not only failed to oppose the young people but, on the contrary, often gave them open encouragement, help, and support, as if failing to realize, in their blind fanaticism, that the ultimate result of such actions would be society's ruin and their own.... Daughters of actual privy councilorsNatalia Armfel'd, Varvara Batiushkova, and Sophia Perovskaia-the daughter of a major general-Sophia Leshem-von-Gertsfel'd--and many others went to live among the people, working as day laborers in the fields, sleeping together with the peasants, their fellow workers. And this behavior apparently encountered sympathy and approval instead of condemnation on the part of some of their relatives and friends. There are many such examples. They must unquestionably serve to confirm the view that the success of the propagandists was due less to their own efforts and activities than to the ease with which their teachings penetrated into various strata of society and the sympathy they evoked there....
To prepare agents, helpers, and future propagandists for themselves from the ranks of the working class, the leaders of the movement spread their views and ideas by word of mouth propaganda, and also by means of enormous quantities of books and pamphlets written in the form of easily comprehensible folk tales.
To complete this brief survey of the facts uncovered by the investigation, a few general conclusions must be formulated:, (1) There exist in Russia illegal secret associations aiming at the overthrow of the state and the entire existing order and at the establishment of complete anarchy. (2) These associations consist of a multitude of small groups and even individuals, acting independently yet linked together by the absolute solidarity of their goals and methods as well as by constant intercourse. (3) Communication between the groups and the organization of new units are carried out by specially authorized agents. (4) Propaganda is conducted both by word of mouth and by the direct circulation of books, pamphlets, and all kinds of printed and handwritten material. (5) Since their goal is clear and definite-the overthrow of the existing order-the revolutionary agents follow a precise and consistently executed plan. (6) This plan, whose main features are set forth in the program of Prince Kropotkin, presents the danger, among other things, that however energetic may be the investigation and prosecution of the guilty, nonetheless some individual groups would certainly remain undetected and would tirelessly carry on their criminal activities. (7) The swift success of the propaganda may be ascribed, on the one hand, to the fact that the activities of the agitators do not meet with sufficiently vigorous and vocal censure from the public, which does not clearly realize the significance and purpose of these criminal aspirations and up to now has regarded them with apathy, indifference, and sometimes even sympathy; and, on the other hand, especially to the fact that the young people, who form the main contingent of the propagandists, do not encounter any resistance to their pernicious and destructive teachings in the environment where they grow up and develop, since those basic moral principles that can be imparted only by tile family appear to be completely undeveloped in many of these young people who, at the time they enter school, lack any firm principles of respect for religion, for the family, and for personal and property rights.
Document 6. THE PROGRAM OF THE "LAND AND FREEDOM" GROUP, OCTOBER 25,1878
In 1876-77 a group of populists in Saint Petersburg established a secret party which in 1878 took the name "Land and Freedom" (Zemlia i Volia). These passages are from the program article of the first number of the first year of the journal Zemlia i volia!, October 25, 1878.
Reference: Zemlia i volia! Sotsial'no-revoliutsionnoe obozrenie, vol. 1, no. 1 (Oct. 25, 1878), as given in B. Bazilevskii (V. Ia. lakovlev), ed., Revoliutsionnaia zhurnalistika semidesiatykh godov. . . (Paris[?], 1906), pp. 71-75. For other documents on the populism of the 1870s, see also Revoliutsionnoe narodnichestvo 70-kh godov XIX veka: Sbornik dokumentov i materialov, 2 vols. Vol. 1 (1870-75), ed. B. S. Itenberg; vol. 2 (1876-82), ed. S. S. Volk (Moscow, 1964-65).

Land and Freedom! These are two magical words that have often called forth powerful elemental movements from the depths of Russia. Twice they came close to overthrowing the Russian state system, and to this day they deeply stir the soul of the simple peasantry from one end of Russia to the other.
Land and Freedom! This is the slogan our forerunners, the socialist-populists of the sixties, faithful to the spirit and history of their people, inscribed on their banner.
We are inscribing the same words on our own banner.
We are convinced that only those cultural forms that are rooted in the minds and aspirations of the masses of the people have a historical future; we do not believe it possible, by means of preliminary work, to inculcate in the people ideals that are at variance with those developed in it by its entire previous history....
The revolution is the work of the masses of the people....
Any historical-revolutionary program must therefore be based upon the ideals of the people, such as have been created by history at a given time and in a given place.
At all times, whenever and in whatever numbers the Russian people have risen up, they have demanded land and freedom.
Land-as the common property of those who toil on it; and freedom-as the common right of all human beings to regulate their own affairs.
The seizure of the lands owned by landlords and boyars; the expulsion and sometimes the general extermination of all superiors, all representatives of the state; the establishment of "Cossack circles," i.e. free autonomous communes with elective, responsible, and always removable executors of the popular will-such invariably was the "program" of the revolutionary socialists from the people: Pugachev, Razin, and their followers.
And there can be no doubt that it has remained the same for the overwhelming majority of the Russian people to this day.
And for that reason we, the revolutionary populists, have made it our own.
Our program places the agrarian problem in the forefront. As for the industrial problem, we leave it in the background, not because we fail to recognize the necessity to expropriate the factories, but because history, which in western Europe has brought the industrial problem into the forefront, in our country has not posed it at all, replacing it with the agrarian issue. Moreover, once the revolutionary movement arises in the cause of land, it cannot help but recognize immediately the need for expropriating the factories and completely abolishing all capitalist production, because in preserving this it would dig its own grave.
In the sixties, the Russian party movement for the first time inscribed "The People's Revolution" on its banner.
In the seventies, the movement is developing from one of small coteries into a general, sweeping, mass movement which despite bloody persecution advances steadily, becoming broader and more redoubtable with every passing year.
Socialism is the highest form of universal happiness for all humanity ever conceived by the mind of man. For socialism there are no differences of sex, or age, or religion, or nationality, or class, or rank! It calls one and all to the wonderful feast of life, and to all it offers peace, freedom, and happiness, as much as anyone can have!
In this, and in this alone, lies the irresistible, fascinating force that draws into the ranks of the socialists all that is free, pure, unselfish. Only faith in their service to all that is human can arouse that fervent, truly religious fanaticism that inspires the socialists and makes them invincible and unconquerable, inasmuch as persecution itself becomes for them a source of supreme earthly bliss, the bliss of martyrdom and self-sacrifice.
[In connection with political terrorism and the political struggle in general:] We must remember that this is not the way we shall achieve the liberation of the toiling masses. Terrorism has nothing to do with the struggle against the foundations of the existing order. Only class can arise against class; only the people itself can destroy the system. It follows that the main contingent of our forces must work in the midst of the people. The terrorists are no more than a protective detachment whose task is to guard those workers against the treacherous blows of their enemies. To dedicate all our strength to the struggle against the power of the government would mean abandoning our direct and permanent goal to pursue a temporary, fortuitous objective.
To direct our activities in this way would be a great mistake.... Autocracy, attacked from all sides, will collapse, making way for a more modern constitutional system which, like every other constitution, will bring into the forefront the privileged classes: landlords, merchants, industrialists, all the owners of movable and immovable capital-in short, the bourgeoisie in the economic sense of the word. At present they are disunited and therefore impotent. Constitutional freedom, however modest, will give them, if no one else, the opportunity to organize into a strong party whose first act will be to proclaim a crusade against us, the socialists, as their most dangerous enemies.
If we direct all our strength to the struggle against the government, we shall of course greatly accelerate its downfall. But then, lacking any roots in the people, we shall be unable to take advantage of our victory. It will be a Pyrrhic victory.... At the cost of a bloody struggle and inevitable heavy sacrifices, we shall gain nothing for our cause....
Only a close bond with the people will enable us to take advantage of the confusion that always attends a change of system and to create at one stroice the mighty force that will prevent our new enemies from consolidating their power after having sucked the people dry-as they did in Western Europe.
Document 7. THE PROGRAM OF THE "PEOPLE'S WILL" GROUP, JANUARY 1, 1880
Here are the main points in the program issued by the Executive Committee of the group called People's Will (Narodnaia Volia), which, on March 1, 18 8 1, thought it was furthering its "immediate task" by the assassination of Alexander.
Reference: Narodnaia Volia; Sotsial'no-revoliutsionnoe obozrenie, vol. 2, no. 3 (Jan. 1, 1880), as given in B. Bazilevskii [V. Ia. lakovlev], ed., Literatura partii Narodnoi Voli (Paris, 1905), pp. 162-64.
By our basic convictions we are socialists and populists [narodniki]. We are convinced that only socialist principles will enable mankind to embody liberty, equality, and fraternity in its life, will ensure general material prosperity as well as the full harmonious development of the individual, and thus will achieve progress. We are convinced that social forms must be sanctioned only by the people's will, that national development is sound only when it advances freely and independently and when every idea that is to be embodied in life has first passed through the people's will and consciousness. The welfare of the people and the will of the people-these are our two most sacred principles, indissolubly linked together.
...The people is in a state of complete economic and political slavery....
Pressing down upon the enchained people we see a class of exploiters, created and protected by the state....
In the people itself we see its ancient traditional principles still living though constantly repressed: the right of the people to the land, to communal and local self-government, to the rudiments of a federative system, to freedom of conscience and of speech....
We therefore hold that it should be our most immediate task, as socialists and populists, to free the people from the crushing oppression of the present government and to bring about a political upheaval that would transfer power to the people....
It is our opinion that the people's will would be adequately expressed and executed by a constituent assembly [uchreditel'noe sobranie], freely elected by universal suffrage and provided with instructions from the voters....
Accordingly this is our goal: to seize power from the existing government and transfer it to the constituent assembly, established in the way described above, whose duty it will be to reexamine all our political and social institutions and to remodel them in accordance with the instructions from the voters.
While submitting fully to the people's will, we nonetheless deem it our duty as a party to appear before the people with our program. We shall propagate it prior to the revolution, we shall advocate it throughout the election campaign, and we shall defend it in the constituent assembly. This program is as follows:
1. A permanent national representative body, established as described above and having full authority in all matters concerning the entire state.
2. Broad regional self-government, guaranteed by the elective character of all officers, the self-determination of the village commune, and the economic independence of the people.
3. The self-determination of the village commune as an economic and administrative unit.
4. The ownership of the land by the people.
5. A series of measures for transferring all industrial plants and factories to the workers.
6. Complete freedom of conscience, of speech, of the press, of assembly, of association, and of electioneering.
7. Universal suffrage, without any class or property limitations.
8. The replacement of the standing army by a territorial militia.
The purpose of terroristic activities ... is to break the spell of governmental power, to give constant proof of the possibility of fighting against the government, to strengthen in this way the revolutionary spirit of the people and its faith in the success of its cause, and, finally, to create cadres suited and accustomed to combat.