Bolshevism | Page 6

his father against making any concessions to the
agitators. It was not surprising, therefore, that he permitted himself to
be advised against the liberals by the most reactionary bureaucrats in
the Empire, and to adopt the most oppressive policies.
The new Czar was greatly influenced by his former tutor, the
reactionary bureaucrat Pobiedonostzev. At first it was believed that out
of respect for his father's memory Alexander III would carry out the
program of reforms formulated by Loris-Melikoff, as his father had
promised to do. In a Manifesto issued on the 29th of April, 1881,
Alexander III promised to do this, but in the same document there were
passages which could only be interpreted as meaning that all demands
for constitutional reform would be resisted and Absolutism upheld at
all cost. Doubtless it was due to the influence of Pobiedonostzev,
Procurator of the Holy Synod, that Alexander III soon abandoned all
intention of carrying out his father's wishes in the matter of reform and
instituted such reactionary policies that the peasants feared that serfdom
was to be restored. A terrible persecution of the Jews was begun,
lasting for several years. The Poles, too, felt the oppressive hand of
Pobiedonostzev. The latter was mastered by the Slavophil philosophy
that the revolutionary unrest in Russia was traceable to the diversity of
races, languages, and religions. He believed that Nihilism, Anarchism,
and Socialism flourished because the people were cosmopolitan rather
than nationalistic in experience and feeling, and that peace and stability
could come only from the persistent and vigorous development of the
three principles of Nationality, Orthodoxy, and Autocracy as the basis
of the state.
In this doctrine we have the whole explanation of the reactionary policy

of Alexander III. In the Manifesto of April 29th was announced the
Czar's determination to strengthen and uphold autocracy. That was the
foundation stone. To uphold orthodoxy was the next logical necessity,
for autocracy and orthodoxy were, in Russia, closely related. Hence the
non-orthodox sects--such as the Finnish Protestants, German Lutherans,
Polish Roman Catholics, the Jews, and the Mohammedans--were
increasingly restricted in the observance of their religion. They might
not build new places of worship; their children could not be educated in
the faith of their parents. In many cases children were taken away from
their parents in order to be sent to schools where they would be
inculcated with the orthodox faith. In a similar way, every attempt was
made to suppress the use of languages other than Russian.
Along with this attempt to force the whole population into a single
mold went a determined resistance to liberalism in all its forms. All this
was accompanied by a degree of efficiency in the police service quite
unusual in Russia, with the result that the terroristic tactics of the Will
of the People party were unavailing, except in the cases of a few minor
officials. Plots to assassinate the Czar were laid, but they were
generally betrayed to the police. The most serious of these plots, in
March, 1887, led to the arrest of all the conspirators.
In the mean time there had appeared the first definite Marxian Social
Democratic group in Russia. Plechanov, Vera Zasulich, Leo Deutsch,
and other Russian revolutionists in Switzerland formed the organization
known as the Group for the Emancipation of Labor. This organization
was based upon the principles and tactics of Marxian Socialism and
sought to create a purely proletarian movement. As we have seen, when
revolutionary terrorism was at its height Plechanov and his disciples
had proclaimed its futility and pinned their faith to the nascent class of
industrial wage-workers. In the early 'eighties this class was so small in
Russia that it seemed to many of the best and clearest minds of the
revolutionary movement quite hopeless to rely upon it. Plechanov was
derided as a mere theorist and closet philosopher, but he never wavered
in his conviction that Socialism must come in Russia as the natural
outcome of capitalist development. By means of a number of scholarly
polemics against the principles and tactics of the Will of the People

party, Plechanov gathered to his side of the controversy a group of very
brilliant and able disciples, and so laid the basis for the Social
Democratic Labor party. With the relatively rapid expansion of
capitalism, beginning with the year 1888, and the inevitable increase of
the city proletariat, the Marxian movement made great progress. A
strong labor-union movement and a strong political Socialist movement
were thus developed side by side.
At the same time there was a revival of terrorism, the one available
reply of the oppressed to brutal autocracy. While the Marxian
movement made headway among the industrial workers, the older
terroristic movement made headway among the peasants. Various
groups appeared in different parts of the country. When Alexander III