However desirable it may be that the two factions should come to an understanding it is nevertheless impossible that outsiders
should do anything. The most that would be possible would be to reduce the personal mistrust and antagonism that stands in the way of every union movement today, by means of a non-partisan court of arbitration which should examine into these personal accusations. But even this cannot be forced from without, but must come in response to the request of the participants. The practical differences, however, can only be settled by the Russian Social Democrats themselves, and this is not so simple since it appears as if each faction contained a majority, and from the very nature of a secret organization each little increase for one side is claimed by the other as accidental. We can only hope that the battle against the common enemy and the rapid changes of the political situation will bring about a removal of the bone of contention and the unity of the party.
We come now to the third group in the Russian divisions, – that between the different social democratic organizations on the one side and that of the Revolutionary Socialists upon the other, including the
Terrorists, and which the
Vorwärts seems to look upon as the leaders of the unity movement in Russia.
Immediately after the call of Gapon the
Vorwärts published a letter written by Karl Marx in 1881 to his daughter concerning the Russian terrorists at that time. The
Vorwärts took the letter from
La Vie Socialiste and accompanied it with comments in which is stated among other things “In a few lines Marx here exhausts all that can be said over the question of Russian
terrorism.”
No one would have been more astonished at such a statement than Karl Marx himself could he have read it today. For what was in this letter after all? In the first place Marx’s statement of the fact that the originators of the St. Petersburg attempt upon Alexander II “were true heroes with no melodramatic poses.” Wholly correct, but something that today does not hold true for the Russian terrorists alone, but for the whole mass of Russian revolutionists to whatever faction they may belong. But this says absolutely nothing concerning the real question of Russian terrorism.
The two statements contained in the letter are equally true that the tactics of the Russian terrorists are a “peculiar Russian tactic” and “historically unavoidable.” So far as I know nobody has ever denied this, but this is very far from “exhausting everything that can be said on the question of Russian terrorism.” Rather this statement merely formulates the question without attempting to give a final answer. That there is almost nothing else in the letter concerning Russian terrorism, shows that the exaggerated importance which has been given to these “few lines” as an expression of “Marxism,” is only intelligible by a complete ignoring of all that has been previously accomplished by the “orthodox Marxists.” This exaggeration shows however that those who make it would maintain that the Russian terrorism of today is identical with that of a quarter of a century ago. Otherwise it would be understood how impossible it would have been, even in a complete and scientific investigation of many volumes, to say nothing of a “few lines” written in 1881, to exhaustively treat the question of terrorism in 1905.
Let us endeavor, not necessarily to exhaust the question, but at least to briefly indicate what are the specific Russian circumstances which have created the Russian terrorism.
Are they to be found iii absolutism? Certainly not. The whole European continent was under the yoke of absolutism in the 18th century, as were Austria and Russia in the first half of the 19th, without a terrorist tactic developing among the classes striving for political supremacy. The peculiarity of the Russian absolutism in opposition to that of Western Europe consists in the fact that it is Oriental and not founded upon a balance of powers between a strongly rising bourgeoisie and a feudal nobility which made the King a sort of court and over-lord of both; but was founded upon the absence of a bourgeoisie, the domination of a landed class, and a people scattered in countless village communities with no unity among themselves and consequently helpless before a central political power; so that the leader was absolute over the whole mass.