In the 18th century this absolutism came in closer touch with Western Europe and at the same time it began to take on something
of the features of the political organization of the latter, such as bureaucracy, army, navy and the corresponding tactics. For this purpose an educated class was necessary which grew out of the hereditary environments and sought to immediately take on all the views and needs of the
intellectuals of Western Europe. These views and needs influenced the ruling circle itself to a certain degree, at least so long as the circle was itself assisted thereby. When, however, the intellectuals became more numerous and began to constitute a class outside of the ruling circle, and in opposition to it, a struggle began between the intellectuals and the government, which grew all the more sharp and the intellectuals all the more
revolutionary, and the government the more reactionary, the longer it continued.
In the eighties of the last century, however, the intellectuals stood alone in this battle. They found no other class which supported them; no strong independent bourgeoisie, no revolutionary class of little capitalists. In Western Europe it had been these classes which had constituted the heart of the popular revolutionary forces. of the English and French revolutions up to the middle of the 19th century. In Russia the little traders were generally nothing more than uprooted peasants who still were inferior to the peasant of the villages, since they had lost the support which the village community with its communist system had given. The peasant stood higher than the little trader, but his democratic and communistic inclinations and instincts did not extend beyond the borders of the village community. For a national democracy the Russian peasant lacked both understanding and interest.
All of this led to a condition where the Russian intellectuals after many disappointing attempts at a democratic propaganda finally came to trust in their own strength as a means of overthrowing absolutism. This strength, however, was utterly inadequate to conquer the enormous powers of a modern government. There remained to them therefore, the single form of battle, of intimidation, of terrorism – the battle of individual heroes, who took their lives in their hands in order to threaten the lives of the possessors of governmental power. This was the root of the “historically unavoidable, peculiarly Russian” tactics of terrorism.
In connection with these tactics, however, there were also certain peculiar socialistic views. The Russian intellectuals were. as we have seen, wholly dependent for their political views and needs upon the West, during the time that terrorism was developing. Meanwhile, the liberalism of Western Europe had ceased to become revolutionary and had become a conservative power. There was now but one revolutionary factor, the Social Democracy. This reacted upon the Russian revolutionists. They had been from the beginning also socialists. Where, however, in so economically backward a land were they to find the starting point of a transformation of society in the socialist sense. A developed industry which could offer such a starting point did not exist, but they hoped to find a complete substitute for this in a direction which is in the Europe of today “peculiarly Russian” – the agrarian communisms of the village community. That was the theory of the Narodniki , which became the theoretical foundation of the terroristic agitation of the Narondnaya Volya .
Like the terrorist battle against the government, so also the agrarian socialism of the Russian revolutionists was “historically unavoidable.” This does not by any means say that it was certain to attain its object. All political tendencies and efforts of a definite epoch are “historically unavoidable,” but only a portion thereof are destined to succeed. Another portion must just as unavoidably disappear without result as that they appear. Twenty-four years ago no one could assert with certainty that the Russian village communities might not become the starting point of a modern form of communism. Society as a whole can not leap over any stage of evolution, but single backward portions thereof can easily do this. They can make a leap in order to correspond with other and more advanced portions. So it was possible that Russian society might leap over the capitalist stage in order to immediately develop the new communism out of the old. But a condition of this was that socialism in the rest of Europe should become victorious during the time that the village communities still had a vital strength in Russia. This at the begin- fling of the eighties appeared still possible. But in a decade the impossibility of this transition was perfectly clear. The revolution in Western Europe moved slower and the village communities in Russia fell faster than appeared probable at the beginning of the eighties, and therewith it was decided that the special peculiarity of Russia upon which the terrorism and the socialism of the Narodnaya Volya was founded should disappear, and that Russia must pass through capitalism in order to attain socialism and that also Russia must in this respect pass along the same road as had Western Europe. Here as there socialism must grow out of the great industry and the industrial proletariat is the only revolutionary class which is capable of leading a continuous and independent revolutionary battle against absolutism.