27. Nineteenth-Century Radical Students
People’s Will had its genesis in radical student study circles in the 1870s, that sought to spread socialist ideas to peasants and industrial workers. They were soon repressed by the Tsarist secret police, the Okhrana, who swiftly arrested and jailed the agitators. That led to a rethink, a consensus that only revolutionary violence could overthrow Tsarism, and the adoption of more clandestine and aggressive tactics – specifically, “propaganda of the deed”, or terrorism.
The result was Zemlya I Volya (Land and Liberty), a radical organization that advocated political assassinations as self-defense and justified revenge against oppressive officials. However, it stopped short of viewing terror as a means of political struggle against the government. People’s Will splintered off from Zemlya I Volya when it was nearly wiped out by the secret police in 1879, following a failed assassination attempt on the Tsar. People’s Will emerged from the wreckage. From the start, it was more radical, and viewed terror as a proactive tool for overthrowing the regime, and not simply as a reactive means of retaliation.
