14. The Steady Radicalization of Nineteenth-Century Russian Students
The Tsarist secret police’s suppression of the radical student study circles led to a major think. The result was a growing consensus that attempts to preach socialism to the masses had been a blunder, and that they were doomed to failure because the Okhrana would simply arrest speakers as soon they opened their mouths. Instead, revolutionary violence came to be seen as the only effective means to overthrow Tsarism. So the students changed tactics to fit their new strategy, and turned to more clandestine and aggressive means – 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 did not view terror as a means of political struggle against the government. Narodnaya Volya, or People’s Will, splintered off from Zemlya I Volya in 1879 after the latter was nearly wiped out by the secret police after a failed assassination attempt on the Tsar. It was more radical. It viewed terror as a proactive tool that could overthrow the regime, and not simply as a reactive means of retaliation against individual officials who happened to be exceptionally bad or unjust.
