United States or Switzerland ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


Towards the close of the reign of Alexander II. , when Count Loris Melikof, with the sanction and approval of his august master, was preparing to introduce a system of liberal political reforms, it was intended to abolish the gendarmerie as an organ of political espionage, and accordingly the direction of it was transferred from the so-called Third Section of his Imperial Majesty's Chancery to the Ministry of the Interior; but when the benevolent monarch was a few months afterwards assassinated by revolutionists, the project was naturally abandoned, and the Corps of Gendarmes, while remaining nominally under the Minister of the Interior, was practically reinstated in its former position.

Would not the dynamiters and throwers of hand-grenades utilise a relaxation of police supervision, as they did in the time of Louis Melikof,* for carrying out their nefarious designs? * Vide supra, p. 569.

At the same time, the police officials, who had become lax and inefficient under the conciliatory regime of Loris Melikof, recovered their old zeal, and displayed such inordinate activity that the revolutionary organisation was paralysed and in great measure destroyed.

Closer Relations with Western Socialism Attempts to Influence the Masses Bakunin and Lavroff "Going in among the People" The Missionaries of Revolutionary Socialism Distinction between Propaganda and Agitation Revolutionary Pamphlets for the Common People Aims and Motives of the Propagandists Failure of Propaganda Energetic Repression Fruitless Attempts at Agitation Proposal to Combine with Liberals Genesis of Terrorism My Personal Relations with the Revolutionists Shadowers and Shadowed A Series of Terrorist Crimes A Revolutionist Congress Unsuccessful Attempts to Assassinate the Tsar Ineffectual Attempt at Conciliation by Loris Melikof Assassination of Alexander II. The Executive Committee Shows Itself Unpractical Widespread Indignation and Severe Repression Temporary Collapse of the Revolutionary Movement A New Revolutionary Movement in Sight.