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Bolshevism - The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy by John Spargo
page 25 of 411 (06%)
in Stuttgart, Germany, and, since its circulation in Russia was forbidden,
it had to be smuggled into the country and secretly circulated, just as the
revolutionary Socialist journals were. Thus another bond was established
between two very different movements.

As was inevitable, revolutionary terrorism enormously increased. In the
cities the working-men were drawn mainly into the Social Democratic
Working-men's party, founded by Plechanov and others in 1898, but the
peasants, in so far as they were aroused at all, rallied around the
standard of the Socialist-Revolutionists, successors to the Will of the
People party. This party was peculiarly a party of the peasants, just as
the party of Plechanov was peculiarly a party of industrial workers. It
emphasized the land question above all else. It naturally scorned the view,
largely held by the Marxists in the other party, that Russia must wait
until her industrial development was perfected before attempting to realize
Socialism. It scorned the slow, legalistic methods and resolutely answered
the terrorism of Czarism by a terrorism of the people. It maintained a
special department for carrying on this grim work. Its Central Committee
passed sentences of death upon certain officials, and its decrees were
carried out by the members of its Fighting Organization. To this
organization within the party belonged many of the ablest and most
consecrated men and women in Russia.

A few illustrations will suffice to make clear the nature of this
terroristic retaliation: In March, 1902, Sypiagin, the Minister of the
Interior, was shot down as he entered his office by a member of the
Fighting Organization, Stephen Balmashev, who was disguised as an officer.
Sypiagin had been duly sentenced to death by the Central Committee. He had
been responsible for upward of sixty thousand political arrests and for the
suffering of many exiles. Balmashev went to his death with heroic
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