During the first years of their existence neither group was strong enough to cause the Government serious inconvenience, and it was not till 1897-98 that they found means of issuing manifestos and programmes.  In these the Narodovoltsi declared that their immediate aims were the annihilation of Autocracy, the convocation of a National Assembly and the reorganisation of the Empire on the principles of federation and local self-government, and that for the attainment of these objects the means to be employed should include popular insurrections, military conspiracies, bombs and dynamite.

Very similar, though ostensibly a little more eclectic, was the programme of the Socialist-Revolutionaries.  Their ultimate aim was declared to be the transfer of political authority from the Autocratic Power to the people, the abolition of private property in the means of production, and in general the reorganisation of national life on Socialist principles.  On certain points they were at one with the Social Democrats.  They recognised, for example, that the social reorganisation must be preceded by a political revolution, that much preparatory work was necessary, and that attention should be directed first to the industrial proletariat as the most intelligent section of the masses.  On the other hand they maintained that it was a mistake to confine the revolutionary activity to the working classes of the towns, who were not strong enough to overturn the Autocratic Power.  The agitation ought, therefore, to be extended to the peasantry, who were quite “developed” enough to understand at least the idea of land-nationalisation; and for the carrying out of this part of the programme a special organisation was created.

With so many opinions in common, it seemed at one moment as if the Social Democrats and the Socialist-Revolutionaries might unite their forces for a combined attack on the Government; but apart from the mutual jealousy and hatred which so often characterise revolutionary as well as religious sects, they were prevented from coalescing, or even cordially co-operating, by profound differences both in doctrine and in method.

The Social Democrats are essentially doctrinaires.  Thorough-going disciples of Karl Marx, they believed in what they consider the immutable laws of social progress, according to which the Socialistic ideal can be reached only through capitalism; and the intermediate political revolution, which is to substitute the will of the people for the Autocratic Power, must be effected by the conversion and organisation of the industrial proletariat.  With the spiritual pride of men who feel themselves to be the incarnations or avatars of immutable law, they are inclined to look down with something very like contempt on mere empirics who are ignorant of scientific principles and are guided by considerations of practical expediency.  The Social-Revolutionaries seem to them to be empirics of this kind because they reject the tenets, or at