In the summer of 1869 there was printed at Geneva "Words Addressed to
Students," signed by them both; the "Formula of the Revolutionary
Question"; "The Principles of the Revolution"; and the "Publications of
the People's Tribunal"--the three last appearing anonymously. All of
them counsel the most infamous doctrines of criminal activity. In "Words
Addressed to Students," the Russian youth are exhorted to leave the
universities and go among the people. They are asked to follow the
example of Stenka Razin, a robber chieftain who, in the time of Alexis,
placed himself at the head of a popular insurrection.[F] "Robbery,"
declare Bakounin and Nechayeff, "is one of the most honorable forms of
Russian national life. The brigand is the hero, the defender, the
popular avenger, the irreconcilable enemy of the State, and of all
social and civil order established by the State. He is the wrestler in
life and in death against all this civilization of officials, of nobles,
of priests, and of the crown.... He who does not understand robbery can
understand nothing in the history of the Russian masses. He who is not
sympathetic with it, cannot sympathize with the popular life, and has no
heart for the ancient, unbounded sufferings of the people; he belongs in
the camp of the enemy, the partisans of the State.... It is through
brigandage only that the vitality, passion, and force of the people are
established undeniably.... The brigand in Russia is the veritable and
unique revolutionist--revolutionist without phrase, without rhetoric
borrowed from books, a revolutionist indefatigable, irreconcilable, and
irresistible in action.... The brigands scattered in the forests, the
cities, and villages of all Russia, and the brigands confined in the
innumerable prisons of the empire, form a unique and indivisible world,
strongly bound together, the world of the Russian revolution. In it, in
it alone, has existed for a long time the veritable revolutionary
conspiracy."[22]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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