and extremely abstract. They wished to go
among the ignorant peasants and educate them in the Western sciences.
"Going among the people" was a phrase among them which assumed the
significance of a program. But with its antipathy toward all forms of
learning the Government soon showed its determination to suppress all
these efforts at educating the common people, and the youthful
agitators were arrested and thrown into prison by the hundreds.

As a matter of fact their abstract ideas had made little impression on
the ignorant mujiks, and had the Government ignored the Nihilists it
is probable that their organization would have died a natural death
from lack of success. But the opposition of the police only roused the
fighting spirit of the young aristocrats, and they not only became
more enthusiastic, but added recruits to their ranks more than enough
in numbers to fill the gaps made by those in prison. The persecution
by the police, furthermore, forced them to make a secret organization
of their loosely knit groups, and this too fired the romantic
imaginations of the young people.

The fight between the agitators and the police waxed stronger and more
bitter. Then one day all Russia was shocked by the news that a
Petrograd police chief had had a young woman in prison as a Nihilist
suspect disrobed and flogged.

Hitherto the Nihilists had been entirely peaceful in their methods;
violence had formed no part of their tactics. The indignation roused
within their ranks by the outrage to the young woman resulted in a
change. They decided to instill terror into the hearts of the
Government officials by a systematic policy of assassination, whereby
the most oppressive of the officials should be removed from their
field of activity by death. The first of these assassinations, not
quite successful, took place in Kiev in 1878. From then on violence on
both sides increased and the bitterness intensified until in 1881 it
culminated in the assassination of Alexander II. This so enraged the
Government officials and vitalized their energy that soon after all
the most active Nihilists had been captured or driven abroad, and for
some years there came a lull in the agitation for democracy in Russia.
But it was, after all, lack of success which had killed Nihilism
rather than the violent measures of the Government. Practically all of
the Nihilists had imbibed the radical doctrines of Karl Marx and
Michael Bakunin, especially those of t