and 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]

Once again the principles of the revolution appear to be complete and
universal destruction. "There must 'not rest ... one stone upon a
stone.' It is necessary to destroy everything, in order to produce
'perfect amorphism,' for, if 'a single one of the old forms' were
preserved, it would become 'the embryo' from which would spring all the
other old social forms."[23] The same leaflet preaches systematic
assassination and declares that for practical revolutionists all
speculations about the future are "criminal, because they hinder _pure
destruction_ and trammel the march of the revolution. We have confidence
only in those who show by their acts their devotion to the revolution,
without fear of torture or of imprisonment, and we disclaim all words
unless action should follow immediately." ...[24] "Words have no value
for us unless followed at once by action. But all is not action that
goes under that name: for example, the modest and too-cautious
organization of secret societies without some external manifestations is
in our eyes merely ridiculous and intolerable child's play. By external
manifestations we mean a series of actions that positively destroy
something--a person, a cause, a condition that hinders the emancipation
of the people. Without sparing our lives, without pausing before any
threat, any obstacle, any danger, etc., we must break into the life of
the people with a series of daring, even insolent, attempts, and inspire
them with a belief in their own power, awake them, rall