d to this source of information.

But a picture of this pair of twin brothers will show us better than
long essays how much of the total phenomenon of modern Anarchism is a
product of Western hyper-philosophy, and how much is an inheritance of
Russian Nihilism. Sergei Netschajew, the apostle and saint of Nihilist
poesy, was born at St. Petersburg in 1846, the son of a court
official, and in time became teacher at a parish school in his native
town. In 1865 he went to Moscow, where he became associated with the
students of the Academy of Agriculture, and founded a secret society
that called itself "The People's Tribunal," and formed ostensibly the
"Russian Branch of the International Workers' Union." Both in St.
Petersburg and elsewhere he appeared as the founder of such branch
societies, attached to the Bakuninist section of the "International,"
and chiefly recruited from the ranks of youthful students. In a
pamphlet issued later (1869), in conjunction with his master, Bakunin,
called _Words Addressed to Students_, he exhorted the students not to
trouble about this "empty knowledge" in whose name it was meant to
bind their hands, but to leave the University and go among the
people.[8] The Russian people, he said, were now in the same condition
as in the time of Alexis, the father of Peter the Great, when Stenka
Razin, a robber chieftain, placed himself at the head of a terrible
insurrection. The young people who now leave their place in society
and lead the life of the people would form an invincible, collective
Stenka Razin, who would put themselves at the head of the fight for
emancipation, and carry it through successfully. For this purpose they
should not merely turn to the peasants and make them revolt, but also
call in the help of robbers. "Robbery," he said, "was one of the most
honourable forms of Russian national life." The robber is a hero, the
protector and avenger of the people, the irreconcilable enemy of the
State, and of all civic and social order founded by the State, who
fights to the death against all this civilisation of officials,
nobles, priests, and the crown. The Russian robber is the true and
only revolutionary, the revolutionary _sans phrase_, without rhetoric
derived from books, indefatigable, irreconcilable, and in action
irresistible, a social revolutionary of the people, not a political
revolutionary of the classes.

[8] The expression "go among the people" has since become a
well-