and Autocracy as the basis of the
state.

In this doctrine we have the whole explanation of the reactionary policy of
Alexander III. In the Manifesto of April 29th was announced the Czar's
determination to strengthen and uphold autocracy. That was the foundation
stone. To uphold orthodoxy was the next logical necessity, for autocracy
and orthodoxy were, in Russia, closely related. Hence the non-orthodox
sects--such as the Finnish Protestants, German Lutherans, Polish Roman
Catholics, the Jews, and the Mohammedans--were increasingly restricted in
the observance of their religion. They might not build new places of
worship; their children could not be educated in the faith of their
parents. In many cases children were taken away from their parents in order
to be sent to schools where they would be inculcated with the orthodox
faith. In a similar way, every attempt was made to suppress the use of
languages other than Russian.

Along with this attempt to force the whole population into a single mold
went a determined resistance to liberalism in all its forms. All this was
accompanied by a degree of efficiency in the police service quite unusual
in Russia, with the result that the terroristic tactics of the Will of the
People party were unavailing, except in the cases of a few minor officials.
Plots to assassinate the Czar were laid, but they were generally betrayed
to the police. The most serious of these plots, in March, 1887, led to the
arrest of all the conspirators.

In the mean time there had appeared the first definite Marxian Social
Democratic group in Russia. Plechanov, Vera Zasulich, Leo Deutsch, and
other Russian revolutionists in Switzerland formed the organization known
as the Group for the Emancipation of Labor. This organization was based
upon the principles and tactics of Marxian Socialism and sought to create a
purely proletarian movement. As we have seen, when revolutionary terrorism
was at its height Plechanov and his disciples had proclaimed its futility
and pinned their faith to the nascent class of industrial wage-workers. In
the early 'eighties this class was so small in Russia that it seemed to
many of the best and clearest minds of the revolutionary movement quite
hopeless to rely upon it. Plechanov was derided as a mere theorist and
closet philosopher, but he never wavered in his conviction that Socialism
must come in Russia as the natural outcome of capitalist development. By
means of a number of