Untitled

THE FATHER OF TERRORISM 19
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, rally them, and
drive them on to the triumph of their own cause." (25*
The most remarkable of this series of writings is TThe
Revolutionary
Catechism." This existed for several
years in cipher, and was guarded most carefully by
Nechayeff. Altogether it contained twenty-six articles,
classified into four sections. Here it is declared that if
the revolutionist continues to live in this world it is
only
in order to annihilate it all the more surely. "The object
remains always the same the :
quickest and surest way
of destroying this filthy order." . . . "For him exists
only one single pleasure, one single consolation, one reward,
one satisfaction : the success of the revolution.
Night and day he must have but one thought, but one
aim— implacable destruction." . . . "For this end of
implacable destruction a revolutionist can and often
must live in the midst of society, feigning to be altogether
different from what he A really is. revolutionist
must penetrate everywhere into :
high society as well as
into the middle class, into the shops, into the church, into
the palaces of the aristocracy, into the official, military,
and literary worlds, into the third section (the secret
police), and even into the imperial palace." (26)
"All this unclean society must be divided into several
categories, the first composed of those who are condemned
to death without delay." (Sec. 15.)
. . ,
"In the first place must be destroyed the men most inimical
to the revolutionary organization and whose violent
and sudden death can frighten the Government the most
and break its
power in depriving it of energetic and in-