isaac-deutscher-the-prophet-armed-trotsky-1879-1921

THE PROPHET ARMED
From none of these classes could there come an immediate
threat to the throne. Each class hoped that its claims would be
met and its wrongs redressed by the monarch himself. In any
case, no class was in a position to air its grievances and make its
demands widely known. None could rally its members and
muster its strength in any representative institution or political
party. These did not exist. State and Church were the only
bodies that possessed a national organization; but the fundion
of both, a function which had determined their shape and
constitution, had been to suppress not to express social discontent.
Only one group, the intelligentsia, rose to challenge the
l dynasty. Educated people in all walks of life, especially those
who had not been absorbed in officialdom, had no less reason
than had the peasantry to be disappointed with the Tsar-the
Emancipator. He had first aroused and then frustrated their
craving for freedom as he had aroused and deceived the muzhiks'
hunger for land. Alexander had not, like his predecessor
Nicholas I, chastised the intelligentsia with scorpions; but he
was still punishing them with whips. His reforms in education
and in the Press had been half-hearted and mean: the spiritual
iife of the nation remained under the tutelage of the police, the
censorship, and the Holy Synod. By offering the educated a
semblance of freedom he made the denial of real freedom even
more painful and humiliating. The intelligentsia sought to
avenge their betrayed hopes; the Tsar strove to tame their
restive spirit; and, so, semi-liberal reforms gave way to repression
and repression bred rebellion.
Numerically the intelligentsia were very weak. The active
revolutionaries among them were a mere handful. If their fight
against the rul'er of ninety million subjects were to be described
as a duel between David and Goliath, that would still exaggerate
their strength. Throughout the 187os, this classical
decade of the intelligentsia's rebellion, a few thousand people
at the most were involved in the peaceful, 'educational and
propagandist' phase of the Narodnik (Populist) movement; and
in its final, terroristic phase less than two score men and women
were directly engaged. These two score made the Tsar a fugitive
in his own realm, and kept the whole might of his empire in
check. Only against the background of a discontented but mute