National Right, which aimed at effecting an alliance between the liberal and the revolutionary elements for the struggle against despotism. This party issued a periodical and a number of pamphlets. It was suppressed in 1894, but the suppression did not entirely put an end to its activities.
The Social Democratic Party gained increasing influence, and in consequence of the livelier political movement which ensued upon 1891 this body became the leading force among the workers. Until then, the remnants and the successors of the Narodnaja Volja, organised in various towns as petty groups, had maintained the upper hand, but in the strikes that became increasingly frequent after 1893 social democratic leadership was already dominant. The great strike of the St. Petersburg textile workers during 1896 may be regarded as the opening of the veritable labour movement.
The conduct of strikes, and the campaign against the entrepreneurs and the government, were undertaken by the League for the Struggle to Liberate the Workers, organised in the spring of 1895. The agitation among the operatives was partly oral and partly written (proclamations).
Of great importance was the comprehensive organisation of the Jewish workers of the west and the south to form the Bund. This took place in 1897. In view of the outlawed position of the Jews, the establishment of a Jewish socialist party was a matter of moment to the working classes, and further, the Bund served to give expression to the revolutionary sentiments of the Jews.
Just as in the working-class organisations the growing social democracy constituted an opposition to the adherents of the Narodnaja Volja, so during the middle nineties did those who were expounding the theories of the social democracy enter into a controversy with the narodničestvo concerning the application of the principles of the philosophy of history to explain the evolution of Russia. In 1884 Struve took the field; in 1895 Plehanov (Beltov) played a prominent part; and there were many other notable Marxist writers, some of them confining their activities to the domain of theory (Tugan-Baranovskii, Bulgakov, etc.), and others being in addition practical workers on behalf of social democracy (Věra Zasulič, Lenin, Martov, etc.). I have previously referred to this important literary duel, and shall have something more to say about the matter presently.
