shall not now attempt to ascertain, since the inquiry would carry us too far from the modest task that we have set for ourselves. We merely state the fact, without explanation, and, in the interest of historical truth, refer, in passing, to one extremely distressing phase of it. The repetition, one after another, of terrible crimes, each of which deeply shocked the social organism, inevitably led, by virtue of the natural law of reaction, to exhaustion. There was danger, therefore, that a continuance of persistent activity in this direction would fatally weaken the organism and extinguish all of its self-preservative energies. ...[1] Ominous forewarnings of such symptoms had begun already to make their appearance. ...[2]
According to the statements of this writer the terrorists of 1879-81 were nothing but "an insignificant gang of discharged telegraph-operators, half-educated school-boys, miserable little Jews, and loose women"; but this heterogeneous organization, notwithstanding its insignificance, almost succeeded in overthrowing "the mightiest power on earth, armed with all the attributes of authority." To a simple-minded reader there seems to be an extraordinary disproportion here between cause and effect. So far as I know there is not another instance in history where a gang of telegraph-operators, school-boys, Jews, and loose women have been able to paralyze the energies of a great empire, and almost to overthrow long-established "monarchical institutions" to which a hundred millions of people were "sincerely devoted." If the statements of Count Lóris-Mélikof's biographer are to be accepted as true, Russian telegraph-operators, Russian school-boys, Russian Jews, and Russian loose women must be regarded as new and extraordinary types of the well-known classes to which they nominally belong. There are no telegraph-operators and loose women, I believe, outside of Russia, who are capable of engaging in a "duel" with the "mightiest power
1 There are dots in the original at these points which indicate the omission of matter disapproved by the censor. The extract is from a biographical sketch of Count Lóris-Mélikof , published in the historical magazine Russian Antiquity for the month of January, 1889, page 65. [Author's note.]
