Violence in politics: Terror and political assassination in Eastern Europe and Russia 9783111382449, 9783111023267

Table of contents :
Table Of Contents
Introduction
I. Types And Function Of Terror
II. History Of Tactical Terror Against Domestic Autocracy In Russia
III. Violence And Individual Terror Against Foreign Rule
IV. Political Assassination In Balkan Politics
V. From The Individual Terror Of The Totalitarian To The Underground Struggle Against Conquerors 1918-1945
VI. Some Sociological Considerations
Appendices: Violence And Terror In Politics - Selected Sources

Citation preview

VIOLENCE IN POLITICS

STUDIES IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES edited by C.A.O. van Nieuwenhuijze

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VIOLENCE IN POLITICS TERROR AND POLITICAL ASSASSINATION IN EASTERN EUROPE AND RUSSIA

by

FELIKS GROSS Brooklyn College, Graduate School and University Center of The City University of New York

1972 MOUTON THE HAGUE • PARIS

© Copyright 1972 in The Netherlands. Mouton & Co., N.V., Publishers, The Hague. No part of this book may be translated or reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any other means, without written permission from the publishers.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD NUMBER: 72-86183

Printed in The Netherlands

To Harry D. Gideonse

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

1

I. TYPES AND FUNCTION OF TERROR

Legitimacy and Violence "Sultanism" and the Transfer of Power by Assassination . . . Renaissance; Tyranny and Its Political Style Political Assassination: Systematic and Tactical Individual Terror Mass Terror Contradictions of Individual and Mass Terror Historical Pattern of Mass Terror Random Terror Focussed Random Terror Dynastic Assassination Tactical and Strategic Objectives of Individual Terror

5 6 7 9 10 12 16 18 18 19 19 20

H. HISTORY OF TACTICAL TERROR AGAINST DOMESTIC AUTOCRACY IN RUSSIA

Differences Between West and East Individual Terror as Political Style Some of the Determinants and Motivation Beginnings of Non-Violence Ideology and Objectives of the Terrorists From Political Assassination to Tactical Terror Early Political Assassinations Beginnings of Systematic Terroristic Struggle Opposition to Terror Nechayev and Burtsev

23 23 25 27 27 29 31 32 32 32

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The Government's Reaction to Individual Terror The Size of the Terroristic Party The "Cause" Terror and Representative Institutions The Impetus of the Terroristic Revolution

34 35 36 36 38

III. VIOLENCE AND INDIVIDUAL TERROR AGAINST FOREIGN RULE

Origin of the Polish Revolutionary Movement The Polish Socialist Party Absence of Terror in the Austrian Part of Poland The Nature of Individual Terror in Poland Opposition to Terror and Direct Action "Other" Victims of Political Terror The Termination of Systematic Terror Individual Violence of Armenian Dashnaks as Defense and Struggle Against Turkish Massacres Armenian Massacres The Dashnak Party Polish and Armenian Terroristic Tactics Compared

39 40 41 42 43 43 44 44 45 47 49

IV. POLITICAL ASSASSINATION IN BALKAN POLITICS

The Nature of Political Assassination Dynastic Feuds and Assassinations Black Hand and Assassination of Archduke Ferdinand . . . . Professionalization and Institutionalization of Individual Terror Komitadjis of Macedonia and the Terroristic Action Terroristic Tactics Continue While Goals Have Changed . . .

50 51 52 54 54 57

V. FROM THE INDIVIDUAL TERROR OF THE TOTALITARIANS TO THE UNDERGROUND STRUGGLE AGAINST CONQUERORS, 1918-1945

Political Situation, 1918-1945 Former Terrorist Party and Revolution in Russia Former Fighters and Democracy in Poland Former Komitadji in a New Bulgaria Transitions and Changes . . . Significance of the Political Situation New and Old Patterns of Political Assassination

58 59 59 60 60 62 62

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Isolated Political Assassination and Tactical Terror in Poland Yugoslavia and the Ustasha. Assassinations of King Alexander and Stephen Radic Rumanian Iron Guard and Individual Terror. Assassinations of Iorga, Duca and Others Foreign Support The Soviet Union Individual Terror and Resistance The Patterns of Resistance The Polish Underground and Legitimation of Individual Terror

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63 65 66 67 68 70 71 72

VI. SOME SOCIOLOGICAL CONSIDERATIONS

Personality, Group and Situation Goals and Intentions Group Context Situation Context Legitimation of the Act Political and Ideological Assassination Major Types of Legitimation of Individual Violence Conflict of Values Situation and Legitimation of political assassination Tyrannicides and Legitimacy of Violence Causation of Individual Terror The Dead-End Situation : Causation of Individual Terror Against Autocracy and Foreign Rule Factor Analysis and Model A Model A Causation of Individual Terror Against Democracy. The PreAssassination Stage Model B A General Hypothesis Duration Institutionalization Diffusion of the Terroristic Pattern Some Reflections

77 78 78 79 79 81 82 83 84 85 86 86 87 89 89 92 93 93 94 95 96

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VU. APPENDICES: VIOLENCE AND TERROR IN POLITICS—SELECTED SOURCES

1. Nicolas Morozov's Theory of Terror, 1880 2. Political Assassination (Position of a Populist Faction), 1879 3. Goals of the Russian Revolutionary Party. The Letter of the Revolutionary Committee to the Tsar after the Assassination of his father, Alexander II 4. Individual Terror as Tactics (Reprinted from the Basic Principles of the Program of the Union of Revolutionary Socialists, 1900) 5. A Terrorist Attempt in Salonica in 1903 6. Trotsky Advocates Mass Terror

101 113

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119 122 130

INTRODUCTION

Almost a century-long experience in violence in politics, especially individual violence, suggests a clear distinction between what might be called an isolated political assassination and a tactical one, known as individual terror. Since the creation of states, men of politics have been assassinated by competitors to power. Tyrants were killed by those seeking freedom, vengeance, or desiring tyranny for themselves. Statesmen were killed by political fanatics and the mentally disturbed. Those are, however, isolated cases of temporary conspiracies on individuals. Elimination of a single person or of a few was the goal of such attempts. The Russian and East European past, however, suggests a long history of tactical terror. Individual assassination in the latter case was a political method, a tactic guided by a strategy and led to systematic violent activities against individuals. Unlike the first type of assassination, which was a rather unique occurrence, individual terror as tactics had in certain cases a duration of over thirty years. In the United States, perhaps the violent activities of the one time Ku Klux Klan resemble this type of tactic. Individual terror was a tactic, however, and like a tool it was used for different objectives. It was waged against brutal foreign conquerors and tyrannies, as a means toward reorganizing the society in terms of a government based on political rights and representative institutions. But individual assassination was also waged as a means to destroy democracy and cow the conquered people into submission. Since only a systematic, tactical terror was of long duration, the question must be asked: What were the conditions of the longevity of this tactic? In past experience, existence or formation of a party was the first, the essential condition. As a rule, this was a secret, highly disciplined and centralistic party with clear and definite goals. Frequently, such parties had support in committees abroad, sometimes the support of foreign governments.

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INTRODUCTION

Secondly, increase of political assassination was usually precipitated by certain social and political situations. Extended periods of terror appeared in "political cultures", which already had traditions of violence. Change of situations very frequently but not always resulted in cessation of individual terror. Professionalization of individual terror, e.g., in Bulgaria, however, carried the once established pattern into different political situations when a relatively moderate peasant government was in power. Thirdly, individual terror attracted certain personality types. Again, under conditions of very oppressive rule, a person otherwise non-aggressive and humane might have turned to violence. We found ourselves, rather suddenly, in an historical period of intellectual confusion and physical violence. The issue of violence and past experiences became of practical significance in a time of appeal to physical violence in domestic politics, as a way of interfering with the business of education and government. There are, of course, times in history when violence is one of the few roads left open for those who fight for the rights of man against the bestiality of others. Man was and is forced sometimes to use violence in his struggle for freedom and emancipation. The experience of a hundred years, discussed in this paper, teaches that a clear distinction must be made between struggle and violence against domestic autocracy, foreign conquerors who exterminated nations or changed them into slaves, and individual violence waged against a republic and democratic institutions. Violence generated violence, blood called, in the past, for more blood. Individual terror, even in the name of the highest ideals, created at the end political habits which moved into the patterns of political life, and continued even when conditions were changed. Violence - we must always ask: For what? Why? Against whom? These are also questions which must be asked today. The attempt of an Armenian militant, a Dashnak, against a Turkish Commander who ordered the massacre of his kinfolk, is morally a different type of act than the assassination of a humane President, or of a senator of a republic who advocated help to the underprivileged. Again, there is a profound moral difference between an attempt by a group of "militants" in a self-governing and democratic community to shoot from a rooftop firemen and policemen called to an emergency, and an assault by Serbian Yugoslavs against Ustashi militia, which moved into a village to kill their families. Violence in Eastern Europe and Russia was a result of a history of long

INTRODUCTION

3

and cruel opressions and led to new tragedies. At times in Russia as a consequence of the tactics of terror, the very moral fabric of man and society was torn and sense of direction lost. The advocates of extreme violence may not realize that this means, in the end, killing. And killing as a political method will sooner or later produce a class of professionals. Democratic institutions and the continuity of our civilization are a result of a slow and difficult development. This is a very subtle political, institutional framework. Once broken, it may take generations to restore. Destruction of democratic institutions, the past suggests, affects the entire civilization. This short volume combines historical material with a sociological discussion. The latter appears at the beginning and conclusion of the volume. This approach as well as focus is a consequence of its origin. Why was this book written, and how? After the tragic assassinations of President Kennedy, Martin Luther King and Senator Kennedy, President Johnson invited Dr. Milton J. Eisenhower to chair the National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence. This Commission initiated an extensive research in the field of individual and collective violence. Research was divided among the task forces. In the middle of September, 1968, I received a telephone call from Washington, from James F. Kirkham, Director of the Task Force on Political Assassination. A conference in Washington followed, and I was asked to serve as consultant and prepare a study which would integrate historical data and a sociological discussion. The time was short - the deadline was set for November 1, and later extended to November 5, since the term and authority of the Commission expired at the end of 1968. No day, nor even hours, could be wasted, especially since my regular academic duties could not be abandoned. However, I have worked in related areas and similar problems for many years, offered seminars at Brooklyn College and New York University, and had substantial material in my files. The New York Public Library and its excellent, easily accessible collections were our workshop. Without this library, it would not have been possible to write this essay in such a short time. Within a few hours I was able to mobilize some assistance. Ara Caprelian, a former student of mine, was very helpful with the Armenian material on the Dashnaks and Turkish massacres, especially with those sources which were published in Armenian.

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INTRODUCTION

The late Dr. Izaak Langnas, who had a command of about fourteen languages, and who had assisted before in some of my research, was kind enough to spare a few days in the library, helping in search, location and rechecking of sources. Only a few months afterwards he fell victim to violence himself, attacked by a few young hoodlums for no reason at all at the corner of Fifth Avenue, beaten savagely until he lost consciousness, saved by police officers. Dr. Langnas died later from probably unrelated causes. I appreciated his friendship, sparkling wit, humanity and broad talents, and his somewhat nostalgic and old-fashioned love for New York and London. Dr. Ronald Monticone, formerly a student of mine and at present a colleague, is well acquainted with the subject matter, and he read and checked the final copy. On Friday, I took the subway to the Atlantic Ocean shores of Arverne, and reached the office of Mrs. Shirley Lerman, a perfect manuscript secretary. She was just finishing her work. There was only time to put the neatly typed copy in a big envelope, address it and carry it to the local post office. We made it; the manuscript arrived on time. Later, at ease, I gathered sources for the second section, and was happy to locate in the Slavic collection of the New York Public Library the text of the Morozov essay on terror. I have had an opportunity to exchange views with other members of the task force during a seminar-conference, and wish to express my appreciation to the Director, James F. Kirkham, a gifted and alert social scientist and research coordinator, for his very friendly interest and assistance. Robert C. Herr, Assistant Director, was very helpful throughout this short but intensive working time, when sleep was limited to a minimum. The United States Printing Office published the volume on Assassination and Political Violence in 1968, as a staff report, prepared by James F. Kirkham, Sheldon G. Levy, and William J. Crotty, which also contains a short version of my text. Neither the full essay nor any of the sources (section II) were published before in present form. The copy of the original manuscript has been somewhat extended, re-read and edited again by the author, and supplied with the second part (Selected Sources). The sociological sections of this book pertain primarily to the question: When, and under what conditions do political assassination occur? They give also an analysis and classification of various types of political assassination. New York, October, 28, 1971. Feliks Gross

I TYPES AND FUNCTION OF TERROR

LEGITIMACY AND VIOLENCE

The humanizing effects of democracy and our civilization had an impact on our thinking and selective perception of the past history. It seems that it is almost forgotten that use of violence and assassination in order to achieve political power, remove an adversary or change a dynasty was a general historical phenomenon for centuries in societies organized into this complex political form of the state. Next to assassination as a means to gain wealth and property, assassination to gain political power seems to be tragically frequent in past history. The western civilization in a slow, historical process humanized political institutions. Humanization means here above all limitation, reduction, or abolition of use of violence, cruelty and killing in the business of internal government. It seems that reduction of political murder and assassination as a means of transferring power or changing dynasties appears in a slow development influenced by the Church and philosophy. The major concept which reduced political assassination in transmission and succession of royal power as this time was the concept of legitimacy rooted in the duality of Church and state. It was the ecclesiastic hierarchy which validated the hereditary legitimacy of the dynasties and maintained in that way a control over the orderly transfer of power. Of course, political murder was still abundant in medieval times. The Church itself indulged in mass terror toward dissidents. Nonetheless, a foundation was laid toward the concept of power based on legal and philosophical (or theological) premises as the only "legitimate" power. The paramount legitimacy of elective and representative power, established already in antiquity, whether in Greece or Rome, continued in medieval cities and corporations. The complex legal and philosophical concept of legitimacy of power became fundamental in Occidental politics. Few ideas in our civilization could be found which contributed more to political and

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cultural continuity of Europe and America than this one. Only late, and in few states, where well established concepts of democratic legitimacy based on "general will" or "majority rule" were associated in the political freedom and relative equality, or absence of excessive exploitation, did a nonviolent power transfer and nonviolent political struggle become fully accepted, "institutionalized". It became a shared value, a political custom or way of life.

"SULTANISM" A N D THE TRANSFER OF POWER BY ASSASSINATION

In imperial Rome political assassination was frequent. In the time of Emperor Constantin, it became a method later called "sultanism", a continuous murder of all possible pretenders to power, or competitors, until no one but the ruler survived.1 Sultanism reappeared in totalitarian states. Hitler's elimination of competitors Roehm, General Schleicher and so many others in the infamous bloodbath of 1934 and Stalin's purges were assassinations of possible competitors. In the fourth century A. D. Licinius, a competitor for power with future emperor Constantin, did away with "families of Galerius Severus, Maximus Daia, including their innocent children". Even the widow and daughter of Emperor Diocletian were assassinated, while Constantin later arranged for the assassination of Licinius. After the death of Constantin his brothers, first Constantius, next Dalmatius, were murdered.2 It was the same Constantin the Great whose merits for the establishment of the Christian Church as a ruling religion of the Roman Empire are well known. This was, however, a period of transition and disintegration of old value systems and legitimacy. At such times power is based rather on personal loyalty of the bodyguards than on legitimacy. While principles of legitimacy slowly grew in Western Europe, by no means free from political murder, in highly civilized Muslim Spain in the eighth century, political assassination was frequently practiced. "Of a total of twenty governors (appointed from Damascus or North Africa) only three survived as long as five years: those who did not fall in battle were murdered by their rivals." 3 In the Ottoman Empire political assassination as a process of consolidation and transfer of power was part of 1 The Swiss historian, Jacob Burkhardt, introduced this term in his Age of Constantin (1852) (New York: Doubleday, 1956), p. 266. 2 Ibid., pp. 266, 271, 277. 3 Harold Livermore, A History of Spain (New York: Grove Press, 1960), p. 67.

TYPES AND FUNCTION OF TERROR

7

the general use of violence in politics and absolute rule and, as we shall see, may have contributed to a "political style" or political cultural pattern in which assassination and individual terror became one of few avenues of struggle against autocratic rule. When Sultan Murad III (1574-1595) left twenty sons (out of forty-seven children who survived), his successor Mohammed III (1595-1603) ordered the murder of his nineteen brothers, to eliminate competitors.4 This pattern of elimination of competing dynasties by assassination, in a far milder form, however, in terms of means and number of victims, continued in the Balkans, especially in Serbia, even after liberation from the Ottoman yoke, from 1817 until 1903. Once a political pattern is well established and "internalized" in political behavior of individuals, or "institutionalized" in groups, it has a tendency to continue and it is difficult to cut and terminate such pattern. Turkey is no exception, but rather a representative of a pattern. In Persia the succession of the two major dynasties was "seldom undisputed and decided without bloodshed". 5 Sultanism was a major political device in Persia.

RENAISSANCE; TYRANNY AND ITS POLITICAL STYLE

The political assassination makes a new appearance in Europe at early Renaissance, with the struggles between the papacy and emperors (Hohenstauifen). The old medieval legitimacy based either on heredity with a succession, validated and legitimized by ecclesiastic authority or elective power, was slowly weakened in parts of Italy, and eroded. Italy now had a "multitude of political units - republics and despots - whose existence was founded simply on their power to maintain it". 6 From Sicily, from the South, came the centralizing style in politics, which broke the medieval freedoms and old legitimacies, and introduced also the Saracen mode of securing power. These new trends appeared with Emperor Frederick II the stupor mundi, but the ruthless and cruel style of government is associated also with the name of his son-in-law and vicar, Ezzelino da Romano. "The conquests and usurpations", writes Burkhardt, "which had hitherto taken place in the Middle Ages rested on real or pretended inheritance 4

L. S. Stavrionos, The Balkans Since 1453 (New York: Rinehart & Co., 1958), p. 159. William S. Haas, Iran (New York: Columbia University Press, 1946), pp. 95ff. See the dynasties of Safarid and Rayars which span almost 350 years. 6 Jacob Burckhardt, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy (English ed.; New York: Harper & Brothers, 1958), I, 22. 5

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and other such claims, or else were effected against unbelievers and excommunicated persons. Here for the first time the attempt was openly made to found a throne by wholesale murder and endless barbarities, by the adoption, in short, of any means with a view of nothing but the end pursued ... The example once set was not forgotten and his fall led to no return of justice among nations, and served as no warning to future transgressors." 7 It is difficult, if possible at all, to prove this one single causal sequence which the Swiss historian suggests as the major or even the only determinant. Nonetheless, the trend appears and carries the traditions which prevailed in other, neighboring parts of the Mediterranean or Middle East: the Saracen, the Arab, the Persian, or earlier, the Byzantine. The sultanic patterns moved into Italy with the beginnings of this great period of cultural renaissance. It weakened the old and subtle fabric of representative-municipal or dualistic hereditary-dynastic legitimacy, and brought political assassination more as a political style based on fear rather than shared values and consensus. Macchiavelli in his Prince described its working, advising the Prince to apply cruelty in order to keep his subjects united and faithful. The Prince - taught the Florentine scholar - must abstain from taking the property of others, but not necessarily life, "for men forget more easily the death of their father than the loss of their patrimony". 8 Political assassination is now moving in time, and step by step a political style, a way of doing the business of politics, and in a broader sense a political culture, is well established. Legitimacy supplied elements of continuity and personal security due to the strength of public institutions based on law and acceptance of shared values. They break if they lack provisions for change in times of transformation, true. But the new style affected the very subtle and yet shallow foundations of limitation of power, the foundation of individual security. Political assassination as a style of maintenance, transmission and consolidation of power resulted sooner or later in a tactical political assassination as a means to oppose autocratic power. This time political assassination as a tactic against autocracy had not a legal, but rather a philosophical legitimacy in the principles of individual and political freedom. Autocracy without recognized legitimacy opened gates to vio7 8

Ibid., pp. 24, 25. Niccolo Macchiavelli, The Prince (New York: Modern Library, 1940), p. 62.

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lence from two fronts: from other competitors for autocratic power, and from opponents and citizens struggling for restoration of freedom. This meant frequent struggles for their own lives, for the survival of their families and neighbors. Thus the idea of systematic political assassination appears in Europe as a tactic of struggle not solely between competitors for power, but also as a means in the struggle for principles of freedom and legitimacy, in consequence as a tactic of the ideological struggle. Once the style was established and internalized in values of man, it continued and led to new attempts. Again Macchiavelli in his Discourses teaches about legal means to defend and maintain liberty in a Republic. Moreover, discussing the reasons of change from liberty to servitude, he writes that a state born in blood and violence will change through blood and violence, because it was born with injury of many and generates the desire of vengeance. From this desire assassination is born. When a state created through consensus is changed, there is no danger comparable to those where blood calls for vengeance.9 Once violence sets in, once political assassination becomes a method, it generates its own logic of perpetuation. Political assassination of this historical period has concrete and definite functions: capture of power, removal of adversaries and competitors to power, consolidation and maintenance of power by means of fear. In isolated cases the victim has been a tyrant and the issue was liberty, perhaps a Republic. In many cases, assassination was an act of vengeance, sometimes an act of retribution for injustices and injuries by the powerful.

POLITICAL ASSASSINATION: SYSTEMATIC A N D TACTICAL

Political assassination as a rational act for a definite goal was a frequent occurrence in past history; in fact, it was in some cultures an accepted method to win and maintain power. Assassination due to political oppression or due to psychological, emotional motives can probably be also traced to the historical past. "Political" assassination as a systematic activity, a part, even a major one, of political tactics, advanced by an organized political group for achievement of an ideological goal, seems 9

Niccolo Macchiavelli, "Discorsi Sopra la Prima Deca di Tito Livio", in Tutte Le Opere (Florenz: Barbèra, 1928), p. 212.

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to be a nineteenth-century occurrence, a consequence of struggle against autocracy and foreign rule. After the French Revolution, what is called "the reaction" in Central and Western Europe closed the avenues of peaceful development of representative and democratic institutions. Monarchies and autocracies representing the interests of the ruling classes lacked will and initiative to resolve the burning social problems of the new industrial society. Here the traditions of the French Revolution suggested the once established and effective type of revolutionary tactics. In Russia, however, which lacked this tradition of a popular revolution "from below", where the people - the peasantry - were either passive, or loyal to the Tsar, or rebellious at times, but without broader political goals of basic change, where the government was autocratic in the Oriental sense rather than in terms of contemporary European monarchs, assassination appeared as political tactics. It spread to the Balkans, again as a tactic in response to foreign oppression and massacres.

INDIVIDUAL TERROR

During the second half of the nineteenth century, a theory of individual terror developed among revolutionary Russians in their struggle against autocracy. Unlike political assassination as an isolated act, individual terror - in terms of nineteenth-century revolutionaries and later in terms of some resistance groups during the Second World War - is a systematic, tactical course of action with political objectives. Individual terror attacked directly, above all, key decision makers or administrators, or acted in lieu of punishment against persons responsible for cruelties and oppression. One of its functions was retribution and deterrence. The leaders of the organization expected that assassination of an oppressive administrator would deter his successors from inhuman, oppressive acts. Such was the goal of assassination of high German Gestapo officers in Poland during the Second World War. The major function of individual terror was, however, weakening of the government and of the autocratic institutions of the Tsarist Empire. In words of the Populist theoretician Stepniak in 1892: A victory, immediate, splendid, and decisive, such as that obtained by an insurrection, is utterly impossible by means of terrorism. But another victory is more probable, that of the weak against the strong, that of the "beggars" of Holland against the Spaniards. In a struggle against an invisible, impalpable,

TYPES AND FUNCTION OF TERROR

11

omnipresent enemy, the strong is vanquished not by arms of his, but by the continuous extension of his own strength, which ultimately exhausts him, more than he would be exhausted by defeat. Such is precisely the position of the belligerent parties in Russia. The Terrorists cannot overthrow the government, cannot drive it from St. Petersburg and Russia; but having compelled it, for so many years running, to neglect everything and do nothing but struggle with them, by forcing it to do so still for years and years, they will render its position untenable. Already the prestige of the Imperial Government has received a wound which it will be very difficult to heal. An Emperor who shuts himself up in prison from fear of the Terrorism is certainly not a figure to inspire admiration.10 The individual terrorism was clearly directed solely against a tyrannical government (we return to this issue in the second chapter). The Russian Populist theoretician of terror and author of an essay on terroristic struggle, Nicholas Morozov, formulated in 1880 the tactical objectives of individual terror: The Terrorist Party ... must press without mercy a system of continuous terror, to punish the government for its every attack on freedom; they must achieve its demoralization, disorganization and weakening. The Party must incapacitate the government and render it powerless to take any kind of measures to suppress ideas and activities directed toward the people's welfare. With these two courses the Party will make its mode of struggle traditional and will annihilate every despotism in the future. 11 The objectives here were clearly formulated: individual terror is directed against autocracy; its objective is a slow process of weakening of government. After a quarter of a century of terror, from 1880 until almost the outbreak of the First World War, this was to a certain extent achieved. At times the government was weakened and confused. The main function of individual terror, in the early Russian theory, was to intimidate and weaken the government by means of fear. Nonetheless, individual terror was a system of action and as a rule only one of the means in the arsenal of revolutionary strategy and tactics. Usually, individual terror was combined with other actions, such as propaganda, or even as in Macedonia with guerrilla tactics. The preference of Russian revolutionaries rested also on moral considerations. "Central Terror" which they practiced was directed solely against carefully selected major 10

Stepniak, Underground Russia (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1892), see pp. 32, 257. 11 Nicolas Morozov, "Terroricheskaya Borba" [Terroristic Struggle], published in London in 1880, reprinted in Da Zdrastuyet Narodnaya Volya (Paris, 1907), pp. 48ff. This essay on terror was regarded fifty years ago as a bibliographical rarity. Full text p. 101.

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representatives of the Russian autocracy such as the Tsar himself, governors, high police officers. It did not hurt innocent people; it was discriminating. In a sense - in their view - it was tactics and punishment at the same time. Individual terror was to a large extent a tool of those who were "outs" and stormed the autocratic institutions. After the First World War, systematic individual assassination was used by the extreme right against democracy. Political techniques are similar to tools. Some - not all, of course - are "neutral" per se~, they can be used for a variety of contradictory objectives. The objectives are decisive in a political and above all a moral sense, since ideology and objectives control the choice of means.

MASS TERROR

Individual terror is the tactics of the "outs", on the contrary, mass terror is a political tactic of the "ins", of those in the saddle, in an effort to consolidate power, and usually to eliminate groups of innocent people defined as class, race or a nation. Thus, objectives of mass terror are broader than solely a rule by fear. 12 J. N. Steinberg, the first Russian Commissar of Justice, member of the S.R. (Social Revolutionary Party), opposed Lenin precisely on the issue of mass terror. He describes the latter as a "system" of violence, dispensed from above. Terror is a planned and quasi-legal program to intimidate and terrify people into submission. Terror is a detailed, well thought-out plan of threat and punishment by which the regime bends a population to its absolute will." 13 The rule of mass terror was usually in the past and still is a government of a minority which maintains its power primarily by manipulation of fear, not by consensus. Kautsky suggests as one of the causes of terror during the French Revolution, the weakness of the new Republican state, which could not properly exercise its power and secure food from the rural areas for the few urban centers. This however may explain the coercive actions and counter-actions of the revolutionary government in the Vendée and Brittany, but not the entire Terroristic period. 14 12 For a discussion of individual and mass terror, see Feliks Gross, Seizure of Political Power (New York: Philosophical Library, 1957), pp. 98-139. 13 I. N. Steinberg, In the Workshops of the Revolution (New York, Toronto: Rinehart & Company, 1953), pp. 134ff. 14 K. Kautsky, Terrorismo E Communismo (Milan: Bocca, 1946), pp. 34-35, originally

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It is the fear of the survivors which is seminal. The fear of suffering, humiliation, loss of life and liberty influences the behavior. Thus, the terrorized submit to the decision of the terrorists, and obey their orders. Society slowly splits into three groups: those who command and control the elements of violence or identify themselves with the latter, and the passive mass of obedient, predictable "subjects" or "citizens" manipulated frequently into manifestations of emotional and symbolic expressions of loyalty and love for the tormentors. The third group is a rapidly declining, divided group of those who are either indifferent (but not "manipulable") or opposed. The latter again are divided into various orientations, and are usually called "enemies of the people". The ruled are continuously warned about the imminent dangers from the "enemies of the people", who in various historical periods carry various names. Some of them in the past really presented "ancient regimes" and status quo. Others, however, opposed for a variety of reasons, and those were the "outs" who challenged the power of the rulers and fought for freedom, toleration and human dignity. Identification of opponents as enemies of the people supplied elements of legitimacy for their annihilation. At first, mass terror appeared in the past as a temporary, transient measure. It was applied as a violent means of coercion and imposition of a new social order and consolidation of political power. The organizers of terror, in their naive optimism, saw its end in terms of imminent and complete victory of the new social order. There was an ideological difference between the Nazi, fascist terror and the Communist one. Coercion and violence were part of the Nazi vision of a future society. They did not project a future society of free and equals, but one of a dominating national caste, regimented "folk", and enslaved foreign peoples. But the Jacobin and the Communist promise was different. Once, however, a terroristic organization is formed, it absorbs a professionally oriented personnel, a substantial number of deviants, others with an urge for power and influence, some, in minor posts indifferent and colorless. The patterns of behavior are set, permanent personnel is recruited, roles are assigned, rank and status are given. Now the goals are clearly stated, and the organization is elevated as the savior of lofty ideals. The Extraordinary (revolutionary) Tribunal established in Paris on written in 1919, also in the English edition. (This writer used the edition which was available at this time.)

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March 10, 1793 was given a wide authority to try "toute entreprise contre-révolutionnaire", all the attempts against freedom, equality, unity and indivisibility of the Republic, its internal and external security. This extraordinary tribunal was elevated to a position of the supreme arbiter of all republican virtues, as the Inquistition assumed a similar role in matters of divinity. By this process of "institutionalization" terroristic activity from a temporary, extraordinary measure, changes in a permanent and supreme authority. Next — the terroristic organization establishes itself as a sovereign institution, uncontrollable, independent, a state within the state. At the beginning of the party-state, the apparatus of mass terror is controlled by the party. In the next stage — the stage of the "emancipation" of the terroristic apparatus — the latter, subject solely to the will of a political superelite or a "maximum" leader, controls the party. Now it becomes a "sovereign" institution, secret, powerful and omnipresent. It has been "emancipated" from the fabric of the party-state as a kind of an outside, independent coercive apparatus. The state is a complex institution, an "integral" one. The state integrates a variety of institutions and supplies a sense of direction. In a democratic state political power is diffused, in a dictatorship the central government, which is in the hands of the super-elite, yields the decisive power and controls the other institutions. Basically, however, political power centers are to an extent interdependent and mutually integrated, even in a dictatorial state. The terroristic apparatus, however, has a tendency to emancipate from the general network of public institutions and assume an independent although dominant role. Its committees or courts try cases outside the regular procedures, dispose "extraordinary" transportation, before the others, enjoy privileges of unlimited power. They are also forced to continue the terror since they know about the unlimited hatred of the governed. The state is conquered now by the party, the party in turn by the terroristic machine. The "extraordinary" and "temporary" organization becomes a permanent one. The process of terror, coercion, becomes a routine and continuous activity. Now it is difficult to stop, it moves on its own impetus. The "Liquidation or abolition of the apparatus" translated from theoretical abstracts into practice, means again death and imprisonment of those who now exercise the power and administer terror. Fear, intimidation is on both sides by now, both the mass terrorists and the terrorized are tied in this mortal contradiction. The problem of strategy becomes with time

TYPES AND FUNCTION OF TERROR

15

crucial and difficult: how to stop terror, how to move from a terroristic coercion to more humane forms of government? Some historical evidence suggests that at certain times during the French as well as the Russian Revolution, tendencies appeared or desire was expressed to end or at least "de-escalate" the mass terror. Those efforts failed, however; the logic of the revolution, if there is any, was different. It led in the French Revolution to the destruction of those who controlled the terroristic apparatus first. Fear and hatred were at work on both sides. "The dictator Robespierre perished just at the very moment when he was prepared to return to a system of justice and humanity", wrote Levasseur de la Sarthe. Napoleon Bonaparte, quoting Cambaceres, suggested that Robespierre attempted to return to a system of "order and moderation" after "having overturned the furious factions which it was requisite for him to combat". 15 Could he indeed do this and survive at the moment when the terroristic machine was in full speed? Perhaps — but he was not alone, it was an entire apparatus. Still with his election into the Committee of Public Safety the intensification of terror begins, and at his death, at least in statistics, there was no indication of any change. Numbers of condemned by the Revolutionary Tribunal of Paris from election of Robespierre to the Committee of Public Safety to his fall: 16 August September October November December January February March April May June July 15

Victims 5 15 60 53 73 83 75 123 263 324 672 835 (exclusive of Robespierre and his partisans)

M. A. Thiers, The History of the French Revolution III (London, Bentley, 1836), p. 476 footnote. 16 As above, p. 424, footnote. The teiTor reigned however all over France and many thousands were killed or executed, France had its antecedents of a massive terror against protestants.

16

TYPES AND FUNCTION OF TERROR

During the Russian Revolution, in January 1919, under pressure of humanistically oriented groups and leaders, Dzierzhinsky, the head of Cheka, recommended abolition of the death penalty (with the exception of military areas). This was supported by Lenin and Trotsky. A decree was indeed signed on January 17. The Cheka, however, which learned about the recommendation, executed "carloads after carloads of suspects" ... "while newspapers were printing the decree". Serge reports that in Petrograd alone 150-200 suspects were shot, in Moscow between 200 and 300.17 The Chekists, in anticipation of de-escalation, acted on their own. They had the control over the apparatus and could act independently, even though a decree of abolition of the death penalty and "deescalation of terror" was considered by the supreme Soviet authorities. Fear and mass intimidation is the result of mass terror. It generates emotions of general insecurity and nervous anxieties. Total submission to the power center is also an escape from fear — but not a "total" escape. The threat and suspicion is always around. Warnings against the enemies of people and traitors remind the newspaper reader or a passerby from a radio amplifier on street corners that the threat and suspicion is part of daily life. Borys Pilniak, the Russian author, at his height of fame and on the eve of purges, said to Victor Serge: "There isn't a single thinking adult in this country who has no thought that he might be shot ...". "He related me details of killings which he had picked up drinking with tipsy executioners", continued Serge.18 After his trip to Europe and America, Pilniak returned to Russia. Pilniak ended his life with suicide.

CONTRADICTIONS OF INDIVIDUAL AND MASS TERROR

The distinction between individual and mass terror was essential in theory and practice to the revolutionary movement of Russia. The populist revolutionaries, members of the "People's Will", later of the Social Revolutionary party, opposed mass terror as a means of consolidation of power. They opposed the latter above all for ethical reasons, since it was directed against an innocent mass of people and defeated the very principle of freedom and ethics. They favored, however, individual terror as what 17

Victor Serge, Memoirs of a Revolutionary, (Oxford U. Press, 1963), p. 99. All three were in fact advocates of terror. This recommendation was at best a tactical one. 18 Serge, op. cit., p. 259. Conquest suggest the early origin of terror, in times of Lenin. For Trotsky's position see App. 6. An extensive and well documented history of Terror: Robert Conquest, The Great Terror (New Edition, Pelican Books, 1971).

TYPES AND FUNCTION OF TERROR

17

they regarded necessary and relatively humane tactics. Individual terror spared innocent victims who suffer in any spontaneous revolution. The targets of individual terror were those regarded as really responsible for the tyranny. The famous case of Ivan Kalayev inspired Camus to write a play, The Just, in which he attempts to explore the mind and personality of a Social Revolutionary terrorist. 19 Kalayev threw a bomb and killed Grand Duke Sergei in February, 1905. The assassination was at first planned on February 2, 1905. But on this day, in the Prince's carriage were his wife and two children. Kalayev refused to destroy innocent persons. He repeated his attempt on February 4. According to the reports, he did not try to escape, since he believed that the assassination was necessary, but nonetheless believed that it was a sin for which a man should suffer the penalty of his own life. 20 The Bolsheviks, to the contrary, rejected individual terror as "adventurism", approving, however, mass terror as a necessary instrument of consolidation of power. J. J. Steinberg, the first Commissar of Justice who opposed Lenin on this issue, writes that "from the very days of October, Lenin strove to impress his colleagues with the absolute necessity for violence, execution, terror". Lenin did not believe that victory of the Revolution could be achieved without terror. 21 Trotsky, in his discussion with the Austrian Social Democrat, Karl Kautsky, a strong opponent of violence and terror, argued that "Terror is helpless — and then only 'in long run' — if it is employed by reaction against a historically rising class which does not want to leave the scene of operations. Intimidation is a powerful weapon of policy, both internationally and internally. War, like revolution, is founded upon intimidation. A victorious war, generally speaking, destroys only an insignificant part of the conquered army, intimidating the remainder and breaking their will. The revolution works in the same way: it kills individuals and intimidates thousands ...". Trotsky answers also the question of those he calls sarcastically "high priests" of liberalism and the "holy men" who asked what is then the difference between Tsarism and red terror: The first was directed against the proletariat, the latter against the bourgeoisie.22 19

Albert Camus, "The Just", in Collected Plays, translated by Stuart Gilbert (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1965). 20 Steinberg, op. cit., pp. 128-31. 21 Ibid., pp. 144-45. 22 Leon Trotsky, Terrorism and Communism (University of Michigan Press [1920], 1961), pp. 58-59.

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TYPES AND FUNCTION OF TERROR

Today, in terms of history and experience, mankind has learned (if it has) that logic and abstract concepts and theories of violence detached from ethical valuation destroy nations, but first such logic destroys our own individual humanity.

HISTORICAL PATTERN OF MASS TERROR

A historical pattern once established has a tendency to continue. The Bolshevik theoreticians had before them, as one of the historical models of the Revolution, the French one, and the French terror. The French terror had a great and most tragic historical antecedent — the Inquisition. The three great terroristic experiences had several factors in common, but one was paramount: the belief that a minority has the right to kill and destroy entire sections of population in pursuing what they believed was a paramount ideological or religious principle. In a sense all of them have shown the hidden dangers of misinterpretation of fundamental idea systems by abstract logic and confused theories. In the name of salvation, liberty and social equality man was destroying those who had to be saved and liberated. Thus freedom was equated with annihilation. The abstract and misinterpreted ideas corrupted the moral issue, legitimized cruelty. The three experiences in terroristic enterprise paved the way to the fourth and most monstrous one: German extermination camps. The ideas have their own fate, and travel different ways than those designed by apostles. A terroristic enterprise, once well established and rooted in a strong ideology or religion becomes a powerful institution and can continue for centuries. RANDOM TERROR

Random terror, in its strategic and tactical objectives, is related rather to the individual than to mass terror. Random or indiscriminate terror has as its goal weakening of the government, erosion of its institutions (this is especially true in case of terroristic struggle against a democracy) and intimidation of the decision makers into submission or withdrawal. The technique is simple: explosives are placed in such places where men congregate — post offices, cafés, railroad or bus stations, banks and the like. Indiscriminate terror was applied by the Algerian revolutionaries against the French Government in Metropolitan France, when bombs were placed in public places, such as cafés. The tactics of random terror were

TYPES AND FUNCTION OF TERROR

19

already used half a century before that, by the Bulgarian revolutionary groups in their struggle against the Turkish Government, to mention only the "Salónica Coup" of April 29, 1903. In this carefully prepared action, bombs were planted in public places (such as banks), thrown in the vicinity of sidewalk cafés, music halls, post offices and others. 23 The random tactics seem to be free of those moral considerations the Russian terrorists had. Death, mutilation, suffering are directed indiscriminately, and also victimize entirely innocent people, accidental bypassers, children, women, workers, office clerks — who by accident found themselves at the place of explosion.

FOCUSSED R A N D O M TERROR

During the Second World War, random terror appeared as what may be called "focussed" terroristic attempts, when explosives were placed in cafés which were meeting points of German officers and representatives of the invading and unusually cruel German administration. (This was, e.g., the case of the resistance action in Cracow, Poland, in the Café "Cyganeria", organized and accomplished by the Polish-Jewish underground during the Second World War. The café was a meeting point of German officers and civilians.) In this case the action was clearly directed against oppressive foreign invaders. Its objectives were (1) punishment, (2) intimidation, and (3) an important act "de presence", a warning: "We are here, and the city does not and will not belong to you. You are criminals and you, and your successors, shall be punished."

DYNASTIC ASSASSINATION

A distinction must be made between tactical and strategic-ideological objectives of a terroristic action. Several distinctions must be made at this point. First of all, we have separated systematic, tactical destruction from isolated, disconnected cases of political assassination, which of course occurred also in Europe and in Russia. We shall limit ourselves here primarily to the tactical, systematic human destruction called terror. 23 Frederick Moore, "The Macedonian Committees and the Insurrection", in Luigi Villari, The Balkan Question (New York: Dutton & Company, 1905), pp. 204ff. See Appendix 5.

20

TYPES AND FUNCTION OF TERROR

It is, however, necessary to add still another type of strategy related to "sultanism", but not necessarily a systematic one: assassination as a means of changing dynasties and political orientations, associated with a ruling dynasty. This was the case of Serbia and the century-long feud between the Obrenovich and Karageorge families, which ended in 1903 with the assassination of the last Obrenovich king and his wife by partisans of the Karageorge dynasty. We may call this dynastic assassination. The objective of dynastic assassination is elimination of a ruler or of a family as well as change of the ruling elites, and usually, change of political orientations.

TACTICAL AND STRATEGIC OBJECTIVES OF INDIVIDUAL TERROR

Further distinction should be made between tactical and strategic or ideological objectives of terror. Tactically the objective of terror was punishment, intimidation, weakening or slow disintegration of government, submission. Strategic-ideological goals were broader, and they form the basis of what we may call moral and ideological legitimation of terror by the actors of this historical tragedy. (See Chapter V.) Thus individual terror in the past was directed also against the representatives of a foreign rule, oppressive and cruel. Usually no avenues of change or redress were open, and this was the way of punishment and struggle for liberation, requiring courage, skill and determination. Individual or focussed terror was in almost all cases of the past combined with at least beginning or full-scale guerrilla warfare. It was justified in the eyes of revolutionaries as a national war, even more than "regular" warfare, since as a rule this was the last resort of those who were oppressed and sometimes abandoned by the civilized world. This was the case of Macedonian, Armenian and Bulgarian terroristic action against the Turkish rule of Abdul Hamid at the end of the nineteenth century and prior to the First World War. Very similar was the nature of the Polish terroristic action, closely related to the Revolution of 1905. The latter had its umbilical cords with the traditions of century-long insurrections against the Russian autocratic rule. The goal in some cases was autonomy, in others restoration of national independence. During the Second World War the choice under German occupation in Eastern Europe was indeed between slavery, slow death by starvation, and extermination, or freedom, dignity, and struggle by all means open to a free man, including individual terror. Under such conditions the

TYPES AND FUNCTION OF TERROR

21

legitimacy of terror was clear for the militants and was rooted in their basic values. There was, in their perception, no other choice for those for whom freedom and dignity was a higher value than life. Terroristic action of the Russians was strategically directed against autocracy, but the goals of individual terrorists were not necessarily identical. The major groups, however (not all, of course), advocated some kind of a democratic and socialist state. At times, they were willing to cease the terroristic action for the price of constitutional political rights. This was at least stated in a letter of the revolutionary committee of the Populist party, written, after the assassination of Tsar Alexander II in 1881, to his successor.24 It must be stressed here again that the goals were not identical. And what some extreme groups advocating terror envisaged was, in fact, dictatorship — a new tyranny of course — but only as a means of establishing a perfect rule of liberty. The third group of strategic objectives was destruction of democracy. The terrorists of the difficult era which followed World War I, after 1918, directed their action against representatives of democracy and directly or indirectly against democratic and republican institutions. Individual terror of the pre-Nazi German organizations was combined with other legal and illegal actions directed in fact against the Republic and democracy. The fascist groups in Eastern Europe which at times practiced individual assassination, directed their actions against the young democratic republican institutions or governments of political moderation. Other forms of struggle were also used by these groups, brutal and ruthless as they were, rather than systematic individual terror. Still, the Croat fascists, Ustashis, used both individual assassination against the Yugoslav King and later, during the war, mass terror against the defenseless Serbian, Greek-Orthodox and Jewish population. In addition to these five major strategic types of systematic assasination or terror — (1) individual, (2) random, (3) random-focussed, (4) mass terror, and (5) dynastic assassination — Europe had, of course, its share of isolated, "not connected" political assassinations. The latter are isolated acts of elimination, sometimes prepared or supported by organized groups. But those are not systematic, tactical actions of well organized ideological, frequently paramilitary groups, usually combined with more extensive revolutionary activities, such as guerrilla warfare, mass manifestations, strikes and mass unrest. It seems that neither England (not Ireland, however), Switzerland nor 24

Gross, Seizure of Political Power, pp. lOlff.; also text of the letter. App. 3 p. 116.

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TYPES AND FUNCTION OF TERROR

the Scandinavian countries had in the past a history of systematic and tactical terror operated by well organized, ideological groups, although the United States has had a share of isolated political assassinations and random and focussed terror of Ku-Klux-Klan. The tactical, systematic terror, contrary to the isolated assassination, is also a part of a broad revolutionary strategic plan. Its continuity is rooted in a centralistic party organization as well as in ideology or goals which have at times a broad appeal to "sympathizers".

II HISTORY OF T A C T I C A L T E R R O R A G A I N S T DOMESTIC A U T O C R A C Y IN RUSSIA

DIFFERENCES BETWEEN WEST AND EAST

The theory of tactical, individual terror developed, perhaps even originated, in Russia. Individual terror as a major revolutionary tactic, or as a part of the entire tactical-strategical design of a mass revolution or insurrection, was practiced at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth, in Eastern Europe and Russia. Nineteenthcentury Western Europe and America had, their sporadic, isolated attempts of assassination of political personalities as well as some rather minor political groups (e.g., "microparties" of the anarchists) leaning toward tactical individual terror. The K u Klux Klan, of course, far more influential, practiced a special kind of violence, assassination and terror. The advent of various brands of fascism changed the pattern, however, and Europe again had its share of fascist individuals and mass violence. Individual terror never assumed, at least until the advent of fascist movements, the political role it played in Russia, in Russian-occupied Poland, in the Balkans. The Russian philosopher Berdyaev once said that anarchism is a Russian ideology. In a sense, tactical, individual terror was a Russian and Balkan revolutionary tactic, associated with well organized and dedicated groups. In a different form terror appeared after the First World War as a part of general policy of intimidation and destruction of democracy, this time a tool of the extreme right and Nazism.

INDIVIDUAL TERROR AS POLITICAL STYLE

In Russia, the Balkans, especially Bulgaria and later Poland the causes of terror were different. Terroristic struggle grew in different conditions and was an outcome of different traditions or ideologies. Nonetheless, in Russia the continuous individual terror for more than thirty years

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HISTORY OF TACTICAL TERROR

impressed Thomas G. Masaryk as a new phenomenon of a terroristic revolution. Terror was conducted by a minority, still this minority followed a dramatic, tragic way of life which in turn impressed the rest of the nation and forced a variety of opinions. The terroristic action — from the shores of the Baltic to the warm waters of the Aegean and Adriatic, from the Gulf of Finland to the Bosphorus — developed during a quarter century into a political style of violence, a revolutionary way of action. In consequence, terror and violence influenced the conduct of politics. After the World War and a very short, stormy interlude of the February 1917 Revolution, Russian politics moved from individual to mass violence. In the Balkans, especially in Bulgaria, terrorism continued and new terroristic parties made their entrance in Croatia. This time, individual violence (and in Western Europe the fascist and Nazi strategy of violence) was directed against the weak, nascent democracy, or against the more stable institutions of relatively moderate governments. At the end, the way was paved to dictatorship and war, a logical consequence of the politics of violence. Polish revolutionary activity had its own style and insurrectionist traditions. Bulgarian (IMRO) and Armenian (Dashnaks) revolutionary organizations were, however, to a certain extent influenced by the Russian revolutionaries. A leader of the Macedonian revolutionary organization, Kostia Todorov, was one time a member of the Russian Social Revolutionary party. Both parties were tied by a common bond of struggle against autocracy and tyranny, Russian or Turkish, and by a vision of a new and better society. What the parties planned, or what they were trying to achieve and what they did achieve are two different things. Some of the most tragic consequences were not anticipated at the beginning. At the turn of the century, however, Russian revolutionary thinkers, some of them active terrorists, suddenly discovered the brutalizing effects and the self-destructing logic of individual terror. Political institutions and political style, similar to ideas, have a tendency to diffuse, to move through a process of selective imitation or assimilation. This tendency can be noticed today in the influence of the "Cuban" political style, starting with military jackets, berets and heavy shoes worn in Manhattan on a hot August day, to the more violent aspects of this pattern, such as various types of direct action.

HISTORY OF TACTICAL TERROR

25

SOME OF THE DETERMINANTS A N D MOTIVATION

The tendency toward terroristic tactics in Russia grew slowly before it was accepted as a major political technique by a small revolutionary group called "People's Will" ( N a r o d n a y a Volya). At the origin of this tactic were the failures of the revolutionary party to win the people, especially the peasantry, as well as the futility of liberal attempts, even of moderate conservatives, to bring about reforms by legal means. True, some avenues of change, some institutions like Zemstvo were still there. But efforts of the liberals were frustrated, the institutional mechanism was rather obsolete, perhaps not suited for such changes as they were needed. Individual terror was conceived as the means toward weakening the government. At its beginnings this was a tactical orientation of a small, idealistic group, composed largely of students, representatives of the "educated" classes, the so-called "intelligentsia". Masaryk's remark was penetrating when he wrote that the Russian revolutionary movement of the seventies and eighties was above all political, and "it was an aristocratic struggle for freedom waged against tsarist absolutism". 1 The ideology of the young revolutionaries was, in spite of its collectivist appeal, individualistic, even personalistic. The large participation of women was striking. Women were early admitted to Russian universities; already in 1886 about a thousand women studied in Russian academic schools. Interestingly enough, among women sentenced for political crimes, the percentage of "educated" was exceedingly high.2 Thus "The People's Will" was a movement of an educated and to a large extent an isolated few. They identified themselves with the peasantry and the working class, but their appeal to both was met at this time with little response. The peasants mistrusted the educated. In terms of the peasants' per1

Thomas G. Masaryk, The Spirit of Russia II (London: Allen and Unwin, 1919), 107. C. Lombroso and R. Laschi, II Delitto Politico e Rivoluzioni (Torino: Bocca, 1890), p. 229, and especially Appendix III, "The nobles and Russian women in political movements", which contains a digest of a study of N. W. Tarnovsky on "modification of delinquency patterns according to social class", which appeared in Yuridicheskii Viestnik, Moscow, May, 1889. According to it, 25 % of the women sentenced for political violations were "educated" women. (The digest does not specify the level of education.) The fact is, however, that among women sentenced from 1874 to 1883 for common crimes, none had higher education, only 29 had "gimnasium" (high school), 35 "elementary education", while 21, 348 were illiterate. As early as 1823, a relatively high number of women attended public lectures in mineralogy and chemistry at the University of Moscow (Entsiklopedicheskii Slovar, 1894). 2

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HISTORY OF TACTICAL TERROR

ception of social classes, of their culture and behavior, these young students, future officials and doctors were closer to the "upper classes" than to the peasantry. This was a socially isolated but highly motivated and young group. The political conditions in Russia were proverbially oppressive. Political freedom and representative government in a Western sense were absent. The Tsar was officially and virtually an autocrat. The situation of the peasantry even after the Emancipation was very difficult. The socialeconomic conditions reflected profound class differences and inequalities. The social-economic conditions alone may not have produced a terroristic, organized action, however. The emotional, the psychological and ethical appeal of this movement of the young and educated, although difficult to explain and evaluate in precise terms, had very much to do with their strong motivation. Contradictory sentiments and ideas rooted in a strange, dogmatic reasoning supported by iron logic were at that time one of the characteristics of Russian political and philosophical thinking, which was influenced so strongly by German philosophy. The revolutionaries carried a kind of religious and apostolic zeal. In their argumentations theology was displaced by philosophy, social science and logic, but still their reasoning was guided by a maximalist, absolute ethics. Most of them were atheists. But they had displaced their childhood religious emotions, even concepts and above all strong ethical principles into political ideology and revolutionary cause. There were differences in personality types, of course. Moreover, different revolutionary tactics appealed to different personality types and membership changed with changing conditions and times.3 Some penetrating insights into the psychology and personality of those men were given by Dostoyevski (rather negative), but perhaps more important by Stepniak (himself a terrorist), Lavrov, Berdyaev, Masaryk, Savinkov (V. Ropsin), and lately by Camus. 4 None of the terrorist movements of Europe produced literature of such philosophical depth and tragic contradictions. None has raised so courageously the moral dilemma. Those arguments and dilemmas tormented the revolutionaries and pointed to terrorism as to a selfdestructing process. At the end some of the idealists discovered that they were henchmen in the service of a great cause and moral principle, but 3

Gross, op. cit., "Personality", pp. 14ff. Masaryk, op. cit.; Albert Camus, L'Homme Révolté (Paris: Gallimard, 1951); Stepniak, Underground Russia (New York: Scribner's, 1892), (also novels of this writer); V. Ropsin [Boris Savinkov], The Pale Horse (London: Allen and Unwin, 1918); Nicolas Berdyaev, The Origin of Russian Communism (London: Bles, 1955). 4

HISTORY OF TACTICAL TERROR

27

still henchmen. The question asked at the end was an elementary and fundamental one: Who has the right to kill; does anybody have this moral authority? It is difficult to explain this complex and tormenting metaphysics and behavior without dwelling on problems of value structure, personality, modes of thinking, history of Russia — in short, culture. It may be remembered that Russia since its rebirth in the sixteenth century was an autocracy, and violence was applied frequently simply as a matter of exercise of power. Political institutions with their roots in oriental autocracy did not supply any sufficient means of political and social-economic change. The centralistic and absolute government paralyzed tendencies toward local government, although demands to liberalize the entire system through legal means were made continuously. The autocratic institutions, maintaining their power by coercion, even violence, supported by religious orthodoxy, generated a strong response and contributed to the development of centralistic parties and tactics of violence as an effective method of change.

BEGINNINGS OF NON-VIOLENCE

On the other extreme of those seekers of a perfect society, was a revolutionary and mystical group rejecting any violence. As early as in 1874, under the leadership of Malikov, a semi-religious sect was formed, advancing ideas of brotherhood, equality and socialism as an ethical ideal which should be achieved only through moral and intellectual influence. Followers of Malikov's creed rejected any violence. They criticized the revolutionary populists for their extreme rationalism, and neglect underestimation of ethical sentiments and emotions. Malikov and his followers could be regarded as forerunners of the philosophy of Tolstoi and later Gandhi. 5

IDEOLOGY A N D OBJECTIVES OF THE TERRORISTS

Still, it was in this terroristic revolutionary group in autocratic Russia where the democratic ideas flourished. There were several factions of course, some minor, whose objective was—as was said before—establish5

Ludwik Kulczycki, Rowolucja Rosyjska [Russian Revolution] (Lw6w: Poloniecki, 1911), II, 237.

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ment of dictatorship, as the means or a transitory stage toward a true free society, free of any coercion. Here rationalism worked with perfect ideals and logical contradictions, impressive and convincing for novices. Theories were also advanced (by Morozov and Tkachev) that terror should continue under constitutional rule, since even under such rule, a tyranny might appear, e.g., of Bismarck or Napoleon. 6 Individual terror by its power of intimidation and elimination of future tyrants, would keep the future, perfect world free from autocracy. Those late regicides were, however, in a minority and formed an insignificant faction or separate party. The main party, the core of the "People's Will" had democratic traditions and clear democratic objectives. In 1878, the "People's Will" stated clearly and sharply in an "Urgent Note" its differences with the group which "indulges in Jacobinistic tendencies and methods of a centralistic organization". 7 In a letter which the committee sent after the assassination of Tsar Alexander II in 1881, the revolutionary committee asked the Tsar to introduce a representative form of government, free press, freedom of speech and assembly as conditions of a pacific development and cessation of revolutionary tactics.8 After the assassination of President Garfield, in the official organ of the revolutionary terrorists, Narodnaya Volya (No. 6, October 23, 1881), a declaration appeared which deserves attention even today: The Executive Committee, expressing its profoundest sympathy with the American people on account of the death of James Abram Garfield, feels it to be its duty to protest in the name of Russian revolutionaries against all such deeds of violence as that which had just taken place in America. In a land where the citizens are free to express their ideas, and where the will of the people does not merely make the law but appoints the person who is to carry the law into effect, in such a country political assassination is the manifestation of a despotic tendency identical with that to whose destruction in Russia we have devoted ourselves. Despotism, whatever may be the parties or whoever may be the individuals that exercise it, is always blameworthy, and force can be justified only when employed to resist force.8

6

Morozov, in his Terroristic Struggle. "The Urgent Note", Obshchina # 8-9, October 1878, signed by Vera Zazuich, Stepniak (Kravchinski) and others, reprinted also in V. Burtsev, Za Sto Lyet (18001896) (London: Free Press Found., 1897). 8 For full text, see Appendix 3. 9 The text is quoted here form Masaryk, op. cit., II, 545 (translation by Eden and Cedar Paul); for early comments and the protest of Narodnaya Volya against assassination of President Garfield, see Alphons Thun, Geschichte der Revolutionären Bewegung in Russland (Leipzig: Dunker-Humboldt, 1883), p. 201; also Gross, op. cit., p. 109. 7

HISTORY OF TACTICAL TERROR

29

FROM POLITICAL ASSASSINATION TO TACTICAL TERROR

The history of a revolutionary movement involves far more than a study of its vicissitudes and ideas. A revolution does not appear suddenly; it is a result of long and continuous process, of a growing of social and political contradictions. It may take decades and a sudden crisis or catastrophe such as war to accelerate the process and trigger a revolution. The social process is a result of a complex relationship and interactions of groups and individuals. Within a situation, within a changing social process the revolutionary party develops its pattern of actions called tactics. But within such a situation, usually several alternatives are open and the political actors may choose from this arsenal of dynamic tactics. The choice is not a mere accident. It is a result of actual conditions within which the party operates, true, but it is also a consequence of historical traditions, existing political institutions and prevailing social values, values of the actors and, of course, of their personality. There may be sometimes also an unexpected, contributing factor which we call in daily parlance simply an accident. In the choice of the revolutionary tactic is always a human, voluntaristic element within the "determinants", within compelling conditions created by the society, by social conditions to which political actors were born, which were created before the actors appeared in the political arena. Such was also the story of the terroristic revolution or terroristic tactics. Terroristic tactics, as was said, was a systematic political assassination. The choice of such tactics was not a consequence of historical necessity. Conditions pointed to such tactics as an efficient one, but the choice was made by the revolutionaries. The revolutionary trend in Russia began prior to the Decembrist Revolution of 1825. It went through its ups and downs, the tactics changed. About half a century later, in 1879, one revolutionary party, "The People's Will", known as Populists, chose individual terror as tactics, although other choices were also open. Individual terror as a tactic in Russian revolutionary history was, however — to repeat — not accidental. As a systematic, tactical action it appeared in 1879, perhaps at a moment of decline of revolutionary mood in Russia, a consequence of failure of propaganda of the party and also of an attempt of a spontaneous revolution of the people. Terrorism was a stage in a long process, and developed into a political style. The social revolutionary Stepniak wrote in the nineties: "The revolution, especially the Russian revolution is a strangely fantastic monster, and there are no

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means of divining where it will stop, or the leaps it may still take, if the whim seizes it." Individual terror appeared on this strange continuum called revolution, as a consequence of a long historical and social process, but this was also a choice of a party committee which searched for effective revolutionary answers to a situation. Once a decision was made and terroristic plans of assassination were on the move, it was difficult to stop and change the tactics. Terror continued for thirty years almost, under conditions of a dangerous and sanguinary struggle, a duration of three distinct political generations. After the failure of the Decembrists of 1825, and sporadic attempts to create revolutionary organizations, a political movement of a radical democratic orientation appeared in 1861-1863. The movement went through a slow evolution and reappeared in 1872, as an agrariansocialist and radical movement, with some sections leaning toward anarchism. The largest and most influential group of the Populists decided to appeal primarily to the masses of peasantry, also to workers in the countryside. This movement was known as "migration to the people". The migration of the young students and intellectuals to the countryside with the apostolic mission of social and political liberation, started at the beginning of 1874, and failed. Many activists were arrested and tried, while peasants were at best indifferent, and mostly hostile to those "white hands" of the cities. No significant political reforms followed. After this experience and failure, and after a "revolutionary lull" of 1876-1877, at a conference of the Populists in 1879, a centralistic disciplined underground organization was formed, tightened by strict secrecy. For its major tactic individual terror was chosen. But even the terroristic section of this party, called now "People's Will", had its antecedents. Tendencies and writings toward individual terror appeared earlier, around 1876. The terroristic group was only one section of a political organization. The movement split. The splinter group, "Black Partition", emphasized the significance of economic transformations and social revolution, as opposed to individual terror. Other groups, suggesting individual terror, appeared too, this time one composed of workers called "The Northern Russian Workers Association". At the same time liberal movements began to be more active; "constitutionalists" advanced the ideas of a constitutional rule. The ideology of "People's Will" was not a monolithic one. The dominant trend was radical-democratic and agrarian socialist. The program stressed the

HISTORY OF TACTICAL TERROR

31

demands for political liberties and representative government. A political alliance with the liberals was viewed as a necessary future policy. The extreme wing of the party was anarchist and this faction had its germs of totalitarianism. 10 Sections of the revolutionaries opposed the terroristic tactics at the party conference of 1879, and individual terror was by no means the only tactic or the only activity.

EARLY POLITICAL ASSASSINATIONS

Isolated political assassinations and attempts had already occurred prior to 1879 in Russia. To start with, there was an attempt to assassinate Tsar Alexander II by Karakosov in 1866. A peasant Kommisarov saved the Tsar from a deadly attempt by a nobleman. 11 In 1878, Vera Zazulich shot and wounded the police prefect of St. Petersburg, General Trepof, after he had mistreated political prisoners. Miss Zazulich was acquitted. She impressed the jury and public opinion by her defense and her description of oppressive conditions in Russia and brutality of the police and government. Shots were fired again the same year in Odessa by a group of revolutionaries resisting arrest. One of them, Kovalsky, was sentenced to death and executed in spite of the warnings of the revolutionaries. In retaliation, the chief of the secret police, General Mezentieff, was stabbed to death by Stepniak in Petersbourg. Again, early in 1879, Prince Kropotkin, governor of Kharkov, whom the revolutionaries made responsible for brutal treatment of political prisoners, was assassinated. In April 1879 an unsuccessful attempt was made to assassinate the Tsar. 12 In November when the Tsar was leaving for Livadia, a dynamite charge was exploded on his way. Again a few months later, a bomb in the Tsar's winter palace exploded, injuring fifty-three and killing ten of his guards. 13 This was not the end of attempts and assassinations. Those were still sporadic acts (although the attempt at the winter palace was organized by the Northern Workers Group), and at the same time a continuous intensification of a trend. By 1880 the sporadic political assassination became systematic, planned, and very much like a military action. 10

For a history of the Russian revolutionary movement at this time, see Kulczycki, op. cit., Vol. II, Chapters IV-VI (incl.), pp. 102-325; Thun, op. cit., p. 186 (conference at Lipeck and Voronesh); Gross, op. cit., Chapters V, VI, pp. 81-132. 11 See Kulczycki, op. cit., I, 457; Thun, op. cit., p. 37. 12 Gross, op. cit., pp. 99-100. 13 Morozov, op. cit.

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BEGINNINGS OF SYSTEMATIC TERRORISTIC STRUGGLE

In August 1879 the committee sentenced Emperor Alexander II to death. In March 1881 the Tsar was killed when a bomb was thrown at his sledges. In 1880 the period of systematic terroristic struggle began. Discussing the earlier patterns of political assassination, Morozov wrote in his Terroristic Struggle: "All these actions of that time were accomplished continuously and in succession when the terroristic struggle did not become yet a part of a system." Now a "system" was here. The terroristic struggle continued, with various intensities and temporary decline. It is beyond the purpose of this paper to list or pursue the tragic and sanguinary details of the terroristic acts.

OPPOSITION TO TERROR

In the meantime, the "Black Partition" evolved into the Social-Democratic movement influenced by Marxist theories. The Social-Democrats were opposed to terror. The political change — they argued — is a result of historical, social-economic changes and not of a single act. Assassination of officials cannot effect such a change of the entire system. The revolution should be an act of the people, of the working class. Soon (1903), the Social-Democrats split into two factions: the Mensheviks and the Bolsheviks. The split was a result of a long discussion and inner dissensions. The Mensheviks represented rather a Western, democratic orientation, the Bolsheviks drifted toward the theory and practice of a small centralistic party (a vanguardist party) and future party dictatorship. None of these parties favored individual terror.

NECHAYEV AND BURTSEV

Theoreticians of the "People's Will" believed also that the political change must be accomplished with the wide participation of the people, and must be done by the people. However, in their ranks a variety of tendencies were present, the intransigents and extremists exercising their pressure. A small minority advanced an extreme position. Although this group had a very small following and minor influence, the views of their theoretician reflect the intensity of feelings. The extremism of Nechayev's views

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33

goes beyond theories of Morozov or Tkachev. Wrote Sergei Nechayev: Karakozov's deed must be viewed as a prologue . . . The most important of these opposing conditions are: (1) All the persons who occupy higher government posts and have authority over the armed forces and who carry out their command work with a special zeal; (2) People who possess large economic powers and use them exclusively for themselves or to help the state; (3) People who argue and write for hire, i.e., journalists bribed by the government and writers who try to obtain government money by flattery and denunciations. The first must be exterminated without any argument. The second must be deprived of their economic powers and means, which should be used for the work of national liberation; if they cannot be used, these powers and means must be destroyed. The third should be made silent by any kind of means (if only by depriving them of their tongues).14 Nechayev's social and political views were akin to the anarchists, and were linked for a time with the anarchist Bakunin. This was not, however, the position of the committee of the "People's Will", of this major revolutionary party. The Russian historian and Populist Nicholas Burtsev stated the official position of the movement in Narodnovolets (No. 2, 1897). ... We will be the first to manifest a complete cessation of the terrorist struggle, when the government honestly shows a desire to give up its present scurrilous policies. We are in favor of terror, however, not because we like it, but only because in our judgment there is no other possible method of struggle with the government at this moment, which, without the aid of terror, could force the government to grant concessions. Whenever there arises the possibility of an honest government, one that believes in its own policies - independent of the Pobedonostsevs - even one that arises under the pressures of liberals affiliated with Loris-Melikov, and that openly professes with sufficient guarantees, the coming of a new era for Russia - an era of free development - we too, as Stepniak, will "applaud the adoption of peaceful means" and will then be opposed to terrorism, as we are now opposed to it in free nations. We count as indispensable conditions in a successful political struggle:

14

Excerpts from an article of Sergei Nechayev in "Narodnaya Rozprava", in V. Burtsev, Za Sto Lyet (1800-1896) (London: Russian Free Press Found., 1897), pp. 93-94.

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freedom of the press, of assembly, of the individual. With these conditions as bargaining points, we will then go as far as we can toward our sacred ideals, but without the use of terror... 16 It was this position, and a theory of ethical, democratic socialism, which prevailed when the Social Revolutionary party was formed in the early years of this century, at times when the tensions and social conflicts were about to culminate in the Revolution of 1905.

THE GOVERNMENT'S REACTION TO INDIVIDUAL TERROR

The terroristic tactics were continued by Social Revolutionaries, and terror was again on the move. The terroristic struggle and political insecurity have contributed to the extension of powers of the police state. An extensive secret political police network was built, the Okhrana, an augury and antecedent of future organizations of this type: the Soviet GPU under Stalin and Hitler's Gestapo. Okhrana, with its ruthless methods, became a hated organization and a target of the terrorist revolution. It penetrated in turn deeply into the fabric of the revolutionary party. Some of the secret agents ("provocators") became leaders of the terrorists. The story of Azev shocked the public opinion of the world. Alexander Gerasimov, the head of the dreaded political police Okhrana, called it later in his memoirs, "conspiracy under my orders". Azev, who was a secret agent of Okhrana, before accepting the leadership of the terroristic squads, consulted the head of the secret police, Gerasimov. Gerasimov in turn discussed the matter with the Minister of Interior Plehve. It was Azev who planned and directed the assassination of Plehve. Plehve was assassinated and the attempt was planned and led by an agent of his own department, the political police.16 The terroristic tactics became self-defeating. But the government felt also the continuous threat of violence. The tactical prediction of terrorist theoreticians had been fulfilled: The government was occupied with problems of its own safety and it was weakened indeed. Of course, the terrorist action was not the only cause. The terror, however, continued after 1905, even after the experimental 15

Gross, op. cit., pp. 109-110. Ibid., pp. 125-126. For details see: Boris Nikolayevski, Istoria Odnovo Predatiela Terroristy i Politicheskaya Politsia (Berlin: Petropolis, 1932); Alexander Gerasimov, Der Kampf Gegen die Erste Russische Revolution (Berlin, 1934). 16

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representative institution, the Duma, was formed in August 1905, and also in the time of the third Duma after 1907. Prime Minister Stolypin answered the political assassinations by courtmartial for those accused of political crimes, which punished those who were found guilty by death sentence. The highest number of executions was reached by 1908, when the total number amounted to 782 executed. The government was at a threshold of the mass terror. But from this high point of tragic and deadly statistics, the number of executions began to decline; in 1911, 73 sentences were passed. 17 In September 1911, Premier Stolypin was assassinated. This was perhaps the last major act of the terroristic revolution, which began in an unsystematic way in 1876, turned into tactics about 1879, and began to fade away about 1911. It did last about thirty-five years.

THE SIZE OF THE TERRORISTIC PARTY

No doubt the terroristic party had a powerful impact on Russia. Systematic political assassination and heroic deeds of revolutionaries had an impact on public opinion in a country which was under an autocratic rule and where representative institutions as late as at the beginning of the twentieth century were only in their rudimentary, initial form. How large was a party which planned and executed this revolutionary tactic of individual terror, unique in Western history? Ludwik Kulczycki, historian of the Russian revolutionary movement, wrote half a century ago that the party had at the time of its highest development about 500 members. But outside the party was a large group of "sympathizers", who were not members of the party, but shared at least part of the views, general political attitudes, although they might have disagreed on sections of the program. Kulczycki estimates that the sympathizers of the "People's Will", supporting this party struggle against absolutism and in favor of free institutions, amounted to probably from thirteen to nineteen thousand persons, largely students and workers. 18 As the party grew in influence, its appeal to the workers and later even to the peasantry, increased. The British historian, Sir Bernard Pares, estimated the "People's Will" about 1881 at 500, organized in twelve local branches, with special 17

George Vernadsky, A History of Russia (first published by Yale University Press) (New York: New Home Library Ed., 1944), p. 194. 18 Kulczycki, op. cit., n , 390.

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subcommittees.19 L. Boguczarski, who used similar sources as Kulczycki, suggests that the party by 1881 was far weaker. It had a Central Committee of 28 and it did not have more than "several tens" (between fifty and ninety) members. 20 Whatever the differences in the estimates are, the numbers were small indeed. The terroristic action was done in small secret squads. In the three attempts at assassination of Tsar Alexander II about fifty populists participated. 21 In consequence, small groups, applying tactics of individual systematic terror, exercised an unusual influence over the powerful empire.

THE "CAUSE"

The secret of their influence was not only in the drama and tragedy of their struggle, but in the cause they represented. The cause, as it appeared to the outsiders who were not initiated into factional struggle, was simple: struggle against absolutism, for more political freedom and socialeconomic justice. A small determined group, representing a great human cause, a cause which appeals to sentiments and values of sections of the society, combined with a dramatic, even tragic tactic, may have a powerful influence over a long period of time.

TERROR A N D REPRESENTATIVE INSTITUTIONS

The question should be asked, how to explain the long duration of the terroristic action? The terroristic struggle coincides with the time of a very slow advance of limited representative institutions —• Zemstvo. Since 1870 the liberal representatives of the Zemstvos used to meet occasionally and to their conference in Kieff in 1878, they even invited several prominent revolutionaries, urging cessation of terrorism. Some revolutionaries even joined the "League of Oppositional Elements". The liberals stressed the need for

19

Sir Bernard Pares, "Reaction and Revolution in Russia", Chapter XII in the Cambridge Modern History (Macmillan and Cambridge University Press, 1934), XII, 310. 20 W. Boguczarski, "Is Istorii Politicheskoy Borby 80 Godov", Russkaya Mysl (April-May, 1910), quoted by Kulczycki, II, 394. 21 Kulczycki, op. cit., II, 395.

HISTORY OF TACTICAL TERROR 22

37

freedom of speech and press. After the Revolution of 1905, the first national representation, the Duma, was elected by 1906. While the socialists boycotted the election, the Constitutional Democrats (KD) were the strongest party. 23 Thus, during the period of terrorism weak representative bodies did exist, and even a national representation, weak and incomplete as it was, made its appearance. There were also liberal parties, tendencies and groups. The revolutionary pressure, however, despite the small numbers of the spearheading party and latent discontent and opposition to absolutism in the few cities of the empire, was far stronger than the government's response and institutional changes. True, for a long time, in the countryside, revolutionaries had little appeal. But in a centralistic state like Russia, cities, even the few urban centers Russia had at this time, play a paramount role in political ecology. In the towns opposition grew among intelligentsia, students and the working class. This was a minority, but still a dynamic minority. The institutional changes, slow and hesitant advance toward some kind of representative form, which in fact did not affect the deep and acute class divisions, were far too inadequate to meet demands and pressures of the moderates in the revolutionary groups. It was not enough. The terror and assassinations continued in spite of court martials, in spite of the Okhrana and executions. A government which desires a peaceful transformation and continuation of its rule must sense the needs of the time, the nature of revolutionary pressures and demands, not solely in terms of the number of voters, but also in terms of real social needs and potential mass appeal of the pressure groups. The government and responsible leaders must perceive the need for changing social-economic inequalities in a proper time and proper way. In want of such wisdom the revolutionary process will follow its logical course. It may not be forgotten, however, that a rational response to an emotional appeal often fails. A democratic government may find itself isolated and helpless vis-à-vis an emotional appeal to hostility and hatred. However, an autocrat such as the Tsar and later the Nazis, may provide another outlet for emotions of hostility and suggest a target, a "scapegoat". For a time this may work.

22 23

Pares, op. cit., pp. 306ff. Vernadsky, pp. 190ff.

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THE IMPETUS OF THE TERRORISTIC REVOLUTION

The story of Russian individual terror was long enough to affect the political life. The terroristic struggle produced its romance, but also its professional types. The terroristic revolution moved by its own impetus, and worked on sharp contradictions which called again and again for retaliation, for vengeance and not for compromise, an essential ingredient of nonviolent politics. Nor was the Tsarist regime willing to surrender some of the antiquated, autocratic prerogatives. Was the Tsar willing to permit a constitutional monarchy or a democratic republic? Of course not. Was an evolution possible? Once the road was chosen, the party continued to move on it, the logic and theory reinforced the tactics, and logic in such cases can be structured of iron links. At least in theory this was not the only road open to change. The Social Democrats have shown another, leading to changes through a movement of the people, through a popular revolution, not terror — as the Mensheviks suggested — which would establish a democratic republic, as the first stage of a new society. The liberals and Constitutional Democrats (Kadets) tried and continued to follow an evolutionary, but still progressive change. The fact remains that politically far more oppressive politics than that of the Tsars, to mention only Hitler's Germany or other twentiethcentury totalitarian empires and states, did not result in a systematic terroristic struggle of the opposition (although political assassinations were attempted at a certain time of Nazi dictatorship). The exception formed the nations which were occupied by foreign totalitarian armies — there systematic terror appeared (Poland). From more or less 1876, the Russian state went at first, for thirty-five years, through a period of autocracy and terroristic revolution, of individual, systematic assassination. The Japanese War, the Revolution of 1905, and a world war followed. After a short interlude of revolutionary democratic rule, through the changing and insecure months of February to October 1917, the Russian people were subject again to a rule based on mass terror. Isolated attempts of political assassination occurred under Soviet rule. (See Chapter V.)

Ill VIOLENCE AND INDIVIDUAL TERROR AGAINST FOREIGN RULE

ORIGIN OF THE POLISH REVOLUTIONARY MOVEMENT

The terroristic action of the Polish revolutionaries from the Polish Socialist Party (P.P.S.) is of quite a different origin, and a consequence of a still different political situation than the individual terror of the "People's Will" or of the Social Revolutionary party. The Russians fought their own government, the Poles a foreign one. Rationalization or legitimation of violent and physical struggle against a foreign invader, and in addition a foreign oppressive government, which prohibited the use of a mother tongue, was supported by national attitudes and values. Legitimacy of a struggle against a foreign invader is generally accepted in the Western civilization. Thus, in terms of ideology or philosophy of the movement, in terms of ethics, the Polish revolutionaries, so it seems, were not tormented by the moral and philosophical problems the Russians were. Perhaps their modes of thinking, their values, were also quite different than those of their Russian comrades. For all their philosophical and historical traditions, the Polish revolutionaries did not leave behind them voluminous philosophical discussions about the moral and philosophical nature of individual political assassination, that the Russians did. It may be safely argued that the terroristic struggle of the Poles was far shorter in time and far less significant as tactics. It was only ancillary. But the revolutionists from the Polish Socialist Party left an important imprint on the "political culture" of their country and also on letters and poetry. Some of the most gifted writers of this at that time divided country, Zeromski, Brzozowski, Strug, to mention the most prominent, were inspired by the revolutionary pathos of the struggle and the tragic life of its heroes. The goals of the Polish Socialist party — both social and political — had their roots in Polish insurrection. The Polish revolutionary movement

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had its umbilical cord in its own past. It was not an offshoot or a derivative of the Russian revolutionary movement. Since the partitions of Poland, sections of Poles mounted insurrection. Since 1794 almost every generation took up arms — to mention the insurrections of 1794, 1831, 1863. Once defeated, Polish insurrectionists fought in foreign revolutions in Europe and America throughout the nineteenth century. The revolutionary traditions, the struggle for independence against a foreign invader were a part of traditions, especially among the nobility and the educated classes, known in Poland and Russia as "intelligentsia". In the early stages of the Polish Socialist Party, the insurrectionist traditions were represented directly by some members (B. Limanowski) who still participated in the insurrection of 1863 or others (J. Pilsudski) whose families were actively engaged or sympathized with the insurrection. The Polish Socialist

Party

The Polish Socialist Party was a result of many trends and currents. Socialist organizations and ideas appeared early in Poland. 1 At the conference in Paris in 1892, a program was adopted which proclaimed as basic objectives national independence of Poland and democratic socialism. A future Polish state was envisaged as a republic. Self-government, representative institutions, freedom of speech, press and assembly, as well as other political rights formed an essential part of the program, which advocated also an extensive labor legislation and gradual nationalization of land, instruments of production and means of transportation 2 . The insurrectionist traditions, however, represented only one trend, one element of this party. Political democracy and social democracy, labor legislation reflected the basic ideology of the working class which this party really represented. While the "People's Will" was above all a party of the educated classes, the young Russian intelligentsia, students and revolutionaries who identified themselves with the peasantry and the working class, the Polish Socialist Party at the turn of the century, and at the eve of the Revolution

1

Adam Ciolkosz, Zarys Dziejöw Socjalizmu Polskiego (London: Gryf, 1966); Feliks Gross, The Polish Worker (New York: Roy, 1945), pp. 107-44. 2 Gross, as above, pp. 115ff.

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of 1905, had not only a powerful appeal to the working class, but also its relatively large membership was composed of workers and of students, and members of the "intelligentsia". Many workers were active in the revolutionary and terroristic struggle. This was indeed a workingman's party, representing his interest and his struggle, appealing to his values, sentiments and economic needs. Absence of Terror in the Austrian Part of Poland

Poland was partitioned in the eighteenth century by Russia, Germany and Austria. In the Austrian part, the constitutional monarchy guaranteed political, and to an extent, national rights to a variety of ethnic groups. The monarchy had not only a representative government, with a house of parliament in Vienna, but also a large measure of self-government, even autonomy. The Polish part was administered by a governor (viceroy) appointed in Vienna, but it also had its own diet. Even the school system was administered with the assistance of national councils. The most oppressive, autocratic rule, denying national rights, even the use of the Polish language in schools and offices, was the Russian, tsarist rule. The revolutionary action of the Polish Socialist Party was conducted only in the Russian part. Individual systematic violence, in the form of tactical terror, such as attempts of assassination of high administrative representatives, governors and police directors, appeared as part of revolutionary tactics only in the so-called "Congress Poland". Since 1846 in the Austrian part no attempt of an armed insurrection was made, no systematic political assassination was organized by the Poles. There was an isolated case of assassination of the viceroy (Namiestnik) of Galicia, Andrzey Potocki, by a Ukrainian nationalist, Sicinski (1908) as a protest against Polish hegemony in this province, which also had a large Ukrainian minority. Sicinski succeeded in his escape to the United States (he settled here and later in Canada). The Austrian government — as it seems — was not unfriendly to his escape. It was a matter of political wisdom to remove in that way from the country an actor of an explosive issue whose trial and sentence would feed further violence and unrest. In Galicia, in the Austrian part, Polish Socialists (P.P.S.D. — Polish Social-Democratic Party) followed the tactics of European socialists, supporting vigorously representative institutions, organizing trade unions, social insurance for workers, fighting for progressive labor legislation. The party was well represented in the Parliament in Vienna, in the pro-

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vincial diet and municipal governments. The representatives in the Parliament soon won recognition and fame as gifted and responsible democratic leaders and legislators. The case of Poland in the first decade of our century is instructive. In this case at least, the fact is that a measure of political rights and selfgovernment was a sufficient policy to secure peaceful, and in a way, after the general franchise of 1907, a parliamentary method of social and political change. It may be suggested that a similar measure of political freedom and self-government would have prevented the development of violent struggle and individual terror in Russian Poland. This experience and very tentative assumption cannot, however, be mechanically generalized and applied to other nations and cultures; it is both "time and culture bound". The Nature of Individual Terror in Poland

The individual political assassination in the Russian part practiced by the revolutionaries of the Polish Socialist Party was tactical, but it neither had the systematic, continuous character of the individual terror of the Russian revolutionaries, nor was this action as paramount a tactic as in the former case. In fact, individual assassination of the high representatives of the Russian government identified by the revolutionaries as responsible for the oppressions or brutality, begins with the revolution of 1904 and it appears only as one of the means of the revolutionary tactical pattern. The Revolution of 1904-1905 was in Poland a powerful social movement, advanced by strikes, propaganda, mass manifestations, military actions related rather to partisan warfare. An armed conflict between the Russian soldiers and the Poles, led by the militants of the Polish Socialist Party, took place in Warsaw in 1904. It was the first armed conflict since the Polish insurrection of 1863. Manifestations and armed conflicts took place in other parts of Russian Poland. In 1905 an attempt against the hated chief of police of Warsaw was made by militants of the P.P.S. Numerous attempts against governors, chiefs of the gendarmes, and many others followed. One of the most known and spectacular was the attempt against the general-governor Skallon in Warsaw in 1906. On Wednesday, August 15, 1906 (known in history as Bloody Wednesday), tactics of mass terror were directed against individual policemen on duty in Warsaw. An attack on the train at Rogov in 1906 was in turn in its nature an organized partisan action,

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involving a number of revolutionists acting according to a detailed plan, under a disciplined command. 3 Opposition to Terror and Direct

Action

The Polish Socialist Party was not the sole representative of socialist ideology, although no doubt this was the dominant party of the working class in Poland. S.D.K.P.L., the Social Democracy of Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania, rejected terror and did not advocate an independent Poland. It envisaged Poland as an autonomous province or state within the future Russian socialist republic. The Polish Communist Party evolved later, after 1917, from the S.D.K.P.L. But terror and direct action also had its opponents within the Polish Socialist Party. The party split in 1905. The revolutionary faction (PPSFR) continued its direct action, a kind of guerrilla warfare combined with individual terror, tactics of political assassination. "Other" Victims of Political

Terror

The terroristic struggle, however, hits a wider circle than the hated representatives of an oppressive government. The operation involves larger numbers of people than the militants alone. Some are corrupt, others betray their trust. The organization was sooner or later penetrated by secret agents. Under conditions of an underground struggle, the party is highly secret, disciplined. Safety of party members, maintenance of secrecy, does not leave many choices. Punishment by death is the price a former member pays for treason or even weakness. Neither does the party tolerate those who want to leave it after some experience. Police agents, once discovered, pay with their lives. Assassination becomes in that way a means of maintenance of discipline and secrecy. The Russian or Macedonian revolutionaries met similar problems of secrecy and police action. They solved them in similar ways — by death. In consequence of this tactic, the circle of victims of terror grew, and terroristic, uncompromising struggle influenced the life, destiny, and sometimes personality of the militants. The military activities of the revolutionary faction of the Polish Socialist 3

Tadeusz Jablonski, Zarys Historii P.P.S. (Warsaw, 1946), pp. 44-50; Jan Kwapinski, Organizacja Bojowa (London: Foreign Committee of P.P.S., 1943), pp. 15-21; H. Wereszczycki, Historia Polski, 1864-1918 (Warsaw: Wiedza, 1948), pp. 253ff.; Leon Wasilewski, Zarys Dziejdw Polskiej Partji Socialistycznej (Warsaw, 1925).

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Party and political assassination of individual representatives of Russian government as one of its tactics, did not last as long as the Russian terroristic struggle. About 1908 the terroristic action began rapidly to decline. Thus, the intensive stage of terroristic action did not last longer than four to five years. The Termination of Systematic

Terror

How was the terroristic action terminated? The terroristic and guerrilla tactics were displaced by military preparations for a war against Russia, and eventually by the professionalization of the militants. In 1908 the leader of the fighting squads, Joseph Pilsudski, began to organize a non-partisan nucleus of the future Polish Army — the Union of Direct Struggle. Later, an organization of "Riflemen" (Stsheltsy) was formed, and from this in turn the Polish Legion evolved in Galicia, headed by Pilsudski. This was the first regular Polish military unit since the Insurrection of 1863, and again the nucleus of the Polish Army. The commander of the Legion, former leader of the fighting squads, became the first chief of state of the Republic. The story of the Irish resistance and struggle for independence, for all its differences, bears certain similarities. The Polish revolutionary movement and its terrorists were thus broadening the legitimacy of the movement. At first the legitimacy of the terroristic movement was ideological in terms of a party. Now the movement claimed national and historical legitimacy, which called for national loyalty. The name of the military formation, as well as its symbols, were those of the Polish military formation in times of the French Revolution and Napoleon Bonaparte. The attempts of identification of the historical with the new reinforced the legitimacy. Thus a secret, underground and militant movement was channeled into a formal military structure, and assumed national symbols and legitimacy. However, only a part of the revolutionaries were absorbed by the military structure. The revolutionary struggle, and individual violence was a part of it, and was now channeled into preparation for war. INDIVIDUAL VIOLENCE OF ARMENIAN DASHNAKS AS DEFENSE AND STRUGGLE AGAINST TURKISH MASSACRES

The massacres of Armenians inspired by the Turkish government assumed proportions of mass extermination, later called genocide. An Armenian

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revolutionary organization known under the name of Dashnaks (Hai Heghapokhakan Dashnaksowtiwn) answered the Turkish massacres by wide action, a broad gamut of tactics. One of the tactical actions was individual violence, or individual terror, directed against Turkish government officials, accused by the Armenians as responsible for the massacres. The goals and strategic objectives of individual terror of the Dashnaks were: vengeance, punishment, intimidation or defense. Again, as in the case of Polish, and as we shall see later, Bulgarian revolutionaries, individual violence was directed against a foreign government, and in addition against an oppressive autocracy. The Armenians had the sympathy and support of what was once called the civilized world. Their struggle against massacres, in terms of European and American values, in terms of the traditions of the tyrannicides of the Renaissance, was not only justified but heroic. Actions akin to guerrilla warfare of small bands of Dashnaks were combined with individual violence or terror in a national struggle of defense and liberation. Thus, ideological legitimation of their struggle, or rationalization in terms of accepted values and ideology was based on identification of the government in power as a foreign and tyrannical one. Armenian

Massacres

The Dashnaks faced, however, a different situation than the Poles. The Turkish government was even more autocratic than the Russian. Arbitrary violence of minor and higher officials, especially in the countryside, was a frequent occurrence. Violence in transfer and changes of power, individual and mass violence exercised against subject Christian population was a recurrent phenomenon, a matter of administrative routine. The position of Armenians in Turkey was also different from the Serbian, Greek, Bulgarian, or Albanian minorities. The former could always look for protection and support from Serbia, Bulgaria or Greece. Albanians were fighting men of the mountains. They could defend themselves. Large sections were Moslem, identifying themselves with the Ottoman Empire. Many served in the Turkish Army. The Armenians were defenseless and without allies. Deprived of their national independence, they were divided between Turkey, Russia, and Persia, abused and mistreated by the Kurds, a nomadic people. The Turkish government used the Kurds against the Armenians. Armenians appealed to the Congress of Berlin in 1878 for support in their attempt to gain more autonomy. They had a certain limited representation of their religious and civil affairs through

46

VIOLENCE AND INDIVIDUAL TERROR

their "National General Assembly". In 1889 persecution of Armenians started while both the Turkish and Russian governments saw the problem in terms of "Armenian danger". In 1894 again Armenian massacres began in the province of Bitlin; Kurds, aided by Turkish troops, destroyed twenty-four villages, killing indiscriminately all Armenians they found. The Pasha commanding this pogrom was decorated. After an Armenian protest in Constantinople in 1895, massacres followed in the capital and again mass killings on a genocide scale in Asia Minor, organized by Turkish officials. According to British reports, about 30,000 Armenians perished in this massacre. In August of 1896, after an Armenian protest action, in Constantinople, massacres of Armenians followed, aided by Turkish soldiers and police officers. About 6,000 persons lost their lives. A British diplomat reported that it seemed "that the intention of Turkish authorities [is] to exterminate the Armenians". 4 Massacres continued, while Western powers protested with no real effect. Again, after a brief, hopeful period, the Young Turkish Revolution in 1908 was followed by the massacre of Armenians at Adana. 5 In 1915 again, massacres of Armenians shocked world opinion. The American ambassador called the massacres "the murder of a nation"; the British government published a document on The Treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, 1915-1916 (London, 1916). Mass deportations ordered by the government were followed by new massacres of the helpless and innocent population. 6 4

William Miller, The Ottoman Empire and Its Successors (Cambridge University Press, 1936), pp. 426-30. Ibid., pp. 480-81. 6 Ibid., p. 538; Henry Morgenthau, The Tragedy of Armenia (London: Spottiswoode, Ballantine and Co. Ltd., 1918); Arnold J. Toynbee, Armenian Atrocities, The Murder of a Nation (New York: Hodder and Stoughton, 1915), also Treatment of the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire (London, 1916); Joseph Guttman, The Beginnings of Genocide, Armenian Massacres in World War I (Armenian Historical Research Association, 1965 [no place of publication given], contains a collection of documents and the memoirs of Nairn Bey. The Armenian Academy of Science made estimates of numbers of victims of Turkish massacres. It is difficult, if possible at all, to check the accuracy of these data. The data may, however, be of interest. Mr. Ara Caprielan assisted our research in this area and supplied the sources and translations: A statistical record of Turkish massacres of non-Turks in the Ottoman Empire, the frequency of massacres resorted to in order to "solve" internal problems. 1822 Greeks massacred on Kios 50,000 1823 Greeks massacred in Misolinki 8,000 1826 Turkifled foreign soldiers in Istanbul 25,000 1850 Assyrians in Mosoul 10,000 5

VIOLENCE AND INDIVIDUAL TERROR

47

Such were the social and political conditions which resulted, as a response to massacres and defense, in revolutionary tactics of individual terror and direct action of the Armenian Dashnaks against the Turks. The massacres were answered by revolutionary action and individual terror, and again the response to the terroristic action were the massacres. The image of Turkish rule must be modified. The massacres and oppressions were not the only features of Turkish rule. In the provincial towns, in port cities, various ethnic groups lived together rather peacefully, while the Turkish administration, corrupt and indolent, was indifferent and interfered little with everyday life. This rather peaceful, although backward and frequently primitive condition of daily urban life not free from abuse, was interrupted by catastrophic massacres. In the villages, however, the peasant suffered far more from tax collectors and sporadic invasions of military and civil authorities which abused the subject population. The ruling Turks in fact formed a minority. The Dashnak

Party

The intolerable condition of Armenians living under the Turkish yoke and the revolutionary fervor among university students in Russia, brought

Armenians and other Christians in Lebanon 12,000 Armenians and Bulgarians in Bulgaria 14,000 Armenians in Bayazid 1,400 Armenians in Alashgerd 1,250 Armenians and other Christians in Alexandria 2,000 Turkified Armenians and foreign soldiers 3,500 Armenians in Sassoun 12,000 Armenians in the provinces of West Armenia 300,000 Armenians in Istanbul 9,570 Armenians in Van 8,000 Armenians, Greeks, Bulgars in Macedonia 14,667 Armenians in Sassoun 5,640 Armenians in Cilicia (Adana) 30,000 1,500,000 Armenians in West Armenia and Turkey 50,000 Armenians in Kars and Ardahan Armenians in and around Baku 30,000 Armenians in Kunvijlar 10,000 Armenians in Cilicia (Adana) 50,000 20,000 Armenians in Hajun 10,000 Armenians and 200,000 other Christians in 210,000 Izmir Aramayis Mnatsaganian, Hai Jzoghovurdi Voghbergowtiune |The Tragedy of the Armenian People] (Yerevan, 1965), p. 65. See also Viscount Bryce, "The Future of Armenia", The Contemporary Review CXIV (1918), 605. 1860 1876 1877 1879 1881 1892 1894 1895 1896 1896 1903 1904 1909 1915 1918-20 1918 1919 1919 1921 1922

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together a cross section of such Armenian students in the summer of 1890. Through the main efforts of Christopher Mikaelian, Simon Zavarian and Stephan Zorian, the Dashnak Party was born in October of 1890. It was comprised of people with diverse social class backgrounds; the prime concern of all these people was the liberation of Turkish Armenia. 7 Mikaelian and his wife, the founders of the party, were formerly members of Narodnaya Volya 'People's Will'. The Dashnak Party advocated independence of Armenia and advanced a socialist and democratic program. Direct action was only a part of its political strategy and tactics. Tactics of individual terror may have come through Mikaelian and his experience in the Russian revolutionary organization "People's Will". Individual terror was used only against those responsible for the Armenian massacres. The Dashnaks, together with the Macedonian revolutionary organization JMRO, planned to assassinate Sultan Abdul Hamid. The unsuccessful attempt of the Armenian revolutionaries against the life of the Sultan did take place in 1905. The Dashnaks, as was mentioned, conducted also guerrilla activities as early as 1897 against the Kurdish persecuting bands. Their direct, revolutionary activities had major objectives: punishment of those guilty of anti-Armenian crimes, and defense against bands and Turks who harassed the people. Furthermore, the party hoped to impress the European powers and the Turkish government with a measure of security as well as national independence and protection for the Armenians. 8 As late as in the early 1920's, the Dashnak terrorists assassinated those whom they regarded as responsible for the Armenian genocide, among them former pashas. Individual assassination and violence in the Armenian case developed in the specific conditions of a disintegrating Turkish Empire and ethnic persecutions. The acts had probably wide moral support among the Armenians. The acts of individual terror of the Dashnaks were a part of their general revolutionary struggle and, above all, "punishment" and defense tactics. Those were not isolated assassinations. 7

Ara Caprielian, "The Formative Period of Armenian Statehood", unpublished Master's Dissertation, Graduate Division of the City College of the City University of New York, December 1,1966; and "Origins of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation", term paper in the seminar on Russian and East European Social Movements, Graduate School, New York University, December, 1967; Louise Nal Badian, The Armenian Revolutionary Movement (Berkeley, 1963). 8 Caprielian, "Origins of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation", p. 41.

VIOLENCE AND INDIVIDUAL TERROR

49

The Dashnaks played later an important role, participating in the government of the short-lived Armenian Republic, after 1918, which was later seized by and incorporated into the Soviet Union.

POLISH AND ARMENIAN TERRORISTIC TACTICS COMPARED

The Polish and the Armenian terroristic action developed in entirely different circumstances, in different historical conditions, within a different social-political environment. But certain characteristics of those movements were common: both were national struggles against a foreign and absolute oppressive government. Furthermore, this was a revolutionary action, and individual terror was only one element in their general strategy and tactics. The Dashnak terroristic and guerrilla activities were of longer duration than the Polish. The span was a quarter of a century, or more.

IV POLITICAL ASSASSINATION IN BALKAN POLITICS

THE NATURE OF POLITICAL ASSASSINATION

Political assassination in Serbia and Bulgaria has to be considered in its sociological and historical context. Serbia won its limited freedom thanks to the struggle of its people in the early years of the nineteenth century, Bulgaria almost seventy years later. Both nations were under the impact of the Ottoman rule for centuries. Individual assassination in transfer of power, especially in succession of power was in Turkey a frequent occurrence, almost a matter of court routine, and violence was applied and abused in an arbitrary manner in this business of ruling subject people. The Turkish occupation of the Balkan peninsula in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries froze the medieval society and arrested the cultural progress. After the emancipation from Turkish rule, the Balkan peasant societies emerged in their primitive, almost medieval although colorful folk-culture and economics. The political habits of the early leaders were shaped by the heavy and dangerous pressures of the Turkish rule. Serbian men of politics were hardened in armed struggles, and also in cunning negotiations, in ruthless politics with the Turks, as well as in competition and fights with their own folks. They were no angels. Thus, armed struggle and violence in Serbia which in the early years of the nineteenth century was a "folk-society" of free peasantry, was directed above all against the Turks and when internal struggle got very heated, against competing families. The peasant families, which slowly grew into dynasties, represented not solely definite interests but also political orientations. The political assassination was a means in the power struggle, a simple means to eliminate a competitor and a change of political courses of action. The assassination was usually perpetrated by organized groups of partisans of a family or dynasty. At the turn of the century, dynastic factions formed secret, highly disciplined organizations, with support and membership among army

POLITICAL ASSASSINATION

51

officers. Assassination was the ultimate tactical means on this road toward desired political change. Unlike the Russian individual and systematic terror, the assassination in Serbia was mostly a single, isolated act, attempted by a conspiracy for a definite purpose of eliminating a ruler or statesman, member of a dynasty. The goal, the ultimate end, was power, associated with a change of the elite. But power for what? The elite and the ends were nationalistic. The conspirators aimed at a union of the entire Serb or South Slavic population in one Serb Kingdom. This type of assassination started early in Serbia. It must be remembered, however, that Serbian politics was influenced by the Turks, and the Turks practiced government by violence against not only the Serbs but also in their own politics. We have called assassinations aimed at change of dynasties "dynastic assassination", related to "sultanism", to a violent elimination of pretenders to power.

DYNASTIC F E U D S A N D ASSASSINATIONS

Kara George, the liberator of the Serbs and the founder of the Karageorgevich dynasty, while escaping from the Turks, killed his own father in 1787. The old man refused to cross the river, since his courage was failing. The story goes that Kara George saw his father dead rather than tortured in Turkish hands. The hero of the Serbian uprising returned to his country, after many vicissitudes, in 1817, in an attempt to regain influence and extend the borders of his country. Milosh, the founder of the Obrenovich dynasty, ruled Serbia at that time. Kara George urged Milosh to join forces against the Turks. Milosh, however, informed the Turkish pasha about Kara George's presence. On the demand of the Pasha, Kara George was murdered and his head was sent to Constantinople. The liberator of Serbia was assassinated with the complicity of the ruler of the newly liberated nation. "The tragedy", writes Temperley, "was of the dreadful Aeschylean type, for Kara George is said to have murdered the half brother of Milosh." 1 The beginnings set the pattern for a future dynastic succession and violent change. Eight sovereigns span the period from 1817 to 1945. Out of eight sovereigns, three were murdered. Should we add Kara George in his role 1 Harold W. V. Temperley, History of Serbia (London: Bell & Sons, 1917) pp. 180-95; William Miller, The Ottoman Empire and its Successors (Cambridge University Press, 1936), p. 57. For general pattern of violence in Balkan politics, see Joseph S. Roucek, Balkan Politics (Stanford University Press, 1947).

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of the liberator as the national leader, then out of nine, four were murdered. Two were deposed, and one abdicated.2 In 1903, King Alexander, the last Obrenovich, and his wife were shot by a group of conspirators, led by Colonel Apis, later founder and leader of the Black Hand, a secret association. Alexander's wife, hiding in a closet, was pierced with bullets. Later, some members of Alexander's government met the same fate. By this assassination the feud between the Karageorgeviches and Obrenoviches was finally terminated. This was not, however, solely a ruthless struggle for political power. The reign of the last Obrenovich was unconstitutional. He suspended a liberal constitution and appointed a military cabinet. His political orientation was pro-Austrian, at times when millions of South Slavs, Serbs and Croats were under Austro-Hungarian rule, while that of the Karageorgeviches was pro-Russian. It is also true that Alexander's successor, King Peter Karageorgevich, was the best king Serbia had. He was a man of personal integrity, simplicity and courage, a truly democratic king, strongly identified with the peasantry. Nonetheless, the dynastic change was a consequence of a brutal assassination.

BLACK H A N D A N D

ASSASSINATION

OF ARCHDUKE

FERDINAND

The young Serbian kingdom had democratic tendencies and institutions. The international situation, tensions and nationality problems and ardent patriotism led young students and officers to the formation of a number of nationalistic societies. Large areas of South Slavic territory were under Austro-Hungarian rule. In addition, after the Congress of Berlin, Austria-Hungary annexed Bosnia and Hertsegovina, previously occupied by Turkey. The population of this area was predominantly Serbian. A pan-Serbian program of union of all Serbs, later South Slavs, in the Serbian state had at this time a strong appeal. 3 A secret nationalistic organization was founded in Belgrade in 1911, the Union of Death, popularly known as the Black Hand. Its goal was a national state of all Serbs, including those under Austro-Hungarian rule. This secret organization included a number of high officers in key positions in the army, among them "Apis" Dimitryevich, Colonel of the General 2

Data from Ferdinand Schevill, The History of the Balkan Peninsula (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1922), p. 543. 3 Miller, as above, pp. 454ff.

POLITICAL ASSASSINATION

53

Staff and chief of Serbian intelligence. Its membership was not large but influential, and had branch committees in various parts of the kingdom as well as some towns in Turkey and Austria-Hungary, inhabited by Serb minorities.4 The organization was dedicated to its national goals through the revolutionary struggle, including terroristic action. The Black Hand reached the heights of its power during the Balkan wars. Members of the Black Hand were among those who initiated, organized and executed the assassination of the Archduke Francis Ferdinand in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914, which precipitated World War I, itself a consequence of far more complex circumstances.5 The Black Hand by means of secrecy and individual violence, with its members placed in key positions in the army, exercised powerful control over the government and the dynasty. In 1917 members of the Black Hand were arrested and accused of planning the assassination of Prince Alexander. The case was not clear, a silent struggle went on for a time between the government on one hand and the Black Hand on the other. One of its most outstanding and dedicated members, Col. Apis (D. Dimitryevich) was sentenced and executed. Apis left a memory of an ardent Serbian patriot.

4

Ernest C. Helmreich, "Black Hand", in Slavonic Encyclopedia (New York: Philosophical Library, 1943), pp. lOOff. 5 Zdenek J. Slouka, "Black Hand and European Politics", a research paper for a graduate seminar at New York University on Social and Political Movements in Russia and Eastern Europe. Louis Adamic, in his My Native Land (New York: Harper, 1943) indicates that many secret organizations were active at that time. However, according to Adamic, the young conspirators against the Archduke were provided by the head of the terroristic department of the Black Hand with guns and he helped them through the borders. Col. Apis (Dimitriyevich) the chief of intelligence of the Serbian Army and prominent in the Black Hand, according to Adamic was not directly involved (p. 293). Helmreich, op. cit., writes: "Members of the Black Hand were responsible for the assassination." C. E. Black and E. C. Helmreich in Twentieth Century Europe (New York: Knopf, 1950), write: "The plot actually had been planned and put into execution by members of the Serbian Black Hand Society" (p. 51). Victor Serge, after the First World War, met some of the survivors of the conspiracy. According to their declaration, Colonel Dragutin Dimitriyevich (pseudonym Apis), chief of the Black Hand, was among the initiators of the attempt, received assurances of support from the Imperial Russian military attaché in Belgrade. Victor Serge, Memoirs of a Revolutionary, as above, p. 181.

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PROFESSIONALIZATION A N D INSTITUTIONALIZATION OF INDIVIDUAL TERROR

Terroristic activity as political tactics has shown in the past two tendencies : toward professionalization and institutionalization. With time, a professional class of terrorists gained influence, and also control of organization. At the same time sporadic and transient conspiracies, once the act of terror was repeated, changed slowly into permanent, and highly disciplined, institutionalized association. In time, such institutionalized groups, of strong ideological and group loyalties, grew independent and exercised a powerful influence in the political life of the nation. Their disciplined organization and use of terror gave them aggressive capacities. Manipulation of fear by terror, terror against those who were unskilled in the use of violence or unwilling to use it, moreover, had powerful key positions, gave them influence and strength far beyond their numbers. This was also the story of transformation of the Macedonian revolutionary organization IMRO, which directed at first its struggle and individual terror against the Turks, and later its members practiced violence in Bulgarian domestic policies.

KOMITADJIS

OF MACEDONIA A N D THE TERRORISTIC ACTION

The struggle against Turkish rule in Macedonia was led in the last quarter of the nineteenth century by insurgents called haiduci in Slav, kleftis in Greek. They were called komitadji by the Turks, since the fighting bands were under the command of the committees. In the year 1894, the first central committee of the Macedonian Revolutionary organization was formed. The organization was called Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO) (the Bulgarian name Yatreshna Makedonska Revolutionarna Organisaciya VMRO). Modeled on Italian Carbonari's in some of their rituals, this secret, highly disciplined organization was directed by a Central Committee, and controlled a number of detachments of a secret political army. 6 The Turkish rule was oppressive, especially for the peasantry. Taxes were burdensome and the peasant was defenseless against the abuses of 6 Joseph. S. Roucek, Balkan Politics, as above, Chapter VI. Joseph S. Roucek, "IMRO", in Slavonic Encyclopedia, as above, pp. 531-32; Kostia Todoroff, "The Macedonian Organization Yesterday and Today", Foreign Affairs VI (1908), 473-82. Todoroff gives 1894 as the date of foundation of IMRO, Roucek, 1893.

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55

tax collectors, passing troops, or police. As was mentioned already, in certain areas and at times Turkish rule, incompetent and corrupt as it was, was still tolerable. But repeated persecutions, abuses of the local population, and massacres, called for self-defense and for emancipation of the subject peoples from the oppressive rule. A Macedonian peasant was subject in his daily life to humiliations and extortions.7 The brutality and cruelty of Turkish administration at the turn of the century called for immediate action. In 1895 new bands of Komitadjis infiltrated Macedonia from Bulgaria. Now the Macedonian Internal Organization began its epic; the story started with a wide uncompromising revolutionary struggle, combining the tactics of guerrilla warfare with individual terror against Turkish officials and their allies. The revolutionary warfare reached its peak in 1904, but continued also during the Balkan wars. The terroristic activities were not limited to the attacks against oppressive Turkish officers and administrators. Discipline and secrecy were maintained under threat of the death penalty, embezzlement of party monies by minor collectors of dues was punished by death, sudden raids and executions terrified the neutrals and opponents. 8 During the Balkan wars, the Komitadji's began rapidly to lose their democratic and liberal orientation. An auxiliary army of certain Bulgarian Komitadji's, writes Todoroff, "committed regrettable acts of violence and brutality against the Turkish population". IMRO started as a democratic and revolutionary organization, fighting Turks. One faction advocated a Balkan Federation with an autonomous Bulgaria, the other was leaning toward incorporating a liberated Macedonia into Bulgaria. As time went on, the pro-Bulgarian and anti-Serb faction grew in influence. During World War I the Komitadji, supported by Central Powers, fought against the Serbs. During and after the First World War, professionalization and institutionalization of the one-time revolutionary guerrilla organization took 7

On taxation and Turkish administration see Edwin Pears, "A Description of Turkish Government", in Luigi Villari, The Balkan Question (New York: Dutton & Company), pp. 14-43. On Turkish rule in Macedonia see Dr. Bogirade Tatarcheff, "Turkish Misrule in Macedonia", in Villari, as above, pp. 167ff. 8 For a description of internal terror see Christo Silianoff, "Briefe und Beichten Eines Mazedonische Revolutionäres", Deutsche Rundschau (Berlin, 1928), Band 216, pp. 171fF. A good description of the organization of IMRO in Roucek, op. cit., and Frederick Moore, "The Macedonian Committees and the Insurrection", in Villari quoted above.

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hold. After years, the terroristic action became a profession. "Little by little", wrote Kostia Todoroff, "the idealists perished in the fighting but the professionals survived.. ,". 9 After the war a faction of IMRO became an independent organization, a state within a state, terrorizing those Bulgarian governments which favored cooperation with Yugoslavia, and opposed war and continuous, irredentist action in Macedonia. Now individual terror, political assassination of the Komitadji was directed against their own Bulgarian government. Terror and political assassination was one of the tactics of a major faction of IMRO; their goal was annexation of all Macedonia, including Yugoslav parts to Macedonia, while, it seems, a minor faction continued to advocate the old program of a Balkan federation with an autonomous Macedonia. 10 Sanguinary internal struggles and assassination between factions and their leaders were reminiscent of Turkish "sultanic" practices. When the peasant leader and Prime Minister Stambulilski ordered arrest of the Komitadjis, in his effort to protect the Yugoslav border from raids, the terrorists answered with assassination of the Minister of War, Dimitroff (October 1921) and a prefect of a district, Kozlovski. Eventually Stambuliiski was murdered by the Macedonian terrorists and supposedly an army officer.11 At the same time, as a consequence of a struggle between the factions, internal terror was raging. "These conflicts turned out to be really massacres, for the Organization was openly aided by the Bulgarian police and military. Three hundred persons were killed", writes Todoroff. 12 The story of the assassination would require a chapter at least. The internal terror between revolutionary factions was raging; assassination resulted in new assassinations, and attempts followed in Bulgaria and abroad. A number of prominent democratic and moderate statesmen were killed, while internecinal assassinations between leaders followed in Bulgarian towns, in the city of Milan, and in a theater in Vienna. Plotting and conspiracy continued in foreign embassies in Vienna and suburban villas. "It is impossible", writes Roucek, "to detail all the terrorist acts perpetrated in Yugoslavia and Greece." 13 9

Todoroff, op. cit., p. 475. Ibid. 11 Ibid., pp. 479-80. 12 Ibid., p. 480. 13 Roucek, Balkan Politics, p. 156. Roucek gives an extensive and dramatic account, pp. 152-56. See also Victor Serge, op. cit., pp. 178-84: Hugh Seton-Watson, Eastern Europe between the Wars (Cambridge University Press, 1945), p. 247 foil. 10

POLITICAL ASSASSINATION

57

TERRORISTIC TACTICS CONTINUE WHILE GOALS HAVE CHANGED

It was in Bulgaria where the violent pattern of Balkan politics was perhaps the strongest. In modern times, Bulgaria was under Turkish rule for a longer period than Greece, Rumania or Serbia. Bulgarians were perhaps subject to more abuse; they were closer to Turkey. Violence, assassinations, conspiracies — as was said before — dominated Turkish politics, and set a pattern of government which continued after the Turks left. IMRO continued, so did conspiracies. There were also "isolated" political murders and conspiracies in Bulgaria in addition to the assassinations of IMRO. However, assassinations perpetrated by factions of IMRO were to a large extent tactical. They were an essential part of terroristic struggle. Part of the assassinations were also "sultanic". Their goal was the elimination of competitors. The story of IMRO, perhaps not yet entirely closed, presents for a sociologist a special interest. Within the span of more than thirty years the organization has changed, but its deadly and destructive tactics of individual terror and violence remained. Once a federalistic and autonomistic political group, which favored a democratic autonomy for Macedonia and federation for the Balkans, certain factions of IMRO became nationalistic, with a major goal of annexation of all Macedonia to Bulgaria. 14 An organization conceived and acting in defense of oppressed Macedonian peasantry became a secret power within Bulgaria, and terrorized its popular government (of Stambuliiski). The value structure, goal orientation of IMRO changed; so did its leadership, even institutional structure. The squad structure was replaced by "cells" (dvoika and troika)}5 Terror and individual assassination, once directed against the foreign Turks, was now directed against their own Bulgarian people, even against members of their own party. Individual terror, once a part of an extensive revolutionary strategy, now became the major means of intimidation and elimination. Guerrilla warfare and insurrection disappeared. Terror, once used for intimidation, punishment and defense against the Turks, was now applied to eliminate competitors and adversaries who spoke the same tongue. The organization was professionalized, institutionalized and directed against different targets. But assassination as a method of problem solving continued in entirely different socio-political conditions. 14 15

See Todoroff's article, quoted above. See Roucek, p. 153.

V FROM THE INDIVIDUAL TERROR OF THE TOTALITARIAN TO THE UNDERGROUND STRUGGLE AGAINST CONQUERORS 1918-1945

POLITICAL SITUATION, 1918-1945

Individual assassination, as a systematic violence, as part of the political tactics, had already declined in Eastern Europe and Russia prior to the beginning of hostilities in 1914. War absorbed the old revolutionaries. Some joined the ranks; others preferred exile in neutral countries. A catastrophic crisis, such as war, has frequently had a decisive impact on political strategy, and tactics. What we call "crisis" is in fact a basic change of situation. Political leaders and their parties work within and try to affect situations. In consequence, changes in situations affect their decisions and actions. The First World War brought along an increase of political controls, extensive control of individual travel. Ration cards and rationing of food and goods increased the power of the state and of the bureaucracy far beyond the pre-war legal limits. On the other hand, war brought along psychological, emotional changes or "redirection", and displacement, at least in the initial stage. The revolutionaries of Russia had to choose between the struggle against the Tsar or against German armies, defense against defeat. This situation did not prevent formation of underground movements. Individual systematic terror, however, was a political tactic, which under the conditions of the First World War began for many reasons to decline. Individual political assassination did not, however, but those were rather exceptional. To such attempts belong the assassination of the Austrian prime minister Sturgkh by a young socialist, pacifist and physics instructor, Friedrich Adler, in Austria, and the assassination of Rasputin, the influential, self-appointed religious preacher of peasant origin killed by Russian aristocrats. Both assassinations took place at a critical moment at the end of the war; both in moods of defeat. In Austria this was a protest against prolongation of the war, in Russia, an attempt to eliminate

FROM THE INDIVIDUAL TERROR

59

an influence regarded as responsible for defeat. The nineteenth century came to an end in 1914. The new historical period began in 1918 with the emergence of independent East European states and disintegration of the old empires. Former leaders and members of the revolutionary and terrorist groups were now not only "legal", but also played a prominent role in "nation building".

FORMER TERRORIST PARTY AND REVOLUTION IN RUSSIA

In Russia, Victor Chernov, one-time leading member of the Social Revolutionary party, active during the democratic stage of the 1917 Revolution, was elected president of the short-lived Constituent Assembly of 1917. He, as well as other members of his party, which once was a terroristic one, a direct descendant of the "People's Will", defended with vigor democratic institutions and the ideology of the new Republic. They opposed the death penalty, and, moreover, attempts toward introduction of dictatorship in Russia. The famous terrorist Borys Savinkov was minister of interior of the Kerenski government. Terrorists in times of autocracy, the one-time Russian "tyrannicides" in their new role of democratic leadership opposed any form of terror, especially mass terror. The programs and declarations of the "People's Will" and of the Social Revolutionary Party of the underground past became guidelines of the S.R. members of the government. After Trotsky and Lenin seized power, and dictatorship was introduced step by step, the Social Revolutionaries continued their opposition. Arrests, imprisonment and mass terror were again their tragic destiny. Isolated attempts against Lenin by Dora Kaplan and against the German ambassador (discussed below) are rather exceptional. Now the fury of mass terror and exile removed this party from the arena of the Revolution.

FORMER FIGHTERS AND DEMOCRACY IN POLAND

In Poland the members of the one-time revolutionary faction (so-called FRAKs) of the Polish Socialist Party returned from Siberian prisons, liberated by the Revolution. Others were released from armed services. Soon, some of the one-time fighters took responsible positions as members

60

FROM THE INDIVIDUAL TERROR

of the parliament (Sejm), trade unions, and municipal government. Thomas Arciszewski, one-time hero of anti-tsarist struggles, later Polish prime minister, was elected to the parliament. His special interest was a children's aid society. Jan Kwapinski, at one time a leader of direct action, involving terroristic, anti-tsarist tactics, was now a member of the parliament, leader of the farm workers, president of the trade union, later mayor of the second largest Polish city, the textile center, Lodz, and also a minister in the Polish government. Joseph Pilsudski, the leader of the FR revolutionary faction, who directed the action at Bezdany against soldiers in a Russian train, commanded the Polish Legion during the war, was the first chief of state. It was evident that the political and historical situation was conducive in those cases to direct, terroristic action. Once a situation has changed, most of those once engaged in revolutionary activities involving tactics of individual violence and guerrilla warfare, have shown political statesmanship, moreover moderation, defending democratic processes and institutions.

FORMER KOMITADJI IN A NEW BULGARIA

This experience was not limited to the Russian and Polish revolutionaries. Kostia Todorov, once a leader of the Komitadji in Macedonia, who once participated in an attempt to assassinate Sultan Abdul Hamid, was Bulgarian minister to Belgrade, later undersecretary for foreign aifairs in the government of Stambuliiski. Under the guidance of Stambuliiski, with the active support of Todorov, who was executing his policies, Bulgaria followed an eminently peaceful policy with its neighbors, especially in the vital area of the Yugoslav and Bulgarian borderland, Macedonia. Stambuliiski and Todorov cooperated now with the Yugoslav government in defending the local population against the raids and assassinations of the Bulgarian Komitadji, who continued their terroristic activities perhaps the longest time.

TRANSITIONS AND CHANGES

Generally, those revolutionaries who were dedicated to democratic principles, and socialist or peasant ideologies rejected violence as means of political power, advanced progressive and humane changes. The

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"intermediate" goals, democracy, representative government, as a stage of their political strategy, were achieved. They pursued a new, legal and democratic road. This was not true, however, about all of the terrorist groups and personalities which were once engaged. IMRO, the Macedonian-Bulgarian organization, continued its terroristic activities (see above). Some of the former terrorists of the Polish section appeared later in marginal social situations, but in the Polish case this was exceptional. The former members of the fighting squads of the Polish Socialist Party could now be found in municipal government, as burgomasters of towns, administrators of social security, members of parliament, and in many other functions. In times of their underground life in the underground circles of "self-education", in underground publications, problems of democracy, federalism and constitutionalism were discussed, advanced and propagated. Now, this gave its fruits. One of the achievements of the democratic Polish socialists, and among them prominent old fighters who had used the tactics of individual violence, was advanced social legislation, which was not a "paper" legislation, but really a well administered social security, social health insurance system, one of the best in Europe. The old struggles, however, left certain characteristic traits, in their analytical skills, political behavior, even daily habits. Many of them understood violence, they could see the dangers approaching when Hitler came to power, while many statesmen and democratic parliamentarians of other countries looked through rigid theories and concepts on the cruel and alarming facts, or fell victim to wishful thinking, which was just a reflection of their own fear. The old fighters also knew how and when to use a variety of tactical means and violence in extreme cases only. They were courageous and skillful but non-violent when fighting for restoration of democratic rule in their own country, while the latter was under dictatorship. They used whatever remained of representative institutions to maintain and extend democratic ways, organized manifestations and political strikes. When Germans overran the country, the same men who led the Revolution of 1905, Thomas Arciszewski and Casimir Puzak, organized the extensive network of the Polish underground, resumed the guerrilla and terroristic struggle, including individual, tactical terror against the invaders.

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SIGNIFICANCE OF THE POLITICAL SITUATION

This has shown the primary significance of socio-political conditions as a causative factor of individual terror. It must be stressed, however, that this experience is "time and culture bound" — it was true in certain cases only, when the struggle was waged by democrats against autocracy, in certain countries, and true again of certain personalities. After all, representative government and independence were the primary goals of the terroristic struggles — (in those cases, of course) — this was achieved, while former fighters moved into the position of political leadership of government or opposition. This is not however the entire picture. Professionalization and institutionalization of terror appeared in the Balkans.

NEW AND OLD PATTERNS OF POLITICAL ASSASSINATION

Were the patterns of political assassination, when they appeared again between 1918 and 1939, new, or were the tactics the same while the goals were different? The assassinations were directed by now against democratic representatives and institutions. The tactical and strategic objective of violence was political power for the extreme right and elimination within the party of "internal" dissenters or "external" political opponents. The democratic institutions were weak, governments frequently unable to cope with urgent socio-political problems. Parliaments, coalitions of shaky majorities composed of numerous micro-parties, or of parties divided into hostile camps, were frequently unable to pass the laws and form governments. In such a climate of weakness and sometimes of disintegration of democratic institutions, assassination reappeared in a new pattern of violence against democratic leaders. However, until the German conquest, assassinations were surprisingly infrequent in the northern part of Eastern Europe, and also in Yugoslavia and Greece. Increase of assassination and appearance of tactical terror was closely related to the increase of inter-ethnic and nationalist tensions. In the Baltic countries and in Czechoslovakia political assassinations (in the Baltics after the period of unrest and formation of the Republics) were practically absent, no major cases could be mentioned until the German takeover. In Poland, which had a tradition of insurrections and individual terror against foreign rule, political assassinations were

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exceptional and rare, and tactical terror limited, in time and space, to the nationalistic Ukrainian secret organizations. In Bulgaria, however, IMRO split into factions, with its dominant anti-Yugoslav section leaning toward extreme nationalism, continuing its irredentist activities. Internal terror decimated its ranks while they continued with their individual terrorism against moderate and progressive Bulgarian statesmen (see Chapter IV). During the late twenties radical nationalist movements of fascist leanings appeared in Yugoslavia, Rumania, Hungary and also, later, in Poland. The pro-fascist parties exercised intimidation and violence against democratic leaders, representatives and national minorities. A nationalistic right wing, pro-German and separatist party grew in significance in Slovakia. The Rumanian Iron Guard and the Croat Ustasha practiced widely all kinds of violence, including individual terror.

ISOLATED POLITICAL ASSASSINATION AND TACTICAL TERROR IN POLAND

By the term "isolated assassination", we may remind the reader, we have defined such assassinations which were not tactical, or systematic. The systematic tactical attempts were called individual terror. In Eastern Europe and Russia, far more than in the United States, political assassinations were ideological, organized and executed by well organized groups. Still, there is no evidence — as far as this writer knows — of such organization in the assassination of Gabriel Narutowicz, the first elected Polish President of the Republic in 1922. Narutowicz was elected by a coalition vote of the parties of the left, of the center, and also by ethnic minorities. A defamation campaign led by the newspapers of the nationalist right increased the tension and enhanced the build-up of hostilities and hatred. This moral "pre-assassination," in the form of a defamation campaign, seems to be seminal in "isolated" political assassination. It breaks the weak, rational restraints and control of emotions, it expiates the assassin before his act and seems to promise a hero's place in the pages of history.1 In such a climate of opinion, after mud and stones were thrown at the President, the attempt was made. There was an emotional, psychological climate created by the parties of the extreme 1

For a more extensive discussion of the pre-assassination "defamation process", see Chapter VI.

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right, but — so it seems today — no connection whatsoever between the parties of the right and the act itself. The assassination of Narutowicz — a friend and choice of Pilsudski — had an impact on Polish interwar history. Joseph Pilsudski, one-time leader of socialist resistance against tsarist rule, commandant of the Polish Legion during the war, organizer of the Polish armed forces and the first chief of state, never recovered from this tragedy. His attitude toward the right wing parties, which opposed his rather liberal attempts from the beginning, was now changed into a far deeper distrust of the Polish nation and doubts of the political maturity of sections of the nation. The assassination also cast doubt whether in such a divided nation a fully democratic process and working representative institutions were feasible. The nation was already split before, and now mutual hostilities and hatred became even deeper. The old fighters against tsarist rule, who once applied the tactics of violence, were now defending democratic institutions and warning against hatred and violence. After the political coup of Marshall Pilsudski in 1926, former chief of the air force General Wlodzimierz Zagorski was imprisoned in 1927 and disappeared under mysterious circumstances.2 It is generally believed that he was assassinated by some of the adherents of the Pilsudski camp. This case, never fully clarified in the eyes of large sections of public opinion in Poland, stained the record of this political group, regarded as responsible for the death of one of their opponents. Those were practically the only major Polish cases of assassination within twenty years of independence. In addition, however, members of a secret Ukrainian nationalistic organization assassinated two representatives of the Polish government. As mentioned before, in 1931, Tadeusz Holovko, a man of progressive traditions and leanings, with a long proUkrainian record, who had dealt with those matters, and Bronislaw Pieracki, a harsh minister of interior, were assassinated in 1934. The Ukrainians inhabited the southeastern corner of Poland. During the military dictatorship the Polish rule in this area was at times oppressive, especially when the peasant unrest was "pacified" by cavalry in a brutal way. Ukrainian nationalists of the extreme right reacted to this rule with a limited individual terror: two persons were assassinated. In spite of all the faults of Polish rule, the Ukrainians elected their representatives to the Polish Parliament (Sejm), and were represented in municipal and village self-government. 2

Joseph Rothschild, Pilsudski's Coup D'Etat (New York: Columbia University Press, 1966), p. 184.

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YUGOSLAVIA A N D THE USTASHA. ASSASSINATIONS OF KING ALEXANDER A N D STEPHEN R A D I C

The inter-ethnic tensions and hostilities intensified and manipulated by pro-fascist or nationalistic parties resulted in the reappearance of individual violence in Yugoslavia, in a far more intense form than in Poland. After the coup d'etat of King Alexander, Ante Pavelich founded a fascist and terroristic Croat organization, Hrvatski Ustasha (Croat Upriser). The party was organized along totalitarian lines. Their goal was creation of a separate Croat state, carved out of Yugoslavia, to be sure, a totalitarian Croatia. The Ustashis were supported by the Italian and Hungarian governments, and had camps in both Hungary and Italy. From there they tried to organize raids into Yugoslavia. The Croatian fascists engaged also in individual terror. In October 1934, they succeeded in assassination of King Alexander of Yugoslavia and French Foreign Minister Louis Barthou. After the invasion of Yugoslavia by the armies of the Axis, a kingdom of Croatia was established under an Italian protectorate. The Ustashis formed a government. Now, the Ustashis who practiced individual terror before, extended their tactics to mass terror. Their cruelty toward the innocent Serbian, Greek Orthodox population can be compared only with the German massacres of the Jews in Poland and Russia, or with the Turkish massacres of Armenians. The Ustashi were responsible for a genocide-extermination of over 500,000 Serbs (according to estimates) and they also ran a notorious concentration camp at Jasenovac in Slovenia.3 The Ustashi, similar to German Nazis, the Rumanian Iron Guard and other fascist groups, applied as tactics individual terror for the attainment of power, and mass terror for consolidation. The new Croat organization of the extreme right, formed by some of the former members of the extreme right continue at present their tactics of individual terror from abroad. A number of terroristic attacks were recorded in Yugoslavia. The intensification of violent activities was noticed in the summer of 1968. The new Croat nationalistic groups violently oppose the liberal and federalistic nationality policy of Tito's government, and advance a program of a totalitarian Croat state. They operate, according to West German sources, from Germany (Bavaria) and Spain. 4 3

"Ustasha" in Grande Dizionario Eticiclopedico, 1962, and Dinko Tomasic, "Ustasha Movement", Slavonic Encyclopedia (New York, 1949), pp. 1337-41. "Yugoslavien, Attentate", Der Spiegel (October 21, 1968). Verfassungsschutz 1971, Rechts und Linksradikale Bestrebungen Bonn, Offentlichkeitsarbeit des Bundesministeriums N o . 13 (nd) p. 98 and ff. 4

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True, the Ustashis reflected the extreme fascist trend. But ethnic tensions and hatred were intense in Yugoslavia, which was a union of several South Slav nations. The democratic Croat peasant party was in turn under continuous pressure of Serb nationalists. Stephen Radic, one of the most promising Yugoslav statesmen and a democrat, was shot in the Yugoslav Parliament with two of his followers, by a Montenegrin member, in front of the entire parliament. 5 This political murder was an isolated act, not a result of organized and systematic tactics. Intensification of ethnic hostilities, manipulation of hatred, which is a powerful motor of politics, generated intense struggles and led to violence. Violence, as was suggested before, was present since the beginnings in the politics of Serbia. A psychological situation which was a result of continuous escalation of unresolved tensions precipitated at the end, an act of assassination. This case again points to the close relationship between socio-political situation and the act. The act of the assassination should be discussed in this context (see Chapter VI). R U M A N I A N IRON G U A R D A N D INDIVIDUAL TERROR. ASSASSINATIONS OF IORGA, D U C A A N D OTHERS

Extreme nationalism and antisemitism bred in Rumania a native form of fascism, the Iron Guard. The Iron Guard derived its tactical strength, as did most of the fascist parties in this area, from ethnic, religious and race tensions. They utilized the tensions for direct action in the form of mass and individual violence. The Iron Guard was founded in 1924 as the "Legion of the Archangel Michael" by Cornelia Zelea Codreanu, of mixed Ukrainian-German origin. Nationalistic and rabidly antisemitic, the Iron Guardists had a substantial following at the Rumanian universities. In their ruthless activities they practiced a variety of violent tactics, inciting the population to pogroms and outrages against Jews, democrats and moderates who opposed them. Fascist students and Iron Guardists, in open disregard for elementary rights of others and law, shot public officials, and fellow students. Codreanu shot the prefect Manciu in court (1924), participated — according to Hugh Seton-Watson—in the assassination of Prime Minister Ion Duca (1933), and finally in 1938 was shot with thirteen other guardists "while trying to escape".6 In 1937 again, 5

Hugh Seton-Watson, Eastern Europe Between the Wars (Cambridge University Press, 1945), p. 224; Victor Serge, Memoirs of a Revolutionary (Oxford University Press, 1963), p. 182. 6 Seton-Watson, op. cit., pp. 206-209.

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terrorists attempted to assassinate a courageous rector of the University of Yassi for his opposition to antisemite terrorism. In 1936 a student, Mikhail Stelescu, who resigned from the organization, was killed in a hospital in Bucharest by ten Iron Guardists. The assassins were students from nineteen to twenty-three years of age.7 The University of Bucharest only with difficulty could conduct the business of education in 1936. Strikes of students and antisemitic incidents were continuous. When General Antonescu took over the government in Rumania in 1940 the Iron Guardists murdered more than sixty political prisoners, kidnapped and cruelly murdered the leading Rumanian historian, Professor Nicola Iorga, one-time Rumanian prime minister, himself a nationalist. A leading peasant party economist, Virgil Madgearu, met the same fate. Outrages against Jews followed. This is only an accidental sample of numerous assassinations, killings and outrages of the Iron Guard. The fascists had their support among students. Their goals were expansionistic, nationalistic, antisemitic, directed against moderate and liberal statesmen, who in spite of the terror in 1938, gave at least legally equal rights to minorities in a nationality statute. 8

FOREIGN SUPPORT

The new terroristic fascist groups were recruited mainly from the nationalistic educated classes, university students, the déclassés who never finished their academic education, and former army officers. Together they formed a certain cohesive class of marginals, uprooted, inspired by fascism and its successes. They were outside the ruling elite. In times of growing unemployment among the educated (so-called "intelligentsia"), and lack of job opportunities for young graduates, the new fascist movement had its promise and attraction. Universities, with their ancient and traditional curriculum, petrified structure, offered at graduation few choices of practical employment. In addition to the socio-economic situation, extreme nationalism, manipulated by powerful political parties and at various times by some of the East European governments, contributed to a climate of ethnic tension of high psychological intensity. 7

Joseph Roucek, Balkan Politics (Stanford University Press, 1948), pp. 221ff. Seton-Watson, op. cit., pp. 206-07; Roucek, op. cit., pp. 220-24; Robert Lee Wolff, The Balkans of Our Time (Harvard University Press, 1956), pp. 194-95; C. E. Black and E. C. Helmreich, Twentieth Century Europe (New York: Knopf, 1950), pp. 548-49.

8

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Hostilities and aggressive urges at such moments were easily released and channeled toward targets pointed now by the fascist party. Their tactic was terror. Thus violence and individual terror were conductors for the aggressive urges — they supplied the avenues of release and satisfaction. The action was promising in terms of glory and success. Powerful fascist states supplied the evidence that assassination and terror is the way to success. The terroristic movement on such a large scale had usually a strong "outside base". Support in the form of money, weapons, and printed material came from abroad. In most cases discussed in this paper, the terroristic groups were supported from abroad. This type of tactics is rather an expensive political business; it involves a small army of professionals. Money was frequently collected abroad or was supplied by foreign governments. Italy, Germany and Hungary were such bases for the fascist terroristic movements of the Balkans. There were some indications, hard to prove today, that at times of Polish-German cooperation after 1934, some help for the Iron Guard also came from Poland. 9 The experience of this past in Eastern Europe suggests that large-scale and systematic political assassination in this area, in the fascist era, was not accidental. It was a systematic and planned tactical action by well organized groups, with the support of the fascist states.

THE SOVIET UNION

Political assassination in the Soviet Union was institutionalized in the form of mass terror, legitimized by the ideology. It is beyond the scope of this essay to discuss political assassinations on Stalin's order perpetrated in various countries. Stalin's mass and individual terror calls for volumes, not chapters. The assassination of Sergei Kirov in 1934, friend of Stalin and member of the Politburo, 10 marked a beginning of the great purges in which thousands of innocent people were executed. The assassination of Kirov still remains a mysterious affair. The purge trials and executions were in fact judicial assassinations. 9

Former Rumanian Foreign Minister Grigori Gafencu, a statesman of integrity under difficult circumstances, told this writer that while he was in office he had evidence that support for the Iron Guard came from the Polish foreign office headed at this time by Col. Beck. This writer was unable to validate this with documentary evidence, but Gafencu's statement was explicit and not accidental. 10 Serge, op. cit., p. 278. For an extensive and documented history see: Robert Conquest, The Great Terror (New Edition, Penguin Books: 1971).

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Until this time, however, mass terror initiated early after the Soviet seizure of power continued with various intensities. During the Civil War, White troops, fighting the young Soviet Republic, practiced their own "White terror", and massacred the captured and suspected. The mutual carnage in times of the Revolution calls for a special study of human potentialities for violence and brutality. Individual assassinations in such a climate of violence, in terms of sheer numbers, seems to be reduced to a minor "quantity" of tragedy. In human destiny however an individual act is the measure of man, and a window to the understanding of his mind and his tragedy far more than quantities and numbers alone. After the seizure of power in October the leadership advanced its control while the political and social situation was changing. No doubt, civil war created new conditions which favored and sometimes called for greater centralization of power. There was an opposition against the growing power of the new dictatorship. However mass terror and dictatorship advanced stage by stage. A minor faction, perhaps a minor group of Social Revolutionaries considered a tactics of individual terror against the new rulers. In consequence of their action, V. Volodarsky, the Petrograd commissar of propaganda and M. S. Uritsky chairman of the Petrograd Cheka (the state terroristic apparatus) were assassinated in 1918 (according to Victor Serge). The individual assassinations in 1918, an attempt by the revolutionary Dora Kaplan on the life of Lenin (mentioned below) and in July 1918 the assassination of Count von Mirbach, the German ambassador, by social revolutionaries,11 were rather isolated acts of individuals, perhaps of a minor group. The intention of the assassination of Mirbach can be understood only within the context of this strange theoretical and tactical thinking of Russian intellectuals. According to Steinberg, the objective of this assassination was to "reestablish former equilibrium of the Revolution" and remove the German influence from the Russian Revolution. The fury of the Bolshevik terror was later directed against the opposing socialist parties. The mass terror destroyed compassion for an individual. Numbers were registered, but few are impressed by the statistics of human suffering.

11

Steinberg, op. cit., p. 244.

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INDIVIDUAL TERROR AND RESISTANCE

With the outbreak of the war and foreign conquest, the pattern of violence changed. Violence of course became the paramount way of the Germans in dealing with the conquered territories. While the German conquest advanced, a ruthless terroristic regime was imposed by the Ustashis, Iron Guard, and other satellites. Italians in the Balkans have been far more moderate, relatively restrained as compared with the Germans, and especially with their Croat, Rumanian and Hungarian allies. Mass murder, massacres and concentration camps cover the pages of history of this tragic period. Individual assassination, individual terror as a political means of maintenance and consolidation of power was widely used. It is impossible during those days to separate individual from mass terror; both were closely related and were only a variation of general tactics. Generally, the fascist conquerors extended individual terror to large proportions (executions of hostages, prominent leaders). The borderline between individual and mass terror was broken. The conquered nations did respond politically to conquest. On one hand, satellite governments appeared in all countries, with the single exception of Poland. On the other hand, active resistance appeared in almost all conquered territories. Resistance to foreign occupation in times of war is tantamount to warfare. Such a warfare is complex. The tactical-strategic pattern of resistance had a wide arsenal of means. Individual and tactical terror appeared solely as one, a rather ancillary tactical device of the struggle; it was a part of warfare, not a simple assassination. The militants of the resistance displayed sometimes unusual daring, as for example the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, deputy chief of the Gestapo and chief of security police and "genius of the final solution", in May 1942, by members of the Free Czechoslovak Army; parachuted from England. 12 Individual assassination or individual terror, especially in countries which had a long revolutionary tradition, had definite objectives. This was not solely a separate act of vengeance, although the quality of retribution cannot be denied. Individual terror was a powerful weapon of intimidation. The Germans responded to individual terror with mass execution of hostages. Still, a Nazi administrator, a Gestapo chief, was haunted by the very idea that 12

William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (New York: Fawcett, 1959, 1960), p. 1289.

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he might not escape the fatal bullet or knife from the avengers of the resistance. Secondly, individual terror, applied as internal terror, directed against those regarded or accused of being traitors, informers, blackmailers, was a coercive sanction. This was one of the methods of the maintenance of national solidarity in resistance, by means of eliminating the corrupt element and intimidating the weaker. Thirdly, it was an important act of retribution, an act of justice against those who were guilty of oppressive and cruel acts. Fourth — and this is one of the most important functions of the terror— individual terror spreads fear, an intense fear, perhaps even no less than mass terror. Grapevine rumor spreads the news rapidly, attention usually focuses on some frightful detail, especially effective in terms of psychological vulnerability of the subject. Thus, individual terror was a powerful device of intimidation of the conqueror. Last, but not least, it was a means of elimination of decision makers and leaders. The most dramatic case of such an attempt was the conspiracy of German officers and their attempt to assassinate Hitler.

THE PATTERNS OF RESISTANCE

Tactical individual terror at that time had one element in common in all East European and Russian resistance movements. It was primarily (although not solely) directed against a foreign conqueror, thus in consequence the terroristic action had support among "natives" and had a strong legitimacy in terms of national shared values as well as sympathy of substantial sections of the population. The patterns of resistance, however, varied from country to country. Historical traditions, skills, personality and specific conditions of struggle resulted in these differences. Russia had an impressive and effective tradition of partisan warfare, going back long before the times of Napoleon's invasion. The Cossacks, although Ukrainians, had throughout history made a reputation for unorthodox tactics. The major pattern of Soviet resistance was above all straight partisan warfare. 13 The partisan units were built sometimes 13

A major work in this area, with large and excellent documentation: John A. Armstrong, ed., Soviet Partisans in World War II (University of Wisconsin Press, 1964). On patterns of underground struggle see Gross, Seizure of Political Power, as quoted, pp. 330ff.

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around a kind of specialized "skeleton" structure of regular soldiers, especially in non-Russian lands. Partisan groups were usually led by army officers, the network was organized and controlled by the Soviet authorities. This was not only a spontaneous movement, it was an organized and centrally directed warfare. The main tactics were guerrilla tactics, not individual violence. In the Balkans, the Yugoslav underground was organized in guerrilla units. The old traditions of fighting the Turks in small bands supplied a general pattern of action. Again, individual violence was not a major tactical device. Fratricidal struggles between the Chetniks led by General Draja Mikhailovich, and partisan groups, led by Tito, massacres of Ustashis, resulted in a human catastrophe of historical magnitude. Internal terror, elimination of prominent partisans of the Chetniks or Ustashis in towns or villages, also took place. This holocaust was precipitated on top of the disaster of war and cruel invasions by Germans and Italians. Old traditional hostilities between Albanians and Serbs in Kossovo were again instigated. Serbs were killed by Hungarians in Novi Sad, and by Ustashis in the Serbian land overrun by fascists. It was a genocide of the Serbs. 14 Mass assassination is a summation of individual assassination. THE POLISH U N D E R G R O U N D A N D LEGITIMATION OF I N D I V I D U A L TERROR

The Polish underground had its old traditions, a history of more than a hundred years when the war started. These traditions were renewed almost immediately after the conquest. The first meetings which led to the emergence of a Polish underground state had already taken place in October 1939.15 The Poles organized an underground state, with courts of justice, schools, political authorities of their own, and the underground Home Army (AK). The basic pattern of an underground state headed by an underground national government was established for the first time in Poland during the insurrection of 1863. During the Second World War, major political parties formed the 14

For the account of Chetnik guerrilla warfare and fratricidal struggles, see David Martin, Ally Betrayed (New York: 1946); F. Gross, World Politics and Tension Areas (New York: New York University Press, 1966), pp. 111-13. 15 Stefan Korbonski, W Imieniu Rzeczypospolites (Paris: Instytut Polski, 1954), pp. 11 if.; English translation, The Fighting Warsaw (Minerva Press [no place given] 1956), ed. 1968, Chapter 1, p. 9; "The Birth of the Polish Underground State", Zygmunt Zaremba, Wojna i Konspiracja (London, 1957), pp. 85-115.

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Council of National Unity — a kind of underground parliament — which in turn elected the "Home Council of Ministers", composed of a viceprime minister and three ministers.16 The home authorities had their counterpart in London, where the Polish government in exile resided, headed by a president and prime minister, with the Polish Army in exile. The legal continuity of the Polish state was in that way maintained. Thus, the decision of the Polish underground authorities, and also the sentences of underground courts, had their legitimacy (see Chapter VI) in terms of perception of the Resistance. The sentences of the underground courts were announced with the traditional "In the name of the Polish Republic". The underground state had its department of justice, headed by the former dean (president) of the Warsaw Bar, attorney Leon Nowodworski. Judges were Polish professional judges, carefully selected among the best. Sentence had to be confirmed by the competent District Plenipotentiary of the underground and next was sent to the District Director of Civil Resistance. The District Director in turn transmitted the decision to fighting teams, which executed the sentence.17 Many such sentences were carried out. Before the sentence was carried out, the commanding officer made an attempt to read the sentence to the condemned. On June 25,1943 the Gestapo killed all persons gathered for a wedding celebration at Zbydniow, except the young couple, who had gone to the town photographer to take pictures, and two young boys hidden in the attic. The Gestapo official who was in charge of this outrage was one by the name of Fuldner. The death sentence was passed against Fuldner by an underground court. A few days later, while he was conferring with two visiting Nazis from Cracow, a group of underground fighters surrounded the house, and the commander of the group read him the sentence. He was shot in the presence of Nazi officials, who were asked to report this to the governor. The chief of civil resistance, Korbowski, radioed the story to London. The news about the execution of the sentence was later broadcast from London. 18 There were many cases like this one, and sentences were also carried out against those regarded as traitors. This type of individual violence was indeed a kind of self-defense. In terms of the resistance groups, headed by the Councils of National Unity, this was a legitimate act of enforcing justice. The act had "legitimation" (see Chapter VI) in the eyes of large sections of the population, 16 17 18

Zaremba, op. cit., p. 202. Korbonski, op. cit. (English text), pp. 120-27. Ibid., pp. 210ff.

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which stood behind the Council of National Unity. Thus, the shooting of the Nazi official had, in their eyes, a moral and legal sanction. Was this a political and ideological assassination or a judicial act? The execution was not even deficient of "due process" in terms of the laws of the underground state. The accused at the court was even represented by a lawyer. Of course, this was not a legal procedure of normal conditions. The war and resistance creates its own area of twilight. The act, evaluated from the vantage point of the socio-political situation and ideology of the Polish resistance, was not a political assassination but execution of a sentence. From the viewpoint of the Western Allies — it was an act of war, perhaps an act of retaliation. The killing was carried out by an allied, underground fighting squad. This was, of course, not a political murder, such as the assassination of French Foreign Minister Barthou and Yugoslav King Alexander by the fascist Ustashis. From the viewpoint of the Nazis, this act had again different aspects and different legal meaning. This specific case, and such cases were many, show the close relationship between act and situation (we shall return to this problem in Chapter VI). The act of political assassination cannot be evaluated as an isolated fact, unrelated to situation. The act is related to the situation and should be considered in this context. In a situation of aggression by means of extreme humiliation and brutality, an otherwise peaceful person may respond with physical violence. Zygmunt Zaremba, one of the leaders of the Polish resistance, a man of humanity and self-control, describes his reaction when in a trolley he was hit by a German policeman without any reason. As a Pole, he was treated as a part-slave. "I had an immediate, overpowering urge to kill him like a dog. Only my reason dictated to keep cool... In a deaf underground struggle an individual is left to himself. There is no chance of an enthusiastic struggle, of an open battle. Such an opportunity gave us defense of Warsaw...". 19 This was, however, not the only struggle the underground forces and leaders had to face, not the only type of individual terror the resistance group practiced, in times when respect for human life and dignity ceases to be a major social value, a paramount rule of human conduct. Many were killed, without this procedure. A small but aggressive fascist and antisemitic Polish underground organization killed several prominent democratic leaders and Jews. 19

Zaremba, op. cit., pp. 148,150.

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Various bands assumed also a role of "independent" underground groups. Waclaw Zagorski, a captain in the Polish underground home army, wrote later: We all tried a taste of the underground, and in this jungle we all believed at one time, that the day will come when no one will be persecuted, followed and trapped like an animal, no one will kill anybody, no one will need a disguise or a false passport, or look for a shelter in a strange home. Our underground paths have crossed and led to various places. Some in this struggle have forgotten their real goal; for them it was only important who kills whom, not who instigates the oppression of man against man; their goal was only their own freedom. From the underground they went into the depth of the jungle ...20 Zagorski again touched the great dilemma of political and ideological assassination, of moral ends and destructive means, of intentions, visions of a better world and not anticipated consequences. Dilemmas of similar nature tormented Savinkov, the Russian revolutionary a generation before. The rule of Nazis in conquered countries was one of violence, massacres, genocide and mass extermination. Individual assassination, with the sanction of the German state and its cruel laws, were a part of this policy of racial extermination. Mass and individual terror became a routine. Were those acts, acts of individual, ideological assassination, judicial murders? Or, a dogmatic mind may argue that those were legal acts of public authorities, supported by laws of the conquerors. Two prominent Jewish socialist leaders, members of the Polish Bund, Alter and Ehrlich were executed on Stalin's orders by Soviet authorities — after a trial. Here are cases of violence against individuals in politics, which, however, were different in their sociological nature, in motivation of the actors, even in scope, and also different in terms of juridical norms. The quasi-legal (however illegal in terms of the text of the Soviet Constitution) basis of those acts does not change the fact that they were political assassinations, perpetrated by political decision makers for political objectives. The purpose was to remove any kind of opposition, any potential critics and competitors. We have entered in this short discussion on a difficult, perhaps also dangerous borderline, where a quasi formally legal act is immoral while

20

Gross, Seizure of Political Power, pp. 345ff.

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a moral act is formally illegal in terms of those who control power and means of violence. A limpid moral judgment and humanity toward fellow men can only suggest in such cases the distinction of right and wrong and point out the road. When the three principles of legality, legitimacy and morality are in conflict, the latter must supply the sense of direction.

VI SOME SOCIOLOGICAL CONSIDERATIONS

PERSONALITY, GROUP AND SITUATION

Political assassination and violence are not abstract occurrences. This type of individual violence is sociologically meaningless or necessarily misinterpreted by an outside observer unless it is viewed in its three major contexts — (a) personality, (b) group, and (c) situation. We shall leave the problem of personality types to psychologists, and limit our attempt of analysis: (a) to the act in its context of the supporting group, and (b) to the situation which may have determined the act. First the question has to be asked: What kind of a political group supports the action? Secondly: What are the goals of the terrorists and what do they expect to achieve, in other words, what is the function of their act, in their perception, not our own. However, the social function, the "nonmanifest" function of their acts may be quite different from the function they envisage. This brings us again to the problem of a difference between a single, "isolated" assassination of a political adversary by members of a hostile party, which happens once or twice in many years, and tactical individual terror, a tactic which is continuous and may last even forty years. In this paper, we are concerned above all with assassination as a political means, as the tactics of a group which has political goals and usually political ideas. A single "isolated" act of violence comes also within this scope when its purpose is to achieve a social political goal by an ideological group. As was already indicated, the tactical function of a systematic individual violence, called individual terror, is different from that of a single "isolated" assassination (see Chapter I). Assassinations committed single-handed, by an unorganized "practically" independent individual, disturbed or motivated by emotional urges of hostility-vengeance, or, in his own perception, for the sake of "justice-punishment" were relatively rare in cases discussed in this paper, but they did happen.

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GOALS AND INTENTIONS

The goals reflect the ideology, and the ideology in turn the values. Values form a kind of a normative "nucleus", a core of a political ideology. In a sense, the ideology is a philosophical or a sociological exposition of the norms. Furthermore, goals projected into the future suggest a vision of a new or of a desired state or society. Liberty, equality, national independence, supreme power for one nation (Herrenvolk) are values and norms. Goals and norms interpret the political, the group motivation of the act, although they do not necessarily explain individual motivation. An Armenian revolutionary may decide to assassinate a Turkish governor to avenge atrocities, murder of his friends and neighbors. The political objective of the party, however, in this case might be intimidation of the Turkish administration and elimination of an enemy who was initiator of such action. For the party, individual violence is a political act, as war is a political act of a state or of a government. Karl von Clausewitz made the clear distinction between hostile feelings and hostile intentions; these are, he says, two different elements. He rightly suggests that a government, and a chief of an army may have hostile intentions vis-à-vis another state or army, without hostile feelings.1 The assassination of Tsar Alexander could be conceived and planned as a rational act by the committee, as hostile intentions without personal hostile feelings against an unknown tsar. In an earlier appeal, before assassination, the Central Committee of "People's Will" promised cessation of all struggles and forgiving the past for a single price: an elective legislative assembly.2

GROUP CONTEXT

Most political assassinations in our examples were organized and planned by an ideological or political group, or when the terrorist was a lonely actor (for instance in case of the assassination of Polish president Narutowicz), he had to count on support, at least moral support, of certain ethnic, ideological groups or politically oriented social classes. The goals, values, ideology and tactics of the terroristic party suggested the purpose of the act, the function the act should play. 1

Karl von Clausewitz, On War, translated by O. J. Matthijs Jolles (New York: Modern Library, 1943), pp. 4ff. 2 Kulczycki, op. cit., II, 329. See Appendix III.

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Thus, the act first must be analyzed within the context of the ideology, objectives and tactics of the party. We may call it group context.

SITUATION CONTEXT

The party, again, does not act in isolation; it responds to a situation. The act of individual violence is an act of response to the social and political situation, therefore the social act should be studied in this context. We may call it situation context. The assassination of a Turkish Pasha by a Dashnak (Armenian) revolutionary as an isolated juridical issue is a crime. The same assassination in a context of a situation of persecution and extermination of Armenians is an act of self-defense and "counter-terror": it is a political act. In the context of ideology of the Dashnaks and their perception, this is a revolutionary act of a democratic and socialist Armenian party, an act of killing an enemy in a revolutionary war. In those terms the act has its ideological legitimacy. This means that it is assumed by the actors that this attempt is exercised as a function of values and norms shared by a given society, or it is assumed that such norms should be shared. It is the ideology which supplies ideological legitimacy and rationalization of the act. The moral issue again is different from a sociological one. Morally, an act of assassination as an act is repulsive and evil, and in consequence not fit as a tactic of a democratic party, since actions of such a party move within humane and ethical considerations. In consequence the moral issue of terror attacks the very core of ideology of a democratically oriented party: the values. The moral issue — our conscience — points to the contradictions, and in consequence attacks the motives. This was the dilemma the social revolutionaries in Russia faced, which was so ably dealt with by a former terrorist Borys Savinkov in his novel Pale Horse.3

LEGITIMATION OF THE ACT

Before we move to the discussion of the situational context, we shall dwell for a few moments on the difficult issue of legitimacy. By legitimacy in a revolutionary activity we shall understand this set of 3

See Chapter II.

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values, norms which supply the philosophical, or, better, the ideological basis for the political act. The concept of legitimacy is basic in our entire approach to the problem of state and power. This concept has a prominent place in Western political theory and sociology. 4 We shall use this concept here in its narrow sense of legitimation of a revolutionary act. W e understand by this an interpretation by the party committee of the act of violence as justified on the basis of an ideology or set of values which the committee assumes are shared, or should be shared by a nation, class or mankind. Exercise of power of the state, of the ruler or of the government, at least in our culture requires legitimation. In this sense it is a set of principles or norms, shared by or imposed o n sections of society. Those basic norms form the core, the essentials of public law, and are enforced or exercised if necessary, with the force of legal sanctions. The transmission of power in a state was based on inheritance (dynastic) democratic, or Jacobin legitimacy. The democratic legitimacy derives its strength from the idea of equality and general will. In case of a Jacobin legitimacy a minority rules in the name of the implicit will of the people. The ruling party considers 4

The French historian Francois P. G. Guizot, in his lectures on General History Oj Civilization in Europe (1828) (New York and London: Appleton & Company, 1928), p. 70, defined political legitimacy as "the right of a government to exist and to exercise powers which it undertakes to wield ... What constitutes the true source of legitimacy is a matter of contention. The prevalent American theory, for example, for America at least, that all governments, to be legitimate, must be founded on the consent of the governed, either expressed or implied ...". Guglielmo Ferrero, Pouvoir [1943] (Paris: Plon, n.d.), p. 122, suggests that power is legitimate when exercised according to principles and rules accepted "without discussion" by those who should obey. Max Weber, Staatssoziologie (Berlin edition: Dunkert & Humbolt, 1956), p. 28, distinguishes three types of legitimacy of power of the state: traditional, legal, charismatic. Perhaps the most appropriate, in our case, is the sociological definition of power by Richard A. Schermerhorn, Society and Power (New York: Random House, 1961), p. 36. Schermerhorn defines legitimate power as that "type which is exercised as a function of values and norms acceptable in society". A legal political party, in its legal actions, derives its authority and rationalization from ideological premises, from underlying norms. An underground movement or a party undertaking an act of violence arrogates functions reserved in our time only to the state. Control of means and exercise of violence as sanction and enforcement of laws or defense of the nation is a monopolistic prerogative of modern states. A party which assumes the role of a dispenser of violence must assume the responsibility for the act and indicate its "right" or legitimacy to use the power of violence. This legitimacy is usually expressed in declarations of the party after, or even before, the act. The act is usually explained as a consequence of the situation perceived in terms of ideology and values, which, according to the party committee, are or should be shared by mankind, a nation or a class.

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itself as the only true representative of the interest and the will of the people. In consequence, on the basis of ideology or values this group professes, it carries on the business of government once it comes to power, including exercise of violence. The party in such a belief system is the only true representative and vanguard of the people. The revolutionary act was regarded by the party in our cases as an exercise of the sanction and the will of the people, thus in the eyes of the terrorists it was legitimate. And in fact, in certain cases which were discussed here, the legitimation of such acts was strong, had forms of legal sanctions and found response in widely shared consent and values: During the Second World War, the sentences were passed against Nazi administrators by Polish underground courts, presided over by judges of the Polish Republic, qualified jurists and appointed as judges. The terroristic act was an execution of the sentence (see Chapter V). Not all terroristic acts had this legitimation, of course. To understand "sociologically" a political assassination and its meaning it is necessary to view the act and the way the actor perceives it. This does not mean that the analyst accepts the moral premise or condones the act. Nor is such an approach equivalent to ethical relativism. The premise of the assassin may violate the basic human values: assassination of a helpless woman who happened to be the wife of the King in Serbia, in 1903; assassination of a peasant prime minister Stambuliiski in Bulgaria who attempted to establish peace in the Balkans and improve the conditions of the peasantry in his country; assassination of political opponents, as General Schleicher in Germany, by Hitler's henchmen, to mention a few — all those acts were "legitimated" by ideologies of the assassins and groups of which they were a part and which they represented. Mass terror, in fact mass murder in Europe — exercised by the Russian Czeka, was also legitimated in terms of the Jacobin values of the party, legalized in the laws or practices of the Soviet state. Nazi terror was legitimated by laws and what Nazis regarded the supreme interest of the German nation. All those acts were profoundly immoral. An ideological assassination is a political one (since problems of power are involved), true, but not all political assassinations are ideological.

POLITICAL AND IDEOLOGICAL ASSASSINATION

An assassination as an act of vengeance is primarily an emotional act; it is a satisfaction of certain psychological urges, a response to frustration,

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or to strong feelings of injustice. Murder for money is or may be a rational act, but it is not political. "Sultanism" or assassination of competitors to power is a political act, since its objective is political power, but it is not ideological. Assassination of the democratic and ethical French Socialist, Jean Jaurès, a member of the French parliament, who opposed war, was a political and an ideological act of a French extremist, a nationalist who believed that his act was legitimate, according to his (not our) value system, since it was done (as he believed) in the interest of the French nation. Its political goal was to remove an opponent. The perception of facts and of certain areas of norms by the assassin was eminently different than ours is now or perhaps was at that time. The difference of perception and different valuation is a result of complex conditions, and it is at this time beyond the scope of this paper to discuss this matter further. 5

MAJOR TYPES OF LEGITIMATION OF INDIVIDUAL VIOLENCE

Now, we may suggest very briefly the basic legitimation of the violent acts in those cases we discussed here in the span of nearly a century. We shall reduce greatly the differentiation of legitimation and limit the terroristic acts of major duration to major categories. We may repeat — we shall list here the legitimation of those acts from the vantage point of terrorists or actors. Thus, empirical data of this study suggest the following types of ideological legitimacy of individual violence: 1. Struggle against domestic autocracy and oppression vindicated by principles of social equality and representative government (democracy). (The terror of the Russian Populists and Social Revolutionary Party belongs to this type.) 2. Struggle against foreign rule and oppression in vindication of the principles of national independence, autonomy and federation, in certain cases: democracy and social equality. Individual terror of the Polish Revolutionary groups in the Russian part, prior to 1914; Armenian Dashnaks, in the initial stage before the World War; the terror of IMRO (Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization) claimed this type of legitimacy. Above all, this was the 5

For further discussion of the problems of ideology and perception of reality, see Karl Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia (New York: Harcourt, Brace, Harvest Books). For the relationship of ideology to strategy, see Feliks Gross, "Mechanics of European Politics", in European Ideologies (New York: Philosophical Library, 1947).

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legitimacy of individual violence against the German occupation in Europe during the Second World War. 3. Struggle against democratic government, democracy and policy of peace, in vindication of principles of supreme primacy and interest of a single nation, and/or what is believed a superior race, as well as totalitarian state. To this category belongs the terror of various groups of the extreme right, including the Nazis and the fascists between the wars. 4. Assassination to enforce "purity" of the ideology of the political party: "Internal terror", exercised within the revolutionary organization. Here belongs internal individual violence, assassination within a group ordered by factions or by the committees which claimed the legitimate power. Stalin's purges were a case of mass and internal terror. The Macedonian Committees of the IMRO between 1920-1930, in addition to their terroristic action, were involved in almost continuous internal shooting and assassinations of those who leaned toward different political orientation or were accused of treason. The assassination of Leon Trotsky in Mexico is an example of "internal individual terror" within the Communist party. Trotsky is only one of many, many victims of Stalin's internal terror. Here belong of course assassinations of Strasser, Roehm and many others under personal direction of Hitler.6 The legitimation of terror points as a rule to the distant ideological goals of the party, in consequence to its strategic stages, goals and objectives. In the last resort the goal of individual terror, especially "internal" and "dynastic" is power.

CONFLICT OF VALUES

The terrorist, however, belongs to many groups, not to one. He is a member of his family, he has also friends outside his revolutionary groups. While he acts in a different role, from a member of a revolutionary party, e.g. in his role as a member of family, the values, the norms and behavior are different.7 8

Otto Strasser, Hitler and I (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1940), pp. 175ff. Alfred McClung Lee developed a theory of multivalence. This theory, fundamental in its application to political behavior, is concerned with contradictions of values and situation and with the impact of such contradictions on personality and behavior. See his Multivalent Man (New York: Brazilier, 1966). 7

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Once he assumes at least temporarily a different role, he may see his action in a different perspective, from a diiferent "value-vantage" point and at such a moment he "compares" his action with "universal" norms or norms which are considered as such. (This writer believes that mankind has a limited core of universal values.) At such a moment, he sees the nature of his act in terms of broader ethical valuation. This was the dilemma of the Russian revolutionary terrorists of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, who at a certain point shifted their perspective from a purely revolutionary outlook and narrower set of norms, to broader ethical values and saw the conflict and contradiction of norms. The world of ideas a terrorist lived was different from ours today, the past in which he acted was different from our present.

SITUATION AND LEGITIMATION OF POLITICAL ASSASSINATION

In a next step, we shall move from the analysis of the act in the groupcontext to the discussion of the act in its relation to the situation. In the context of the situation a political assassination appears as a repulsive crime in one situation, while in another situation and context, it is an act of self-defense or vengeance. The assassination of President Garfield in 1882 was, to the same Russian terrorists who organized the assassination of Tsar Alexander II, a repulsive crime, since it was perpetrated in a society which had well working democratic and representative institutions. In the judgment of the Russian Committee the act was criminal and had no revolutionary legitimacy. The assassination of Heydrich was directed against a Gestapo chief and organizer of death camps, and within this context of a current political situation the act had wide legitimation among allies and neutrals, even Germans who shared democratic, we may even argue — universal values. The assassination of a tyrant is a different act than an assassination of a president of a democratic republic, in which citizens enjoy political rights and personal freedom. The new problem appears here: how to define a tyrant? But no amount of abstract logic, justifying such an act, will bridge the moral abyss between the former and the latter. Shooting by Macedonian revolutionaries of Turkish soldiers and bashi-bazouks — irregulars — pillaging and killing unarmed Bulgarian peasants, women and children, burning villages, is morally a diametrically different act than shooting of firemen by a group of people who called them to an

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emergency. Those two situations cannot be equated. Legitimation of individual terror is closely related to the situation within which violence is practiced.

TYRANNICIDES A N D LEGITIMACY OF VIOLENCE

The legitimation of assassination or the right to destroy a tyrant was advocated by leading Catholic and Protestant thinkers in the sixteenth century. The Spanish humanist, Jesuit Juan de Mariana, in his De Rege et Regis Institutione (Toledo, 1599), defended popular sovereignty and tyrannicide. Mariana differentiated a king from a tyrant, and discussed conditions in which tyrannicide, assassination of tyrants, is "noble" or legitimate in our terms (Cap. VII. An Liceat Tyrannum Veneno Uccidere).8 During the night of St. Bartholomew in 1572, the French King, Henry, personally conducted killings and a cruel massacre of innocent French Protestants. The problem arose whether a king is at liberty to kill his own honest and pious subjects. French Protestant theologians answered this question in terms of religious legitimacy to resist the tyrant. The book of Du Plessis-Mornay and Hubert Languet, Vindiciae Contra Tyrannos (1579) supplied political and religious legitimacy to armed resistance against tyrants; moreover, to resist was a duty of a citizen.9 Incidentally, the essay of Morozov on terror written three hundred years later, is in fact a somewhat belated Russian treatise on tyrannicide. Thus, the legitimacy of political assassination, in a situation of political oppression, or tyranny, appears early. In the Western civilization the act of "tyrannicide" had a response in value system in terms of moral justice only (a) under conditions of extreme oppression and abuse of power (absolute power was still perceived as legitimate but within limits); (b) against foreign conquerors, who mistreated the native population; (c) against oppressive autocrats, in times of growing influence of modern democratic ideas, when institutional provisions for peaceful transition to representative government and political rights were either blocked, nonexistent, or forcibly abolished; or when the ruler refused to take steps toward such change (the absolute power at such time was not perceived any more as legitimate). 8

Pierre Mesnard, IIPensiero Politico Rinascimentale (Ban: Laterza, 1964), II, 262-89, especially 275-76. 9 Ibid., H, 524-40.

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Only in certain, limited number of situations such acts were justified or legitimated in terms of generally shared norms.

CAUSATION OF INDIVIDUAL TERROR

The context between situation and the assassination is seminal in terms of vindication of the act by public opinion, by large sections of population, and legitimation by the party. This is one aspect of the significance of the context of situation. There is, however, another aspect of the same issue of act and assassination: What are the conditions, what is the sociological situation conducive to political-ideological assassination or even to individual systematic terror. We shall limit ourselves here primarily to the factual material already discussed in this study. Cases which were discussed occurred at certain times and in certain political cultures. Causation might be different in different political cultures and at different times. Furthermore, a distinction must be made between individual terror applied against domestic autocracy and foreign conquerors on the one hand, and individual terror directed against representatives of democracy and "internal terror".

THE DEAD-END SITUATION: CAUSATION OF INDIVIDUAL TERROR AGAINST AUTOCRACY AND FOREIGN RULE

In the first two cases, two major social-political conditions could be indicated in the past experience which resulted in terroristic response: (a) oppressive foreign rule and conquest, or (b) oppressive domestic rule, the latter without any expectation of institutionalized, legalized avenues of change. We may call this a dead-end situation. What is the meaning of "oppressive" ? This term denotes acts of physical brutality, including killing and limitation of freedom, humiliation of persons, economic exploitation, deprivation of elementary economic opportunities, confiscation of property. Definitions cannot illustrate humiliation and deprivations. Armenians or Bulgarians suffered under Turkish rule, Serbs under Croat Ustasha government, and Jews in Germany and occupied areas of Eastern Europe. Moral, political and economic subordination of ethnic groups, or of a nation by extreme coercive means, in consequence a mass mobility downward to such conditions

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which the conquered or ruled group views as substantial deprivation, result — under certain conditions — into situations in which revolutionary committees may favor the choice of violence as a response. The chances of such response were enhanced under conditions of foreign conquest. We shall call this factor or determinant a "general sociological" one, since essentially it points to a response to ethnic or class subordination or stratification as well as to control of political and social behavior by means of extreme coercion. The case of Poland prior to 1918 is quite illustrative. It was indicated below in the Austrian occupied part of Poland tactical individual terror was absent, while in the Russian part individual terror was directed against high government representatives. Russian rule was oppressive and autocratic relative to the rule in Galicia, which enjoyed a large measure of self-government and individual political rights. Individual terror was again revived by Polish underground fighters under German occupation, which was cruel. Systematic terror against Turkish officials in Macedonia validates also this general hypothesis. But later the terroristic organizations of IMRO were institutionalized and their terroristic action continued, although the "sociological base" discontinued. The Armenian terror of the Dashnaks was primarily a response to Turkish massacres and persecutions. The experience of the Second World War was similar. The conditions of terroristic action appeared at a certain "high" intensity level of oppression, which theoretically at least could be measured by the quantity of oppressive acts, such as destruction of households, killing of conquered people, number of political prisoners of the conquered ethnic group, limitations imposed on freedom of movements and expression. Arbitrary values could be assigned to each type of oppression and a composite index could be formed of all those types of occurrences. Still, a quantitative index cannot express the nature of human suffering and humiliation. Difficult as it is to evaluate the nature of oppression, the fact of various intensities seems to be obvious. Fascist Italian rule, oppressive as it was, was less oppressive than the German Nazi rule.

FACTOR ANALYSIS AND MODEL A

"The general sociological" factor is a relevant causal factor but not a sufficient one; one may even challenge the question whether this is at all times a necessary cause. Oppression must be perceived qua political

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oppression by a group of people. In consequence one of the contributing "causal" factors of a systematic individual terror thus far was the formation or existence of an organized group, guided by an ideology. Ideology determines the strategy and tactics. The terroristic tactic was obviously a consequence of choice of such tactics by a party, which had definite ideological objectives. Tactic was anchored to those objectives. The members of the committee, however, had a number of choices open, at least two alternatives: surrender or fight. History might supply cases where man has chosen self-destruction or total submission in the form of slavery rather than direct armed resistance or action. In some cases, e.g., in the case of Russian terrorists, there were certain chances of change by means of weak representative bodies, or there were other revolutionary alternatives, at least in terms of theory, such as a revolution made rather by the people, as a spontaneous act of the masses rather than a series of assassinations. Here we arrive at the third factor: personality type. The choice of tactics, even under such oppressive conditions as Tsarist rule or German occupation, was mostly a voluntaristic act, a consequence of choice. Leaders and militants of strong principles and beliefs, and of a certain personality structure, were in or joined the revolutionary party of "People's Will" in Russia or the underground Polish movement during the Second World War. In all cases discussed in this paper, where systematic individual terror was part of the tactics of the struggle against autocracy, those three factors were present: (a) "oppressive" sociological situation; (b) a revolutionary party; (c) "activist" personality types, persons who took a definite stand in relation to the situation and had or developed the will to act. The revolutionary party operates in a certain social-political situation, and it responds to it as well as it is trying to affect it: in this sense, there is an interdependence between the situation and activities of the party. But interdependence does not suggest as yet causation of terroristic tactics. The causation of terroristic acts, in terms of systematic, tactical terror, required in our cases those three major causal factors, or three antecedents. We shall now reduce causation of systematic individual terror, discussed in this study, to Model A.

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MODEL A Causation of Tactical Terroristic Acts Against Foreign Rule or Autocracy

C.D.

Systematic terroristic acts (SE) were sequences (effects) of the following process: 1. Presence of three antecedents was seminal A x - Antecedent 1: Existence of a political party with an ideology and tactics of direct action A 2 - Antecedent 2: Perception of social-political conditions as oppression A 3 - Antecedent 3: Presence of activist personality types willing to make political choice of and respond with direct action and violence to conditions of oppression. 2. C.D. - Choice and decision was made within conditions which were a result of an interplay of the 3 factors, A x , A 2 , A 3 and terroristic action chosen 3. Action: Terroristic action followed 4. S (E) the sequence-effect: the terroristic act was accomplished. Briefly: the interplay of three causal factors A 1 ; A 2 , A 3 were necessary in cases discussed here, to result in an effect: individual, tactical terror.

CAUSATION OF INDIVIDUAL TERROR AGAINST DEMOCRACY. THE PRE-ASSASSINATION STAGE

The conditions of a terroristic action against democracy are, however, different. In a democracy in which political rights of citizens are respected,

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the element of direct, physical oppression, such as in the case of foreign conquest or domestic autocracy, is absent. Even under the rule of the peasant party of Stambuliiski, who was later assassinated by a conspiracy, in spite of all the shortcomings and harsh measures, the government was far milder than the dictatorship which followed in Bulgaria. The social-political antecedents, our sociological determinants in all those cases were different than in anti-autocratic terror of the tyrannicides. It is quite possible that terroristic action can be started by an extremist party against a strong and vigorous democracy, although this has not happened thus far in Switzerland or England. Usually such action, however, begins when democratic and representative institutions are weak or in decline, disintegration — similarly, when democratic values lose their appeal and cease to motivate and integrate individuals. Such a process was called by the French sociologist, Emile Durkheim, anomie. In the German Weimar Republic the institutions of the country were weak after a catastrophic crisis of the war, and the representative government unable to cope efficiently with social-economic problems. During this period two courses of action of parties of the extreme right could be noticed: attacks and vilification against the democratic institutions and a campaign of insults and defamation against the leading, known personalities of the democratic camp. Whatever the overt or covert objectives of such tactics were, as a consequence the image of those persons was affected in public opinion. This tactic of moral attack and destruction was intensified: we may call this stage a pre-assassination stage. At a certain point of this stage, attempts of assassination against representatives of democracy appeared; the attempts could be sometimes displaced on other persons, and did not necessarily destroy the person singled out in the defamation propaganda. This pre-assassination technique is quite frequent — Stalin usually destroyed his opponents morally prior to their physical destruction. Is such a campaign conscious or not? directed or spontaneously formed? It is not easy, perhaps not even possible, to give one single general answer. Every case requires a careful study. The fact is that the process of defamation appeared in the past, in a pre-assassination stage, in a variety of forms: articles in newspapers, "antilocutions" in public speeches and private gossip, posters, inscriptions on walls, subways and railroad stations. Before the assassination of President Gabriel Narutowicz in 1922 in Poland, in a pre-assassination stage, a vituperous defamation campaign was launched against him by the parties of the right. The assassination

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was an isolated, political act of killing, not a result of a terroristic tactic. The assassin, Eligius Niewiadomski, believed as it seems from statements, that he had performed a heroic act and a patriotic duty. There was neither conspiracy nor organized terroristic party. But in the climate of vilification, once the political actor was "morally" branded, eliminated and destroyed, psychological restraints and controls of a potential assassin were weakened or even removed, and in his view assassination was justified; in his eyes — and incidentally in Poland, among some nationalists — the act had legitimacy. The assassin represented a psychological personality type with certain tendencies, perhaps with subconscious aggressive urges, perhaps even deviant. But many such persons are around and walk the streets of large cities. Once, however, a "moral" sanction was given to individual violence, by what the future assassin regarded as public opinion, or a political authority, aggression was released, and sometimes was probably displaced against other persons than the "target-persons" of the defamation propaganda. Violence and disorders resulted in the past in a situation of relative insecurity and disintegration or weakening of democratic institutions. In such a climate assassination has appeared. In Germany a process of defamation of Rathenau preceded assassination of this prominent German statesman. Where can we draw a borderline between bold and legitimate criticism and defamation? It is difficult, perhaps even impossible, to draw this precise line. Such an action cannot be effectively prohibited. Prohibition and persecution would destroy the will and courage to criticize and differ, perhaps eventually it would destroy freedom of speech. The process of defamation is rather a symptom than a cause. Weakening or breakdown of democratic institutions was not a sole or an isolated antecedent of violence. Difficulties in functioning of democratic institutions were utilized by anti-democratic parties in tactics of erosion of democratic institutions. Again, a terroristic tactic is a matter of decision and choice, made by the leaders of a party. Such a tactic is also a consequence of a set of values or ideology. Again a certain type of personality must be present; not every member of a rightist party would make such a decision. Now we may again reduce the analysis of causation of tactical terror and political assassination in a democracy to a simple model — Model B.

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MODEL B

Causation of Individual Violence as Tactics Against Democratic Institutions

C.D. Action

1.

2.

3.

^ S(p)

4.

Political assassination in this case is a sequence (SE) of the following antecedents: 1. At:

Social-political determinant; weakening of shared democratic values and/or crisis of democratic institutions A 2 _ 3 : Pre-assassination process of defamation and actions of the party directed against democratic institutions A 4 : Existence of a party, temporary conspiracy with ideology and tactics of direct violence A 5 : Presence of certain personality types, with propensities toward overt aggression once antecedents are present.

2. C.D. - Choice and decision is made by the terrorist group or terrorist party 3. Action is organized and released against target-person 4. Assassination, S (E) follows, which is the sequence and effect of antecedents and decisions. Antecedents form the contributing but not sufficient set of causal variables. The will, which reflects the personality of the decision makers and affects the choice and decision of tactics, is the necessary causal variable. The terroristic action may be planned by the party, but in the past the parties were frequently inspired, supported or even directed by an outside government.

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A GENERAL HYPOTHESIS

The experience of a century in violent political behavior (individual terror and political assassination) in Russia, Eastern Europe including the Balkans, suggests some rather striking but tentative findings, or hypotheses: 1. Assassinations and individual terror appeared or have increased in the past in Eastern Europe (including the Balkans) in periods of intensification of ethnic tensions. (Yugoslavia, Rumania, Bulgaria, Poland — see Chapters III, IV, V). Social-economic tensions before or during the depression did not result in tactics of individual violence. 2. National-political inequalities and tensions rather than social and economic conditions contributed to revolutionary situations in which individual terror was waged by underground parties in Russia (in the nineteenth century and beginning of the twentieth). In the Russian revolutionary theory, individual terror and violence was primarily legitimated as tactics toward achievement of political objectives (representative government, democracy, or dictatorship!) and not of socialeconomic goals. During the late terroristic period, social-economic conflicts appeared independently of terroristic activities, in a form of economic strikes, which, in the wake of the Revolution of 1905, began to change into political strikes. 3. It seems that the level of general delinquency was irrelevant and independent. Political violence involved different social classes and different personality types than common criminal violence.

DURATION

How long did terror as systematic tactics last? In the historical past the duration varied. The longest duration of tactics of individual terror in Russia and Eastern Europe continued for about forty years (IMRO), and of mass terror in Europe six hundred years (Inquisition). Once terror begins it is very difficult to halt it. Assassination calls for vengeance or retaliation, terror releases counter-terror. A tragic chain of reciprocity, once initiated, cannot be easily stopped, since it is motivated by strong emotions. A short, tentative table of duration of terroristic action illustrates this issue. The data of duration are not precise, they represent gross approximations.

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SOME SOCIOLOGICAL CONSIDERATIONS Duration of Tactics of Individual Terror against autocracy or foreign government (approximations)

Polish Socialist Party under Russian occupation 4- 5 years Armenian Dashnaks 25-30 years Russian Populists and Social Revolutionaries 30 years IMRO (Macedonian Internal Revolutionary Organization-including 2nd post 1918 period of changed strategic objectives) 40 years (and more)

Duration of Terroristic Tactics Against Democracy and Moderate Governments (approximations) Croatian Ustasha Macedonian IMRO (2nd period) Rumanian Iron Guard

35 years 20 years 15 years

Duration of Institutions of Mass Terror (approximations) Inquisition about 600 years Intensive terror of Russian Cheka and GPU Qater changed the name) 35 years Terror of the Gestapo 12 years Intense terror during the French Revolution 10 months

INSTITUTIONALIZATION

Both types of terror had periods of long duration. Once the group is institutionalized the activity becomes a part of "institutional" behavior, it creates values of its own, discipline and routines. Institutions, especially bureaucracies of mass terror, have a tendency to perpetuate and extend the life of their organizations. They resist termination of the destructive institutions. Next to institutionalization, professionalization of terroristic parties sets in. Terroristic activity for those who are actively engaged becomes a full-time occupation, their livelihood depends on the party. This tactic requires careful preparation, planning, and deadly skills. It necessitates secrecy, which again conflicts with regular, daily, eight-hour employment. The core of the terroristic organization became — in most cases discussed here — professional. As years went on — and some of those organizations lasted two or even three revolutionary generations — this type of revolutionary activity became a way of life. Once the social-political situation changed, at least in the case of

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Russian Social Revolutionaries as well as of the Poles, the revolutionaries knew how to terminate the terroristic activities. They became members of representative institutions and channeled their energies into building of a short-lived democratic society. But some could hardly adjust to new conditions. In other cases, however, as in the case of Macedonian IMRO, objectives were changed, and terroristic activities did not cease. The professionals continued to apply terror in internal struggles and external aggression. The extension of the duration of terroristic tactics was also dependent on response in the "social base", of the social class the party claimed to represent, or in other cases, response of social or ethnic groups. Some of the terroristic parties had stronger support, others weaker. In certain periods, terroristic activities of the underground movement in Poland had in the cities at least a wide, national support. IMRO at the turn of the century, in their terroristic activities against the Turks, had the support of the Bulgarian peasantry. The "Black Hand" of Serbia had strong influence in the army and among the younger educated classes. The class or ethnic support contributed to the strength of the terroristic parties and to their duration. But the major factors of duration were three: (1) sociological situation within which the party operated; (2) the nature of the party organization and ideological appeal; and (3) personalities of leadership and militants; recruitment and personality types of new members.

DIFFUSION OF THE TERRORISTIC PATTERN

Once the tactics of individual terror were initiated in one country, the news spread by various media and found imitators. In Eastern Europe, the Russian "People's Will" and the Social Revolutionary party exercised influence. Since the nineties of the last century the tactics were assimilated by revolutionary parties in Eastern Europe, the Balkans and Russian Armenia. A kind of political style developed, which to a certain extent was a result of terroristic tactics. This type of tactics imposed — as a condition of individual and group survival — a certain style of political behavior, even a style of personal life. Once the situation changed and the way of life of militants was modified, still something remained of the past. Those who fought against autocracy by way of individual violence, the modern tyrannicides, were frequently men and women of high principles

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and education. For some, this was a tragic and traumatic experience, which left lasting impressions from which it was hard to free their minds. The terroristic nazi and authoritarian parties moved from individual terror to massacres, mass terror and genocide, which again have changed the history and destiny of nations, contributed to attitude formation and hostilities difficult to channel or alter. Still, after the Second World War, mankind did recover rather miraculously from this past, at least on the surface.

SOME REFLECTIONS

Individual terror and violence, political assassination as systematic tactics directed against democratic and free society, debilitates slowly the entire political fabric, erodes democratic institutions. It forces, sooner or later, a resolute action in defense of democracy, which may also result in limitation of freedom, in consequence measures contradictory to democracy, or, the intimidated population may yield to a vocal and aggressive minority. Democracy by definition is a political system in which respect for a dissenting minority and government by consent, not by violence, are fundamental premises. Democracies, conceived as governments of the free, never did develop adequate ways of combatting continuous, systematic violence, especially individual, tactical terror and assassination. Democratic societies view individual political assassination as an exceptional, isolated occurrence. We do believe that a country in which a citizen enjoys freedom and relative welfare should be free of violence. Current experience seems not to confirm such an assumption. Political violence appeared even in societies in which personal freedom was a supreme value. It is of paramount significance to better understand conditions conducive to political assassination, since control of such conditions, and not a repressive policy, suggests a humane road and policy of prevention. But political situations can be manipulated, small terroristic groups may operate for a time in a democratic society by using political rights as their shield. The lessons of the past are a message of warning: once politics of violence and terror sets in, it is difficult to return to democratic and well working representative institutions. Violence creates conditions in which an arrogant and brutal minority can seize power and rule over intimidated and passive multitudes for many years.

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Only a few great civilizations, and in rather short periods in history, were able to maintain governments based on democratic legitimacy, elected government, government by consent and protection of dissident minorities. Democracies decline by slow erosion of their institutions and by means of violence. Understanding of conditions in which individual violence grows, ways by which it can be controlled, by democratic means, setting limits for violent political behavior, and defining conditions under which force must be used to protect democratic institutions, are areas which call for calm judgment, investigation, serious thinking and wise and humane answers.

APPENDICES:

VIOLENCE AND TERROR IN POLITICS

SELECTED SOURCES

APPENDIX 1

NICOLAS MOROZOV'S THEORY OF TERROR

Nicolas Morozov's Terroristic Struggle appeared in London in 1880. Morozov's extreme view was opposed by the majority of the populists, members and sympathizers of the revolutionary party of "People's Will". In an historical perspective, three hundred years before Morozov, the tyrannicides of the Renaissance proclaimed the right of the citizen to destroy the tyrant (see Chapter VI). Morozov, dogmatic in his logic, declares the legitimacy of assassination of any ruler recognized by the "people" as oppressive. His vague and one-sided formulation, which might have threatened development of an orderly democratic government, was strongly opposed by Andrey Shelyabov, leader of the revolutionary party "People's Will", aprotagonist of a representative government and political freedoms. Shelyabov was executed for his revolutionary activities. What Morozov suggests here is an institutionalization of individual terror. This would of course lead to the government by those who combine political cunning with assassination, as it happened already many times before during the Byzantine Empire and Renaissance. The essay of Morozov however indicates, that individual terror in Russia led to escalation of counter terror ("white terror"). Morozov had difficulties in publishing his pamphlet. Eventually this was done — according to Ludwik Kulczycki — with the assistance of Peter Tkachev. Tkachev represented a Jacobin and Blanquist orientation of dictatorship in the Russian revolutionary movement. As early as 1911, this pamphlet on terror was a bibliographical rarity, according to the historian Kulczycki.1 Translation 2 has been made from a reprint which appeared in Paris in 1907, in a publication Dazdrasvuyet Narodnaya Volya. 1

Ludwik Kulczycki, Rewolucja Rosyjska (Lwow, 1911), p. 570, footnote 14. In an attempt to give a faithful translation, the effort was made twice. First it was translated by Mrs. Maria Adamczyk, and checked by Dr. I. Langnas and myself. The work was done again, by Professor M. Liwszyc, and edited by Professor A. Preminger of Brooklyn College. This is The Liwszyc Translation. 2

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NICOLAS MOROZOV THE TERRORISTIC STRUGGLE

I Just as the elementary forces of nature are few and simple but appear in millions of very diversified and fantastic forms, so the internal cause of revolution is eternally one and the same, even though each time it appears in a new, unexpected form. When in the distant past vast forests covered contemporary Europe and only the lonely castles of feudal lords towered here and there; when large cities were scarce and armies did not reach extensive size; when the means of communication were the same for the king's army and for the civilian population of the newly-created nation, and military weapons were the same on both sides — revolutionary movement appeared in the form of large peasant revolts. As time went by, feudalism, which had fragmentized the country, slowly began to disintegrate. The kings obtained for their own disposal large fortunes and armies. The concentration of the population and the higher standards of living of the "civilized" classes led to the improvement of communication between the metropolis and the provinces. The peasant movements were crushed in the embryo stage. Meanwhile, the development of manufacturing concentrated the working people in the cities, and the center of revolutionary life was transferred to the city dwellers. The crooked, narrow, winding streets and alleys of the former city suburbs, running like gorges between the cramped houses, with clotheslines draped across from window to window, provided, ironically, ideal barricades. The sheer mass of the working people, their closeness to the center of operation of the enemy, and the possibility of dealing them a critical blow, increased the probability of victory and gave the revolting people faith in their own strength. Here, the victorious revolution appeared to the world in a different image. It brought about the dissolution of old chains, the disintegration of former ways, and the complete destruction of obsolete idols. At the present time on the endless plains of Russia, with her sparse villages and with her equally rare workers' settlements, the uncoordinated peasant population impeded the organization of a large rural revolt. On the other hand, the insignificance of the proletariat did not, as yet, present any serious danger to the government, and thus, the nascent revolution took on quite original forms. Since the revolution was deprived of the possibility of taking form in a

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rural or city revolt, it manifested itself in the terroristic movement of the "student youth". The peasant movements as well as the proletariat uprisings and the present struggle of intelligentsia with the government are only different forms of the same revolution. The revolution is one and the same, and it only changes its forms in conformity to the conditions of the times.

II

Just as every revolution begins by the development of already formulated ideals, so the Russian movement appeared first of all in the declaration of a new, ideally beautiful way of life. The movement, which began in 1872 by means of propaganda among the working class of St. Petersburg, soon spread to the provincial population. Dressed in peasant coats with staffs in their hands and with bundles of books under their arms, having shaken off the dust of a corrupted world from their shoes, the propagandists toured the settlements and villages of their boundless homeland. There was not a province they did not visit with their prophecy. The movement grew rapidly, and in the summer of 1874 the propaganda embraced almost all of European Russia. For the government, the revolution was unexpected and sudden. The measures against the revolution, however, were taken just as quickly and efficiently. At the end of 1874 almost all propagandists pined away in makeshift prisons waiting to be exiled or sent to hard labor camps or expecting endless confinement in city prisons. Having endured the last defeat in 1875 in the villages, the movement again relocated itself in the city, from there to exert its influence on the rural areas. Here, too, it was crushed by the government; almost all the propagandists of that period as well as the workers who followed them, were caught at the very ferment by prosecutions. Willingly or not, it was necessary to settle a score with the government. Every now and then a secret assassination of a public statesman occurred. On January 24, 1878, the shot meant for Trepov, the police prefect of St. Petersburg, was heard in his waiting room. This shot was the starting point for the whole struggle that followed. From this point on, the movement took on definite form, and it went almost without deviation towards the new, already clearly established ideal. People unknown to society or government appeared out of nowhere and started to dispose of one or another statesman. Having accomplished

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the execution, they disappeared without a trace. In this way Nikonov, Gejknig, Miezentzev, Kropotkin, and a few others were killed. Neither searches nor arrests, practiced extensively by the government, brought any success. The government decided to use the system of "white terror" and condemned to death Bobohov, who had once escaped from exile. As if in response to this brutal sentence, Drentel was shot the next day. From this time on, the events become more and more grandiose. The Tsar, who was a reactionary leader and a promulgator of persecutions, becomes the target for the revolutionists, and all their attempts are directed against him. On April 2, 1879, Solovev tried to kill the Tsar with five shots, but was himself killed. The frightened Tsar left hurriedly for Livadja. Russia was divided among five general governors. Thus came the dark period of executions. The whole summer of 1879 went by like a terrible quiet before the storm. In November, the Tsar decided to leave Livadja and on his way was met by an explosion of dynamite. There was an increased number of arrests but without any significant results. The government looked upon the first arrested socialists as hostages and started to vent its anger on them. Again, there were a few executions. In answer to that an explosion occurred in the Winter Palace on February 5 beneath the dining room of the Tsar, hitting or injuring 53 and killing 10 of his guards. The dictatorship of Loris-Melikov was announced and at the very beginning an attempt was made on his life by Molodeckij. The government started to become friendly with liberals and conservatives in order to induce them to an active struggle with the revolutionaries. There ensued an era of hypocritical liberalism and hidden cruelty. Such strange characteristics marked the Revolution up to this time. In the beginning, the revolution was intermittent, unsystematic, more in self-defense. It became more and more serious and consistent and finally presented to the government its first clearly formulated demands.

Ill What is the likely fate of this new form of revolutionary struggle which could be called "terroristic revolution"? In order to give a more or less positive answer to this question, it is important to review the meaning of the movement and its conditions. Matters were as follows: At the head of the country was the all-powerful government with its spies, prisons and guns, with its millions of soldiers

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and voluntary government servants who either knew or were ignorant of what they represented. It is the government against whom all the national uprisings and all the open revolutionary attempts of youth were helpless. It was a government that managed the country with an iron hand and was capable with one gesture of its leader to destroy tens of thousands of the obvious enemies. Against this large organization, the depressed, intelligent Russian youth brought forth a handful of people insignificant as to numbers but strong and terrible in their energy and elusiveness. The active, spontaneous revolutionary struggle was concentrated in this small group. To the pressure of the all-powerful enemy it opposed impenetrable secrecy. This small group was not afraid of the enemy's numerous spies since it protected itself by the way it carried on the struggle; revolutionaries did not need to get close to a lot of strange, little known people and were able to choose only those men for comrades in their small group who were already tested and trustworthy. The III section (of the secret police) knows how few members of this group fell into the hands of the government through the activity of the government's spies. The revolutionary group is not afraid of bayonets and the government's army because it does not have to clash, in its struggle, with this blind and insensible force, which strikes down those whom it is ordered to strike. This force is only dreadful to the obvious enemy. Against the secret one it is completely useless. The real danger lies in the carelessness among the revolutionaries since it may destroy individual members of the organization, but this destruction will be only temporary anyway. Elements from a better segment of society which are hostile to government will produce new members who will continue to work for the cause. The revolutionary group is immortal because its way of struggle becomes a tradition and part of people's lives. The secret assassination becomes a terrible weapon in the hands of such a group of people. "The 'Malicious Will' eternally bent to one viewpoint becomes extremely resourceful and there is no possibility of saving oneself from its assault." In such a way Russian newspapers described another attempt on the Tsar's life. It is true that human resourcefulness is unlimited. No one would have believed before November 19 that in spite of all the police measures it would be possible to mine the railroad during the Tsar's return from Livadja. Before November 19 no one would have believed that the conspirators could penetrate to the Tsar's castle. But

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terroristic struggle has exactly this advantage that it can act unexpectedly and find means and ways which no one anticipates. All that the terroristic struggle really needs is a small number of people and large material means. This presents really a new form of struggle. It replaces by a series of individual political assassination, which always hit their target, the massive revolutionary movements, where people often rise against each other because of misunderstanding and where a nation kills off its own children, while the enemy of the people watches from a secure shelter and sees to it that the people of the organization are destroyed. The movement punishes only those who are really responsible for the evil deed. Because of this the terroristic revolution is the only just form of a revolution. At the same time, it is also the most convenient form of a revolution. Using insignificant forces it had an opportunity to restrain all the efforts of tyranny which seemed to be undefeated up to this time. "Do not be afraid of the Tsar, do not be afraid of despotic rulers because all of them are weak and helpless against secret, sudden assassinations", it says to mankind. This is the meaning of the movement which is now developing in Russia. Never before in history were there such convenient conditions for the existence of a revolutionary party and for such successful methods of struggle. When a whole new row of independent terroristic societies will arise in Russia together with the already existing terroristic groups and when these groups will come to know each other during their struggle, they will all unite into one common organization. If this organization will start its activities against the government, and if the hard two years struggles of Russian terrorists left any impressions in Russia's youth, then there can be no doubt that the last days of the monarchy and of brutal force will soon be over. A wide path will be open for socialist activities in Russia.

IV

Terroristic movement in Russia has another distinctive feature, which we, its contemporaries, hardly notice, but which has an important meaning. This feature alone can bring about a turning point in the history of revolutionary struggle. Hatred toward national oppressors was always powerful in mankind,

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and many times selfless people tried to destroy the life of the one who personified violence, at the price of their own lives. However, each time they tried, they perished. The act of human justice against tyranny had been accomplished but it was also followed by retribution. In the deathly silence of the depressed witnesses the bloody executioner's black arose, human sacrifice was offered to the idol of monarchy, and national Nemesis lowered again its slightly raised head. The momentary satisfaction of higher justice was now dimmed by the destruction of a generous and selfless man. The very thought about the Tsar's assassination finally turned into something terrible and tragic. It soon evoked rather a notion of hopeless despair and magnanimous suicide than the idea of irreconcilable struggle with oppression... This thought told the people of terrible moral sufferings, of unbearable internal agony which the Tsar's killer had to live through, before he finished his account with life and accomplished his feat which appeared to be exceptional, unattainable and not normal. The Tsar knew that such magnanimous heroes were very few and when he recovered from the first shock, he continued his reign of violence. Contemporary terroristic struggle is not like this at all. Justice is done here, but those who carry it out remain alive. They disappear without a trace and thus they are able to fight again against the enemy, to live and to work for the cause. Sad feelings do not tarnish the realization of restored human dignity. That was the struggle of despair and self-sacrifice; this is the struggle of force against force, of equal against equal; struggle of heroism against oppression, of knowledge and education against bayonets and gallows. Now the struggle does not speak to people of hopelessness and selfsacrifice. No, now it tells them about the powerful love of freedom which is capable of making a hero out of a man, which can give people gigantic strength to accomplish almost superhuman deeds. The tsars and despots who oppress the nation cannot live peacefully any longer in their palaces. The unseen revenger will let them know by a deafening explosion that their time has come and the despots will feel that the earth is collapsing under their feet among the sounds of music, the frightened screams of innumerable crowds, during the dessert at a refined dinner...

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APPENDIX V

It is not difficult to say which way the terroristic struggle should take to accomplish its goal for certain. We have already shown that the conditions of the terroristic party are much more comfortable than those of the government; and the party owes this to the great ideal which inspires its members, to the deep secrecy surrounding its activities and to the weapon used by the party to accomplish its goal. In these conditions victory at an earlier or later date is inevitable, and the government will have to satisfy the demands presented by the opposite side. What could these demands be? Let us look at our past. Russian revolutionary movement always had as its goal the change not only of the political, but also of the economic system, without which complete political freedom for the working people is inconceivable. To preach on the idea of socialism to the people was a method chosen by the Russian Socialist party to accomplish its ideas from the very beginning of its existence in the 70's. Terroristic movement was the result of government persecutions which made propaganda unusally difficult, if not impossible. It is obvious, therefore, that terroristic struggle will quickly come to a stop as soon as the socialists will achieve freedom of thought and press and real safety from oppression. These are the necessary conditions for the wide preaching of socialist ideas. The terroristic struggle will then be followed by a period of calmness, and the youth movement will again direct itself to the people. The lifeless forms of governmental hierarchy will exist up to the time when the nation will become aware of its rights and will rise en masse. The nation will wipe out the hierarchy, and a new, better system based on the needs of freedom and justice will be built on the ruins of the old order. There is no doubt that a constitution will also be an indirect result of Russian terroristic struggle before its end. When the government will become aware of the unfitness of police and gendarmes while coping with the new form of revolutionary struggle, it will try to attract supporters interested in the preservation of the present economic system. This will be the time of the emperor's parliament, when under the cover of social will such oppression as in contemporary Germany will be practiced. The government will have slightly more supporters, but will this destroy the possibility of struggle in the former fashion? It is not difficult to see that it will not. How can the bourgeois elements be helpful to the government? Obviously, only by toadying to the conspirators. However, spying and reporting developed in Russia to such a degree, that there is no

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possibility of reckoning on their future increase with just any kind of change of form of administration. Apart from the multitude of betrayals which took place in society during the last years, and of the mass of anonymous letters flooding the Illrd section at the time of each political assassination, we had seen 12-14 year-old boys reporting their acquaintances at whose home they happened to see a suspicious book. 1 In these conditions there is no need for us to show that all underground printing houses and terroristic actions existed rather by being unknown to the "liberal" elements than under their witty patronage. We are not talking any more about such instances of struggle as undermining the MoscowKursk railroad or the explosion at the Winter Palace where the inevitability of denunciations is obvious at the first suspicion surrounding people under the constitutional or unconstitutional order. If the inclination of the bourgeois element to spy and report did not destroy the possibility for terroristic struggle under such conditions, it will not destroy that possibility in the future. The impossibility of another means of struggle against sedition, as for example, the influence in school and family, where it has been unsuccessfully practiced for a long time by Count Tolstoy, is so evident that it does not pay to talk about it. The contemporary terroristic movement is supported by its own energy and by peculiarities of the struggle, and not by the liberal elements, which always limited themselves to platonisms in their love for revolutionaries as well as in their hatred for government. Terroristic struggle is equally possible under the absolute force or under the constitutional brutal force, in Russia as well as in Germany. Brutal force and despotism are always concentrated either in a few or more often in one ruling person (Bismarck, Napoleon) and stop with his failure or death. Such people should be destroyed in the very beginning of their career, be they chosen by an army or plebiscite. The wide and easy road opened in the country for ambitious people trying to strengthen their power on the remains of national freedom should be made hopeless and dangerous by antigovernment terrorists. Thus, not too many volunteers will try to make use of it. In Russia, where rough force and despotism became traditional in the present dynasty, the course of terror became considerably complicated and perhaps a number of political assassinations and tsar killings are necessary. However, the contemporary terrorists who for two years fought the government, being supported only by the strength of their convictions, have shown that, even without clarifying the ideas of their 1

A case this year in Odessa and other places.

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struggle, it has many chances to succeed, even in this kingdom of despotism. Success of the terroristic movement will be inevitable if the future terroristic struggle will become a deed of not only one separate group, but of an idea, which cannot be destroyed by people. Then in place of those fighters who will perish, new ones and new revolutionaries will appear until the goal of the movement will be achieved.

VI

The goal of the terroristic movement in our country should not become concentrated only on disarraying contemporary Russian despotism. The movement should make the struggle popular, historical and grandiose. It should bring the way of struggle into the lives of people in such a manner that every new appearance of tyranny in the future will be met by new groups of people from the better elements of society, and these groups will destroy oppression by consecutive political assassinations. "Every man has a right to kill a tyrant and a nation cannot take away this right even from one of its citizens", said St. Just during the trial of Louis Capet. These words should become a slogan for the future struggle and violence. There is no possibility to suppose that there won't be the necessary elements for this kind of struggle. Devotion to the idea, heroism and selflessness did not disappear from humanity during its darkest period of history, when it seems that oppression would crush the last gleam of life, and consciousness of people. The gleam sparkled secretly in the heart of the country and broke free here and there as with a shot from Wilhelm Tell, or Babeuf's conspiracy or Decembrists' attempted struggle. The spontaneous, massive struggle against oppression throughout history was parallel to another struggle, which although unconscious and not systematic, nevertheless was continuous and irreconcilable. This other movement became evident because of a number of attempts at political assassinations. With every centennial this struggle became more energetic and active and never were the attempts on the Tsar's life so numerous as in the last 30 years. There were the following facts concerning the struggle of underground fighters from 1848, without taking into account numerous assassinations and attempts at assassination of public statesmen of Russia and America: attempt on the life of the count of Modena, attempt to assassinate a Prussian prince, attempt on the life of Queen Victoria, seriously wounding emperor Francis Joseph on the bastions of Vienna,

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attempt on the life of Victor Emanuel, assassination of Ferdinand III of Parma, attempt on the life of the Spanish Queen, wounding of Ferdinand of Naples by bayonets, shooting of Queen of Greece, assassination of Prince Mikhail of Serbia, attempt on life of Humbert, two attempts on life of King Alfonso during his short reign, four attempts on life of Wilhelm wounding him twice seriously, six attempts to assassinate Napoleon III in all possible ways, six attempts on life of Emperor Alexander II of which only one was discovered while being carried out. All these actions, which were carried out continuously and consequently at the time when the terroristic struggle had not yet been turned into a system, deprives of all foundation the assumption that these actions would cease in the future when terror acquires theoretical foundation. But there is another reason which makes such assumption unlikely. We know that any historical struggle, any historical development, will move along the line of least resistance. All offsprings of movement turning to another direction bruise themselves against the obstacles they encounter on their way. Terroristic struggle which strikes at the weakest spot of the existing system will obviously be universally accepted in life. The time will come when the present, unsystematic attempts will merge into one wide stream and then no despotism or brutal force will be able to stand up against them. The task of the contemporary Russian terrorists is to summarize theoretically and to systematize practically this form of revolutionary struggle, which goes on for a long time. Political assassinations alone should become an expression of this rich, consistent system. We know the importance of the influence of ideas on man. In distant antiquity these ideas brought about Christianity and fromfiresand crosses they foretold near freedom to the world. In the dark calm of medieval ages they were responsible for the Crusades and for many years they attracted people to the dry and unfertile plains of Palestine. In the last 100 years these ideas summoned revolutionary and socialist movements, and the fields of Europe and America were covered with the blood of new fighters for freedom and humanity. When a small handful of people appears to represent the struggle of a whole nation and is triumphant over millions of enemies, then the idea of terroristic struggle will not die once it is clarified for the people and proven that it can be practical. Each act of violence and force will give birth to new revengers and each tyrant will create new Solovjevs and Nobilings. Thus, the very existence of despotism and monarchy will quickly become impossible. Furthermore, it will not be difficult for the revolutionaries-terrorists,

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once they have succeeded, to direct their efforts to the preparation of social revolution of the whole nation. All the same, the ideas of the revolutionaries will live in the memories of the masses, and every manifestation of violence (on the part of government) will bring forth new terroristic groups. It will not be known where these groups will disappear to, or where they will come from. Russian terrorists have two highly important tasks. (1) They should clarify theoretically the idea of terroristic struggle, which up to now is understood differently by different people. Along with the preaching of socialism, preaching on future struggle is essential among these classes of population where propaganda is still possible despite the unfavorable conditions. This can be accomplished because these classes, by their customs and traditions, are close to the revolutionary party. Only then will the struggle receive an influx of fresh forces from the population, and these forces are essential for a determined and long struggle. (2) The terroristic party should show in practice the usefulness of the means it employs. The party should bring about the final disorganization, demoralization and weakening of government for its actions of violence against freedom. This should be achieved through a consistent, punishing system used by terrorists. This system should make the government weak and incapable of taking any measures for the oppression of freedom of thought and against actions carried out for the national welfare. By accomplishing these two tasks the terroristic party will establish its way of struggle as a traditional one and will destroy the very possibility of despotism's recurrence in the future. The future will show if the contemporary terrorists will live up to their standards. We are, however, deeply convinced that the terroristic movement will overcome all the obstacles in its way; the triumph of the cause will show all the antagonists that the terroristic movement fully satisfies the conditions of contemporary reality, which put this form of struggle in the forefront.

APPENDIX 2

POLITICAL ASSASSINATION Position of a Populist Faction

The article on political assassination appeared in a bulletin of the Populists (The Letter of Land and Freedom — Listok Ziemli i Volii) in March, 1879. In addition to other publications, the Populists printed Listok, where shorter articles and declarations were published. This article, written according to Kulczycki by Morozov, 1 deals with goals and functions of assassination. According to Morozov, political assassination against the Tsar and his government was an act of vengeance, self-defense, but also a revolutionary tactic and an efficient weapon of struggle against despots. In conclusion of this rather contradictory statement, Morozow admits with a kind of a strange enthusiasm, that the terror of the revolutionary party led to a harsh response, increase of military rule and political control. The response to intensive terror was an increase of autocracy. Tactics of individual terror against despotism led to counteractions, to "white terror", and eventually the terroristic revolution turned, after 1918 into mass terror. Most of the idealistic social revolutionaries perished in Stalin's purges. Morozov survived miraculously. Individual terror, war, and mass terror created a deadly and tragic pattern.

POLITICAL

ASSASSINATION

(The Letter of Land and Freedom, No. 2-3, Petersburg, March 14, 1879) STATEMENT OF MOROZOV

Political assassination is, first of all, an act of vengeance. Only after having 1

»Kulczycki, op. cit., n , 300.

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revenged the fallen comrades can the revolutionary organization look straight into the eyes of its enemies, only then does it raise itself to the moral height essential for workers of freedom to win over the masses. Political assassination is the sole means of self-defense in the present condition and one of the best methods of agitation. Dealing a blow to the very center of governmental organization, it shakes the whole system with a terrible force. As by an electric current this blow immediately transmits itself throughout the whole state and causes disorder in all of its functions. When there were few adherents of freedom they always secluded themselves in secret societies. This secrecy gave them the strength of the masses. This secrecy gave opportunity to the handful of courageous people to fight with millions of organized but obvious enemies. "In underground places or caves they united into an unconquerable community of 'holy madmen' with whom neither the wild barbarous measures on the one hand, nor the venerable civilized ones on the other could cope." 2 But when political assassination is added to this secrecy as a systematic acceptance of struggle, these people will actually become terrifying to their enemies. The latter will have to tremble every minute for their lives, not knowing from where and when the vengeance will come. Political assassination is the accomplishment of revolution at present. An underground force, "unknown to anyone", summons to its trial highly placed felonious officials, sentences them to death, and the powerful of this world feel the ground moving from under them as they fall from the height of their power into some dark, unknown abyss. With whom should one fight? Against whom should one defend oneself? On whom should one revenge one's devilish rage? Millions of bayonets, millions of slaves wait for one order, one move of a hand... With one gesture they are ready to strangle, to destroy thousands of their very own co-workers. But against whom should one direct this force terrible in its discipline, created through centuries by all the corrupting efforts of government? There is no one around. It is not known from where this punishing hand appeared, and having accomplished the execution, disappeared from where it came into a domain unknown to anyone. It is quiet and silent around everywhere. Only sometimes the body of the murdered one is a witness to the recent catastrophe. The enemies perceive that their very existence becomes impossible; they sense their own weakness in the midst of their power. Political assassination is a very terrible weapon for our enemies, a weapon which does not help them against the 2

Kolokol, January 1, 1864.

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menacing army or legions of spies. That is why the enemies are afraid of it. That is why three-four successful political assassinations compelled our government to introduce military law, to increase gendarmes' divisions, to place Cossacks in the streets and in the villages ... in other words, to perform such a somersault of autocracy to which it was compelled neither through the years of propaganda, nor through the centuries of discontent in all Russia, nor the unrest of youth, nor the curses of thousands of victims tortured in penal servitude and in exile. That is why we acknowledge political assassination as one of the main means of struggle with despotism.

APPENDIX 3

GOALS OF THE RUSSIAN TERRORIST PARTY The Letter of the Revolutionary Committee to the Tsar after assassination of his father Alexander II After the assassination of Tsar Alexander II, the Executive Committee of the People's Will wrote a letter to Tsar Alexander III, free of hostile feelings, suggesting cessation of terroristic struggle in exchange for democratic and representative form of government. This interesting letter begins with feelings of personal sympathy and respect.1 The views expressed in this letter, it seems, represented the majority of the movement.

Your Majesty, The Executive Committee thoroughly understands the mental prostration you must now be experiencing. It does not, however, consider that it should from a feeling of delicacy, defer the following declaration. There is something higher even than legitimate human feeling; it is the duty towards our country, a duty to which every citizen should sacrifice himself, his own feelings, and even those of others. Impelled by this imperious duty, we address ourselves to you without delay, as the course of events which threatens us with terrible convulsions, and rivers of blood in the future, will suffer no delay. The sanguinary tragedy on the Catherine canal was no mere chance occurrence, and could have surprised no one. After what has happened during the last ten years, it appeared inevitable; and therein lies its profound significance, which should be thoroughly understood by him whom destiny has placed at the head of a State. Only a man utterly incapable of analysing the life of the people, can characterise such occurrences as the crimes of individuals, or even of a "band". During an entire decade, we have seen that the Revolutionary 1

Reprinted from Stepniak's Underground Russia (New York: Scribner's Sons, 1892), pp. 313ff.

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movement, notwithstanding the sternest persecution, notwithstanding the sacrifice by the late Czar's Government of everything, liberty, and the interests of all classes of the people, and of industry, nay, even of its own personal dignity; notwithstanding, in a word, all the measures adopted to suppress it, the Revolutionary movement continued to increase; the best forces of the country, the most energetic men in Russia, and the most willing to make sacrifices, came forward to swell its ranks. For three whole years the desperate war has lasted between it and the Government. Your Majesty will admit that the Government of the late Emperor cannot be accused of "want of energy". The innocent and the guilty were hanged alike; the prisons, like the remotest provinces, were filled with the condemned. The so-called "leaders" were taken and hanged by the dozen. There are only two outlets from such a situation; either a Revolution, which will neither be averted nor prevented by condemnations to death, or the spontaneous surrender of supreme authority to the people to assist in the work of government. In the interests of the country, and to avoid a useless waste of talent and energy, and those terrible disasters by which the Revolution is always accompanied, the Executive Committee addresses itself to your Majesty and counsels you to select the latter course. Be sure of this, that directly the highest power ceases to be arbitrary, directly it shows itself resolved to carry out only what the will and the conscience of the people prescribes, you will be able to get rid of your spies, who dishonour the Government, dismiss your escorts to their barracks, and burn the gibbets, which demoralise the people. Then the Executive Committee will spontaneously suspend its own activity, and the forces it has organised will disband and devote themselves to the fruitful work of civilisation, culture, and the welfare of the people. A pacific struggle of ideas will take the place of the violence which is much more repugnant to us than to your servitors, and to which we are now compelled to have recourse solely by necessity. We address ourselves to your Majesty, dismissing the prejudice and mistrust inspired by the past. We will forget that you are the representative of that power which has deceived the people and done them so much injury. We address ourselves to you as to a fellow citizen and honest man. We hope that personal resentment will not suppress in you, either the sentiment of duty or the desire of hearing the truth... We impose upon you no conditions of any kind. Do not take oifence at our proposals. The conditions which are necessary in order that the Revolutionary movement should give place to a pacific development

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have not been created by us, but by events. We simply record them. These conditions, according to our view, should be based upon two principal stipulations. First, a general amnesty for all political offenders since they have committed no crime, but have simply done their duty as citizens. Second, the convocation of the representatives of the whole of the people, for the examination of the best forms of social and political life, according to the wants and desires of the people. We, nevertheless, consider it necessary to point out that the legalization of power by the representation of the people can only be arrived at when the elections are perfectly free. The elections should, therefore, take place under the following conditions: First, the deputies shall be chosen by all classes without distinction, in proportion to the number of inhabitants. Second, there shall be no restriction of any kind upon electors or deputies. Third, the election and the electoral agitation shall be perfectly free. The Government will, therefore, grant as provisional regulations, until the convocation of the popular assemblies: (a) Complete freedom of the press. (b) Complete freedom of speech. (c) Complete freedom of public meeting. (d) Complete freedom of electoral addresses. These are the only means by which Russia can enter upon the path of peaceful and regular development. We solemnly declare, before the country, and before the whole world, that our party will submit unconditionally to the National Assembly which meets upon the basis of the above conditions, and will offer no opposition to the Government which the National Assembly may sanction. And now, your Majesty, decide. The choice rests with you. We, on our side, can only express the hope that your judgment and your conscience will suggest to you the only decision which can accord with the welfare of Russia, with your own dignity, and with your duties towards the country. March 10 (23), 1881.2

2

THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE.

Printed at the office of the Narodnaia Volia, March 13 (23), 1881.

APPENDIX 4

INDIVIDUAL TERROR AS TACTICS

In a pamphlet, Our Tasks (1900), the Russian Social Revolutionary Party presents The Basic Principles of the Program, an official position on revolutionary tactics, especially on relationship of terroristic tactics to mass movement in a struggle against Russian autocracy. It is necessary to note here that the terroristic struggle — according to this important document of the SR — is waged solely against absolute monarchy. We read that: "Terroristic activity will cease only when absolute monarchy has been vanquished and only when political freedom will be completely attained." The Social Revolutionary Party indicates in its program, representative government and democracy as a paramount goal. The Social Revolutionary Party was an ideological heir of the "People's Will", which appealed with the same strength of conviction for the introduction of democratic institutions and freedom (see Appendix 3). THE BASIC PRINCIPLES OF THE PROGRAM OF THE UNION OF REVOLUTIONARY SOCIALISTS1

The Means of Revolutionary Struggle: Terroristic activity and mass revolutionary struggle. The propagation of social-revolutionary ideas and agitation serve as natural weapons to strengthen the Party numerically and to create the most favorable conditions for its successful activities. However, as soon as the revolutionary movement exceeds the limits of the original propagandist«; organization and becomes a large social movement, deeply rooted in various strata of the population, a period of planned struggle with the enemy will be initiated. 1

From the pamphlet Our Tasks, published by the Union of Russian Socialist Revolutionaries in 1900; reprinted by G. A. Kuklin, ltogi (Geneva, 1903).

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Let us assume the following: the present-day political conditions in Russia are not accidental; they will disappear only after the violent overthrow of the absolute monarchy; all these conditions create unsurmountable barriers for a Pan-Russian revolutionary party; the latter — certain of its victory — could, by means of mere physical superiority and open revolution, start an open fight against the Russian absolute monarchy, which is protected by millions of troops and by all means of defense. We therefore feel that the destruction of the existing political order will be carried out exclusively in the name of the social-revolutionary party, based on the principle of conspiracy and connected organically with the surrounding population through mass sympathy and active support. This will be manifested by an open protest and the constant appearance of new fighting groups replacing those who have left. Political terror consists in the annihilation of the most obnoxious and influential personalities who, under the given conditions, represent the Russian absolute monarchy. This political terror will be a strong means of struggle for such a party, as it was in our revolutionary past and present. Systematic terror, along with other forms of open mass struggle which assume enormous decisive importance only at the time of terror (e.g., industrial and agrarian revolts, demonstrations, etc.), will bring about the disorganization of the enemy. Terroristic activity will cease only when the absolute monarchy has been vanquished and only when political freedom will be completely attained. Besides its main role as a means of disorganization, terroristic activity will simultaneously serve as propaganda and agitation, as an open struggle, conducted in full view of the entire nation. This struggle undermines the appeal of governmental authority, justifies its own existence, and calls to life new revolutionary forces as well as the continuous flow of oral and printed propaganda. Finally, terroristic activity becomes a means of self-defense for the clandestine revolutionary party and protects the organization from harmful elements, i.e., spies and traitors. Thus, our immediate goal is political freedom in the name of social revolution. The socialist intelligentsia and the vanguard of the industrial proletariat are our principal yet not exclusive forces. Our present preparatory tasks are propaganda, agitation and organi-

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zation. These will enable us to start and complete the political liberation of Russia by means of systematic terroristic struggle with the absolute monarchy and by other forms of mass struggle which originate in various strata of the population.

APPENDIX 5

A TERRORIST ATTEMPT IN SALONICA IN 1903

A carefully planned terroristic attack in Salonica, largely a tactic of random terror waged by Bulgarian and Macedonian revolutionaries, is described here by Frederick Moore in his essay "The Macedonian Committee and the Insurrection". 1 Moore describes political conditions which led to Bulgarian revolutionary action, which was a response to Turkish outrages. Later, Turks answered the Bulgarian and Macedonian attempts with massacres. Individual terror as tactics of the Macedonians or Armenians at this time should be viewed in the "context-situation" of Turkish rule. The random terror in Salonica was however senseless in its scope, even from a Bulgarian view point. The Macedonians and Bulgarians could not gain friends in Europe by such action and in consequence they have weakened sympathy for their cause. Innocent people were killed indiscriminately, according to this report. This tactics, in entirely different conditions reappeared now in Europe and Middle East.

THE MACEDONIAN COMMITTEE AND THE INSURRECTION FREDERICK MOORE

The Turk has no other idea of governing a discontented province than by repression. When a few men committed acts of anarchy, which a score of London police and detectives would have prevented, every Turkish official, including the Inspector-General, immediately declared with one accord that the only way to put an end to the disorders was to strike at the root — to fight Bulgaria as Greece had been fought when she was following a similar policy. 1

*Frederick Moore's essay appeared in Luigi Villari, ed., The Balkan Question (New York: E. P. Dutton and Company, 1905), pp. 204-16.

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The affair commonly known as the "Salónica Outrages" was ingenious both in design and execution. The desperation and the self-sacrifice of its authors has almost a mediaeval character. Gerjikoff and Sarafoff told me that the official revolutionary organization had no hand whatever in the affair. The Internal Committee was approached by a number of young school-teachers and students, mostly of Salónica, and informed of the plan. The leaders tried to discourage them because of the bad effect the outrages would have on European sympathy. But the young men replied: "Europe put us back under the Turk, after we had been freed, and promised us protection. When the European Powers had accomplished that part of the Berlin Treaty which affected them, they forgot the people whom they had sacrificed. We have pleaded for twenty-five years that their promises should be executed; we have pointed out the insecurity of our property, of our lives, and of our women's honour, but all to no purpose. These things must be brought home to the people who have betrayed us. The death of half a dozen Europeans they will feel, but every soul of us can perish with no effect on them." It is very easy, sitting at home comfortably in London, under as beneficent a government as exists in the world, to dismiss from our minds an annoying sense of duty when an excuse like the "outrages" of Salónica comes to us. But if your wife or daughter were outraged at will by brutal soldiers; if you dared not wear good clothes when going to market, lest they should be taken from you on your way home by the man with the gun; if not only your material possessions, but your children were stolen from you; if, when you remonstrated for any of these frequent occurrences, your evidence were set aside for that of any Muhamedan, and you yourself imprisoned and beaten for daring to object, I wonder then if you would be content to fight only according to "civilized methods" with the certainty of defeat? The revolutionary leaders undoubtedly sympathized with the dynamiters; they argued against the attempt out of policy and not on ethical grounds. But as the young men were determined, the leaders suggested that they should wait until the peasants were armed and let the explosions come as a signal for the uprising. That was agreed to, and the insurgent chiefs themselves were surprised when the Salónica affair occurred prematurely on April 29th, 1903. Early in February a Bulgarian rented a little shop in a narrow street directly opposite the Ottoman Bank. He stocked it at once with groceries, but his prices were so exorbitant that they kept much trade away. Half a dozen regular customers who patronized his shop daily, however, seemed

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to purchase great quantities of provisions. They brought baskets and oil-cans and buckets, and took them away heavily laden; — but their purchases merely served to hide quantities of earth. For forty days this comedy lasted, and all the time the Imperial Ottoman Bank was being successfully mined. Considering the fact that a house at the corner was known even to the man in the street as a den of dynamiters, and the presence of the host of spies which the Government employs — rewarded according to the work they do, and therefore doubly industrious — it is difficult to believe that the authorities were not aware of what was going on in the very heart of Salonica. Feruh Bey, the Turkish Commissioner at Sofia, told me a few weeks after the explosions that he was informed of the intention of the dynamiters a fortnight before the occurrence. He advised the Porte to let the attempt take place, because of the effect it would have in weaning European sympathy from the Bulgarian cause. "How did you know this?" I asked His Excellency. "Through one of my secret agents. Moreover, we knew that two customhouse officials at Salonica were fast growing rich." The tunnel was finished in good time. But one day the plotters saw men with picks and shovels digging in the street at a spot not far from the tunnel and approaching it. On inquiry they learned that there was some trouble with the water-pipes to the Hotel Colombo. There was no time to warn the revolutionary leaders in the mountains. The men mustered, probably twenty-five in all, and decided to carry off the affair on the following night. On the morning of April 29th, a train of Anatolian troops barely missed being blown up just outside the station of Salonica. The "infernal machine" placed on the track was timed a few minutes too soon, and exploded before the train reached it. During the day the Guadalquivir incident occurred. A Bulgarian took a passage for Constantinople on the French mail-boat, and came on board with a bag about half an hour before the ship sailed. At the last moment he bailed a small boat and went ashore, ostensibly to speak to a friend on the quay, leaving his bag behind. As he did not return, the ship weighed anchor without him; but hardly was she in motion when a terrific explosion occurred amidship, and a moment later flames burst out which soon enveloped the whole hull. It was not learned definitely until the evening that dynamite had been the cause. At eight o'clock, when the open-air cafes and music-halls along the quay were crowded with foreigners and the wealthier natives, and the chief thoroughfares were thronged, a number of open carriages drew up simultaneously in front of all the more popular resorts. Their drivers were

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unaware of the mission in which they were doomed to play a part. The "fares" were all dynamiters. Some of them stood up in the carriages and others dismounted, and lit and threw the half-dozen bombs apiece which they carried. A series of explosions followed, creating a panic, but only a few people were killed. With the exception of one or two ex-officers of the Bulgarian Army, not a man of the dynamiters had handled explosives before. The hollow-cast shells, about 2\ inches in diameter, the dynamite, and the fuses had been imported separately, and put together in the little shop opposite the Bank and in other places about the town. The Bulgarians generally threw their bombs too soon, and the people had time to get away from them before the explosions occurred. When the British army used the hand grenade the soldiers were trained to count three slowly after lighting the fuse; this the Bulgarians did not do. Suddenly in the midst of all the excitement that ensued, the lights throughout the city were extinguished. It had been a simple matter to place a charge of dynamite under the gas main outside the walls. There was no mistake about the timing of that charge; the gas was cut off just at the critical moment. Then came the climax. At five minutes past eight, four Bulgarians staggered out of a carriage in front of the Turkish Post Office, pretending to be slightly tipsy, accosted the two guards at the gate, cut their throats, and began to throw dynamite into the building. At the same moment another party drove up behind them and attacked the German Club, adjoining the Bank, in the same manner. Almost simultaneously a heavy charge of dynamite under the Bank and the German Club knocked in the back wall of the former building, and demolished the latter. There were about thirty men within, all of whom, with a single exception, escaped. It was part of the plan of the Bulgarian band to make German subjects suffer — Germany having been the best support of the Ottoman Empire. The German Club was blown up with the Bank, and it had been planned to destroy the German School also. For this purpose some time previously a little house next door to the school had been rented. From the terrace, while attention was drawn off to the burning Bank, a bomb was cast at the nearest window of the school, where it exploded, but did little damage. Other bombs followed fast, and were equally ineffective. In a few moments a barrack across the street opened fire on the house occupied by the dynamiters, and troops rushed up the street in front. Almost simultaneously another detachment poured down from the other direction, and one force, in the darkness mistaking the other for Bulgarians, fired a volley into it before the error was discovered. For more than two hours the

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din continued, during which thirty bombs exploded, and thousands of rifle-shots rent the air. Finally the bombs ceased, and the Turks entered the house. They dragged out two bodies, more dead than alive, already shot in a dozen places, and finished them. Thus ended the Salonica outrages. The scheme was gigantic and well laid, but it failed in many points. It proved, however — if further proof were needed — two things: the corruption of Turkish officials, and the desperation of the Macedonians. All the explosives necessary were brought in through the Salonica custom-house. The importation of table salt into Turkey is prohibited, but even dynamite may come in by bribery. Many of the dynamiters were blown up with their bombs, and the soldiers succeeded in killing a few that night, but the majority escaped for the time being. A house-to-house search through the Bulgarian quarter and the Bulgarian schools was begun at once. Where members of the conspiracy were discovered, fights took place. Generally the houses were burned from around them, and the inmates were shot as they emerged. All the other Bulgarian men of the town were hounded out, a few were shot in their hiding-places, some were beaten to death with the butts of rifles, but the majority were thrown into prison. Hilmi Pasha may have had hopes of "saving the Empire" by means of the reforms, when he became Inspector-General under the Austro-Russian scheme; but if he had such hopes, they were of short duration. Before he left Uskiib to direct the "suppression" of the rebellion in the Monastir district, he had abandoned all effort at honest reforms, and lapsed into the easier task, in which the Turks are adepts, of duping consuls and deceiving foreign correspondents. After the Salonica explosions the Turks were given practically a free hand. The effect on the Western Powers was just what the Turkish Government had calculated that it would be. The Internal Committee had been waiting for a favourable turn of European sympathy before beginning their rising. In Russia's sympathy they never had faith; now England, France, and Italy withdrew theirs. They strove to delay the revolution, but the acts of the Turks forced their hands. It came to the point, in the Monastir district, that the leaders could no longer hold the people. Throughout June and July the arrests, beatings, and shootings of Bulgarians assumed appalling proportions, and a rising was known to be imminent. At last, on the night of August 2nd, the insurrection broke out in the kazas of Ochrida, Perlepe, Monastir, Fiorina, and Kastoria. During the next few days fighting took place between the troops and the

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komittadjis at Smilevo and Ekshisu; and various Turkish villages, whose inhabitants had frequently gone out as armed bands of bashi-buzuks to plunder their Christian neighbours, were attacked. The bands concentrated especially in the Karadjova mountains, and the whole region between Fiorina and Kastoria was in their hands by August 6th. On the night of the outbreak in the Monastir vilayet some three hundred revolutionists entered Krushevo, the wealthiest town in Macedonia, inhabited chiefly by Ylachs belonging to the Patriarchist Church. Some ten or twelve Turkish soldiers were in the gendarmerie station at the time, and there were also thirteen Turkish officials in the town. The soldiers escaped, but the officials were surrounded in the Konak, the building was set on fire, and the Turks shot as they came out. Their wives and children, however, were safely escorted to a Christian house close by, with the exception of one woman who was shot, whether by accident or by an insubordinate komittadji, I could not learn. The revolutionists declared the town free from Turkish misrule, and established their headquarters in the Greek School, three of the leaders forming a governing Triumvirate. Their first act was to commandeer provisions. The komittadjis went about from house to house, knocking at the doors and demanding contributions of bread. At the same time they requisitioned all the lead in the town to make bullets. That same day they seized two Greeks known to have been in the Ottoman employ as spies, gave them a semblance of a trial, and shot them. A number of the young Vlachs of the town had been secretly armed before the revolution, and these, with some other bands who came up later, swelled the number of the rebels to about 1000. The next day men were summoned to appear before the Triumvirate, and ordered to pay into the treasury sums of money in proportion to the wealth of each. In every case the money was forthcoming, and some £T3000 are said to have been collected. Paper money, redeemable on autonomy being granted to Macedonia, was given in exchange. For more than a week no attack was made on the half-armed band that held the town. A large number of troops were brought up, with General Bakhtiar Pasha in command. A man named Adam Aga brought up bashi-buzuks to the number of about 5000. This week was allowed for him to collect the latter from the neighbouring Turkish villages as far away as Perlepe. The town of Krushevo is situated on the summit of a ridge of mountains. The houses are of stone, with roofs of huge slate slabs. I entered one house through which two cannon balls had passed. It was still standing, and had

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not been burnt. Every burned house in the town had been ignited individually. Oil-stains trailed down from the window-sills of many of them on to the rocks, and the marks of the axes with which holes had been cut in the doors so as to thrust in the fire-brands were visible everywhere. But in most cases the doors had been burst open, and the soldiers and bashi-buzuks rushed in to plunder and kill before the houses were set on fire. The gates of the unburned houses bore the marks of the adzes and axes with which the Turks provide themselves when a looting expedition is on the programme. They still carried their adzes in their belts while I was there. The bashi-buzuks, who had often visited Krushevo on market-day, knew the wealth of the town, and they knew which were the houses most worth plundering. The plunder, which was collected by the soldiers and bashi-buzuks, was carried off in the vehicles of the victims, or on the backs of their own animals, and much of it sold publicly in the bazaars of Monastir and Perlepe. The officers got the money that was found in the houses, and the soldiers and bash-buzuks the furniture, silver, and provisions. After the sack the Turkish authorities circulated a declaration for the people of Krushevo to sign, stating that the Bulgarians had committed the atrocities. A few, under compulsion, actually did sign it. The Krushevo affair was a grand plunder, not a massacre. I think eighty-eight was the number of non-combatants killed. The people were ordered to leave the town before the Turks entered. On their way out they were stopped and searched for valuables, and even any good clothes which they wore were taken from their backs. Some of the young women were outraged, and some carried off by the soldiers. The fate of those who refused to leave the town was worse than that of the others. At the time of my visit, bones were still lying in a dry water-course which passed through the town; some of the inhabitants had hidden under the bridges, only to be shot on being discovered. One woman, who had been wounded herself, had had her infant held up before her eyes, and its life threatened by a man with a sword unless she produced money. When the inhabitants returned to the ruined town, they were not even allowed to bury their dead, and some of the bodies were left lying about the streets for several days after, until devoured by dogs. The insurgents had retired from the town when the troops began the bombardment. The Turks have often let the bands escape, and there is little doubt but that an opening in the lines was left for them at Krushevo. The Turks dread dynamite, which is given as one of the reasons that the Bulgarian quarter was left untouched; but I believe the real reason why

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they sacked only the Greeks and Vlachs was principally, if not entirely, that they knew them to be extremely wealthy, while the Bulgars were poor. The only instance of fighting in the town was the case of Peto, a komittadji leader and a native of Krushevo, who had fought the Turks for eighteen years. After the rebels had captured his native place, he declared that he would never again surrender it to its oppressors. With a few other members of the band known as the "Knights of Death", who had sworn to die in the cause, he barricaded himself in an isolated house just outside the town, and fought the Turks for several hours. The little band is said to have shot down nearly fifty Turks before it was finally exterminated. The rising spread eastward.

APPENDIX 6

TROTSKY ADVOCATES MASS TERROR

In his well-known essay Terrorism and Communism Trotsky debates and opposes Karl Kautsky, the leading social-democratic theoretician and intransigent critic of dictatorship and mass terror. 1 Trotsky advocates mass terror by intimidation as a power consolidation technique. Interestingly enough, an essay against freedom of the press followed this section. George Sorel, a French syndicalist philosopher, condoned violence for power conquest by the working class (whatever was meant by it) in his Reflections on Violence, but ethically opposed mass terror for power consolidation. Trotsky approves of shooting hostages, execution (as being far more effective than prison), abolition of freedom of the press, and extreme repression of all dissidents during revolution and in defense of the "working class". History and social science displace theology in his arguments. A generation later similar arguments were used to defend a "race". TERRORISM LEON TROTSKY

The chief theme of Kautsky's book is terrorism. The view that terrorism is of the essence of revolution Kautsky proclaims to be a widespread delusion. It is untrue that he who desires revolution must put up with terrorism. As far as he, Kautsky, is concerned, he is, generally speaking, for revolution, but decidedly against terrorism. From there, however, complications begin. "The revolution brings us," Kautsky complains, "a bloody terrorism carried out by Socialist governments. The Bolsheviks in Russia first stepped on to this path, and were, consequently, sternly condemned by all Socialists who had not adopted the Bolshevik point of view, including the Socialists of the German Majority. But as soon as the latter found 1

Reprinted from Leon Trotsky, Terrorism and Communism (The University of Michigan Press, 1961), pp. 49-59.

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themselves threatened in their supremacy, they had recourse to the methods of the same terrorist regime which they attacked in the East." (p. 9.) It would seem that from this follows the conclusion that terrorism is much more profoundly bound up with the nature of revolution than certain sages think. But Kautsky makes an absolutely opposite conclusion. The gigantic development of White and Red terrorism in all the last revolutions — the Russian, the German, the Austrian, and the Hungarian — is evidence to him that these revolutions turned aside from their true path and turned out to be not the revolution they ought to have been according to the theoretical visions of Kautsky. Without going into the question whether terrorism "as such" is "immanent" to the revolution "as such", let us consider a few of the revolutions as they pass before us in the living history of mankind. Let us first regard the religious Reformation, which proved the watershed between the Middle Ages and modern history: the deeper were the interests of the masses that it involved the wider was its sweep, the more fiercely did the civil war develop under the religious banner, and the more merciless did the terror become on the other side. In the seventeenth century England carried out two revolutions. The first, which brought forth great social upheavals and wars, brought amongst other things the execution of King Charles I, while the second ended happily with the accession of a new dynasty. The British bourgeoisie and its historians maintain quite different attitudes to these two revolutions: the first is for them a rising of the mob — the "Great Rebellion"; the second has been handed down under the title of the "Glorious Revolution". The reason for this difference in estimates was explained by the French historian, Augustin Thierry. In the first English revolution, in the "Great Rebellion", the active force was the people; while in the second it was almost "silent". Hence, it follows that, in surroundings of class slavery, it is difficult to teach the oppressed masses good manners. When provoked to fury they use clubs, stones, fire, and the rope. The court historians of the exploiters are offended at this. But the great event in modern "bourgeois" history is, none the less, not the "Glorious Revolution", but the "Great Rebellion". The greatest event in modern history after the Reformation and the "Great Rebellion", and far surpassing its two predecessors in significance, was the great French Revolution of the eighteenth century. To this classical revolution there was a corresponding classical terrorism. Kautsky is ready to forgive the terrorism of the Jacobins, acknowledging that they had no other way of saving the republic. But by this justification

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after the event no one is either helped or hindered. The Kautskies of the end of the eighteenth century (the leaders of the French Girondists) saw in the Jacobins the personification of evil. Here is a comparison, suficiently instructive in its banality, between the Jacobins and the Girondists from the pen of one of the bourgeois French historians: "Both one side and the other desired the republic". But the Girondists "desired a free, legal, and merciful republic. The Montagnards desired a despotic and terrorist republic. Both stood for the supreme power of the people; but the Girondist justly understood all by the people, while the Montagnards considered only the working class to be the people. That was why only to such persons, in the opinion of the Montagnards, did the supremacy belong." The antithesis between the noble champions of the Constituent Assembly and the bloodthirsty agents of the revolutionary dictatorship is here outlined fairly clearly, although in the political terms of the epoch. The iron dictatorship of the Jacobins was evoked by the monstrously difficult position of revolutionary France. Here is what the bourgeois historian says of this period: "Foreign troops had entered French territory from four sides. In the north, the British and the Austrians, in Alsace, the Prussians, in Dauphine and up to Lyons, the Piedmontese, in Rousillon the Spaniards. And this at a time when civil war was raging at four different points: in Normandy, in the Vendee, at Lyons, and at Toulon." (p. 176). To this we must add internal enemies in the form of numerous secret supporters of the old regime, ready by all methods to assist the enemy. The severity of the proletarian dictatorship in Russia, let us point out here, was conditioned by no less difficult circumstances. There was one continuous front, on the north and south, in the east and west. Besides the Russian White Guard armies of Kolchak, Denikin and others, there are attacking Soviet Russia, simultaneously or in turn: Germans, Austrians, Czecho-Slovaks, Serbs, Poles, Ukrainians, Roumanians, French, British, Americans, Japanese, Finns, Esthonians, Lithuanians... In a country throttled by a blockade and strangled by hunger, there are conspiracies, risings, terrorist acts, and destruction of roads and bridges. "The government which had taken on itself the struggle with countless external and internal enemies had neither money, nor sufficient troops, nor anything except boundless energy, enthusiastic support on the part of the revolutionary elements of the country, and the gigantic courage to take all measures necessary for the safety of the country, however arbitrary and severe they were." In such words did once upon a time Plekhanov describe the government of the — Jacobins. (Sozial-demokrat, a quarterly

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review of literature and politics. Book I [February, 1890, London]. The article on "The Centenary of the Great Revolution", pp. 6-7). Let us now turn to the revolution which took place in the second half of the nineteenth century, in the country of "democracy" — in the United States of North America. Although the question was not the abolition of property altogether, but only of the abolition of property in negroes, nevertheless, the institutions of democracy proved absolutely powerless to decide the argument in a peaceful way. The southern states, defeated at the presidential elections in 1860, decided by all possible means to regain the influence they had hitherto exerted in the question of slaveowning; and uttering, as was right, the proper sounding words about freedom and independence, rose in a slave-owners' insurrection. Hence inevitably followed all the later consequences of civil war. At the very beginning of the struggle, the military government in Baltimore imprisoned in Fort MacHenry a few citizens, sympathizers with the slave-holding South, in spite of Habeas Corpus. The question of the lawfulness or the unlawfulness of such action became the object of fierce disputes between so-called "high authorities". The judge of the Supreme Court decided that the President had neither the right to arrest the operation of Habeas Corpus nor to give plenipotentiary powers to that end to the military authorities. "Such, in all probability, is the correct Constitutional solution of the question", says one of the first historians of the American Civil War. "But the state of affairs was to such a degree critical, and the necessity of taking decisive measures against the population of Baltimore so great, that not only the Government but the people of the United States also supported the most energetic measures." 1 Some goods that the rebellious South required were secretly supplied by the merchants of the North. Naturally, the Northerners had no other course but to introduce methods of repression. On August 6, 1861, the President confirmed a resolution of Congress as to "the confiscation of property used for insurrectionary purposes". The people, in the shape of the most democratic elements, were in favor of extreme measures. The Republican Party had a decided majority in the North, and persons suspected of secessionism, i.e., of sympathizing with the rebellious Southern states, were subjected to violence. In some northern towns, and even in the states of New England, famous for their order, the people frequently burst into the offices of newspapers which supported the 1 The History of the American War, by Fletcher, Lieut.-Colonel in the Scots Guards (St. Petersburg, 1867), p. 95.

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revolting slave-owners and smashed their printing presses. It occasionally happened that reactionary publishers were smeared with tar, decorated with feathers, and carried in such array through the public squares until they swore an oath of loyalty to the Union. The personality of a planter smeared in tar bore little resemblance to the "end-in-itself"; so that the categorical imperative of Kautsky suffered in the civil war of the states a considerable blow. But this is not all. "The government, on its part", the historian tells us, "adopted repressive measures of various kinds against publications holding views opposed to its own: and in a short time the hitherto free American press was reduced to a condition scarcely superior to that prevailing in the autocratic European States." The same fate overtook the freedom of speech. "In this way", Lieut.-Colonel Fletcher continues, "the American people at this time denied itself the greater part of its freedom. It should be observed", he moralizes, "that the majority of the people was to such an extent occupied with the war, and to such a degree imbued with the readiness for any kind of sacrifice to attain its end, that it not only did not regret its vanished liberties, but scarcely even noticed their disappearance." 2 Infinitely more ruthlessly did the bloodthirsty slave-owners of the South employ their uncontrollable hordes. "Wherever there was a majority in favor of slavery", writes the Count of Paris, "public opinion behaved despotically to the minority. All who expressed pity for the national banner... were forced to be silent. But soon this itself became insufficient; as in all revolutions, the indifferent were forced to express their loyalty to the new order of things... Those who did not agree to this were given up as a sacrifice to the hatred and violence of the mass of the people... In each centre of growing civilization (South-Western states) vigilance committees were formed, composed of all those who had been distinguished by their extreme views in the electoral struggle... A tavern was the usual place of their sessions, and a noisy orgy was mingled with a contemptible parody of public forms of justice. A few madmen sitting around a desk on which gin and whisky flowed judged their present and absent fellow-citizens. The accused, even before having been questioned, could see the rope being prepared. He who did not appear at the court learned his sentence when falling under the bullets of the executioner concealed in the forest..." This picture is extremely reminiscent of the scenes which day by day took place in the camps of Denikin, Kolchak, Yudenich, and the other heroes of Anglo-Franco-American "democracy". a

Fletcher's History of the American War, pp. 162-164.

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We shall see later how the question of terrorism stood in regard to the Paris Commune of 1871. In any case, the attempts of Kautsky to contrast the Commune with us are false at their very root, and only bring the author to a juggling with words of the most petty character. The institution of hostages apparently must be recognized as "immanent" in the terrorism of the civil war. Kautsky is against terrorism and against the institution of hostages, but in favor of the Paris Commune. (N. B. — The Commune existed fifty years ago.) Yet the Commune took hostages. A difficulty arises. But what does the art of exegesis exist for? The decree of the Commune concerning hostages and their execution in reply to the atrocities of the Versaillese arose, according to the profound explanation of Kautsky, "from a striving to preserve human life, not to destroy it". A marvellous discovery! It only requires to be developed. It could, and must, be explained that in the civil war we destroyed White Guards in order that they should not destroy the workers. Consequently, our problem is not the destruction of human life, but its preservation. But as we have to struggle for the preservation of human life with arms in our hands, it leads to the destruction of human life — a puzzle the dialectical secret of which was explained by old Hegel, without reckoning other still more ancient sages. The Commune could maintain itself and consolidate its position only by a determined struggle with the Versaillese. The latter, on the other hand, had a large number of agents in Paris. Fighting with the agents of Thiers, the Commune could not abstain from destroying the Versaillese at the front and in the rear. If its rule had crossed the bounds of Paris, in the provinces it would have found — during the process of the civil war with the Army of the National Assembly — still more determined foes in the midst of the peaceful population. The Commune when fighting the royalists could not allow freedom of speech to royalist agents in the rear. Kautsky, in spite of all the happenings in the world to-day, completely fails to realize what war is in general, and the civil war in particular. He does not understand that every, or nearly every, sympathizer with Thiers in Paris was not merely an "opponent" of the Communards in ideas, but an agent and spy of Thiers, a ferocious enemy ready to shoot one in the back. The enemy must be made harmless, and in wartime this means that he must be destroyed. The problem of revolution, as of war, consists in breaking the will of the foe, forcing him to capitulate and to accept the conditions of the conqueror. The will, of course, is a fact of the physical world, but in contradistiction to a meeting, a dispute, or a congress, the revolution

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carries out its object by means of the employment of material resources — though to a less degree than war. The bourgeoisie itself conquered power by means of revolts, and consolidated it by the civil war. In the peaceful period, it retains power by means of a system of repression. As long as class society, founded on the most deep-rooted antagonisms, continues to exist, repression remains a necessary means of breaking the will of the opposing side. Even if, in one country or another, the dictatorship of the proletariat grew up within the external framework of democracy, this would by no means avert the civil war. The question as to who is to rule the country, i.e., of the life or death of the bourgeoisie, will be decided on either side, not by references to the paragraphs of the constitution, but by the employment of all forms of violence. However deeply Kautsky goes into the question of the food of the anthropopithecus (see p. 122 et seq. of his book) and other immediate and remote conditions which determine the cause of human cruelty, he will find in history no other way of breaking the class will of the enemy except the systematic and energetic use of violence. The degree of ferocity of the struggle depends on a series of internal and international circumstances. The more ferocious and dangerous is the resistance of the class enemy who have been overthrown, the more inevitably does the system of repression take the form of a system of terror. But here Kautsky unexpectedly takes up a new position in his struggle with Soviet terrorism. He simply waves aside all reference to the ferocity of the counter-revolutionary opposition of the Russian bourgeoisie. "Such ferocity", he says, "could not be noticed in November, 1917, in Petrograd and Moscow, and still less more recently in Budapest." (p. 149). With such a happy formulation of the question, revolutionary terrorism merely proves to be a product of the bloodthirstiness of the Bolsheviks, who simultaneously abandoned the traditions of the vegetarian anthropopithecus and the moral lessons of Kautsky. The first conquest of power by the Soviets at the beginning of November, 1917 (new style), was actually accomplished with insignificant sacrifices. The Russian bourgeoisie found itself to such a degree estranged from the masses of the people, so internally helpless, so compromised by the course and the result of the war, so demoralized by the regime of Kerensky, that it scarcely dared show any resistance. In Petrograd the power of Kerensky was overthrown almost without a fight. In Moscow its resistance was dragged out, mainly owing to the indecisive character of our own actions. In the majority of the provincial towns, power was

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transferred to the Soviet on the mere receipt of a telegram from Petrograd or Moscow. If the matter had ended there, there would have been no word of the Red Terror. But in November, 1917, there was already evidence of the beginning of the resistance of the propertied classes. True, there was required the intervention of the imperialist governments of the West in order to give the Russian counter-revolution faith in itself, and to add ever-increasing power to its resistance. This can be shown from facts, both important and insignificant, day by day during the whole epoch of the Soviet revolution. Kerensky's "Staff" felt no support forthcoming from the mass of the soldiery, and was inclined to recognize the Soviet Government, which had begun negotiations for an armistice with the Germans. But there followed the protest of the military missions of the Entente, followed by open threats. The Staff was frightened; incited by "Allied" officers, it entered the path of opposition. This led to armed conflict and to the murder of the chief of the field staff, General Dukhonin, by a group of revolutionary sailors. In Petrograd, the official agents of the Entente, especially the French Military Mission, hand in hand with the S.R.s and the Mensheviks, openly organized the opposition, mobilizing, arming, inciting against us the cadets, and the bourgeois youth generally, from the second day of the Soviet revolution. The rising of the junkers on November 10 brought about a hundred times more victims than the revolution of November 7. The campaign of the adventurers Kerensky and Krasnov against Petrograd, organized at the same time by the Entente, naturally introduced into the struggle the first elements of savagery. Nevertheless, General Krasnov was set free on his word of honor. The Yaroslav rising (in the summer of 1918) which involved so many victims, was organized by Savinkov on the instructions of the French Embassy, and with its resources. Archangel was captured according to the plans of British naval agents, with the help of British warships and aeroplanes. The beginning of the empire of Kolchak, the nominee of the American Stock Exchange, was brought about by the foreign Czecho-Slovak Corps maintained by the resources of the French Government. Kaledin and Krasnov (liberated by us), the first leaders of the counter-revolution on the Don, could enjoy partial success only thanks to the open military and financial aid of Germany. In the Ukraine the Soviet power was overthrown in the beginning of 1918 by German militarism. The Volunteer Army of Denikin was created with the financial and technical help of Great Britain and France. Only in the hope of British intervention and of

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British military support was Yudenich's army created. The politicians, the diplomats, and the journalists of the Entente have for two years on end been debating with complete frankness the question of whether the financing of the civil war in Russia is a sufficiently profitable enterprise. In such circumstances, one needs truly a brazen forehead to seek the reason for the sanguinary character of the civil war in Russia in the malevolence of the Bolsheviks, and not in the international situation. The Russian proletariat was the first to enter the path of the social revolution, and the Russian bourgeoisie, politically helpless, was emboldened to struggle against its political and economic expropriation only because it saw its elder sister in all countries still in power, and still maintaining economic, political, and, to a certain extent, military supremacy. If our November revolution had taken place a few months, or even a few weeks, after the establishment of the rule of the proletariat in Germany, France, and England, there can be no doubt that our revolution would have been the most "peaceful", the most "bloodless" of all possible revolutions on this sinful earth. But this historical sequence — the most "natural" at the first glance, and, in any case, the most beneficial for the Russian working class — found itself infringed — not through our fault, but through the will of events. Instead of being the last, the Russian proletariat proved to be the first. It was just this circumstance, after the first period of confusion, that imparted desperation to the character of the resistance of the classes which had ruled in Russia previously, and forced the Russian proletariat, in a moment of the greatest peril, foreign attacks, and internal plots and insurrections, to have recourse to severe measures of State terror. No one will now say that those measures proved futile. But, perhaps, we are expected to consider them "intolerable"? The working class, which seized power in battle, had as its object and its duty to establish that power unshakeably, to guarantee its own supremacy beyond question, to destroy its enemies' hankering for a new revolution, and thereby to make sure of carrying out Socialist reforms. Otherwise there would be no point in seizing power. The revolution "logically" does not demand terrorism, just as "logically" it does not demand an armed insurrection. What a profound commonplace! But the revolution does require of the revolutionary class that it should attain its end by all methods at its disposal — if necessary, by an armed rising: if required, by terrorism. A revolutionary class which has conquered power with arms in its hands is bound to, and will, suppress, rifle in hand, all attempts to tear the power out of its hands. Where it has

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against it a hostile army, it will oppose to it its own army. Where it is confronted with armed conspiracy, attempt at murder, or rising, it will hurl at the heads of its enemies an unsparing penalty. Perhaps Kautsky has invented other methods? Or does he reduce the whole question to the degree of repression, and recommend in all circumstances imprisonment instead of execution? The question of the form of repression, or of its degree, of course, is not one of "principle". It is a question of expediency. In a revolutionary period, the party which has been thrown from power, which does not reconcile itself with the stability of the ruling class, and which proves this by its desperate struggle against the latter, cannot be terrorized by the threat of imprisonment, as it does not believe in its duration. It is just this simple but decisive fact that explains the widespread recourse to shooting in a civil war. Or, perhaps, Kautsky wishes to say that execution is not expedient, that "classes cannot be cowed". This is untrue. Terror is helpless — and then only "in the long run" — if it is employed by reaction against a historically, rising class. But terror can be very efficient against a reactionary class which does not want to leave the scene of operations. Intimidation is a powerful weapon of policy, both internationally and internally. War, like revolution, is founded upon intimidation. A victorious war, generally speaking, destroys only an insignificant part of the conquered army, intimidating the remainder and breaking their will. The revolution works in the same way: it kills individuals, and intimidates thousands. In this sense, the Red Terror is not distinguishable from the armed insurrection, the direct continuation of which it represents. The State terror of a revolutionary class can be condemned "morally" only by a man who, as a principle rejects (in words) every form of violence whatsoever — consequently, every war and every rising. For this one has to be merely and simply a hypocritical Quaker. "But, in that case, in what do your tactics differ from the tactics of Tsarism?" we are asked, by the high priests of Liberalism and Kautskianism. You do not understand this, holy men? We shall explain to you. The terror of Tsarism was directed against the proletariat. The gendarmerie of Tsarism throttled the workers who were fighting for the Socialist order. Our Extraordinary Commissions shoot landlords, capitalists, and generals who are striving to restore the capitalist order. Do you grasp this... distinction? Yes? For us Communists it is quite sufficient.