Let us try to answer this question with a small picture of the activity of a typical Social-Democratic circle of 1894–1901. We have already pointed out the widespread enthusiasm for Marxism among the student youth of this period. This enthusiasm referred, of course, not only and even not so much to Marxism as a theory, as to the answer to the question: "what is to be done?", as to a call to march into battle against the enemy. And the new warriors marched into battle with astonishingly primitive equipment and preparation. In the majority of cases there was almost no equipment at all and absolutely no preparation. They went to war like peasants from the plough, seizing only a club. A circle of students, without any connection with the old figures of the movement, without any connection with circles in other localities or even in other parts of the city (or in other educational institutions), without any organization of separate aspects of revolutionary work, without any systematic plan of activity for any significant period of time, establishes connections with workers and gets down to business. The circle gradually unfolds more and more broad propaganda and agitation, attracts by its very appearance the sympathy of fairly wide strata of workers, sympathy from some part of educated society, which provides money and places new and new groups of youth at the disposal of the "Committee." The prestige of the committee (or league of struggle) grows, the scope of its activity grows, and it expands this activity in a completely spontaneous manner: the very same people who a year or several months before had appeared in student circles and decided the question: "where to go?", who established and maintained relations with workers, produced and distributed leaflets, now establish connections with other groups of revolutionaries, obtain literature, take on the publication of a local newspaper, begin to speak of organizing demonstrations, finally transition to open military actions (and these open military actions may turn out to be, depending on circumstances, even the very first agitation leaflet, the very first issue of a newspaper, the very first demonstration). And usually the very beginning of these actions leads immediately to complete collapse. Immediately and complete precisely because these military actions were not the result of a systematic, carefully thought-out in advance and gradually prepared plan of long and stubborn struggle, but simply the spontaneous growth of traditionally conducted circle work; because the police naturally almost always knew all the principal figures of the local movement, who had "distinguished" themselves already from student days, and only waited for the most convenient moment for a raid, deliberately allowing the circle to grow sufficiently and unfold, in order to have tangible corpus delicti[68], and deliberately always leaving several persons known to them "for recruitment" (as the technical expression goes, which, as far as I know, is used both by our people and by the gendarmes). Such a war cannot be compared to anything but an attack by gangs of peasants armed with clubs against a modern army. And one can only marvel at the vitality of the movement, which expanded, grew, and won victories, in spite of this complete absence of preparation among those who fought. True, from a historical point of view, the primitiveness of equipment was not only inevitable at first, but even legitimate, as one of the conditions for broad recruitment of warriors. But as soon as serious military actions began (and they began, in essence, with the summer strikes of 1896), – the defects of our military organization began more and more strongly to make themselves felt. Taken aback at first and making a series of mistakes (such as appeals to society with descriptions of the crimes of socialists, or the exile of workers from the capitals to provincial industrial centers), the government soon adapted itself to the new conditions of struggle and succeeded in placing in the proper positions its forces, armed with all the latest improvements, detachments of provocateurs, spies, and gendarmes. Pogroms began to be repeated so frequently, to seize such masses of persons, to sweep clean to such a degree the local circles, that the working masses literally lost all their leaders, the movement acquired an incredibly jerky character, and absolutely no continuity and connection in work could be established. Remarkable fragmentation of local activists, accidental composition of circles, lack of preparation and narrow outlook in the sphere of theoretical, political, and organizational questions were the inevitable result of the conditions described. Things reached such a point that in some places workers, owing to the lack of stamina and conspiratorial discipline on our part, became imbued with distrust of the intelligentsia and avoided it: the intellectuals, they said, too thoughtlessly lead to collapses!

That this handicraft work finally began to be felt by all thinking Social-Democrats as an illness – this is known to everyone who is at all familiar with the movement. And so that the reader, unfamiliar with it, should not think that we are "constructing" artificially some special stage or special illness of the movement, – we shall refer to the witness already mentioned once. Let no one complain to us about a long quotation.

"If the gradual transition to broader practical activity," writes B—v in No. 6 of "Rab. Delo," "a transition which is in direct dependence upon the general transitional period being experienced by the Russian workers' movement, is a characteristic feature… then there is yet another no less interesting feature in the general mechanism of the Russian workers' revolution. We speak of that general lack of revolutionary forces fit for action[69], which is felt not only in Petersburg, but throughout all Russia. With the general quickening of the workers' movement, with the general development of the working masses, with the increasingly frequent cases of strikes, with the increasingly open mass struggle of workers, intensifying governmental persecutions, arrests, exile and expulsion, this lack of qualitatively high revolutionary forces becomes more and more noticeable and, undoubtedly, does not fail to influence the depth and general character of the movement. Many strikes pass without strong and direct influence of revolutionary organizations… there is felt a lack of agitation leaflets and illegal literature… workers' circles remain without agitators… Along with this there is noticed a constant need for monetary resources. In short, the growth of the workers' movement outpaces the growth and development of revolutionary organizations. The existing body of active revolutionaries turns out to be too insignificant to concentrate in its hands influence over the entire stirring working masses, to impart to all the ferment at least a tinge of coherence and organization… Individual circles, individual revolutionaries are not gathered, not united, do not constitute a single, strong and disciplined organization with systematically developed parts"… And, adding the caveat that the immediate appearance of new circles in place of those shattered "proves only the vitality of the movement… but does not yet show the presence of a sufficient quantity of fully suitable revolutionary activists," the author concludes: "The practical unpreparedness of Petersburg revolutionaries shows itself also in the results of their work. The recent trials, especially of the groups 'Self-Liberation' and 'Struggle of Labor Against Capital'{54}, clearly showed that a young agitator, unfamiliar in detail with the conditions of labor, and consequently also with agitation at a given factory, not knowing the principles of conspiracy and having assimilated" (assimilated or not?) "only the general views of Social-Democracy, can work for some 4, 5, 6 months. Then comes an arrest, often leading to the destruction of the entire organization or at least part of it. The question is, is successful and fruitful activity of a group possible if the time of existence of this group is determined by months? Obviously, the defects of existing organizations cannot be wholly attributed to the account of the transitional period… obviously, the quantitative and, chiefly, the qualitative composition of the existing organizations plays here a not insignificant role, and the first task of our Social-Democrats… should be the real unification of organizations with strict selection of members."