Petersburg revolutionaries are going through a hard time. The government seems to have gathered all its forces to crush the recently born workers' movement which has manifested itself with such strength. Arrests have assumed extraordinary proportions; the prisons are overflowing. Intellectuals, men and women, are seized; workers are seized and deported en masse. Hardly a day passes without news of fresh victims of the police government, which has furiously hurled itself at its enemies. The government has set itself the task of not letting the new current of the Russian revolutionary movement grow strong and stand on its own feet. The prosecutors and gendarmes already boast that they have succeeded in smashing the "League of Struggle."

This boast is a lie. The League of Struggle is intact, despite all the persecutions. With full satisfaction we note that the mass arrests are serving their purpose, proving a mighty instrument of agitation among the workers and among the socialist intelligentsia, and that new people are coming forward to replace the fallen revolutionaries, ready with fresh forces to take their places in the ranks of fighters for the Russian proletariat and the whole Russian people. Without sacrifices there can be no struggle, and to the savage onslaught of the tsar's bashi-bazouks we calmly reply: revolutionaries have perished — long live the revolution!

The intensification of persecution has so far been able to cause only a temporary weakening of individual functions of the "League of Struggle," a temporary shortage of agents and agitators. Just such a shortage is felt now, and it compels us to address an appeal to all class-conscious workers and to all intellectuals who wish to devote their energies to the revolutionary cause. The "League of Struggle" needs agents. Let all circles and all individuals willing to work in any sphere, even the most narrow, of revolutionary activity declare this to those who have contact with the "League of Struggle." (In the event that any group should be unable to find such persons — which is highly unlikely — it may apply through the "Union of Russian Social-Democrats Abroad.") Workers are needed for every kind of work, and the more strictly revolutionaries specialise in the individual functions of revolutionary activity, the more carefully they think out the conspiratorial methods and devices for covering their work, the more selflessly they confine themselves to small, inconspicuous, piecemeal work, the more reliable will the whole enterprise be, the harder will it be for the gendarmes and spies to detect the revolutionaries. The government has already cast a net of its agents in advance not only over the actual but also over the possible, probable centres of anti-government elements. The government is steadily developing in breadth and depth the activity of its servants who hound the revolutionaries, inventing new methods, employing new provocateurs, trying to bring pressure to bear on the arrested by means of intimidation, presentation of false testimony, forged signatures, planting of fabricated notes, and similar devices. Without the strengthening and development of revolutionary discipline, organisation and conspiracy, the struggle against the government is impossible. And conspiracy demands above all the specialisation of individual circles and persons in separate functions of the work, and the entrusting of the unifying role to the smallest possible central nucleus of the "League of Struggle." The individual functions of revolutionary work are infinitely varied: legal agitators are needed, who are able to speak among workers in such a way as to make prosecution impossible, who are able to say only A, leaving it to others to say B and C. Distributors of literature and leaflets are needed. Organisers of workers' circles and groups are needed. Correspondents from all factories and plants are needed, to report on all incidents. People are needed to keep watch on spies and provocateurs. People are needed to arrange secret premises. People are needed to transmit literature, to carry messages, to establish all manner of contacts. Collectors of money are needed. Agents among the intelligentsia and the officialdom are needed, people who have contacts with workers, with factory life, with the administration (the police, factory inspection, etc.). People are needed for communication with various cities of Russia and other countries. People are needed for arranging various methods of mechanical reproduction of all kinds of literature. People are needed for the safekeeping of literature and other things, etc., etc. The smaller and more minute the job that a particular person or particular group undertakes, the greater the chance that they will be able to set about it thoughtfully and ensure it as far as possible against failure, think out all conspiratorial details, apply every possible means of deceiving the vigilance of the gendarmes and misleading them — the more reliable will be the success of the enterprise, the harder for the police and gendarmes to trace the revolutionary and his connection with the organisation, the easier for the revolutionary party to replace fallen agents and members by others without detriment to the whole cause. We know that such specialisation is a very difficult thing, difficult because it demands the utmost patience and the greatest self-sacrifice from a man, demands that he devote all his energies to inconspicuous, monotonous work, bereft of contact with comrades, subordinating his whole life to dry and strict regulation. But only under these conditions have the leading figures of revolutionary practice in Russia succeeded in carrying out the most grandiose undertakings, spending years on the all-round preparation of a cause, and we are deeply convinced that Social-Democrats will show no less self-sacrifice than the revolutionaries of preceding generations. We know also that under the system we propose, it will be very hard for many persons, eager to apply their energies to revolutionary work, to endure the preparatory period during which the "League of Struggle" collects the requisite information about the person or group offering their services, and tests their abilities through individual assignments. But without such a preliminary trial, revolutionary activity in present-day Russia is impossible.

In proposing this system of activity to our new comrades, we are expressing conclusions which have been reached through prolonged experience, deeply convinced that the success of revolutionary work is most fully guaranteed under this system.

Written in the summer of 1897.