Not until the movement started by Proudhon had reached Russia did the “propaganda of action” come into it. In Russia the government, controlling the military, was able to check instantly any movement which might appear in any of the few big cities. In the country no movement could have effect.
“Terrorism arose,” says Stepniak, “because of the necessity of taking the great governmental organization in the flank before it could discover that an attack was planned. Nurtured in hatred, it grew up in an electric atmosphere filled by the enthusiasm that is awakened by a noble deed.” The “great subterranean stream” of nihilism thus had its rise. From nihilism and its necessary sudden outbreaks anarchism borrowed terrorism, the propaganda of action.
Prince Peter Kropotkin of Russia was the founder of the violent school of anarchists. Banished from Russia, he set about organizing in various countries bands of propagandists. Instead of the individualism of Proudhon he proclaimed anarchist communism, which is now the doctrine of force and is the branch of the cult most followed in Italy, France, Spain and among the Poles.
That form of anarchy to-day is giving great concern to the police and military power of the world. It has its hotbed in continental Europe. Vienna, beyond all the other capitals on the continent, is said to harbor its doctrinaires. Switzerland has contended with its “propaganda of action,” which Kropotkin stood for in 1879. Italy, France, Spain, Russia, and nearly every other continental country has felt its force. London itself has been a nest of anarchistic vipers in times past. From all this territory, too, the gradual closing in of the police power has forced both leaders and tools of anarchy to seek asylums in America. The problem of anarchy as now presented to the United States government has to deal almost wholly with this foreign born element.
Its principles, as voiced by the manifesto of the Geneva conference in 1882, stand in great measure for the propaganda of action of to-day:
“Our ruler is our enemy. We anarchists are men without any rulers, fighting against all those who have usurped any power or who wish to usurp it.
“Our enemy is the owner of the land who keeps it for himself and makes the peasant work for his advantage.
“Our enemy is the manufacturer who fills his factory with wage slaves; our enemy is the state, whether monarchical, oligarchical, or democratic, with its officials and staff officers, magistrates, and police spies.
“Our enemy is every thought of authority, whether men call it God or devil, in whose name the priests have so long ruled honest people.
“Our enemy is the law which always oppresses the weak by the strong to the justification and apotheosis of crime.