ABSTRACT
The movement of the Narodnoe Delo group toward the International and the earlier (1868) creation of Bakunin's Alliance constituted important steps for the revolutionary movement actually inside Russia because they provided potential new alternatives. In Russia itself, the movement had reached a dead end. The momentum generated by the reaction to the Crimean War and the Government's decision to emancipate the peasants reached a peak in the years 1859–61 and then began to decline. The radical opposition, numerically insignificant and lacking a mass base, could do nothing to bring about the great social change it regarded as the next logical step following the emancipation. The revolutionaries founded secret cells and communes, appealed—in vain—to the peasants to rise up against the Tsar, embraced the cause of Polish freedom, called themselves socialists and democrats. But all this activity little affected the dormant seeds of revolution, which were to mature and blossom only when fresh new winds from the West began to sweep over dark Russia.
