Red prelude : the life of the Russian terrorist Zhelyabov / by David Footman.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 242-262) and index.

1. Background of a revolutionary -- 2. School and university -- 3. The young crusaders -- 4. Deadlock -- 5. Reprisals -- 6. The new party -- 7. The first attacks -- 8. The spring campaign -- 9. "Tarass" -- 10. Organizing revolution -- 11. The final preparations -- 12. Killing an emperor -- 13. The roundup --14. The trial of the six -- 15. The end.

"The outstanding episode of the Russian revolutionary movement of the nineteenth century was the campaign of the Narodnaya Volya or "Will of the People's" Party, which culminated in the assassination of Emperor Alexander II in 1881. It is in the shadow of this campaign that Lenin an his generation grew up; and it was one of the last and youngest recruits to this party that Lenin's elder brother met his death in 1887. Now that Wester Europe is prepared to acknowledge the importance of the Russian Revolution as a factor in the history of mankind, the time has come for a study of the Narodnaya Volya and of the men and women who composed it. That is the main purpose of this book. It is a biography of Andrei Ivanovich Zhelyabov who, with his alter ego Sophia Perovskaya, was the party's leading figure at the decisive period of its existence[...]This book is an attempt to set out how and why Zhelyabov and his friends abandoned their original policy of reform by persuasion to become revolutionary terrorists; and to explain what they did, how they felt, and what happened to them. It is written in terms of personal experience as opposed to ideological theory, not because the story of Zhelyabov and Perovskaya is, inevitably, the great romantic drama of revolutionary history, but because the writer is convinced that to do otherwise would be to put the cart before the horse. This book is concerned with the period of Zhelyabov's life and now what happened after him. But this may be said. The struggle of the Narodovolsky was more than a "mere experiment in self-sacrifice." It was an experiment in total war against the existing social structure and against the vast imperial machine. It was an attempt, by all available means of persuasion and force, to break open for the Russian masses an outlet to a better world." -- From the forward.