Almost done with it now for a 2nd time and no longer trying to find the meaning in everything that's happening... and it's much more delightful of a read. I didn't pick it up the first time around... but the humor is incredible in this book.
6 men are selected by the President/Sunday to be on an anarchist committee. They are planning on "blowing up" the Czar who is going to be meeting with the President of the French Republic.
As the story unfolds you learn that all 6 of the men are undercover police agents, but police agents with a philosophical inclination. Their individual purpose is to sniff out the warning signs of philosophical nihilism that lends itself to the more active anarchical "dynamiters".
Towards the end, when all of the 6 men have realized that each other was a secret police agent, they find themselves on the run from what they believe to be a world gone mad. That this President/Sunday was somehow able to convert everyone to the cause of anarchy.
Their hope for sanity in the world starts to dwindle as they even see peasants supposedly taking up the cause for anarchy. Earlier on the main protagonist "Gabriel Syme" says that the peasant is too practical and common sensical to ever fall for philosophical nihilism. But when he sees even a previous helpful peasant in the angry throng chasing after the 6 men the following dialog occurs:
Laughed out loud when I read that.Two or three men, looking little and black like monkeys, leapt over the edge as they had done and dropped on to the beach. These came ploughing down the deep sand, shouting horribly, and strove to wade into the sea at random. The example was followed, and the whole black mass of men began to run and drip over the edge like black treacle.
Foremost among the men on the beach Syme saw the peasant who had driven their cart. He splashed into the surf on a huge cart-horse, and shook his axe at them.
“The peasant!” cried Syme. “They have not risen since the Middle Ages.”
Another funny moment, when the 6 first realize that they are being pursued by who they believe are a large mob of anarchists won over by President/Sunday:
“Yes,” answered Ducroix, “you may be quite certain that I gave orders the moment I came in. Those enemies of yours gave no impression of hurry, but they were really moving wonderfully fast, like a well-trained army. I had no idea that the anarchists had so much discipline. You have not a moment to waste.”