Although predominantly associated with revolutionary activism, most nihilists were not political—instead seeing politics as an outdated mode of society. They held that until a negation of current conditions had taken place the positive role of politics could not properly be formulated. Among some nihilists however, communal principles began to develop, though their formulations in this regard remained vague. With the widespread revolutionary arson of 1862, a number of assassinations and attempted assassinations of the 1860s and 70s, and the eventual assassination of Tsar Alexander II in 1881, Russian nihilism was fiercely mischaracterized throughout Europe as political terrorism and violent criminality. As Kropotkin states, terrorism was particular to given historical conditions of the revolutionary struggle and not to nihilist philosophy itself, which in turn however, scholar Gillespie adds, was central to revolutionary thought in Russia throughout the lead-up to the Russian Revolution. Religious scholar Altizer states that Russian nihilism in fact had its deepest expression in a Bolshevist nihilism of the 20th century.