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Title: Memoirs of a revolutionist
Author: Peter Kropotkin
Release date: June 21, 2024 [eBook #73882]
Language: English
Original publication: London: Swan Sonnenschein & Co., Ltd, 1906
Credits: Lukas Bystricky, Joeri de Ruiter and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST ***
MEMOIRS
OF
A REVOLUTIONIST
[Illustration: P. KROPOTKIN.
1906.
_Photo. by Lavender,
Bromley, Kent._]
MEMOIRS
OF
A REVOLUTIONIST
BY
P. KROPOTKIN
WITH A PREFACE BY GEORGE BRANDES AND A PREFACE
TO THIS EDITION BY P. KROPOTKIN DEALING WITH
EVENTS IN RUSSIA UP TO 1906
_WITH PORTRAIT_
LONDON
SWAN SONNENSCHEIN & CO., LTD.
25 HIGH STREET, BLOOMSBURY
1906
This book would not probably have been written for some time to come,
were it not for the kind invitation and the most friendly encouragement
of the editor and the publisher of the ‘Atlantic Monthly’ to write it
for a serial publication in their Review. I feel it a pleasant duty
to acknowledge here my very best thanks both for the hospitality that
was offered to me, and for the friendly pressure that was exercised
in order to induce me to undertake this work. It was published in the
‘Atlantic Monthly’ (September 1898 to September 1899) under the title
of ‘Autobiography of a Revolutionist.’ Preparing it now for publication
in book form, I have considerably added to the original text in the
portions relating to my youth and my stay in Siberia, and especially in
the Sixth Part, in which I have narrated my life in Western Europe.
P. K.
_October, 1899._
CONTENTS
PART PAGE
I. CHILDHOOD 1
II. THE CORPS OF PAGES 65
III. SIBERIA 144
IV. ST. PETERSBURG--FIRST JOURNEY TO WESTERN EUROPE 209
V. THE FORTRESS--THE ESCAPE 320
VI. WESTERN EUROPE 352
----------
PORTRAIT OF P. KROPOTKIN IN 1906 _Frontispiece_
PREFACE
The Autobiographies which we owe to great minds have in former times
generally been of one of three types: ‘So far I went astray, thus I
found the true path’ (St. Augustine); or, ‘So bad was I, but who dares
to consider himself better!’ (Rousseau); or, ‘This is the way a genius
has slowly been evolved from within and by favourable surroundings’
(Goethe). In these forms of self-representation the author is thus
mainly pre-occupied with himself.
In the nineteenth century the autobiographies of men of mark are more
often shaped on lines such as these: ‘So full of talent and attractive
was I; such appreciation and admiration I won!’ (Johanne Louise
Heiberg, ‘A Life lived once more in Reminiscence’); or, ‘I was full
of talent and worthy of being loved, but yet I was unappreciated, and
these were the hard struggles I went through before I won the crown
of fame’ (Hans Christian Andersen, ‘The Tale of a Life’). The main
pre-occupation of the writer, in these two classes of life-records,
is consequently with what his fellow-men have thought of him and said
about him.
The author of the autobiography before us is not pre-occupied with
his own capacities, and consequently describes no struggle to gain
recognition, Still less does he care for the opinions of his fellow-men
about himself; what others have thought of him, he dismisses with a
single word.
There is in this work no gazing upon one’s own image. The author is not
one of those who willingly speak of themselves; when he does so, it
is reluctantly and with a certain shyness. There is here no confession
that divulges the inner self, no sentimentality, and no cynicism. The
author speaks neither of his sins nor of his virtues; he enters into no
vulgar intimacy with his reader. He does not say when he fell in love,
and he touches so little upon his relations with the other sex, that
he even omits to mention his marriage, and it is only incidentally we
learn that he is married at all. That he is a father, and a very loving
one, he finds time to mention just once in the rapid review of the last
sixteen years of his life.
He is more anxious to give the psychology of his contemporaries than
of himself; and one finds in his book the psychology of Russia: the
official Russia and the masses underneath--Russia struggling forward
and Russia stagnant. He strives to tell the story of his contemporaries
rather than his own; and consequently, the record of his life contains
the history of Russia during his lifetime, as well as that of the
labour movement in Europe during the last half-century. When he plunges
into his own inner world, we see the outer world reflected in it.
There is, nevertheless, in this book an effect such as Goethe aimed
at in ‘Dichtung und Wahrheit,’ the representation of how a remarkable
mind has been shaped; and in analogy with the ‘Confessions’ of St.
Augustine, we have the story of an inner crisis which corresponds with
what in olden times was called ‘conversion.’ In fact, this inner crisis
is the turning point and the core of the book.
There are at this moment only two great Russians who think for the
Russian people, and whose thoughts belong to mankind, Leo Tolstoy and
Peter Kropotkin. Tolstoy has often told us, in poetical shape, parts
of his life. Kropotkin gives us here, for the first time, without any
poetical recasting, a rapid survey of his whole career.
However radically different these two men are, there is one parallel
which can be drawn between the lives and the views on life of both.
Tolstoy is an artist, Kropotkin is a man of science; but there came a
period in the career of each of them, when neither could find peace in
continuing the work to which he had brought great inborn capacities.
Religious considerations led Tolstoy, social considerations led
Kropotkin, to abandon the paths they had first taken.
Both are filled with love for mankind; and they are at one in the
severe condemnation of the indifference, the thoughtlessness, the
crudeness and brutality of the upper classes, as well as in the
attraction they both feel towards the life of the downtrodden and
ill-used man of the people. Both see more cowardice than stupidity in
the world. Both are idealists and both have the reformer’s temperament.
Both are peace-loving natures, and Kropotkin is the more peaceful of
the two--although Tolstoy always preaches peace and condemns those who
take right into their own hands and resort to force, while Kropotkin
justifies such action, and was on friendly terms with the Terrorists.
The point upon which they differ most is in their attitudes towards
the intelligent educated man and towards science altogether; Tolstoy,
in his religious passion, disdains and disparages the man equally with
the thing, while Kropotkin holds both in high esteem, although at the
same time he condemns men of science for forgetting the people and the
misery of the masses.
Many a man and many a woman have accomplished a great life-work without
having led a great life. Many people are interesting, although their
lives may have been quite insignificant and commonplace. Kropotkin’s
life is both great and interesting.
In this volume will be found a combination of all the elements out of
which an intensely eventful life is composed--idyll and tragedy, drama
and romance.
The childhood in Moscow and in the country, the portraits of his
mother, sister, and teachers, of the old and trusty servants, together
with the many pictures of patriarchal life, are done in such a masterly
way that every heart will be touched by them. The landscapes, the story
of the unusually intense love between the two brothers--all this is
pure idyll.
Side by side there is, unhappily, plenty of sorrow and suffering: the
harshness in the family life, the cruel treatment of the serfs, and the
narrow-mindedness and heartlessness which are the ruling stars of men’s
destinies.
There is variety and there are dramatic catastrophes: life at Court
and life in prison; life in the highest Russian society, by the side
of emperors and grand dukes, and life in poverty, with the working
proletariat, in London and in Switzerland. There are changes of costume
as in a drama; the chief actor having to appear during the day in fine
dress in the Winter Palace, and in the evening in peasant’s clothes
in the suburbs, as a preacher of revolution. And there is, too, the
sensational element that belongs to the novel. Although nobody could
be simpler in tone and style than Kropotkin, nevertheless parts of his
narrative, from the very nature of the events he has to tell, are more
intensely exciting than anything in those novels which aim only at
being sensational. One reads with breathless interest the preparations
for the escape from the hospital of the fortress of St. Paul and St.
Peter, and the bold execution of the plan.
Few men have moved, as Kropotkin did, in all layers of society; few
know all these layers as he does. What a picture! Kropotkin as a little
boy with curled hair, in a fancy-dress costume, standing by the Emperor
Nicholas, or running after the Emperor Alexander as his page, with the
idea of protecting him. And then again--Kropotkin in a terrible prison,
sending away the Grand Duke Nicholas, or listening to the growing
insanity of a peasant who is confined in a cell under his very feet.
He has lived the life of the aristocrat and of the worker; he has been
one of the Emperor’s pages and a poverty-stricken writer; he has lived
the life of the student, the officer, the man of science, the explorer
of unknown lands, the administrator, and the hunted revolutionist.
In exile he has had at times to live upon bread and tea as a Russian
peasant; and he has been exposed to espionage and assassination plots
like a Russian emperor.
Few men have had an equally wide field of experience. Just as Kropotkin
is able, as a geologist, to survey prehistoric evolution for hundreds
of thousands of years past, so too he has assimilated the whole
historical evolution of his own times. To the literary and scientific
education which is won in the study and in the university (such as
the knowledge of languages, belles-lettres, philosophy, and higher
mathematics), he added at an early stage of his life that education
which is gained in the workshop, in the laboratory, and in the open
field--natural science, military science, fortification, knowledge of
mechanical and industrial processes. His intellectual equipment is
universal.
What must this active mind have suffered when he was reduced to the
inactivity of prison life! What a test of endurance and what an
exercise in stoicism! Kropotkin says somewhere that a morally developed
personality must be at the foundation of every organization. That
applies to him. Life has made of him one of the cornerstones for the
building of the future.
The crisis in Kropotkin’s life has two turning points which must be
mentioned.
He approaches his thirtieth year--the decisive year in a man’s life.
With heart and soul he is a man of science; he has made a valuable
scientific discovery. He has found out that the maps of Northern Asia
are incorrect; that not only the old conceptions of the geography
of Asia are wrong, but that the theories of Humboldt are also in
contradiction with the facts. For more than two years he has plunged
into laborious research. Then, suddenly, on a certain day, the true
relations of the facts flash upon him; he understands that the main
lines of structure in Asia are not from north to south or from west
to east, but from the south-west to the north-east. He submits his
discovery to test, he applies it to numerous separated facts, and--it
holds its ground. Thus he knew the joy of scientific revelation in its
highest and purest form; he has felt how elevating is its action on the
mind.
Then comes the crisis. The thought that these joys are the lot of so
few, fills him now with sorrow. He asks himself whether he has the
right to enjoy this knowledge alone--for himself. He feels that there
is a higher duty before him--to do his part in bringing to the mass
of the people the information already gained, rather than to work at
making new discoveries.
For my part I do not think that he was right. With such conceptions
Pasteur would not have been the benefactor of mankind that he has been.
After all, everything, in the long run, is to the benefit of the mass
of the people. I think that a man does the utmost for the well-being
of all when he has given to the world the most intense production of
which he is capable. But this fundamental notion is characteristic of
Kropotkin; it contains his very essence.
And this attitude of mind carries him farther. In Finland, where
he is going to make a new scientific discovery, as he comes to the
idea--which was heresy at that time--that in prehistoric ages all
Northern Europe was buried under ice, he is so much impressed with
compassion for the poor, the suffering, who often know hunger in their
struggle for bread, that he considers it his highest, absolute duty to
become a teacher and helper of the great working and destitute masses.
Soon after that a new world opens before him---the life of the working
classes--and he _learns_ from those whom he intends to _teach_.
Five or six years later this crisis appears in its second phase. It
happens in Switzerland. Already during his first stay there Kropotkin
had abandoned the group of state-socialists, from fear of an economical
despotism, from hatred of centralization, from love for the freedom
of the individual and the commune. Now, however, after his long
imprisonment in Russia, during his second stay amidst the intelligent
workers of West Switzerland, the conception which floated before his
eyes of a new structure of society, more distinctly dawns upon him
in the shape of a society of federated associations, co-operating in
the same way as the railway companies, or the postal departments of
separate countries co-operate. He knows that he cannot dictate to the
future the lines which it will have to follow; he is convinced that
all must grow out of the constructive activity of the masses, but he
compares, for the sake of illustration, the coming structure with the
guilds and the mutual relations which existed in mediæval times, and
were worked out from below. He does not believe in the distinction
between leaders and led; but I must confess that I am old-fashioned
enough to feel pleased when Kropotkin, by a slight inconsistency, says
once in praise of a friend that he was ‘a born leader of men.’
The author describes himself as a Revolutionist, and he is surely quite
right in so doing. But seldom have there been revolutionists so humane
and mild. One feels astounded when, in alluding on one occasion to the
possibility of an armed conflict with the Swiss police, there appears
in his character the fighting instinct which exists in all of us. He
cannot say precisely in this passage whether he and his friends felt a
relief at being spared a fight, or a regret that the fight did not take
place. This expression of feeling stands alone. He has never been an
avenger, but always a martyr.
He does not impose sacrifices upon others; he makes them himself. All
his life he has done it, but in such a way that the sacrifice seems to
have cost him nothing. So little does he make of it. And with all his
energy he is so far from being vindictive, that of a disgusting prison
doctor he only remarks: ‘The less said of him the better.’
He is a revolutionist without emphasis and without emblem. He laughs
at the oaths and ceremonies with which conspirators bind themselves in
dramas and operas. This man is simplicity personified. In character he
will bear comparison with any of the fighters for freedom in all lands.
None have been more disinterested than he, none have loved mankind more
than he does.
But he would not permit me to say in the forefront of his book all the
good that I think of him, and should I say it, my words would outrun
the limits of a reasonable Preface.
GEORGE BRANDES.
PREFACE
TO THE SECOND EDITION
When the first edition of this book was brought out at the end of 1899,
it was evident to those who had followed the development of affairs in
Russia that, owing to the obstinacy of its rulers in refusing to make
the necessary concessions in the way of political freedom, the country
was rapidly drifting towards a violent revolution. But everything
seemed to be so calm on the surface, that when a few of us expressed
this idea, we were generally told that we merely took our desires for
realities. At the present moment Russia is in full revolution. The
old system is falling to pieces, and amidst its ruins the new one is
painfully making its way. Meanwhile the defenders of the past are
waging a war of extermination against the country--a war which may
prolong their rule for a few additional months, but which raises at the
same time the passions of the people to a pitch that is full of menaces
and danger.
Looked upon in the light of present events, the early movements for
freedom which are related in this book acquire a new meaning. They
appear as the preparatory phases of the great breakdown of a whole
obsolete world--a breakdown which is sure to give a new life to nearly
one hundred and fifty million people, and to exercise at the same time
a deep and favourable influence upon the march of progress in all
Europe and Asia. It seems necessary, therefore, to complete the record
of events given in this book by a rapid review of those which have
taken place during the last seven years, and were the immediate cause
of the present revolution.
The thirteen years of the reign of Alexander III., 1881-1894, were
perhaps the gloomiest portion in the nineteenth century history of
Russia. Reaction had been growing worse and worse during the last few
years of the reign of his father--with the result that a terrible war
had been waged against autocracy by the Executive Committee, which had
inscribed on its banner political freedom. After the tragic death of
Alexander II., his son considered it his duty to make no concessions
whatever to the general demand of representative government, and a few
weeks after his advent to the throne he solemnly declared his intention
of remaining an autocratic ruler of his Empire. And then began a heavy,
silent, crushing reaction against all the great, inspiring ideas of
Liberty which our generation had lived through at the time of the
liberation of the serfs--a reaction, perhaps the more terrible on
account of its not being accompanied by striking and revolting acts
of violence, but slowly crushing down all the progressive reforms of
Alexander II., and the very spirit that bred these reforms, and turning
everything, including education, into tools of a general reaction.
Sheer despair got hold of the generation of the Russian ‘intellectuals’
who had to live through that period. The few survivors of the
Executive Committee laid down their arms, and there spread in Russian
intellectual society that helpless despair, that loss of faith in the
forces of ‘the intellectual,’ that general invasion of common-place
vulgarity which Tchékhoff has pictured with such a depressing sadness
in his novels.
True, that Alexander III., since his advent to the throne, had vaguely
understood the importance of several economic questions concerning the
welfare of the peasants, and had included them in his programme. But
with the set of reactionary advisers whom he had summoned to his aid,
and whom he retained throughout his reign, he could accomplish nothing
serious; the reactionaries whom he trusted did _not_ at all want to
make those serious improvements in the conditions of the peasants
which he considered it the mission of autocracy to accomplish; and he
would not call in other men, because he knew that they would require
a limitation of the powers of autocracy, which he would not admit.
When he died, a general feeling of relief went through Russia and the
civilized world at large.
Never had a Tsar ascended the throne under more favourable
circumstances than Nicholas II. After these thirteen years of reaction,
the state of mind in Russia was such, that if Nicholas II. had only
mentioned, in his advent manifesto, the intention of taking the advice
of his country upon the great questions of inner policy which required
an immediate solution, he would have been received with open arms.
The smallest concession would have been gladly accepted as an asset. In
fact, the delegates of the Zemstvos, assembled to greet him, asked him
only--and this in the most submissive manner--‘to establish a closer
intercourse between the Emperor and the provincial representation of
the land.’ But instead of accepting this modest invitation, Nicholas
II. read before the Zemstvo representatives the insolent speech of
reprimand, which had been written for him by Pobiedonostseff, and
which expressed his intention of remaining an autocratic ruler of his
subjects.
A golden opportunity was thus lost. Distrust became now the dominating
note in the relations between the nation and the Tsar, and it was
striking to see how this distrust--in one of those indescribable ways
in which popular feelings develop--rapidly spread from the Winter
Palace to the remotest corners of Russia.
The results of that distrust soon became apparent. The great strikes
which broke out at St. Petersburg in 1895, at the time of the
coronation of Nicholas II., gave a measure of the depth of discontent
which was growing in the masses of the people. The seriousness of the
discontent and the unity of action which this revealed were quite
unsuspected. What an immense distance was covered since those times,
of which I speak in this book, when we used to meet small groups of
weavers in the Viborg suburb of St. Petersburg, and asked them with
despair if it really was impossible to induce their comrades to join
in a strike, so as to obtain a reduction of the hours of labour, which
were fourteen and sixteen at that time! Now, the same working-men
combined all over St. Petersburg, and brought out of their ranks such
speakers and such organisers, as if they had been trade-union hands for
ages.
Two years later, in 1897, there were serious disturbances in all
the Russian universities; but when a second series of student
disturbances began in 1901, they suddenly assumed a quite unexpected
political significance. The students protested this time against a
law, passed by Nicholas II., who had ordered--again on the advice of
Pobiedonostseff--that students implicated in academical disorders
should be sent to Port Arthur as soldiers. Hundreds of them were
treated accordingly. Formerly, such a movement would have remained a
university matter; now it assumed a serious political character and
stirred various classes of society. At Moscow the working-men supported
the students in their street demonstrations, and fought at their side
against the police. At St. Petersburg all sorts of people, including
the workmen’s organizations, joined in the street demonstrations, and
serious fighting took place in the streets. When the manifestations
were dispersed by the lead-weighted horsewhips of the Cossacks, who cut
open the faces of men and women assembled in the streets, there was a
strikingly unanimous outburst of public indignation.
I have mentioned in this book how tragical was the position of our
youth in the seventies and eighties, on account of ‘the fathers’ having
abandoned entirely to their sons the terrible task of struggling
against a powerful government. Now, ‘the fathers’ joined hands with
‘the sons.’ The ‘respectable’ Society of Authors issued a strongly
worded protest. A venerated old member of the Council of the State,
Prince Vyazemsky, did the same. Even the officers of the Cossacks of
the Bodyguard notified their unwillingness to carry on such police
duties. In short, discontent was so general and so openly expressed,
that the Committee of Ministers, assuming for the first time since
its foundation the _rôle_ of a ‘Ministry,’ discussed the Imperial
order concerning the students, and insisted upon, and obtained, its
withdrawal.
Something quite unexpected had thus happened. A rash and ill-tempered
measure of the young autocrat had thus set all the country on fire. It
resulted in two ministers being killed; in bloodshed in the streets
of Kharkoff, Moscow and St. Petersburg; and it would have become the
cause of further disasters if Nicholas II. had not been prevented from
declaring the state of siege in his capital, which surely would have
led to still more bloodshed.
All this was pointing to such a deep change in the mind of the nation,
that already in the early spring of 1901--long before the declaration
of war with Japan--it became evident that the days of autocracy were
already counted: ‘Speaking plainly,’ I wrote in the ‘North American
Review,’ ‘the fact is that Russia has outgrown the autocratic form
of government; and it may be said confidently that if external
complications do not disturb the peaceful development of Russia,
Nicholas II. will soon be brought to realize that he is bound to take
steps for meeting the wishes of the country. Let us hope that he will
understand the proper sense of the lesson which he has received during
the past two months’ (May 1901, p. 723).
Unfortunately, Nicholas II. understood nothing. He did, on the
contrary, everything to bring about the revolution. He contributed to
spread discontent everywhere: in Finland, in Poland, in Armenia (by
confiscating the property of the Armenian Church), and in Russia itself
amongst the peasants, the students, the working-men, the dissenters,
and so on. More than that. Efforts were made, on different sides, to
induce Nicholas II. to adopt a better policy; but always he himself--so
weak for good--found the force to resist these influences. At a
decisive moment he always would find enough energy to turn the scales
in favour of reaction, by his personal interference. It has been said
of him that obstinacy was a distinctive feature of his character,
and this seems to be true enough; but he displays it exclusively to
oppose those progressive measures which the necessities of the moment
render imperative. Even if he occasionally yields to progressive
influences, he always manages very soon to counteract them in secrecy.
He displays, in fact, precisely those features which necessarily lead
to a revolution.
In 1901 it was evident that the old order of things would soon have to
be abandoned. The then Minister of Finances, Witte, must have realized
it, and he took a step which certainly meant that he was preparing
a transition from autocracy to some sort of a half-constitutional
_régime_. The ‘Commissions on the Impoverishment of Agriculture
in Central Russia,’ which he convoked in thirty-four provinces,
undoubtedly meant to supply that intermediary step, and the country
answered to his call in the proper way. Landlords and peasants alike
said and maintained quite openly in these Commissions that Russia could
not remain any longer under the system of police rule established by
Alexander III. Equal rights for all subjects, political liberties, and
constitutional guarantees were declared to be an urgent necessity.
Again a splendid opportunity was offered to Nicholas II. for taking
a step towards constitutional rule. The Agricultural Commissions had
indicated how to do it. Similar committees had to be convoked in all
provinces of the Empire, and they would name their representatives
who would meet at Moscow and work out the basis of a national
representation. And once more Nicholas II. refused to accept that
opening. He preferred to follow the counsels of his more intimate
advisers, who better expressed his own will. He disowned Witte and
called at the head of the Ministry of Interior Von Plehwe--the worst
produce of reaction that had been bred by police rule during the reign
of Alexander III.!
Even that man did not undertake to maintain autocracy indefinitely; but
he undertook to maintain it for ten years more--provided full powers
be granted to him, and plenty of money be given--which money he, a
pupil of the school of Ignatieff, freely used, it is now known, for
organizing the ‘pogroms’--the massacres of the Jews. More than that.
Prince Meschersky, the well-known editor of the _Grazhdanin_--an old
man, a Conservative of old standing, and a devotee of the Imperial
family--wrote lately in his paper that Plehwe, in order to give a
further lease to autocracy, had decided to do his utmost to push
Nicholas II. into that terrible war with Japan. Like the Franco-German
conflict, the Japanese war was thus the last trump of a decaying
Imperial power.
I certainly do not mean that Plehwe’s will was the _cause_ of that
war. Its causes lie deeper than that. It became unavoidable the day
that Russia got hold of Port Arthur--and even much earlier than that.
But this move of Plehwe, and the support he found in his master, are
deeply significant for the comprehension of the present events in
Russia.
Plehwe was the trump card of autocracy. He was invested with unlimited
powers, and used them for placing all Russia under police rule. The
State police became the most demoralized and dangerous body in the
State. More than 30,000 persons were deported by the police to remote
corners of the Empire. Fabulous sums of money were spent for his
own protection--but that did not help; he was killed in July 1904,
amidst the disasters of the war that he had been so eager to call
upon his country. And since that date the events took a new and rapid
development. The system of police rule was defeated, and nobody in the
Tsar’s surroundings would attempt to continue it.
For six weeks in succession nobody would agree to become the Tsar’s
Minister of Interior; and when the Prince Svyatopolk-Mirsky was
induced at last to accept it, he did so under the condition that
representatives of all the Zemstvos would be convoked at once, to work
out a scheme of national representation.
A great agitation spread thereupon in all Russia, when a Congress of
the Zemstvos was allowed to come together ‘unofficially’ at Moscow in
December 1904. The Zemstvos were quite outspoken in their demands for
constitutional guarantees, and their ‘Memorandum’ to the Tsar, signed
by 102 representatives out of 104, was soon signed also by numbers
of representative persons of different classes in Russia. By-and-by
similarly worded ‘Memoranda’ were addressed to the Tsar by the
barristers and magistrates, the Assemblies of the Nobility in certain
provinces, some municipalities, and so on. The Zemstvo memorandum
became thus a sort of ultimatum of the educated portion of the nation,
which rapidly organized itself into a number of professional unions.
The year 1904 thus ended in a state of great excitement.
Then a new element--the working-men--came to throw the weight of their
intervention in favour of the liberating movement. The working-men of
St. Petersburg--whom that original personality, Father Gapon, had been
most energetically organizing for the preceding twelve months--came to
the idea of an immense manifestation which would claim from the Tsar
political rights for the workers. On January 22, 1905, they went out--a
dense and unarmed crowd of more than 100,000 persons, marching from
all the suburbs towards the Winter Palace. Up to that date they had
retained an unbroken faith in the good intentions of Nicholas II., and
they wanted to tell him themselves of their needs. They trusted him as
if he really was their father. But a massacre of these faithful crowds
had been prepared beforehand by the military commander of the capital,
with all the precautions of modern warfare--local staffs, ambulances,
and so on. For a full week the manifestation was openly prepared by
Gapon and his aids, and nothing was done by the Government to dissuade
the workers from their venture. They marched towards the Palace and
crowded round it--sure that the Tsar would appear before them and
receive their petition--when the firing began. The troops fired into
the dense, absolutely pacific and unarmed crowds, at a range of a few
dozen yards, and more than a thousand--perhaps two thousand--men,
women and children fell that day, the victims of the Tsar’s fears and
obstinacy.
This was how the Russian revolution began, by the extermination of
peaceful, trustworthy crowds, and this double character of passive
endurance from beneath, and of bloodthirsty extermination from above,
it retains up till now. A deep chasm is thus being dug, deeper and
deeper every day, between the people and the present rulers, a chasm
which--I am inclined to think--never will be filled.
If these massacres were meant to terrorize the masses, they utterly
failed in their purpose. Five days after the ‘bloody Vladimir Sunday’
a mass-strike began at Warsaw and similar strikes soon spread all over
Poland. All classes of Polish society joined more or less actively in
these strikes, which took a formidable extension in the following May.
In fact, all the fabric of the State was shattered by these strikes,
and the series of massacres which the Russian Government inaugurated in
Poland in January and in May 1905, only led to an uninterrupted series
of retaliations in which all Polish society evidently stands on the
side of the terrorists. The result is, that at the present time Poland
is virtually lost to the Russian autocratic Empire. Unless it obtains
as complete an autonomy as Finland obtained in 1905, it will not resume
its normal life.
Gradually, the revolts began to spread all over Russia. The peasant
uprising now assumed serious proportions in different parts of the
Empire, everywhere the peasants showing moderation in their demands,
together with a great capacity for organized action, but everywhere
also insisting upon the necessity of a move in the sense of land
nationalization. In the western portion of Georgia (in Transcaucasia)
they even organized independent communities, similar to those of the
old cantons of Switzerland. At the same time a race-war began in the
Caucasus; then came a great uprising at Odessa; the mutiny of the
iron-clads of the Black Sea; and a second series of general strikes
in Poland, again followed by massacres. And only then, when all
Russia was set into open revolt, Nicholas II. finally yielded to the
general demands, and announced, in a manifesto issued on the 19th of
August, that some sort of national representation would be given to
Russia in the shape of a State’s Duma. This was the famous ‘Bulyghin
Constitution,’ which granted the right of voting to an infinitesimal
fraction only of the population (one man in each 200, even in such
wealthy cities as St. Petersburg and Moscow), and entirely excluded
4,000,000 working-men from any participation in the political life
of the country. This tardy concession evidently satisfied nobody; it
was met with disdain. Mignet, the author of a well-known history of
the French Revolution, was right when he wrote that in such times
the concessions must come from the Government _before_ any serious
bloodshed has taken place. If they come _after_ it, they are useless;
the Revolution will take no heed of them and pursue its unavoidable,
natural development. So it happened in Russia.
A simple incident--a strike of the bakers at Moscow--was the beginning
of a general strike, which soon spread over all Moscow, including all
its trades, and from Moscow extended all over Russia. The sufferings of
the working-men during that general strike were terrible, but they held
out. All traffic on the railways was stopped, and no provisions, no
fuel reached Moscow. No newspapers appeared, except the proclamations
of the strike committees. Thousands of passengers, tons of letters,
mountains of goods accumulated at the stations. St. Petersburg soon
joined the strike, and there, too, the workers displayed wonderful
powers of organization. No gas, no electric light, no tramways, no
water, no cabs, no post, no telegraphs! The factories were silent, the
city was plunged in darkness. Then, gradually, the enthusiasm of the
poorer classes won the others as well. The shop assistants, the clerks
in the banks, the teachers, the actors, the lawyers, the chemists--even
the judges joined the strike. A whole country struck against its
government, and the strikers kept so strict an order, that they offered
no opportunity for military intervention and massacres. Committees
of Labour Representatives came into existence, and they were obeyed
explicitly by the crowds, 300,000 strong, which filled the streets of
St. Petersburg and Moscow.
The panic in the Tsar’s _entourage_ was at a climax. His usual
Conservative advisers proved to be as unreliable as the _talons rouges_
were in the surroundings of Louis XVI. Then--only then--Nicholas II.
called in Count Witte and agreed on the 30th of October to sign a
constitutional manifesto. He declared in it that it was his ‘inflexible
will’ ‘to grant to the population the immutable foundations of civic
liberty, based on real inviolability of the person, conscience, speech,
union, and association.’ For that purpose he ordered to elect a State’s
Duma, and promised ‘to establish it as an immutable rule that no law
can come into force without the approval of the State Duma,’ and that
the people’s representatives ‘should have a real participation in the
supervision of the legality of the acts of the authorities appointed by
the Crown.’
Two days later, as the crowds which filled the streets of St.
Petersburg were going to storm the two chief prisons, Count Witte
obtained from him also the granting of an almost general amnesty for
political offenders.
These promises produced a tremendous enthusiasm, but, alas, they were
soon broken in many important points.
It appears now from an official document, just published--the report of
the Head of the Police Department, Lopukhin, to the Premier Minister
Stolypin--that at the very moment when the crowds were jubilating
in the streets, the Monarchist party organized hired bands for the
slaughter of the jubilating crowds. The gendarme officers hurriedly
printed with their own hands appeals calling for the massacre ‘of the
intellectuals and the Jews,’ and saying that they were the hirelings of
the Japanese and the English. Two bishops, Nikon and Nikander, in their
pastoral letters, called upon all the ‘true Russians’ ‘to put down the
intellectuals by force’; while from the footsteps of the Chapel of the
Virgin of Iberia, at Moscow, improvised orators tried to induce the
crowds to kill all the students.
More than that. The same Prince Meschersky confessed in his
paper--‘with horror’ as he said--that it was a settled plan, hatched
among some of the rulers of St. Petersburg, to provoke a serious
insurrection, to drown it in blood, and thus ‘to let the Duma die
before it was born, so as to return to the old _régime_.’ ‘Several high
functionaries have confessed this to me,’ he adds in his paper.
I have endeavoured in this book to be fair towards Alexander II., and
I certainly should like to be equally fair towards Nicholas II., the
more as he, besides his own faults, pays for those of his father and
grandfather. But I must say that the cordial reception which he gave
at that time in his palace to the representatives of the above party,
and his protection which they have enjoyed since, were certainly an
encouragement to continue on these lines of breeding massacres of
innocent people--even if the encouragement be unconscious.
But then came the insurrection at Moscow, in January 1906, provoked to
a great extent by the Governor-General, Admiral Dubassoff; the uprising
of the peasants in the Baltic provinces against the tyranny of their
German landlords; the general strike along the Siberian railway; and a
great number (over 1,600) of peasant uprisings in Russia itself; and
in all these cases the military repression was accomplished in such
terrible forms, including flogging to death, and with such a cruelty,
that one could really come to totally despair of civilization, if
there were not by the side of these cruelties acts of sublime heroism
on behalf of the lovers of freedom.
It was under such conditions that the Duma met in May 1905, to be
dissolved after an existence of only seventy days. Its fate evidently
had been settled at Peterhof, before it met. A powerful league of all
the reactionary elements, lead by Trépoff, who found strong support
with Nicholas II. himself, was formed with the firm intention of not
allowing the Duma, under any pretext, to exercise a real control upon
the actions of the Ministers nominated by the Tsar. And as the Duma
strove to obtain this right above all others, it was dissolved.
And now, the condition of Russia is simply beyond description. The
items which we have for the first year of ‘Constitutional rule,’
since October 30, 1905, till the same date in 1906, are as follows:
Killed in the massacres, shot in the riots, etc., 22,721; condemned
to penal servitude, 851 (to an aggregate of 7,138 years); executed,
mostly without any semblance of judgment, men, women and youths, 1,518;
deported without judgment, mostly to Siberia, 30,000. And the list
increases still at the rate of from ten to eighteen every day.
These facts speak for themselves. They talk at Peterhof of maintaining
‘autocracy,’ but there is none left, except that of the eighty
governors of the provinces, each of whom is, like an African king,
an autocrat in his own domain, so long as his orders please his
subordinates. Bloodshed, drumhead military courts, and rapine are
flourishing everywhere. Famine is menacing thirty different provinces.
And Russia has to go through all that, merely to maintain for a few
additional months the irresponsible rule of a camarilla standing round
the throne of the Tsar.
How long this state of affairs will last, nobody can foretell. During
both the English and the French Revolutions reaction also took for a
time the upper hand; in France this lasted nearly two years. But the
experience of the last few months has also shown that Russia possesses
such a reserve of sound, solid forces in those classes of society upon
whom depends the wealth of the country, that the present orgy of White
Terror certainly will not last long. The army, which has hitherto been
a support of reaction, shows already signs of a better comprehension
of its duties towards its mother country; and the crimes of the joined
reactionists become too evident not to be understood by the soldiers.
As to the revolutionists, after having first minimized the forces of
the old _régime_, they realize them now and prepare for a struggle
on a more solid and a broader basis; while the devotion of thousands
upon thousands of young men and women is such, that virtually it
seems to be inexhaustible. In such conditions, the ultimate victory
of those elements which work for the birth of a regenerated, free
Russia, is not to be doubted for a moment, especially if they find,
as I hope they will, the sympathy and the support of the lovers of
Freedom all over the world. Regenerated Russia means a body of some
150,000,000 persons--one-eighth part of the population of the globe,
occupying one-sixth part of its continental parts--permitted at last to
develop peacefully--a population which, owing to its very composition,
is bound to become, not an Empire in the Roman sense of the word,
but a Federation of nations combined for the peaceful purposes of
civilization and progress.
BROMLEY, KENT,
_November, 1906_.
PART FIRST
CHILDHOOD
I
Moscow is a city of slow historical growth, and down to the present
time its different parts have wonderfully well retained the features
which have been stamped upon them in the slow course of history. The
Trans-Moskva River district, with its broad, sleepy streets and its
monotonous gray painted, low-roofed houses, of which the entrance-gates
remain securely bolted day and night, has always been the secluded
abode of the merchant class, and the stronghold of the outwardly
austere, formalistic, and despotic Nonconformists of the ‘Old Faith.’
The citadel, or Kreml is still the stronghold of Church and State; and
the immense space in front of it, covered with thousands of shops and
warehouses, has been for centuries a crowded beehive of commerce, and
still remains the heart of a great internal trade which spreads over
the whole surface of the vast empire. The Tverskáya and the Smiths’
Bridge have been for hundreds of years the chief centres for the
fashionable shops; while the artisans’ quarters, the Pluschíkha and
the Dorogomílovka, retain the very same features which characterized
their uproarious populations in the times of the Moscow Tsars. Each
quarter is a little world in itself; each has its own physiognomy,
and lives its own separate life. Even the railways, when they made an
irruption into the old capital, grouped apart in special centres on
the outskirts of the old town their stores and machine-works and their
heavily loaded carts and engines.
However, of all parts of Moscow, none, perhaps, is more typical than
that labyrinth of clean, quiet, winding streets and lanes which lies at
the back of the Kreml, between two great radial streets, the Arbát and
the Prechístenka, and is still called the Old Equerries’ Quarter--the
Stáraya Konyúshennaya.
Some fifty years ago, there lived in this quarter, and slowly died
out, the old Moscow nobility, whose names were so frequently mentioned
in the pages of Russian history before the time of Peter I., but who
subsequently disappeared to make room for the new-comers, ‘the men of
all ranks’--called into service by the founder of the Russian state.
Feeling themselves supplanted at the St. Petersburg court, these nobles
of the old stock retired either to the Old Equerries’ Quarter in
Moscow, or to their picturesque estates in the country round about the
capital, and they looked with a sort of contempt and secret jealousy
upon the motley crowd of families which came ‘from no one knew where’
to take possession of the highest functions of the government, in the
new capital on the banks of the Nevá.
In their younger days most of them had tried their fortunes in the
service of the state, chiefly in the army; but for one reason or
another they had soon abandoned it, without having risen to high rank.
The more successful ones obtained some quiet, almost honorary position
in their mother city--my father was one of these--while most of the
others simply retired from active service. But wheresoever they might
have been shifted, in the course of their careers, over the wide
surface of Russia, they always somehow managed to spend their old age
in a house of their own in the Old Equerries’ Quarter, under the shadow
of the church where they had been baptized, and where the last prayers
had been pronounced at the burial of their parents.
New branches budded from the old stocks. Some of them achieved more
or less distinction in different parts of Russia; some owned more
luxurious houses in the new style in other quarters of Moscow or at
St. Petersburg; but the branch which continued to reside in the Old
Equerries’ Quarter, somewhere near to the green, the yellow, the pink,
or the brown church which was endeared through family associations,
was considered as the true representative of the family, irrespective
of the position it occupied in the family tree. Its old-fashioned head
was treated with great respect, not devoid, I must say, of a slight
tinge of irony, even by those younger representatives of the same stock
who had left their mother city for a more brilliant career in the St.
Petersburg Guards or in the court circles. He personified, for them,
the antiquity of the family and its traditions.
In these quiet streets, far away from the noise and bustle of the
commercial Moscow, all the houses had much the same appearance. They
were mostly built of wood, with bright green sheet-iron roofs, the
exteriors stuccoed and decorated with columns and porticoes; all were
painted in gay colours. Nearly every house had but one story, with
seven or nine big, gay-looking windows facing the street. A second
story was admitted only in the back part of the house, which looked
upon a spacious yard, surrounded by numbers of small buildings, used
as kitchens, stables, cellars, coach-houses, and as dwellings for
the retainers and servants. A wide gate opened upon this yard, and a
brass plate on it usually bore the inscription, ‘House of So-and-So,
Lieutenant or Colonel, and Commander’--very seldom ‘Major-General’
or any similarly elevated civil rank. But if a more luxurious house,
embellished by a gilded iron railing and an iron gate, stood in one of
those streets, the brass plate on the gate was sure to bear the name of
‘Commerce Counsel’ or ‘Honourable Citizen’ So-and-So. These were the
intruders, those who came unasked to settle in this quarter, and were
therefore ignored by their neighbours.
No shops were allowed in these select streets, except that in some
small wooden house, belonging to the parish church, a tiny grocer’s or
greengrocer’s shop might have been found; but then, the policeman’s
lodge stood on the opposite corner, and in the daytime the policeman
himself, armed with a halberd, would appear at the door to salute
with his inoffensive weapon the officers passing by, and would retire
inside when dusk came, to employ himself either as a cobbler or in the
manufacture of some special stuff patronized by the elder servants of
the neighbourhood.
Life went on quietly and peacefully--at least for the outsider--in
this Moscow Faubourg Saint-Germain. In the morning nobody was seen in
the streets. About midday the children made their appearance under the
guidance of French tutors and German nurses, who took them out for a
walk on the snow-covered boulevards. Later on in the day the ladies
might be seen in their two-horse sledges, with a valet standing behind
on a small plank fastened at the end of the runners, or ensconced in
an old-fashioned carriage, immense and high, suspended on big curved
springs and dragged by four horses, with a postillion in front and two
valets standing behind. In the evening most of the houses were brightly
illuminated, and, the blinds not being drawn down, the passer-by could
admire the card-players or the waltzers in the saloons. ‘Opinions’
were not in vogue in those days, and we were yet far from the years
when in each one of these houses a struggle began between ‘fathers and
sons’--a struggle that usually ended either in a family tragedy or in
a nocturnal visit of the state police. Fifty years ago nothing of the
sort was thought of; all was quiet and smooth--at least on the surface.
In this Old Equerries’ Quarter I was born in 1842, and here I passed
the first fifteen years of my life. Even after our father had sold
the house in which our mother died, and bought another, and when again
he had sold that house, and we spent several winters in hired houses,
until he had found a third one to his taste within a stone’s-throw of
the church where he had been baptized, we still remained in the Old
Equerries’ Quarter, leaving it only during the summer to go to our
country-seat.
II
A high, spacious bedroom, the corner room of our house, with a wide bed
upon which our mother is lying, our baby chairs and tables standing
close by, and the neatly served tables covered with sweets and jellies
in pretty glass jars--a room into which we children are ushered at a
strange hour---this is the first half-distinct reminiscence of my life.
Our mother was dying of consumption; she was only thirty-five years
old. Before parting with us for ever, she had wished to have us by her
side, to caress us, to feel happy for a moment in our joys, and she had
arranged this little treat by the side of her bed which she could leave
no more, I remember her pale thin face, her large, dark brown eyes. She
looked at us with love, and invited us to eat, to climb upon her bed;
then suddenly she burst into tears and began to cough, and we were told
to go.
Some time after, we children--that is, my brother Alexander and
myself--were removed from the big house to a small side house in the
courtyard. The April sun filled the little rooms with its rays, but
our German nurse Madame Búrman and Uliána, our Russian nurse, told
us to go to bed. Their faces wet with tears, they were sewing for us
black shirts fringed with broad white tassels. We could not sleep: the
unknown frightened us, and we listened to their subdued talk. They said
something about our mother which we could not understand. We jumped
out of our beds, asking, ‘Where is mamma? Where is mamma?’
Both of them burst into sobs, and began to pat our curly heads, calling
us ‘poor orphans,’ until Uliána could hold out no longer, and said,
‘Your mother is gone there--to the sky, to the angels.’
‘How to the sky? Why?’ our infantile imagination in vain demanded.
This was in April 1846. I was only three and a half years old, and
my brother Sásha not yet five. Where our elder brother and sister,
Nicholas and Hélène, had gone I do not know: perhaps they were already
at school. Nicholas was twelve years old, Hélène was eleven; they kept
together, and we knew them but little. So we remained, Alexander and
I, in this little house, in the hands of Madame Búrman and Uliána.
The good old German lady, homeless and absolutely alone in the wide
world, took toward us the place of our mother. She brought us up as
well as she could, buying us from time to time some simple toys, and
overfeeding us with ginger cakes whenever another old German, who used
to sell such cakes--probably as homeless and solitary as herself--paid
an occasional visit to our house. We seldom saw our father, and the
next two years passed without leaving any impression on my memory.
III
Our father was very proud of the origin of his family, and would point
with solemnity to a piece of parchment which hung on the wall of his
study. It was decorated with our arms--the arms of the principality
of Smolénsk covered with the ermine mantle and the crown of the
Monomáchs--and there was written on it, and certified by the Heraldry
Department, that our family originated with a grandson of Rostisláv
Mstislávich the Bold (a name familiar in Russian history as that of a
Grand Prince of Kíeff), and that our ancestors had been Grand Princes
of Smolénsk.
‘It cost me three hundred roubles to obtain that parchment,’ our father
used to say. Like most people of his generation, he was not much versed
in Russian history, and valued the parchment more for its cost than for
its historical associations.
As a matter of fact, our family is of very ancient origin indeed; but,
like most descendants of Rurik who may be regarded as representative of
the feudal period of Russian history, it was driven into the background
when that period ended, and the Románoffs, enthroned at Moscow, began
the work of consolidating the Russian state. In recent times, none of
the Kropótkins seem to have had any special liking for state functions.
Our great-grandfather and grandfather both retired from the military
service when quite young men, and hastened to return to their family
estates. It must also be said that of these estates the main one,
Urúsovo, situated in the government of Ryazán, on a high hill at the
border of fertile prairies, might tempt any one by the beauty of its
shadowy forests, its winding rivers, and its endless meadows. Our
grandfather was only a lieutenant when he left the service, and retired
to Urúsovo, devoting himself to his estate, and to the purchase of
other estates in the neighbouring provinces.
Probably our generation would have done the same; but our grandfather
married a Princess Gagárin, who belonged to a quite different family.
Her brother was well known as a passionate lover of the stage. He kept
a private theatre of his own, and went so far in his passion as to
marry, to the scandal of all his relations, a serf--the genial actress
Semyónova, who was one of the creators of dramatic art in Russia, and
undoubtedly one of its most sympathetic figures. To the horror of ‘all
Moscow,’ she continued to appear on the stage.
I do not know if our grandmother had the same artistic and literary
tastes as her brother--I remember her when she was already paralyzed
and could speak only in whispers; but it is certain that in the next
generation a leaning toward literature became a characteristic of our
family. One of the sons of the Princess Gagárin was a minor Russian
poet, and issued a book of poems--a fact which my father was ashamed
of and always avoided mentioning; and in our own generation several of
our cousins, as well as my brother and myself, have contributed more or
less to the literature of our period.
Our father was a typical officer of the time of Nicholas I. Not that
he was imbued with a warlike spirit or much in love with camp life;
I doubt whether he spent a single night of his life at a bivouac
fire, or took part in one battle. But under Nicholas I. that was of
quite secondary importance. The true military man of those times was
the officer who was enamoured of the military uniform and utterly
despised all other sorts of attire; whose soldiers were trained to
perform almost superhuman tricks with their legs and rifles (to break
the wood of the rifle into pieces while ‘presenting arms’ was one of
those famous tricks); and who could show on parade a row of soldiers
as perfectly aligned and as motionless as a row of toy-soldiers, ‘Very
good,’ the Grand Duke Mikhael said once of a regiment, after having
kept it for one hour presenting arms--‘only _they breathe_!’ To respond
to the then current conception of a military man was certainly our
father’s ideal.
True, he took part in the Turkish campaign of 1828; but he managed to
remain all the time on the staff of the chief commander; and if we
children, taking advantage of a moment when he was in a particularly
good temper, asked him to tell us something about the war, he had
nothing to tell but of a fierce attack of hundreds of Turkish dogs
which one night assailed him and his faithful servant, Frol, as they
were riding with despatches through an abandoned Turkish village.
They had to use swords to extricate themselves from the hungry beasts.
Bands of Turks would assuredly have better satisfied our imagination,
but we accepted the dogs as a substitute. When, however, pressed by our
questions, our father told us how he had won the cross of Saint Anne
‘for gallantry,’ and the golden sword which he wore, I must confess
we felt really disappointed. His story was decidedly too prosaic. The
officers of the general staff were lodged in a Turkish village, when
it took fire. In a moment the houses were enveloped in flames, and in
one of them a child had been left behind. Its mother uttered despairing
cries. Thereupon, Frol, who always accompanied his master, rushed into
the flames and saved the child. The chief commander, who saw the act,
at once gave father the cross for gallantry.
‘But, father,’ we exclaimed, ‘it was Frol who saved the child!’
‘What of that?’ replied he, in the most naïve way. ‘Was he not my man?
It is all the same.’
He also took some part in the campaign of 1831, during the Polish
Revolution, and in Warsaw he made the acquaintance of, and fell in love
with, the youngest daughter of the commander of an army corps, General
Sulíma. The marriage was celebrated with great pomp, in the Lazienki
palace; the lieutenant-governor, Count Paskiéwich, acting as nuptial
godfather on the bridegroom’s side. ‘But your mother,’ our father used
to add, ‘brought me no fortune whatever.’
Which was true. Her father, Nikolái Semyónovich Sulíma, was not versed
in the art of making a career or a fortune. He must have had in him too
much of the blood of those Cossacks of the Dnyéper, who knew how to
fight the well-equipped, warlike Poles or armies of the Turks, three
times more than themselves, but knew not how to avoid the snares of
the Moscow diplomacy, and, after having fought against the Poles in
the terrible insurrection of 1648, which was the beginning of the end
for the Polish republic, lost all their liberties in falling under the
dominion of the Russian Tsars. One Sulíma was captured by the Poles
and tortured to death at Warsaw, but the other ‘colonels’ of the same
stock only fought the more fiercely on that account, and Poland lost
Little Russia. As to our grandfather, he knew how, with his regiment
of cuirassiers during Napoleon I.’s invasion, to cut his way into a
French infantry square bristling with bayonets, and to recover, after
having been left for dead on the battlefield, with a deep cut in his
head; but he could not become a valet to the favourite of Alexander I.,
the omnipotent Arakchéeff, and was consequently sent into a sort of
honorary exile, first as a governor-general of West Siberia, and later
of East Siberia. In those times such a position was considered more
lucrative than a gold-mine, but our grandfather returned from Siberia
as poor as he went, and left only modest fortunes to his three sons and
three daughters. When I went to Siberia, in 1862, I often heard his
name mentioned with respect. He was almost driven to despair by the
wholesale stealing which went on in those provinces, and which he had
no means to repress.
Our mother was undoubtedly a remarkable woman for the times she
lived in. Many years after her death I discovered, in a corner of a
storeroom of our country house, a mass of papers covered with her firm
but pretty handwriting: diaries in which she wrote with delight of
the scenery of Germany, and spoke of her sorrows and her thirst for
happiness; books which she had filled with Russian verses prohibited by
censorship--among them the beautiful historical ballads of Ryléeff, the
poet, whom Nicholas I. hanged in 1826; other books containing music,
French dramas, verses of Lamartine, and Byron’s poems that she had
copied; and a great number of water-colour paintings.
Tall, slim, adorned with a mass of dark chestnut hair, with dark
brown eyes and a tiny mouth, she looks quite lifelike in a portrait
in oils that was painted _con amore_ by a good artist. Always lively
and often careless, she was fond of dancing, and the peasant women in
our village would tell us how she would admire from a balcony their
ring-dances--slow and full of grace--and how finally she would herself
join in them. She had the nature of an artist. It was at a ball that
she caught the cold that produced the inflammation of the lungs which
brought her to the grave.
All who knew her loved her. The servants worshipped her memory. It was
in her name that Madame Búrman took care of us, and in her name the
Russian nurse bestowed upon us her love. While combing our hair, or
signing us with the cross in our beds, Uliána would often say, ‘And
your mamma must now look upon you from the skies, and shed tears on
seeing you, poor orphans.’ Our whole childhood is irradiated by her
memory. How often in some dark passage, the hand of a servant would
touch Alexander or me with a caress; or a peasant woman, on meeting us
in the fields, would ask, ‘Will you be as good as your mother was? She
took compassion on us. You will, surely.’ ‘Us’ meant, of course, the
serfs. I do not know what would have become of us if we had not found
in our house, amidst the serf servants, that atmosphere of love which
children must have around them. We were her children, we bore likeness
to her, and they lavished their care upon us, sometimes in a touching
form, as will be seen later on.
Men passionately desire to live after death, but they often pass
away without noticing the fact that the memory of a really good
person always lives. It is impressed upon the next generation, and is
transmitted again to the children. Is not that an immortality worth
striving for?
IV
Two years after the death of our mother our father married again. He
had already cast his eyes upon a nice-looking young person, this time
belonging to a wealthy family, when the fates decided another way. One
morning, while he was still in his dressing-gown, the servants rushed
madly into his room, announcing the arrival of General Timoféeff, the
commander of the sixth army corps, to which our father belonged. This
favourite of Nicholas I. was a terrible man. He would order a soldier
to be flogged almost to death for a mistake made during a parade, or he
would degrade an officer and send him as a private to Siberia because
he had met him in the street with the hooks on his high, stiff collar
unfastened. With Nicholas General Timoféeff’s word was all-powerful.
The general, who had never before been in our house, came to propose to
our father to marry his wife’s niece, Mademoiselle Elisabeth Karandinó,
one of several daughters of an admiral of the Black Sea fleet--a young
lady with a classical Greek profile, said to have been very beautiful.
Father accepted, and his second wedding, like the first, was solemnized
with great pomp.
‘You young people understand nothing of this kind of thing,’ he said in
conclusion, after having told me the story more than once, with a very
fine humour which I will not attempt to reproduce. ‘But do you know
what it meant at that time, the commander of an army corps--above all
that one-eyed devil, as we used to call him--coming himself to propose?
Of course she had no dowry; only a big trunk filled with ladies’
finery, and that Martha, her one serf, dark as a gypsy, sitting upon
it.’
I have no recollection whatever of this event. I only remember a big
drawing-room in a richly furnished house, and in that room a young
lady, attractive but with a rather too sharp southern look, gambolling
with us, and saying, ‘You see what a jolly mamma you will have;’ to
which Sásha and I, sulkily looking at her, replied, ‘Our mamma has
flown away to the sky.’ We regarded so much liveliness with suspicion.
* * * * *
Winter came, and a new life began for us. Our house was sold and
another was bought and furnished completely anew. All that could convey
a reminiscence of our mother disappeared--her portraits, her paintings,
her embroideries. In vain Madame Búrman implored to be retained in
our house, and promised to devote herself to the baby our stepmother
was expecting as to her own child: she was sent away. ‘Nothing of the
Sulímas in my house,’ she was told. All connection with our uncles
and aunts and our grandmother was broken. Uliána was married to Frol,
who became a major-domo, while she was made housekeeper; and for our
education a richly paid French tutor, M. Poulain, and a miserably paid
Russian student, N. P. Smirnóff, were engaged.
Many of the sons of the Moscow nobles were educated at that time by
Frenchmen, who represented the débris of Napoleon’s Grande Armée. M.
Poulain was one of them. He had just finished the education of the
youngest son of the novelist Zagóskin; and his pupil, Serge, enjoyed
in the Old Equerries’ Quarter the reputation of being so well brought
up that our father did not hesitate to engage M. Poulain for the
considerable sum of six hundred roubles a year.
M. Poulain brought with him his setter, Trésor, his coffee-pot
Napoléon, and his French text-books, and he began to rule over us and
the serf Matvéi who was attached to our service.
His plan of education was very simple. After having woke us up he
attended to his coffee, which he used to take in his room. While we
were preparing the morning lessons he made his toilet with minute care:
he shampooed his grey hair so as to conceal his growing baldness, put
on his tail-coat, sprinkled and washed himself with eau-de-cologne,
and then escorted us downstairs to say good-morning to our parents. We
used to find our father and stepmother at breakfast, and on approaching
them we recited in the most ceremonious manner, ‘Bonjour, mon cher
papa,’ and ‘Bonjour, ma chère maman,’ and kissed their hands. M.
Poulain made a very complicated and elegant obeisance in pronouncing
the words, ‘Bonjour, monsieur le prince,’ and ‘Bonjour, madame la
princesse,’ after which the procession immediately withdrew and retired
upstairs. This ceremony was repeated every morning.
Then our work began. M. Poulain changed his tail-coat for a
dressing-gown, covered his head with a leather cap, and dropping into
an easy-chair said ‘Recite the lesson.’
We recited it ‘by heart’ from one mark which was made in the book with
the nail to the next mark. M. Poulain had brought with him the grammar
of Noël and Chapsal, memorable to more than one generation of Russian
boys and girls; a book of French dialogues; a history of the world,
in one volume; and a universal geography, also in one volume. We had
to commit to memory the grammar, the dialogues, the history, and the
geography.
The grammar, with its well-known sentences, ‘What is grammar?’ ‘The art
of speaking and writing correctly,’ went all right. But the history
book, unfortunately, had a preface, which contained an enumeration
of all the advantages which can be derived from a knowledge of
history. Things went on smoothly enough with the first sentences. We
recited: ‘The prince finds in it magnanimous examples for governing
his subjects; the military commander learns from it the noble art
of warfare.’ But the moment we came to law all went wrong. ‘The
jurisconsult meets in it’--but what the learned lawyer meets in history
we never came to know. That terrible word ‘jurisconsult’ spoiled all
the game. As soon as we reached it we stopped.
‘On your knees, _gros pouff_!’ exclaimed Poulain. (That was for me.)
‘On your knees, _grand dada_!’ (That was for my brother.) And there we
knelt, shedding tears and vainly endeavouring to learn all about the
jurisconsult.
It cost us many pains, that preface! We were already learning all about
the Romans, and used to put our sticks in Uliána’s scales when she was
weighing rice, ‘just like Brennus;’ we jumped from our table and other
precipices for the salvation of our country, in imitation of Curtius;
but M. Poulain would still from time to time return to the preface,
and again put us on our knees for that very same jurisconsult. Was
it strange that later on both my brother and I should entertain an
undisguised contempt for jurisprudence?
I do not know what would have happened with geography if M. Poulain’s
book had had a preface. But happily the first twenty pages of the book
had been torn away (Serge Zagóskin, I suppose, rendered us that notable
service), and so our lessons commenced with the twenty-first page,
which began, ‘of the rivers which water France.’
It must be confessed that things did not always end with kneeling.
There was in the class-room a birch rod, and Poulain resorted to it
when there was no hope of progress with the preface or with some
dialogue on virtue and propriety; but one day sister Hélène, who by
this time had left the Catherine Institut des Demoiselles, and now
occupied a room underneath ours, hearing our cries, rushed, all in
tears, into our father’s study, and bitterly reproached him with having
handed us over to our stepmother, who had abandoned us to ‘a retired
French drummer.’ ‘Of course,’ she cried, ‘there is no one to take their
part, but I cannot see my brothers being treated in this way by a
drummer!’
Taken thus unprepared, our father could not make a stand. He began to
scold Hélène, but ended by approving her devotion to her brothers.
Thereafter the birch rod was reserved for teaching the rules of
propriety to the setter, Trésor.
No sooner had M. Poulain discharged himself of his heavy educational
duties than he became quite another man--a lively comrade instead of a
gruesome teacher. After lunch he took us out for a walk, and there was
no end to his tales: we chattered like birds. Though we never went with
him beyond the first pages of syntax, we soon learned, nevertheless,
‘to speak correctly;’ we used to _think_ in French; and when he had
dictated to us half through a book of mythology, correcting our faults
by the book, without ever trying to explain to us why a word must be
written in a particular way, we had learned ‘to write correctly.’
After dinner we had our lesson with the Russian teacher, a student of
the faculty of law in the Moscow University. He taught us all ‘Russian’
subjects--grammar, arithmetic, history, and so on. But in those years
serious teaching had not yet begun. In the meantime he dictated to
us every day a page of history, and in that practical way we quickly
learned to write Russian quite correctly.
Our best time was on Sundays, when all the family, with the exception
of us children, went to dine with Madame la Générale Timoféeff.
It would also happen occasionally that both M. Poulain and N. P.
Smirnóff would be allowed to leave the house, and when this occurred
we were placed under the care of Uliána. After a hurriedly eaten
dinner we hastened to the great hall, to which the younger housemaids
soon repaired. All sorts of games were started--blind man, vulture
and chickens, and so on; and then, all of a sudden, Tíkhon, the
Jack-of-all-trades, would appear with a violin. Dancing began;
not that measured and tiresome dancing, under the direction of a
French dancing-master ‘on india-rubber legs,’ which made part of our
education, but free dancing which was not a lesson, and in which a
score of couples turned round any way; and this was only preparatory
to the still more animated and rather wild Cossack dance. Tíkhon
would then hand the violin to one of the older men, and would begin to
perform with his legs such wonderful feats that the doors leading to
the hall would soon be filled by the cooks and even the coachmen, who
came to see the dance so dear to the Russian heart.
About nine o’clock the big carriage was sent to fetch the family
home. Tíkhon, brush in hand, crawled on the floor, to make it shine
with its virgin glance, and perfect order was restored in the house.
And if, next morning, we two had been submitted to the most severe
cross-examination, not a word would have been dropped concerning the
previous evening’s amusements. We never would have betrayed any one of
the servants, nor would they have betrayed us. One Sunday, my brother
and I, playing alone in the wide hall, ran against a bracket which
supported a costly lamp. The lamp was broken to pieces. Immediately a
council was held by the servants. No one scolded us; but it was decided
that early next morning Tíkhon should at his risk and peril slip out of
the house and run to the Smiths’ Bridge in order to buy another lamp
of the same pattern. It cost fifteen roubles--an enormous sum for the
servants; but it was done, and we never heard a word of reproach about
it.
When I think of it now, and all these scenes come back to my memory,
I notice that we never heard coarse language in any of the games, nor
saw in the dances anything like the kind of dancing which children
are now taken to admire in the theatres. In the servants’ house,
among themselves, they assuredly used coarse expressions; but we were
children--_her_ children--and that protected us from anything of the
sort.
* * * * *
In those days children were not bewildered by a profusion of toys, as
they are now. We had almost none, and were thus compelled to rely upon
our own inventiveness. Besides, we both had early acquired a taste for
the theatre. The inferior carnival theatres, with the thieving and
fighting shows, produced no lasting impression upon us: we ourselves
played enough at robbers and soldiers. But the great star of the
ballet, Fanny Elssler, came to Moscow, and we saw her. When father
took a box in the theatre, he always secured one of the best, and paid
for it well; but then he insisted that all the members of the family
should enjoy it to its full value. Small though I was at that time,
Fanny Elssler left upon me the impression of a being so full of grace,
so light, and so artistic in all her movements, that ever since I have
been unable to feel the slightest interest in a dance which belongs
more to the domain of gymnastics than to the domain of art.
Of course the ballet that we saw--‘Gitana,’ the Spanish Gypsy--had to
be repeated at home; its substance, not the dances. We had a ready-made
stage, as the doorway which led from our bedroom into the class-room
had a curtain instead of a door. A few chairs put in a half-circle in
front of the curtain, with an easy-chair for M. Poulain, became the
hall and the imperial box, and an audience could easily be mustered
with the Russian teacher, Uliána, and a couple of maids from the
servants’ rooms.
Two scenes of the ballet had to be represented by some means or
other: the one where the little Gitana is brought by the gypsies into
their camp in a wheelbarrow, and that in which Gitana makes her first
appearance on the stage, descending from a hill and crossing a bridge
over a brook which reflects her image. The audience burst into frantic
applause at this point, and the cheers were evidently called forth--so
we thought, at least--by the reflection in the brook.
We found our Gitana in one of the youngest girls in the maid-servants’
room. Her rather shabby blue cotton dress was no obstacle to
personifying Fanny Elssler. An overturned chair, pushed along by
its legs, head downwards, was an acceptable substitute for the
wheelbarrow. But the brook! Two chairs and the long ironing-board of
Andréi, the tailor, made the bridge, and a piece of blue cotton made
the brook. The image in the brook, however, would not appear full size,
do what we might with M. Poulain’s little shaving-glass. After many
unsuccessful endeavours we had to give it up, but we bribed Uliána to
behave as if she saw the image, and to applaud loudly at this passage,
so that finally we began to believe that perhaps something of it could
be seen.
Racine’s ‘Phèdre,’ or at least the last act of it, also went off
nicely; that is, Sásha recited the melodious verses beautifully--
A peine nous sortions des portes de Trézène;
and I sat absolutely motionless and unconcerned during the whole length
of the tragic monologue intended to apprise me of the death of my son,
down to the place where, according to the book, I had to exclaim, ‘_O
dieux!_’
But whatsoever we might impersonate, all our performances invariably
ended with hell. All candles save one were put out, and this one was
placed behind a transparent paper to imitate flames, while my brother
and I, concealed from view, howled in the most appalling way as the
condemned. Uliána, who did not like to have any allusion to the evil
one made at bedtime, looked horrified; but I ask myself now whether
this extremely concrete representation of hell, with a candle and a
sheet of paper, did not contribute to free us both at an early age from
the fear of eternal fire. Our conception of it was too realistic to
resist scepticism.
I must have been very much of a child when I saw the great Moscow
actors: Schépkin, Sadóvskiy, and Shúmski, in Gógol’s _Revisór_ and
another comedy; still, I remember not only the salient scenes of the
two plays, but even the attitudes and expressions of these great
actors of the realistic school which is now so admirably represented by
Duse. I remembered them so well that when I saw the same plays given at
St. Petersburg by actors belonging to the French declamatory school, I
found no pleasure in their acting, always comparing them with Schépkin
and Sadóvskiy, by whom my taste in dramatic art was settled.
This makes me think that parents who wish to develop artistic taste in
their children ought to take them occasionally to really well-acted,
good plays, instead of feeding them on a profusion of so-called
‘children’s pantomimes.’
V
When I was in my eighth year, the next step in my career was taken,
in a quite unforeseen way. I do not know exactly on what occasion
it happened, but probably it was on the twenty-fifth anniversary of
Nicholas I.’s reign, when great festivities were arranged at Moscow.
The imperial family were coming to the old capital, and the Moscow
nobility intended to celebrate this event by a fancy-dress ball in
which children were to play an important part. It was agreed that the
whole motley crowd of nationalities of which the population of the
Russian Empire is composed should be represented at this ball to greet
the monarch. Great preparations went on in our house, as well as in
all the houses of our neighbourhood. Some sort of remarkable Russian
costume was made for our stepmother. Our father, being a military man,
had to appear, of course, in his uniform; but those of our relatives
who were not in the military service were as busy with their Russian,
Greek, Caucasian, and Mongolian costumes, as the ladies themselves.
When the Moscow nobility gives a ball to the imperial family, it must
be something extraordinary. As for my brother Alexander and myself, we
were considered too young to take part in so important a ceremonial.
And yet, after all, I did take part in it. Our mother was an intimate
friend of Madame Nazímoff, the wife of the general who was Governor
of Wilno when the emancipation of the serfs began to be spoken of.
Madame Nazímoff, who was a very beautiful woman, was expected to be
present at the ball with her child, about ten years old, and to wear
some wonderful costume of a Persian princess in harmony with which
the costume of a young Persian prince, exceedingly rich, with a belt
covered with jewels, was made ready for her son. But the boy fell ill
just before the ball, and Madame Nazímoff thought that one of the
children of her best friend would be a good substitute for her own
child. Alexander and I were taken to her house to try on the costume.
It proved to be too short for Alexander, who was much taller than I,
but it fitted me exactly, and therefore it was decided that I should
impersonate the Persian prince.
The immense hall of the House of the Moscow nobility was crowded with
guests. Each of the children received a standard bearing at its top
the arms of one of the sixty provinces of the Russian Empire. I had an
eagle floating over a blue sea, which represented, as I learned later
on, the arms of the government of Astrakhan, on the Caspian Sea. We
were then ranged at the back of the great hall, and slowly marched in
two rows toward the raised platform upon which the Emperor and his
family stood. As we reached it we went right and left, and thus stood
aligned in one row before the platform. At a given signal all standards
were lowered before the Emperor. The apotheosis of autocracy was made
most impressive: Nicholas was enchanted. All provinces of the Empire
worshipped the supreme ruler. Then we children slowly retired to the
rear of the hall.
But here some confusion occurred. Chamberlains in their
gold-embroidered uniforms were running about, and I was taken out of
the ranks; my uncle, Prince Gagárin, dressed as a Tungus (I was dizzy
with admiration of his fine leather coat, his bow, and his quiver full
of arrows), lifted me up in his arms, and planted me on the imperial
platform.
Whether it was because I was the tiniest in the row of boys, or that
my round face, framed in curls, looked funny under the high Astrakhan
fur bonnet I wore, I know not, but Nicholas wanted to have me on the
platform; and there I stood amidst generals and ladies looking down
upon me with curiosity. I was told later on that Nicholas I., who was
always fond of barrack jokes, took me by the arm, and, leading me to
Marie Alexándrovna (the wife of the heir to the throne), who was then
expecting her third child, said in his military way, ‘That is the sort
of boy you must bring me’--a joke which made her blush deeply. I well
remember, at any rate, Nicholas asking me whether I would have sweets;
but I replied that I should like to have some of those tiny biscuits
which were served with tea (we were never overfed at home), and he
called a waiter and emptied a full tray into my tall bonnet. ‘I will
take them to Sásha,’ I said to him.
However, the soldier-like brother of Nicholas, Mikhael, who had the
reputation of being a wit, managed to make me cry. ‘When you are a good
boy,’ he said, ‘they treat you so,’ and he passed his big hand over my
face downwards; ‘but when you are naughty, they treat you so,’ and he
passed the hand upwards, rubbing my nose, which already had a marked
tendency toward growing in that direction. Tears, which I vainly tried
to stop, came into my eyes. The ladies at once took my part, and the
good-hearted Marie Alexándrovna took me under her protection. She set
me by her side, in a high velvet chair with a gilded back, and our
people told me afterward that I very soon put my head in her lap and
went to sleep. She did not leave her chair during the whole time the
ball was going on.
I remember also that, as we were waiting in the entrance-hall for our
carriage, our relatives petted and kissed me, saying, ‘Pétya, you have
been made a page;’ but I answered, ‘I am not a page; I will go home,’
and was very anxious about my bonnet which contained the pretty little
biscuits that I was taking home for Sásha.
I do not know whether Sásha got many of those biscuits, but I recollect
what a hug he gave me when he was told about my anxiety concerning the
bonnet.
To be inscribed as a candidate for the corps of pages was then a great
favour, which Nicholas seldom bestowed on the Moscow nobility. My
father was delighted, and already dreamed of a brilliant court career
for his son. Our stepmother, every time she told the story, never
failed to add, ‘It is all because I gave him my blessing before he went
to the ball.’
Madame Nazímoff was delighted too, and insisted upon having her
portrait painted in the costume in which she looked so beautiful, with
me standing at her side.
* * * * *
My brother Alexander’s fate, also, was decided next year. The jubilee
of the Izmáylovsk regiment, to which my father had belonged in his
youth, was celebrated about this time at St. Petersburg. One night,
while all the household was plunged in deep sleep, a three-horse
carriage, ringing with the bells attached to the harnesses, stopped at
our gate. A man jumped out of it, loudly shouting, ‘Open! An ordinance
from his Majesty the Emperor.’
One can easily imagine the terror which this nocturnal visit
spread in our house. My father, trembling, went down to his study.
‘Court-martial, degradation as a soldier,’ were words which rang
then in the ears of every military man; it was a terrible epoch.
But Nicholas simply wanted to have the names of the sons of all the
officers who had once belonged to the regiment, in order to send the
boys to military schools, if that had not yet been done. A special
messenger had been dispatched for that purpose from St. Petersburg
to Moscow, and now he called day and night at the houses of the
ex-Izmáylovsk officers.
With a shaking hand my father wrote that his eldest son, Nicholas,
was already in the first corps of cadets at Moscow; that his youngest
son, Peter, was a candidate for the corps of pages; and that there
remained only his second son, Alexander, who had not yet entered the
military career. A few weeks later came a paper informing father of the
‘monarch’s favour.’ Alexander was ordered to enter a corps of cadets
in Orel, a small provincial town. It cost my father a deal of trouble
and a large sum of money to get Alexander sent to a corps of cadets at
Moscow. This new ‘favour’ was obtained only in consideration of the
fact that our elder brother was in that corps.
And thus, owing to the will of Nicholas I., we had both to receive a
military education, though, before we were many years older, we simply
hated the military career for its absurdity. But Nicholas I. was
watchful that none of the sons of the nobility should embrace any other
profession than the military one, unless they were of infirm health;
and so we had all three to be officers, to the great satisfaction of my
father.
VI
Wealth was measured in those times by the number of ‘souls’ which a
landed proprietor owned. So many ‘souls’ meant so many male serfs:
women did not count. My father, who owned nearly twelve hundred souls,
in three different provinces, and who had, in addition to his peasants’
holdings, large tracts of land which were cultivated by these peasants,
was accounted a rich man. He lived up to his reputation, which meant
that his house was open to any number of visitors, and that he kept a
very large household.
We were a family of eight, occasionally of ten or twelve; but fifty
servants at Moscow, and half as many more in the country, were
considered not one too many. Four coachmen to attend a dozen horses,
three cooks for the masters and two more for the servants, a dozen
men to wait upon us at dinner-time (one man, plate in hand, standing
behind each person seated at the table), and girls innumerable in the
maid-servants’ room,--how could anyone do with less than this?
Besides, the ambition of every landed proprietor was that everything
required for his household should be made at home by his own men.
‘How nicely your piano is always tuned! I suppose Herr Schimmel must be
your tuner?’ perhaps a visitor would remark.
To be able to answer, ‘I have my own piano-tuner,’ was in those times
the correct thing.
‘What beautiful pastry!’ the guests would exclaim, when a work of
art, composed of ices and pastry, appeared toward the end of the
dinner. ‘Confess, prince, that it comes from Tremblé’ (the fashionable
pastry-cook).
‘It is made by my own confectioner, a pupil of Tremblé, whom I have
allowed to show what he can do,’ was a reply which elicited general
admiration.
To have embroideries, harnesses, furniture--in fact, everything--made
by one’s own men was the ideal of the rich and respected landed
proprietor. As soon as the children of the servants attained the age
of ten, they were sent as apprentices to the fashionable shops, where
they were obliged to spend five or seven years chiefly in sweeping, in
receiving an incredible number of thrashings, and in running about town
on errands of all sort. I must own that few of them became masters of
their respective arts. The tailors and the shoemakers were found only
skilful enough to make clothes or shoes for the servants, and when a
really good pastry was required for a dinner-party it was ordered at
Tremblé’s, while our own confectioner was beating the drum in the music
band.
That band was another of my father’s ambitions, and almost every one
of his male servants, in addition to other accomplishments, was a
bass-viol or a clarinet in the band. Makár, the piano-tuner, _alias_
under-butler, was also a flutist; Andréi, the tailor, played the French
horn; the confectioner was first put to beat the drum, but he misused
his instrument to such a deafening degree that a tremendous trumpet was
bought for him, in the hope that his lungs would not have the power to
make the same noise as his hands; when, however, this last hope had to
be abandoned, he was sent to be a soldier. As to ‘spotted Tíkhon,’ in
addition to his numerous functions in the household as lamp-cleaner,
floor-polisher, and footman, he made himself useful in the band--to-day
as a trombone, to-morrow as a bassoon, and occasionally as second
violin.
The two first violins were the only exceptions to the rule: they were
‘violins,’ and nothing else. My father had bought them, with their
large families, for a handsome sum of money, from his sisters (he never
bought serfs from nor sold them to strangers). In the evenings when he
was not at his club, or when there was a dinner or an evening party
at our house, the band of twelve to fifteen musicians was summoned.
They played very nicely, and were in great demand for dancing-parties
in the neighbourhood; still more when we were in the country. This
was, of course, a constant source of gratification to my father, whose
permission had to be asked to get the assistance of his band.
Nothing, indeed, gave him more pleasure than to be asked for help,
either in the way mentioned or in any other: for instance, to obtain
free education for a boy, or to save somebody from a punishment
inflicted upon him by a law court. Although he was liable to fall into
fits of rage, he was undoubtedly possessed of a natural instinct
toward leniency, and when his patronage was requested he would write
scores of letters in all possible directions, to all sorts of persons
of high standing, in favour of his protégé. At such times, his mail,
which was always heavy, would be swollen by half a dozen special
letters, written in a most original, semi-official, and semi-humorous
style; each of them sealed, of course, with his arms, in a big square
envelope, which rattled like a baby rattle on account of the quantity
of sand it contained--the use of blotting-paper being then unknown.
The more difficult the case, the more energy he would display, until
he secured the favour he asked for his protégé, whom in many cases he
never saw.
My father liked to have plenty of guests in his house. Our dinner-hour
was four, and at seven the family gathered round the _samovár_
(tea-urn) for tea. Everyone belonging to our circle could drop in
at that hour, and from the time my sister Hélène was again with us
there was no lack of visitors, old and young, who took advantage of
the privilege. When the windows facing the street showed bright light
inside that was enough to let people know that the family was at home
and friends would be welcome.
Nearly every night we had visitors. The green tables were opened in
the hall for the card-players, while the ladies and the young people
stayed in the reception-room or around Hélène’s piano. When the ladies
had gone, card-playing continued sometimes till the small hours of
the morning, and considerable sums of money changed hands among the
players. Father invariably lost. But the real danger for him was not
at home: it was at the English Club, where the stakes were much higher
than in private houses, and especially when he was induced to join
a party of ‘very respectable’ gentlemen, in one of the aristocratic
houses of the Old Equerries’ Quarter, where gambling went on all night.
On an occasion of this kind his losses were sure to be heavy.
Dancing-parties were not infrequent, to say nothing of a couple of
obligatory balls every winter. Father’s way, in such cases, was to
have everything done in a good style, whatever the expense. But at the
same time such niggardliness was practised in our house in daily life
that if I were to recount it, I should be accused of exaggeration. It
is said of a family of pretenders to the throne of France, renowned
for their truly regal hunting-parties, that in their everyday life
even the tallow candles are minutely counted. The same sort of miserly
economy ruled in our house with regard to everything; so much so that
when we, the children of the house, grew up, we detested all saving and
counting. However, in the Old Equerries’ Quarter such a mode of life
only raised my father in public esteem. ‘The old prince,’ it was said,
‘seems to be sharp over money at home; but he knows how a nobleman
ought to live.’
In our quiet and clean lanes that was the kind of life which was most
in respect. One of our neighbours, General D----, kept his house up
in very grand style; and yet the most comical scenes took place every
morning between him and his cook. Breakfast over, the old general,
smoking his pipe, would himself order the dinner.
‘Well, my boy,’ he would say to the cook, who appeared in snow-white
attire, ‘to-day we shall not be many: only a couple of guests. You will
make us a soup, you know, with some spring delicacies--green peas,
French beans, and so on. You have not given us any yet, and madam, you
know, likes a good French spring soup.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Then, anything you like as an entrée.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Of course, asparagus is not yet in season, but I saw yesterday such
nice bundles of it in the shops.’
‘Yes, sir; eight shillings the bundle.’
‘Quite right! Then, we are sick of your roasted chickens and turkeys;
you ought to get something for a change.’
‘Some venison, sir?’
‘Yes, yes, anything for a change.’
And when the six courses of dinner had been decided on, the old general
would ask, ‘Now how much shall I give you for to-day’s expenses? Six
shillings will do, I suppose?’
‘One pound, sir.’
‘What nonsense, my boy! Here is six shillings; I assure you that’s
quite enough.’
‘Eight shillings for asparagus, five for the vegetables.’
‘Now, look here, my dear boy, be reasonable. I’ll go as high as
seven-and-six, and you must be economical.’
And the bargaining would go on thus for half an hour, until the
two would agree upon fourteen shillings and sixpence, with the
understanding that the morrow’s dinner should not cost more than
three shillings. Whereupon the general, quite happy at having made
such a good bargain, would take his sledge, make a round of the
fashionable shops, and return quite radiant, bringing for his wife a
bottle of exquisite perfume, for which he had paid a fancy price in
a French shop, and announcing to his only daughter that a new velvet
mantle--‘something very simple’ and very costly--would be sent for her
to try on that afternoon.
All our relatives, who were numerous on my father’s side, lived exactly
in the same way: and if a new spirit occasionally made its appearance,
it usually took the form of some religious passion. Thus a Prince
Gagárin joined the Jesuit order, again to the scandal of ‘all Moscow,’
another young prince entered a monastery, while several older ladies
became fanatic devotees.
There was a single exception. One of our nearest relatives, Prince--let
me call him Mírski--had spent his youth at St. Petersburg as an officer
of the Guards. He took no interest in keeping his own tailors and
cabinet-makers, for his house was furnished in a grand modern style,
and his wearing apparel was all made in the best St. Petersburg shops.
Gambling was not his propensity--he played cards only when in company
with ladies; but his weak point was his dinner-table, upon which he
spent incredible sums of money.
Lent and Easter were his chief epochs of extravagance. When the Great
Lent came, and it would not have been proper to eat meat, cream, or
butter, he seized the opportunity to invent all sorts of delicacies in
the way of fish. The best shops of the two capitals were ransacked for
that purpose; special emissaries were dispatched from his estate to the
mouth of the Vólga, to bring back on post-horses (there was no railway
at that time) a sturgeon of great size or some extraordinarily cured
fish. And when Easter came, there was no end to his inventions.
Easter, in Russia, is the most venerated and also the gayest of the
yearly festivals. It is the festival of spring. The immense heaps of
snow which have been lying during the winter along the streets rapidly
thaw, and roaring streams run down the streets; not like a thief
who creeps in by insensible degrees, but frankly and openly spring
comes--every day bringing with it a change in the state of the snow and
the progress of the buds on the trees; the night frosts only keep the
thaw within reasonable bounds. The last week of the Great Lent, Passion
Week, was kept in Moscow, in my childhood, with extreme solemnity;
it was a time of general mourning, and crowds of people went to the
churches to listen to the impressive reading of those passages of the
Gospels which relate the sufferings of the Christ. Not only were meat,
eggs, and butter not eaten, but even fish was refused; some of the most
rigorous taking no food at all on Good Friday. The more striking was
the contrast when Easter came.
On Saturday everyone attended the night service which began in a
mournful way. Then, suddenly, at midnight, the resurrection news was
announced. All the churches were at once illuminated, and gay peals of
bells resounded from hundreds of bell towers. General rejoicing began.
All the people kissed one another thrice on the cheeks, repeating the
resurrection words, and the churches, now flooded with light, shone
with the gay toilettes of the ladies. The poorest woman had a new
dress; if she had only one new dress a year, she would get it for that
night.
At the same time, Easter was, and is still, the signal for a real
debauch in eating. Special Easter cream cheeses (_páskha_) and Easter
bread (_koolích_) are prepared; and everyone, no matter how poor he
or she may be, must have a small páskha and a small koolích, with at
least one egg painted red, to be consecrated in the church, and to
be used afterward to break the Lent. With most old Russians, eating
began at night, after a short Easter mass, immediately after the
consecrated food had been brought from church; but in the houses of
the nobility the ceremony was postponed till Sunday morning, when a
table was covered with all sorts of viands, cheeses, and pastry, and
all the servants came to exchange with their masters three kisses and a
red-painted egg. Throughout Easter week a table spread with Easter food
stood in the great hall, and every visitor was invited to partake.
On this occasion Prince Mírski surpassed himself. Whether he was at
St. Petersburg or at Moscow, messengers brought to his house, from his
estate, a specially prepared cream cheese for the páskha, and his cook
managed to make out of it a piece of artistic confectionery. Other
messengers were dispatched to the province of Nóvgorod to get a bear’s
ham, which was cured for the prince’s Easter table. And while the
princess, with her two daughters, visited the most austere monasteries,
in which the night service would last three or four hours in
succession, and spent all Passion Week in the most mournful condition
of mind, eating only a piece of dry bread between the visits she paid
to Russian, Roman, and Protestant preachers, her husband made every
morning the tour of the well-known Milútin shops at St. Petersburg,
where all possible delicacies are brought from the ends of the earth.
There he used to select the most extravagant dainties for his Easter
table. Hundreds of visitors came to his house, and were asked ‘just to
taste’ this or that extraordinary thing.
The end of it was that the prince managed literally to eat up a
considerable fortune. His richly furnished house and beautiful estate
were sold, and when he and his wife were old they had nothing left, not
even a home, and were compelled to live with their children.
No wonder that when the emancipation of the serfs came, nearly all
these families of the Old Equerries’ Quarter were ruined. But I must
not anticipate events.
VII
To maintain such numbers of servants as were kept in our house would
have been ruinous if all provisions had to be bought at Moscow; but in
those times of serfdom things were managed very simply. When winter
came, father sat at his table and wrote the following:--
‘To the manager of my estate, Nikólskoye, situated in the government
of Kalúga, district of Meschóvsk, on the river Siréna, from the Prince
Alexéi Petróvich Kropótkin, Colonel and Commander of various orders.
‘On receipt of this, and as soon as winter communication is
established, thou art ordered to send to my house, situated in the
city of Moscow, twenty-five peasant-sledges, drawn by two horses each,
one horse from each house, and one sledge and one man from each second
house, and to load them with [so many] quarters of oats, [so many] of
wheat, and [so many] of rye, as also with all the poultry and geese
and ducks, well frozen, which have to be killed this winter, well
packed and accompanied by a complete list, under the supervision of a
well-chosen man;’ and so it went on for a couple of pages, till the
next full-stop was reached. After this there followed an enumeration of
the penalties which would be inflicted in case the provisions should
not reach the house situated in such a street, number so-and-so, in due
time and in good condition.
Some time before Christmas the twenty-five peasant-sledges really
entered our gates, and covered the surface of the wide yard.
‘Frol!’ shouted my father, as soon as the report of this great event
reached him. ‘Kiryúshka! Yegórka! Where are they? Everything will be
stolen! Frol, go and receive the oats! Uliána, go and receive the
poultry! Kiryúshka, call the princess!’
All the household was in commotion, the servants running wildly in
every direction, from the hall to the yard, and from the yard to the
hall, but chiefly to the maid-servants’ room, to communicate there the
Nikólskoye news: ‘Pásha is going to marry after Christmas. Aunt Anna
has surrendered her soul to God,’ and so on. Letters had also come from
the country, and very soon one of the maids would steal upstairs into
my room.
‘Are you alone? The teacher is not in?’
‘No, he is at the university.’
‘Well, then, be kind and read me this letter from mother.’
And I would read to her the naïve letter, which always began with the
words, ‘Father and mother send you their blessing for ages not to be
broken.’ After this came the news: ‘Aunt Eupraxie lies ill, all her
bones aching; and your cousin is not yet married, but hopes to be after
Easter; and aunt Stepanída’s cow died on All Saints’ day.’ Following
the news came the greetings, two pages of them: ‘Brother Paul sends you
his greetings, and the sisters Mary and Dária send their greetings,
and then uncle Dmítri sends his many greetings,’ and so on. However,
notwithstanding the monotony of the enumeration, each name awakened
some remarks: ‘Then she is still alive, poor soul, if she sends her
greetings; it is nine years since she has lain motionless.’ Or, ‘Oh, he
has not forgotten me; he must be back, then, for Christmas; such a nice
boy. You will write me a letter, won’t you? and I must not forget him
then.’ I promised, of course, and when the time came I wrote a letter
in exactly the same style.
When the sledges had been unloaded, the hall filled with peasants. They
had put on their best coats over their sheepskins, and waited until
father should call them into his room to have a talk about the snow and
the prospects of the next crops. They hardly dared to walk in their
heavy boots on the polished floor. A few ventured to sit down on the
edge of an oak bench; they emphatically refused to make use of chairs.
So they waited for hours, looking with alarm upon everyone who entered
father’s room or issued from it.
Some time later on, usually next morning, one of the servants would run
slyly upstairs to the class-room.
‘Are you alone?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then go quickly to the hall. The peasants want to see you; something
from your nurse.’
When I went down to the hall, one of the peasants would give me
a little bundle containing perhaps a few rye cakes, half a dozen
hard-boiled eggs, and some apples, tied in a motley coloured cotton
kerchief. ‘Take that: it is your nurse, Vasilísa, who sends it to you.
Look if the apples are not frozen. I hope not: I kept them all the
journey on my breast. Such a fearful frost we had.’ And the broad,
bearded face, covered with frost-bites, would smile radiantly, showing
two rows of beautiful white teeth from beneath quite a forest of hair.
‘And this is for your brother, from his nurse Anna,’ another peasant
would say, handing me a similar bundle. ‘“Poor boy,” she says, “he can
never have enough at school.”’
Blushing and not knowing what to say, I would murmur at last, ‘Tell
Vasilísa that I kiss her, and Anna too, for my brother.’ At which all
faces would become still more radiant.
‘Yes, I will, to be sure.’
Then Kiríla, who kept watch at father’s door, would whisper suddenly,
‘Run quickly upstairs; your father may come out in a moment. Don’t
forget the kerchief; they want to take it back.’
As I carefully folded the worn kerchief, I most passionately desired to
send Vasilísa something. But I had nothing to send, not even a toy, and
we never had pocket-money.
* * * * *
Our best time, of course, was in the country. As soon as Easter
and Whitsuntide had passed, all our thoughts were directed towards
Nikólskoye. However, time went on--the lilacs must be past blooming at
Nikólskoye--and father had still thousands of affairs to keep him in
town. At last, five or six peasant-carts entered our yard: they came
to take all sorts of things which had to be sent to the country house.
The great old coach and the other coaches in which we were going to
make the journey were taken out and inspected once more. The boxes
began to be packed. Our lessons made slow progress; at every moment we
interrupted our teachers, asking whether this or that book should be
taken with us, and long before all others we began packing our books,
our slates, and our toys, which were of our own making.
Everything was ready: the peasant-carts stood heavily loaded with
furniture for the country house, boxes containing the kitchen utensils,
and almost countless empty glass jars which were to be brought back in
the autumn filled with all kinds of preserves. The peasants waited
every morning for hours in the hall; but the order for leaving did
not come. Father continued to write all the morning in his room, and
disappeared at night. Finally, our stepmother interfered, her maid
having ventured to report that the peasants were very anxious to
return, as haymaking was near.
Next afternoon, Frol, the major-domo, and Mikhael Aléeff, the first
violin, were called into father’s room. A sack containing the ‘food
money’--that is, a few coppers a day--for each of the forty or fifty
souls who were to accompany the household to Nikólskoye, was handed
to Frol, with a list. All were enumerated in that list: the band
in full; then the cooks and the under-cooks, the laundresses, the
under-laundress, who was blessed with a family of six mites, ‘Polka
Squinting,’ ‘Domna the Big One,’ ‘Domna the Small One,’ and the rest of
them.
The first violin received an ‘order of march.’ I knew it well, because
father, seeing that he never would be ready, had called me to copy it
into the book, in which he used to copy all ‘outgoing papers’:--
‘To my house servant, Mikhael Aléeff, from Prince Alexéi Petróvich
Kropótkin, Colonel and Commander.
‘Thou art ordered, on May 29, at six A.M., to march out with my loads,
from the city of Moscow, for my estate, situated in the government
of Kalúga, district of Meschóvsk, on the river Siréna, representing
a distance of one hundred and sixty miles from this house; to look
after the good conduct of the men entrusted to thee, and if any one
of them proves to be guilty of misconduct, or of drunkenness, or of
insubordination, to bring the said man before the commander of the
garrison detachment of the separate corps of the interior garrisons,
with the inclosed circular letter, and to ask that he may be punished
by flogging [the first violin knew who was meant], as an example to the
others.
‘Thou art ordered, moreover, to look especially after the integrity
of the goods entrusted to thy care, and to march according to the
following order: First day, stay at village So-and-So, to feed the
horses; second day, spend the night at the town of Podólsk;’ and so on
for all the seven or eight days that the journey would last.
Next day, at ten instead of at six--punctuality is not a Russian
virtue (‘Thank God, we are not Germans,’ true Russians used to say),
the carts left the house. The servants had to make the journey on
foot; only the children were accommodated with a seat in a bath-tub
or basket, on the top of a loaded cart, and some of the women might
find an occasional resting-place on the ledge of a cart. The others
had to walk all the hundred and sixty miles. As long as they were
marching through Moscow, discipline was maintained: it was peremptorily
forbidden to wear top-boots or to pass a belt over the coat. But when
they were on the road, and we overtook them a couple of days later, and
especially when it was known that father would stay a few days longer
at Moscow, the men and the women--dressed in all sorts of impossible
coats, belted with cotton handkerchiefs, burned by the sun or dripping
under the rain, and helping themselves along with sticks cut in the
woods--certainly looked more like a wandering band of gypsies than the
household of a wealthy landowner. Similar peregrinations were made by
every household in those times, and when we saw a file of servants
marching along one of our streets, we at once knew that the Apúkhtins
or the Pryánishnikoffs were migrating.
The carts were gone, yet the family did not move. All of us were sick
of waiting; but father still continued to write interminable orders to
the managers of his estates, and I copied them diligently into the big
‘outgoing book.’ At last the order to start was given. We were called
downstairs. My father read aloud the order of march, addressed to ‘the
Princess Kropótkin, wife of Prince Alexéi Petróvich Kropótkin, Colonel
and Commander,’ in which the halting-places during the five days’
journey were duly enumerated. True, the order was written for May 30,
and the departure was fixed for nine A.M., though May was gone, and the
departure took place in the afternoon: this upset all calculations.
But, as is usual in military marching-orders, this circumstance had
been foreseen, and was provided for in the following paragraph:--
‘If, however, contrary to expectation, the departure of your highness
does not take place at the said day and hour, you are requested to act
according to the best of your understanding, in order to bring the said
journey to its best issue.’
Then, all present, the family and the servants, sat down for a moment,
signed themselves with the cross, and bade my father good-bye. ‘I
entreat you, Alexis, don’t go to the club,’ our stepmother whispered to
him. The great coach, drawn by four horses, with a postillion, stood
at the door, with its little folding ladder to facilitate climbing in;
the other coaches also were there. Our seats were enumerated in the
marching-orders, but our stepmother had to exercise ‘the best of her
understanding’ even at that early stage of the proceedings, and we
started to the great satisfaction of all.
The journey was an inexhaustible source of enjoyment for us children.
The stages were short, and we stopped twice a day to feed the horses.
As the ladies screamed at the slightest declivity of the road, it was
found more convenient to alight each time the road went up or down
hill, which it did continually, and we took advantage of this to have a
peep into the woods by the roadside, or a run along some crystal brook.
The beautifully kept high road from Moscow to Warsaw, which we followed
for some distance, was covered, moreover, with a variety of interesting
objects: files of loaded carts, groups of pilgrims, and all sorts of
people. Twice a day we stopped in large, animated villages, and after
a good deal of bargaining about the prices to be charged for hay and
oats, as well as for the samovárs, we dismounted at the gates of an
inn. Cook Andréi bought a chicken and made the soup, while we ran in
the meantime to the next wood, or examined the farmyard, the gardens,
the inner life of the inn.
At Máloyaroslávetz, where a battle was fought in 1812, when the Russian
army vainly attempted to stop Napoleon in his retreat from Moscow,
we usually spent the night. M. Poulain, who had been wounded in the
Spanish campaign, knew, or pretended to know, everything about the
battle at Máloyaroslávetz. He took us to the battlefield, and explained
how the Russians tried to check Napoleon’s advance, and how the Grande
Armée crushed them and made its way through the Russian lines. He
explained it as well as if he himself had taken part in the battle.
Here the Cossacks attempted _un mouvement tournant_, but Davout, or
some other marshal, routed them and pursued them just beyond these
hills on the right. There the left wing of Napoleon crushed the Russian
infantry, and here Napoleon himself, at the head of the Old Guard,
charged Kutúzoff’s centre, and covered himself and his Guard with
undying glory.
We once took the old Kalúga route, and stopped at Tarútino; but here M.
Poulain was much less eloquent. For it was at this place that Napoleon,
who intended to retreat by a southern route, was compelled, after a
bloody battle, to abandon his plan, and was forced to take the Smolénsk
route, which his army had laid waste during its march on Moscow.
However, in M. Poulain’s narrative, Napoleon did not lose the battle:
he was only deceived by his marshals; otherwise he would have marched
straight upon Kíeff and Odéssa, and his eagles would have floated over
the Black Sea.
Beyond Kalúga we had to cross for a stretch of five miles a beautiful
pine forest, which remains connected in my memory with some of the
happiest reminiscences of my childhood. The sand in that forest was as
deep as in an African desert, and we went all the way on foot, while
the horses, stopping every moment, slowly dragged the carriages in the
sand. When I was in my teens, it was my delight to leave the family
behind, and to walk the whole distance by myself. Immense red pines,
centuries old, rose on every side, and not a sound reached the ear
except the voices of the lofty trees. In a small ravine a fresh crystal
spring murmured, and a passer-by had left in it, for the use of those
who should come after him, a small funnel-shaped ladle, made of birch
bark, with a split stick for a handle. Noiselessly a squirrel ran up a
tree, and the underwood was as full of mysteries as were the trees. In
that forest my first love of Nature and my first dim perception of its
incessant life were born.
Beyond the forest, and past the ferry which took us over the Ugrá, we
left the high road and entered narrow country lanes, where green ears
of rye bent toward the coach, and the horses managed to bite mouthfuls
of grass on either side of the way, as they ran, closely pressed to
one another in the narrow, trenchlike road. At last we saw the willows
which marked the approach to our village, and suddenly we caught sight
of the elegant, pale-yellow bell tower of the Nikólskoye church.
* * * * *
For the quiet life of the landlords of those times Nikólskoye was
admirably suited. There was nothing in it of the luxury which is seen
in richer estates; but an artistic hand was visible in the planning of
the buildings and gardens, and in the general arrangement of things.
Besides the main house, which father had recently built, there were,
round a spacious and well-kept yard, several smaller houses, which
gave a greater degree of independence to their inhabitants, without
destroying the close intercourse of the family life. An immense
‘upper garden’ was devoted to fruit-trees, and through it the church
was reached. The southern slope of the land, which led to the river,
was entirely given up to a pleasure garden, where flower-beds were
intermingled with alleys of lime-trees, lilacs, and acacias. From the
balcony of the main house there was a beautiful view of the Siréna,
with the ruins of an old earthen fortress where the Russians had
offered a stubborn resistance during the Mongol invasion, and farther
on, the boundless yellow grain-fields, with copses of woods on the
horizon.
In the early years of my childhood we occupied with M. Poulain one of
the separate houses entirely by ourselves; and after his method of
education was softened by the intervention of our sister Hélène, we
were on the best possible terms with him. Father was invariably absent
from home in the summer, which he spent in military inspections, and
our stepmother did not pay much attention to us, especially after her
own child, Pauline, was born. We were thus always with M. Poulain, who
thoroughly enjoyed the stay in the country, and let us enjoy it. The
woods; the walks along the river; the climbing over the hills to the
old fortress, which M. Poulain made alive for us as he told how it
was defended by the Russians, and how it was captured by the Tartars;
the little adventures, in one of which he became our hero by saving
Alexander from drowning; an occasional encounter with wolves--there
was no end of new and delightful impressions. Large parties were
also organized in which all the family took part, sometimes picking
mushrooms in the woods, and afterward having tea in the midst of the
forest, where a man a hundred years old lived alone with his little
grandson, taking care of the bees. At other times we went to one of
father’s villages where a big pond had been dug, in which golden carp
were caught by the thousand--part of them being taken for the landlord
and the remainder being distributed among all the peasants. My former
nurse, Vasilísa, lived in that village. Her family was one of the
poorest; besides her husband, she had only a small boy to help her, and
a girl, my foster-sister, who became later on a preacher and a ‘Virgin’
in the Nonconformist sect to which they belonged. There was no bound to
her joy when I came to see her. Cream, eggs, apples, and honey were all
that she could offer; but the way in which she offered them, in bright
wooden plates, after having covered the table with a fine snow-white
linen tablecloth of her own making (with the Russian Nonconformists
absolute cleanliness is a matter of religion), and the fond words with
which she addressed me, treating me as her own son, left the warmest
feelings in my heart. I must say the same of the nurses of my elder
brothers, Nicholas and Alexander, who belonged to prominent families of
two other Nonconformist sects in Nikólskoye. Few know what treasuries
of goodness can be found in the hearts of Russian peasants, even
after centuries of the most cruel oppression, which might well have
embittered them.
On stormy days M. Poulain had an abundance of tales to tell us,
especially about the campaign in Spain. Over and over again we induced
him to tell us how he was wounded in a battle, and every time he came
to the point when he felt warm blood streaming into his boot, we jumped
to kiss him and gave him all sorts of pet names.
Everything seemed to prepare us for the military career: the
predilection of our father (the only toys that I remember his having
bought for us were a rifle and a real sentry-box); the war tales of
M. Poulain; nay, even the library which we had at our disposal. This
library, which had once belonged to General Repnínsky, our mother’s
grandfather, a learned military man of the eighteenth century,
consisted exclusively of books on military warfare, adorned with rich
plates and beautifully bound in leather. It was our chief recreation,
on wet days, to look over the plates of these books, representing the
weapons of warfare since the times of the Hebrews, and giving plans
of all the battles that had been fought since Alexander of Macedonia.
These heavy books also offered excellent materials for building out of
them strong fortresses which would stand for some time the blows of a
battering-ram and the projectiles of an Archimedean catapult (which,
however, persisted in sending stones into the windows, and was soon
prohibited). Yet neither Alexander nor I became military men. The
literature of the sixties wiped out the teachings of our childhood.
M. Poulain’s opinions about revolutions were those of the Orleanist
‘Illustration Française,’ of which he received back numbers, and of
which we knew all the woodcuts. For a long time I could not imagine a
revolution otherwise than in the shape of Death riding on a horse, the
red flag on one hand and a scythe in the other, mowing down men right
and left. So it was pictured in the ‘Illustration.’ But I now think
that M. Poulain’s dislike was limited to the uprising of 1848, for one
of his tales about the Revolution of 1789 deeply impressed my mind.
The title of prince was used in our house with and without occasion. M.
Poulain must have been shocked by it, for he began once to tell us what
he knew of the great Revolution, I cannot now recall what he said, but
one thing I remember, namely, that ‘Count Mirabeau’ and other nobles
one day renounced their titles, and that Count Mirabeau, to show his
contempt for aristocratic pretensions, opened a shop decorated with
a signboard which bore the inscription, ‘Mirabeau, tailor.’ (I tell
the story as I had it from M. Poulain.) For a long time after that I
worried myself thinking what trade I should take up, so as to write,
‘Kropótkin, such and such a handicraft man.’ Later on, my Russian
teacher, Nikolái Pávlovich Smirnóff, and the general Republican tone
of Russian literature influenced me in the same way; and when I began
to write novels--that is, in my twelfth year--I adopted the signature
P. Kropótkin, which I never have departed from, notwithstanding the
remonstrances of my chiefs when I was in the military service.
VIII
In the autumn of 1852 my brother Alexander was sent to the corps of
cadets, and from that time we saw each other only during the holidays
and occasionally on Sundays. The corps of cadets was six miles from our
house, and although we had a dozen horses, it always happened that when
the time came to send the sledge to the corps there was no horse free
for that purpose. My eldest brother, Nicholas, came home very seldom.
The relative freedom which Alexander found at school, and especially
the influence of two of his teachers in literature, developed his
intellect rapidly, and later on I shall have ample occasion to speak of
the beneficial influence that he exercised upon my own development. It
is a great privilege to have had a loving, intelligent elder brother.
In the meantime I remained at home. I had to wait till my turn to enter
the corps of pages should come, and that did not happen until I was
nearly fifteen years of age. M. Poulain was dismissed, and a German
tutor was engaged instead. He was one of those idealistic men who are
not uncommon among Germans, but I remember him chiefly on account of
the enthusiastic way in which he used to recite Schiller’s poetry,
accompanying it by a most naïve kind of acting that delighted me. He
stayed with us only one winter.
The next winter I was sent to attend the classes at a Moscow gymnasium;
and finally I remained with our Russian teacher, Smirnóff. We soon
became friends, especially after my father took both of us for a
journey to his Ryazán estate. During this journey we indulged in all
sorts of fun, and we used to invent humorous stories in connection
with the men and the things that we saw; while the impression produced
upon me by the hilly tracts we crossed added some new and fine touches
to my growing love of nature. Under the impulse given me by Smirnóff,
my literary tastes also began to grow, and during the years from 1854
to 1857 I had full opportunity to develop them. My teacher, who had
by this time finished his studies at the university, obtained a small
clerkship in a law court, and spent his mornings there. I was thus
left to myself till dinner-time, and after having prepared my lessons
and taken a walk, I had plenty of leisure for reading and writing. In
the autumn, when my teacher returned to his office at Moscow, while
we remained in the country, I was left again to myself, and though in
continual intercourse with the family, and spending part of the day in
playing with my little sister Pauline, I could in fact dispose of my
time as I liked.
* * * * *
Serfdom was then in the last years of its existence. It is recent
history--it seems to be only of yesterday; and yet, even in Russia, few
realize what serfdom was in reality. There is a dim conception that the
conditions which it created were very bad; but how these conditions
affected human beings bodily and mentally is only vaguely understood.
It is amazing, indeed, to see how quickly an institution and its social
consequences are forgotten when the institution has ceased to exist,
and with what rapidity men and things change after that. I will try to
recall the conditions of serfdom by telling, not what I heard, but what
I saw.
Uliána, the housekeeper, stands in the passage leading to father’s
room, and crosses herself; she dares neither to advance nor to retreat.
At last, after having recited a prayer, she enters the room, and
reports, in a hardly audible voice, that the store of tea is nearly at
an end, that there are only twenty pounds of sugar left, and that the
other provisions will soon be exhausted.
‘Thieves, robbers!’ shouts my father. ‘And you, you are in league with
them!’ His voice thunders throughout the house. Our stepmother leaves
Uliána to face the storm. But father cries, ‘Frol, call the princess!
Where is she?’ And when she enters, he receives her with the same
reproaches.
‘You also are in league with this progeny of Ham; you are standing up
for them;’ and so on, for half an hour or more.
Then he commences to verify the accounts. At the same time, he thinks
about the hay. Frol is sent to weigh what is left of that, and our
stepmother is sent to be present during the weighing, while father
calculates how much of it ought to be in the barn. A considerable
quantity of hay appears to be missing, and Uliána cannot account for
several pounds of such and such provisions. Father’s voice becomes more
and more menacing; Uliána is trembling; but it is the coachman who now
enters the room, and is stormed at by his master. Father springs at
him, strikes him, but he keeps repeating, ‘Your highness must have made
a mistake.’
Father repeats his calculations, and this time it appears that there is
more hay in the barn than there ought to be. The shouting continues;
he now reproaches the coachman with not having given the horses their
daily rations in full; but the coachman calls on all the saints to
witness that he gave the animals their due, and Frol invokes the Virgin
to confirm the coachman’s appeal.
But father will not be appeased. He calls in Makár, the piano-tuner
and sub-butler, and reminds him of all his recent sins. He was drunk
last week, and must have been drunk yesterday, for he broke half a
dozen plates. In fact, the breaking of these plates was the real
cause of all the disturbance: our stepmother had reported the fact to
father in the morning, and that was why Uliána was received with more
scolding than was usually the case, why the verification of the hay was
undertaken, and why father now continues to shout that ‘this progeny of
Ham’ deserve all the punishments on earth.
Of a sudden there is a lull in the storm. My father takes his seat at
the table and writes a note. ‘Take Makár with this note to the police
station, and let a hundred lashes with the birch rod be given to him.’
Terror and absolute muteness reign in the house.
The clock strikes four, and we all go down to dinner; but no one has
any appetite, and the soup remains in the plates untouched. We are
ten at table, and behind each of us a violinist or a trombone-player
stands, with a clean plate in his left hand; but Makár is not among
them.
‘Where is Makár?’ our stepmother asks. ‘Call him in.’
Makár does not appear, and the order is repeated. He enters at last,
pale, with a distorted face, ashamed, his eyes cast down. Father looks
into his plate, while our stepmother, seeing that no one has touched
the soup, tries to encourage us.
‘Don’t you find, children,’ she says, ‘that the soup is delicious?’
Tears suffocate me, and immediately after dinner is over I run out,
catch Makár in a dark passage and try to kiss his hand; but he tears it
away, and says, either as a reproach or as a question, ‘Let me alone;
you, too, when you are grown up, will you not be just the same?’
‘No, no, never!’
Yet father was not among the worst of landowners. On the contrary, the
servants and the peasants considered him one of the best. What we saw
in our house was going on everywhere, often in much more cruel forms.
The flogging of the serfs was a regular part of the duties of the
police and of the fire brigade.
A landowner once made the remark to another, ‘Why is it, general,
that the number of the souls on your estate increases so slowly? You
probably do not look after their marriages.’
A few days later the general ordered that a list of all the inhabitants
of his village should be brought him. He picked out from it the names
of the boys who had attained the age of eighteen, and of the girls just
past sixteen--these are the legal ages for marriage in Russia. Then he
wrote, ‘John to marry Anna, Paul to marry Paráshka,’ and so on with
five couples. The five weddings, he added, must take place in ten days,
the next Sunday but one.
A general cry of despair rose from the village. Women, young and old,
wept in every house. Anna had hoped to marry Gregory; Paul’s parents
had already had a talk with the Fedótoffs about their girl, who would
soon be of age. Moreover, it was the season for ploughing, not for
weddings; and what wedding can be prepared in ten days? Dozens of
peasants came to see the landowner; peasant women stood in groups at
the back entrance of the mansion, with pieces of fine linen for the
landowner’s spouse, to secure her intervention. All in vain. The master
had said that the wedding should take place at such a date, and so it
must be.
At the appointed time, the nuptial processions, in this case more like
burial processions, went to the church. The women cried with loud
voices, as they are wont to cry during burials. One of the house valets
was sent to the church, to report to the master as soon as the wedding
ceremonies were over; but soon he came running back, cap in hand, pale
and distressed.
‘Paráshka,’ he said, ‘makes a stand; she refuses to be married to Paul.
Father’ (that is, the priest) ‘asked her, “Do you agree?” but she
replied in a loud voice, “No, I don’t.”’
The landowner grew furious. ‘Go and tell that long-maned drunkard’
(meaning the priest; the Russian clergy wear their hair long) ‘that if
Paráshka is not married at once, I will report him as a drunkard to the
archbishop. How dares he, clerical dirt, disobey me? Tell him he shall
be sent to rot in a monastery, and I shall exile Paráshka’s family to
the steppes.’
The valet transmitted the message. Paráshka’s relatives and the priest
surrounded the girl; her mother weeping, fell on her knees before her,
entreating her not to ruin the whole family. The girl continued to say
‘I won’t,’ but in a weaker and weaker voice, then in a whisper, until
at last she stood silent. The nuptial crown was put on her head; she
made no resistance, and the valet ran full speed to the mansion to
announce, ‘They are married.’
Half an hour later, the small bells of the nuptial processions
resounded at the gate of the mansion. The five couples alighted from
the cars, crossed the yard and entered the hall. The landlord received
them, offering them glasses of wine, while the parents, standing behind
the crying daughters, ordered them to bow to the earth before their
lord.
Marriages by order were so common that amongst our servants, each time
a young couple foresaw that they might be ordered to marry, although
they had no mutual inclination for each other, they took the precaution
of standing together as godfather and godmother at the christening
of a child in one of the peasant families. This rendered marriage
impossible, according to Russian Church law. The stratagem was usually
successful, but once it ended in a tragedy. Andréi, the tailor, fell
in love with a girl belonging to one of our neighbours. He hoped that
my father would permit him to go free, as a tailor, in exchange for
a certain yearly payment, and that by working hard at his trade he
could manage to lay aside some money and to buy freedom for the girl.
Otherwise, in marrying one of my father’s serfs she would have become
the serf of her husband’s master. However, as Andréi and one of the
maids of our household foresaw that they might be ordered to marry,
they agreed to unite as god-parents in the christening of a child. What
they had feared happened: one day they were called to the master, and
the dreaded order was given.
‘We are always obedient to your will,’ they replied, ‘but a few weeks
ago we acted as godfather and godmother at a christening.’ Andréi also
explained his wishes and intentions. The result was that he was sent to
the recruiting board to become a soldier.
Under Nicholas I. there was no obligatory military service for all,
such as now exists. Nobles and merchants were exempt, and when a new
levy of recruits was ordered, the landowners had to supply a certain
number of men from their serfs. As a rule, the peasants, within their
village communities, kept a roll amongst themselves; but the house
servants were entirely at the mercy of their lord, and if he was
dissatisfied with one of them, he sent him to the recruiting board and
took recruit acquittance, which had a considerable money value, as it
could be sold to any one whose turn it was to become a soldier.
Military service in those times was terrible. A man was required to
serve twenty-five years under the colours, and the life of a soldier
was hard in the extreme. To become a soldier meant to be torn away
for ever from one’s native village and surroundings, and to be at
the mercy of officers like Timoféeff, whom I have already mentioned.
Blows from the officers, flogging with birch rods and with sticks,
for the slightest fault, were normal affairs. The cruelty that was
displayed surpasses all imagination. Even in the corps of cadets, where
only noblemen’s sons were educated, a thousand blows with birch rods
were sometimes administered, in the presence of all the corps, for a
cigarette--the doctor standing by the tortured boy, and ordering the
punishment to end only when he ascertained that the pulse was about to
stop beating. The bleeding victim was carried away unconscious to the
hospital. The Grand Duke Mikhael, commander of the military schools,
would quickly have removed the director of a corps in which one or two
such cases did not occur every year. ‘No discipline,’ he would have
said.
With common soldiers it was far worse. When one of them appeared
before a court-martial, the sentence was that a thousand men should
be placed in two ranks facing each other, every soldier armed with a
stick of the thickness of the little finger (these sticks were known
under their German name of _Spitzruthen_), and that the condemned man
should be dragged three, four, five, and seven times between these two
rows, each soldier administering a blow. Sergeants followed to see that
full force was used. After one or two thousand blows had been given,
the victim, spitting blood, was taken to the hospital and attended
to, in order that the punishment might be finished as soon as he had
more or less recovered from the effects of the first part of it. If he
died under the torture, the execution of the sentence was completed
upon the corpse. Nicholas I. and his brother Mikhael were pitiless;
no remittance of the punishment was ever possible. ‘I will send you
through the ranks; you shall be skinned under the sticks,’ were threats
which made part of the current language.
A gloomy terror used to spread through our house when it became known
that one of the servants was to be sent to the recruiting board.
The man was chained and placed under guard in the office to prevent
suicide. A peasant cart was brought to the office door, and the doomed
man was taken out between two watchmen. All the servants surrounded
him. He made a deep bow asking everyone to pardon him his willing or
unwilling offences. If his father and mother lived in our village,
they came to see him off. He bowed to the ground before them, and his
mother and his other female relatives began loudly to sing out their
lamentations--a sort of half-song and half-recitative: ‘To whom do you
abandon us? Who will take care of you in the strange lands? Who will
protect me from cruel men?’--exactly in the same way in which they sang
their lamentations at a burial, and with the same words.
Thus Andréi had now to face for twenty-five years the terrible fate of
a soldier: all his schemes of happiness had come to a violent end.
* * * * *
The fate of one of the maids, Pauline, or Pólya, as she used to be
called, was even more tragical. She had been apprenticed to make fine
embroidery, and was an artist at the work. At Nikólskoye her embroidery
frame stood in sister Hélène’s room, and she often took part in the
conversations that went on between our sister and a sister of our
stepmother who stayed with Hélène. Altogether, by her behaviour and
talk Pólya was more like an educated young person than a housemaid.
A misfortune befell her: she realized that she would soon be a mother.
She told all to our stepmother, who burst into reproaches: ‘I will not
have that creature in my house any longer! I will not permit such a
shame in my house! oh, the shameless creature!’ and so on. The tears
of Hélène made no difference. Pólya had her hair cut short, and was
exiled to the dairy; but as she was just embroidering an extraordinary
skirt, she had to finish it at the dairy, in a dirty cottage, at
a microscopical window. She finished it, and made many more fine
embroideries, all in the hope of obtaining her pardon. But pardon did
not come.
The father of her child, a servant of one of our neighbours, implored
permission to marry her; but as he had no money to offer, his request
was refused. Pólya’s ‘too gentlewoman-like manners’ were taken as an
offence, and a most bitter fate was kept in reserve for her. There was
in our household a man employed as a postillion, on account of his
small size; he went under the name of ‘bandy-legged Fílka.’ In his
boyhood a horse had kicked him terribly, and he did not grow. His
legs were crooked, his feet were turned inward, his nose was broken
and turned to one side, his jaw was deformed. To this monster it was
decided to marry Pólya--and she was married by force. The couple were
sent to become peasants at my father’s estate in Ryazán.
Human feelings were not recognized, not even suspected, in serfs, and
when Turguéneff published his little story ‘Mumú,’ and Grigoróvich
began to issue his thrilling novels, in which he made his readers weep
over the misfortunes of the serfs, it was to a great number of persons
a startling revelation. ‘They love just as we do; is it possible?’
exclaimed the sentimental ladies who could not read a French novel
without shedding tears over the troubles of the noble heroes and
heroines.
* * * * *
The education which the owners occasionally gave to some of their serfs
was only another source of misfortune for the latter. My father once
picked out in a peasant house a clever boy, and sent him to be educated
as a doctor’s assistant. The boy was diligent, and after a few years’
apprenticeship made a decided success. When he returned home, my father
bought all that was required for a well-equipped dispensary, which
was arranged very nicely in one of the side houses of Nikólskoye. In
summer time Sásha the Doctor--that was the familiar name under which
this young man went in the household--was busy gathering and preparing
all sorts of medical herbs, and in a short time he became most popular
in the region round Nikólskoye. The sick people among the peasants
came from the neighbouring villages, and my father was proud of the
success of his dispensary. But this condition of things did not last.
One winter, my father came to Nikólskoye, stayed there for a few days,
and left. That night Sásha the Doctor shot himself--by accident, it was
reported; but there was a love story at the bottom of it. He was in
love with a girl whom he could not marry, as she belonged to another
landowner.
The case of another young man, Gherásim Kruglóff, whom my father
educated at the Moscow Agricultural Institute, was almost equally sad.
He passed his examinations most brilliantly, getting a gold medal, and
the director of the Institute made all possible endeavours to induce my
father to give him freedom and to let him go to the university--serfs
not being allowed to enter there. ‘He is sure to become a remarkable
man,’ the director said, ‘perhaps one of the glories of Russia, and it
will be an honour for you to have recognized his capacities and to have
given such a man to Russian science.’
‘I need him for my own estate,’ my father replied to the many
applications made on the young man’s behalf. In reality, with the
primitive methods of agriculture which were then in use, and from which
my father would never have departed, Gherásim Kruglóff was absolutely
useless. He made a survey of the estate, but when that was done he
was ordered to sit in the servants’ room and to stand with a plate
at dinner-time. Of course Gherásim resented it very much; his dreams
carried him to the university, to scientific work. His looks betrayed
his discontent, and our stepmother seemed to find an especial pleasure
in offending him at every opportunity. One day in the autumn, a rush of
wind having opened the entrance gate, she called out to him, ‘Garáska,
go and shut the gate.’
That was the last drop. He answered, ‘You have a porter for that,’ and
went his way.
My stepmother ran into father’s room, crying, ‘Your servants insult me
in your house!’
Immediately Gherásim was put under arrest, and chained, to be sent away
as a soldier. The parting of his old father and mother with him was one
of the most heartrending scenes I ever saw.
This time, however, fate took its revenge. Nicholas I. died, and
military service became more tolerable. Gherásim’s great ability was
soon remarked, and in a few years he was one of the chief clerks,
and the real working force in one of the departments of the Ministry
of War. Meanwhile, my father, who was absolutely honest, and, at a
time when almost every one was receiving bribes and making fortunes,
had never let himself be bribed, departed once from the strict rules
of the service in order to oblige the commander of the corps to which
he belonged, and consented to allow an irregularity of some kind. It
nearly cost him his promotion to the rank of general; the only object
of his thirty-five years’ service in the army seemed on the point
of being lost. My stepmother went to St. Petersburg to remove the
difficulty, and one day, after many applications, she was told that
the only way to obtain what she wanted was to address herself to a
particular clerk in a certain department of the ministry. Although he
was a mere clerk, he was the real head of his superiors, and could do
everything. This man’s name was Gherásim Ivánovich Kruglóff.
‘Imagine, our Garáska!’ she said to me afterward. ‘I always knew that
he had great capacity. I went to see him, and spoke to him about this
affair, and he said, “I have nothing against the old prince, and I will
do all I can for him.”’
Gherásim kept his word: he made a favourable report, and my father got
his promotion. At last he could put on the long-coveted red trousers
and the red-lined overcoat, and could wear the plumage on his helmet.
These were things which I myself saw in my childhood. If, however, I
were to relate what I heard of in those years it would be a much more
gruesome narrative: stories of men and women torn from their families
and their villages, and sold, or lost in gambling, or exchanged for a
couple of hunting dogs, and then transported to some remote part of
Russia for the sake of creating a new estate; of children taken from
their parents and sold to cruel or dissolute masters; of flogging ‘in
the stables,’ which occurred every day with unheard-of cruelty; of a
girl who found her only salvation in drowning herself; of an old man
who had grown grey-haired in his master’s service, and at last hanged
himself under his master’s window; and of revolts of serfs, which were
suppressed by Nicholas I.’s generals by flogging to death each tenth
or fifth man taken out of the ranks, and by laying waste the village,
whose inhabitants, after a military execution, went begging for bread
in the neighbouring provinces, as if they had been the victims of a
conflagration. As to the poverty which I saw during our journeys in
certain villages, especially in those which belonged to the imperial
family, no words would be adequate to describe the misery to readers
who have not seen it.
* * * * *
To become free was the constant dream of the serfs--a dream not easily
realized, for a heavy sum of money was required to induce a landowner
to part with a serf. ‘Do you know,’ my father said to me once, ‘that
your mother appeared to me after her death? You young people do not
believe in these things, but it was so. I sat one night very late in
this chair, at my writing-table, and slumbered, when I saw her enter
from behind, all in white, quite pale, and with her eyes gleaming.
When she was dying she begged me to promise that I would give liberty
to her maid, Másha, and I did promise; but then what with one thing
and another, nearly a whole year passed without my having fulfilled my
intention. Then she appeared, and said to me in a low voice, “Alexis,
you promised me to give liberty to Másha: have you forgotten it?” I
was quite terrified: I jumped out of my chair, but she had vanished. I
called the servants, but no one had seen anything. Next morning I went
to her grave and had a litany sung, and immediately gave liberty to
Másha.’
When my father died, Másha came to his burial, and I spoke to her. She
was married, and quite happy in her family life. My brother Alexander,
in his jocose way, told her what my father had said, and we asked her
what she knew of it.
‘These things,’ she replied, ‘happened a long time ago, so I may tell
you the truth. I saw that your father had quite forgotten his promise,
so I dressed up in white and spoke like your mother. I recalled the
promise he had made to her--you won’t bear a grudge against me, will
you?’
‘Of course not!’
* * * * *
Ten or twelve years after the scenes described in the early part of
this chapter, I sat one night in my father’s room, and we talked of
things past. Serfdom had been abolished, and my father complained of
the new conditions, though not very severely; he had accepted them
without much grumbling.
‘You must agree, father,’ I said, ‘that you often punished your
servants cruelly, and without any reason.’
‘With the people,’ he replied, ‘it was impossible to do otherwise;’
and, leaning back in his easy-chair, he remained plunged in thought.
‘But what I did was nothing worth speaking of,’ he said after a long
pause. ‘Take that same Sábleff: he looks so soft, and talks in such a
meek voice; but he was really terrible with his serfs. How many times
they plotted to kill him! I, at least, never took advantage of my
maids, whereas that old devil Tónkoff went on in such a way that the
peasant women were going to inflict a terrible punishment upon him....
Good-bye; _bonne nuit_!’
IX
I well remember the Crimean war. At Moscow it affected people but
little. Of course, in every house lint and bandages for the wounded
were made at evening parties; not much of it, however, reached the
Russian armies, immense quantities being stolen and sold to the armies
of the enemy. My sister Hélène and other young ladies sang patriotic
songs, but the general tone of life in society was hardly influenced by
the great struggle that was going on. In the country, on the contrary,
the war caused much gloominess. The levies of recruits followed one
another rapidly, and we continually heard the peasant women singing
their funereal songs. The Russian people look upon war as a calamity
which is being sent upon them by Providence, and they accepted this
war with a solemnity that contrasted strangely with the levity I saw
elsewhere under similar circumstances. Young though I was, I realized
that feeling of solemn resignation which pervaded our villages.
My brother Nicholas was smitten like many others by the war fever, and
before he had ended his course at the corps he joined the army in the
Caucasus. I never saw him again.
In the autumn of 1854 our family was increased by the arrival of two
sisters of our stepmother. They had had their own house and some
vineyards at Sebastopol, but now they were homeless, and came to stay
with us. When the allies landed in the Crimea, the inhabitants of
Sebastopol were told that they need not be afraid, and had only to stay
where they were; but after the defeat at the Alma, they were ordered to
leave with all haste, as the city would be invested within a few days.
There were few conveyances, and there was no way of moving along the
roads in face of the troops which were marching southward. To hire a
cart was almost impossible, and the ladies, having abandoned all they
had on the road, had a very hard time of it before they reached Moscow.
I soon made friends with the younger of the two sisters, a lady of
about thirty, who used to smoke one cigarette after another, and to
tell me of all the horrors of their journey. She spoke with tears in
her eyes of the beautiful battle-ships which had to be sunk at the
entrance of the harbour of Sebastopol, and she could not understand how
the Russians would be able to defend Sebastopol from the land; there
was no wall even worth speaking of.
I was in my thirteenth year when Nicholas I. died. It was late in the
afternoon of February 18 (March 2), that the policemen distributed in
all the houses of Moscow a bulletin announcing the illness of the Tsar,
and inviting the inhabitants to pray in the churches for his recovery.
At that time he was already dead, and the authorities knew it, as
there was telegraphic communication between Moscow and St. Petersburg;
but not a word having been previously uttered about his illness, they
thought that the people must be gradually prepared for the announcement
of his death. We all went to church and prayed most piously.
Next day, Saturday, the same thing was done, and even on Sunday morning
bulletins about the Tsar’s health were distributed. The news of the
death of Nicholas reached us only about midday, through some servants
who had been to the market. A real terror reigned in our house and in
the houses of our relatives, as the information spread. It was said
that the people in the market behaved in a strange way, showing no
regret, but indulging in dangerous talk. Full-grown people spoke in
whispers, and our stepmother kept repeating, ‘Don’t talk before the
men;’ while the servants whispered among themselves, probably about the
coming ‘freedom.’ The nobles expected at every moment a revolt of the
serfs--a new uprising of Pugachóff.
At St. Petersburg, in the meantime, men of the educated classes, as
they communicated to one another the news, embraced in the streets.
Everyone felt that the end of the war and the end of the terrible
conditions which prevailed under the ‘iron despot’ were near at hand.
Poisoning was talked about, the more so as the Tsar’s body decomposed
very rapidly, but the true reason only gradually leaked out: a too
strong dose of an invigorating medicine that Nicholas had taken.
In the country, during the summer of 1855, the heroic struggle which
was going on in Sebastopol for every yard of ground and every bit
of its dismantled bastions was followed with a solemn interest. A
messenger was sent regularly twice a week from our house to the
district town to get the papers; and on his return, even before he had
dismounted, the papers were taken from his hands and opened. Hélène or
I read them aloud to the family, and the news was at once transmitted
to the servants’ room, and thence to the kitchen, the office, the
priest’s house, and the houses of the peasants. The reports which came
of the last days of Sebastopol, of the awful bombardment, and finally
of the evacuation of the town by our troops were received with tears.
In every country house round about, the loss of Sebastopol was mourned
over with as much grief as the loss of a near relative would have been,
although everyone understood that now the terrible war would soon come
to an end.
X
It was in August 1857, when I was nearly fifteen, that my turn came to
enter the corps of pages and I was taken to St. Petersburg. When I left
home I was still a child; but human character is usually settled in a
definite way at an earlier age than is generally supposed, and it is
evident to me that under my childish appearance I was then very much
what I was to be later on. My tastes, my inclinations, were already
determined.
The first impulse to my intellectual development was given, as I have
said, by my Russian teacher. It is an excellent habit in Russian
families--a habit now, unhappily, on the decline--to have in the house
a student who aids the boys and the girls with their lessons, even when
they are at a gymnasium. For a better assimilation of what they learn
at school, and for a widening of their conceptions about what they
learn, his aid is invaluable. Moreover, he introduces an intellectual
element into the family and becomes an elder brother to the young
people--often something better than an elder brother, because the
student has a certain responsibility for the progress of his pupils;
and as the methods of teaching change rapidly, from one generation to
another, he can assist his pupils much better than the best educated
parents could.
Nikolái Pávlovich Smirnóff had literary tastes. At that time, under
the wild censorship of Nicholas I., many quite inoffensive works by
our best writers could not be published; others were so mutilated as
to deprive many passages in them of any meaning. In the genial comedy
by Griboyédoff, ‘Misfortune from Intelligence,’ which ranks with
the best comedies of Molière, Colonel Skalozúb had to be named ‘Mr.
Skalozúb,’ to the detriment of the sense and even of the verses; for
the representation of a colonel in a comical light would have been
considered an insult to the army. Of so innocent a book as Gógol’s
‘Dead Souls’ the second part was not allowed to appear, nor the first
part to be reprinted, although it had long been out of print. Numerous
verses of Púshkin, Lérmontoff, A. K. Tolstóy, Ryléeff, and other poets
were not permitted to see the light; to say nothing of such verses as
had any political meaning or contained a criticism of the prevailing
conditions. All these circulated in manuscript, and my teacher used to
copy whole books of Gógol and Púshkin for himself and his friends, a
task in which I occasionally helped him. As a true child of Moscow he
was also imbued with the deepest veneration for those of our writers
who lived in Moscow--some of them in the Old Equerries’ Quarter.
He pointed out to me with respect the house of the Countess Saliás
(Eugénie Tour), who was our near neighbour, while the house of the
noted exile Alexander Hérzen always was associated with a certain
mysterious feeling of respect and awe. The house where Gógol lived was
for us an object of deep respect, and though I was not nine when he
died (in 1851), and had read none of his works, I remember well the
sadness his death produced at Moscow. Turguéneff well expressed that
feeling in a note, for which Nicholas I. ordered him to be put under
arrest and sent into exile to his estate.
Pushkin’s great poem, ‘Evghéniy Onyéghin,’ made but little impression
upon me, and I still admire the marvellous simplicity and beauty of his
style in that poem more than its contents. But Gógol’s works, which I
read when I was eleven or twelve, had a powerful effect on my mind, and
my first literary essays were in imitation of his humorous manner. An
historical novel by Zagóskin, ‘Yúriy Miloslávskiy,’ about the times of
the great uprising of 1612, Púshkin’s ‘The Captain’s Daughter,’ dealing
with the Pugachóff uprising, and Dumas’ ‘Queen Marguerite’ awakened
in me a lasting interest in history. As to other French novels, I
have only begun to read them since Daudet and Zola came to the front.
Nekrásoff’s poetry was my favourite from early years: I knew many of
his verses by heart.
Nikolái Pávlovich Smirnóff early began to make me write, and with his
aid I wrote a long ‘History of a Sixpence,’ for which we invented all
sorts of characters, into whose possession the sixpence fell.
My brother Alexander had at that time a much more poetical turn of
mind. He wrote most romantic stories, and began early to make verses,
which he did with wonderful facility and in a most musical and easy
style. If his mind had not subsequently been taken up by natural
history and philosophical studies, he undoubtedly would have become a
poet of mark. In those years his favourite resort for finding poetical
inspiration was the gently sloping roof underneath our window. This
aroused in me a constant desire to tease him. ‘There is the poet
sitting under the chimney-pot, trying to write his verses,’ I used to
say; and the teasing ended in a fierce scrimmage, which brought our
sister Hélène to a state of despair. But Alexander was so devoid of
revengefulness that peace was soon concluded, and we loved each other
immensely. Among boys, scrimmage and love seem to go hand in hand.
I had even then taken to journalism. In my twelfth year I began to
edit a daily journal. Paper was not to be had at will in our house,
and my journal was of a Lilliputian size. As the Crimean war had not
yet broken out, and the only newspaper which my father used to receive
was the Gazette of the Moscow Police, I had not a great choice of
models. As a result my own Gazette consisted merely of short paragraphs
announcing the news of the day: as, ‘Went out to the woods. N. P.
Smirnóff shot two thrushes,’ and the like.
This soon ceased to satisfy me, and in 1855 I started a monthly
review which contained Alexander’s verses, my novelettes, and some
sort of ‘varieties.’ The material existence of this review was fully
guaranteed, for it had plenty of subscribers; that is, the editor
himself and Smirnóff, who regularly paid his subscription, of so
many sheets of paper, even after he had left our house. In return, I
accurately wrote out for my faithful subscriber a second copy.
When Smirnóff left us, and a student of medicine, N. M. Pávloff, took
his place, the latter helped me in my editorial duties. He obtained for
the review a poem by one of his friends, and--still more important--the
introductory lecture on physical geography by one of the Moscow
professors. Of course this had not been printed before: a reproduction
would never have found its way into so serious a publication.
Alexander, I need not say, took a lively interest in the review, and
its renown soon reached the corps of cadets. Some young writers on
the way to fame undertook the publication of a rival. The matter was
serious: in poems and novels we could hold our own; but they had a
‘critic,’ and a ‘critic’ who writes, in connection with the characters
of some new novel, all sorts of things about the conditions of life,
and touches upon a thousand questions which could not be touched upon
anywhere else, makes the soul of a Russian review. They had a critic,
and we had none! Happily enough, the article he wrote for the first
number was shown to my brother. It was rather pretentious and weak, and
Alexander at once wrote an anti-criticism, ridiculing and demolishing
the critic in a violent manner. There was great consternation in the
rival camp when they learned that this anti-criticism would appear
in our next issue; they gave up publishing their review and their
best writers joined our staff. We triumphantly announced the future
‘exclusive collaboration’ of so many distinguished writers.
In August 1857 the review had to be suspended, after nearly two years’
existence. New surroundings and a quite new life were before me. I went
away from home with regret, the more so because the whole distance
between Moscow and St. Petersburg would be between me and Alexander,
and I already considered it a misfortune that I had to enter a military
school.
PART SECOND
THE CORPS OF PAGES
I
The long-cherished ambition of my father was thus realized. There
was a vacancy in the corps of pages which I could fill before I had
got beyond the age to which admission was limited, and I was taken
to St. Petersburg and entered the school. Only a hundred and fifty
boys--mostly children of the nobility belonging to the court--received
education in this privileged corps, which combined the character of a
military school endowed with special rights and of a court institution
attached to the imperial household. After a stay of four or five years
in the corps of pages, those who had passed the final examinations were
received as officers in any regiment of the Guard or of the army they
chose, irrespective of the number of vacancies in that regiment; and
each year the first sixteen pupils of the highest form were nominated
_pages de chambre_: that is, they were personally attached to the
several members of the imperial family--the emperor, the empress, the
grand duchesses, and the grand dukes. That was considered, of course,
a great honour; and, moreover, the young men upon whom this honour was
bestowed became known at the court, and had afterward every chance of
being nominated aides-de-camp of the emperor or of one of the grand
dukes, and consequently had every facility for making a brilliant
career in the service of the State. Fathers and mothers took due
care, therefore, that their boys should not miss entering the corps of
pages, even though entrance had to be secured at the expense of other
candidates who never saw a vacancy opening for them. Now that I was in
the select corps my father could give free play to his ambitious dreams.
The corps was divided into five forms, of which the highest was the
first, and the lowest the fifth, and the intention was that I should
enter the fourth form. However, as it appeared at the examinations that
I was not sufficiently familiar with decimal fractions, and as the
fourth form contained that year over forty pupils, while only twenty
had been mustered for the fifth form, I was enrolled in the latter.
I felt extremely vexed at this decision. It was with reluctance that
I entered a military school, and now I should have to stay in it five
years instead of four. What should I do in the fifth form, when I
knew already all that would be taught in it? With tears in my eyes I
spoke of it to the inspector (the head of the educational department),
but he answered me with a joke. ‘You know,’ he told me, ‘what Cæsar
said--better to be the first in a village than the second in Rome.’ To
which I warmly replied that I should prefer to be the very last if only
I could leave the military school as soon as possible. ‘Perhaps, after
some time, you will like the school,’ he remarked, and from that day he
became friendly to me.
To the teacher of arithmetic, who also tried to console me, I gave my
word of honour that I would never cast a glance into his text-book;
‘and nevertheless you will have to give me the highest marks.’ I kept
my word; but thinking now of this scene, I fancy that the pupil was not
of a very docile disposition.
And yet, as I look back upon that remote past, I cannot but feel
grateful for having been put in the lower form. Having only to repeat
during the first year what I already knew, I got into the habit of
learning my lessons by merely listening to what the teachers said in
the class-room; and, the lessons over, I had plenty of time to read and
to write to my heart’s content. I never prepared for the examinations,
and used to spend the time which was allowed for that in reading aloud
to a few friends the dramas of Shakespeare or of Ostróvskiy. When I
reached the higher ‘special’ forms, I was also better prepared to
master the variety of subjects we had to study. Besides, I spent more
than half of the first winter in the hospital. Like all children who
are not born at St. Petersburg, I had to pay a heavy tribute to ‘the
capital on the swamps of Finland,’ in the shape of several attacks of
local cholera, and finally one of typhoid fever.
* * * * *
When I entered the corps of pages, its inner life was undergoing a
profound change. All Russia awakened at that time from the heavy
slumber and the terrible nightmare of Nicholas I.’s reign. Our school
also felt the effects of that revival. I do not know, in fact, what
would have become of me, had I entered the corps of pages one or
two years sooner. Either my will would have been totally broken, or
I should have been excluded from the school with no one knows what
consequences. Happily, the transition period was already in full sway
in the year 1857.
The director of the corps was an excellent old man, General Zheltúkhin.
But he was the nominal head only. The real master of the school was
‘the Colonel,’--Colonel Girardot, a Frenchman in the Russian service.
People said he was a Jesuit, and so he was, I believe. His ways, at
any rate, were thoroughly imbued with the teachings of Loyola, and his
educational methods were those of the French Jesuit colleges.
Imagine a short, extremely thin man, with dark, piercing, and
furtive eyes, wearing short-clipped moustaches, which gave him the
expression of a cat; very quiet and firm; not remarkably intelligent,
but exceedingly cunning; a despot at the bottom of his heart, who
was capable of hating--intensely hating--the boy who would not
fall under his fascination, and of expressing that hatred, not by
silly persecutions, but unceasingly by his general behaviour--by an
occasionally dropped word, a gesture, a smile, an interjection. His
walk was more like gliding along, and the exploring glances he used to
cast round without turning his head completed the illusion. A stamp
of cold dryness was impressed on his lips, even when he tried to look
well disposed, and that expression became still more harsh when his
mouth was contorted by a smile of discontent or of contempt. With all
this there was nothing of a commander in him; you would rather think,
at first sight, of a benevolent father who talks to his children as if
they were full-grown people. And yet, you soon felt that everyone and
everything had to bend before his will. Woe to the boy who would not
feel happy or unhappy according to the degree of good disposition shown
towards him by the Colonel.
The words ‘the Colonel’ were continually on all lips. Other officers
went by their nicknames, but no one dared to give a nickname to
Girardot. A sort of mystery hung about him, as if he were omniscient
and everywhere present. True, he spent all the day and part of the
night in the school. Even when we were in the classes he prowled about,
visiting our drawers, which he opened with his own keys. As to the
night, he gave a good portion of it to the task of inscribing in small
books--of which he had quite a library--in separate columns, by special
signs and in inks of different colours, all the faults and virtues of
each boy.
Play, jokes, and conversations stopped when we saw him slowly moving
along through our spacious rooms, hand in hand with one of his
favourites, balancing his body forward and backward; smiling at one
boy, keenly looking into the eyes of another, casting an indifferent
glance upon a third, and giving a slight contortion to his lip as he
passed a fourth: and from these looks everyone knew that he liked the
first boy, that to the second he was indifferent, that he intentionally
did not notice the third, and that he disliked the fourth. This dislike
was enough to terrify most of his victims--the more so as no reason
could be given for it. Impressionable boys had been brought to despair
by that mute, unceasingly displayed aversion and those suspicious
looks; in others the result had been a total annihilation of will, as
one of the Tolstóys--Theodor, also a pupil of Girardot--has shown in an
autobiographic novel, the ‘Diseases of the Will.’
The inner life of the corps was miserable under the rule of the
Colonel. In all boarding-schools the newly entered boys are subjected
to petty persecutions. The ‘greenhorns’ are put in this way to a
test. What are they worth? Are they not going to turn ‘sneaks?’ And
then the ‘old hands’ like to show to new-comers the superiority of an
established brotherhood. So it is in all schools and in prisons. But
under Girardot’s rule these persecutions took on a harsher aspect, and
they came, not from the comrades of the same form, but from the first
form--the pages de chambre, who were non-commissioned officers, and
whom Girardot had placed in a quite exceptional, superior position.
His system was to give them carte blanche; to pretend that he did not
know even the horrors they were enacting; and to maintain through
them a severe discipline. To answer a blow received from a page de
chambre would have meant, in the times of Nicholas I., to be sent
to a battalion of soldiers’ sons, if the fact became public; and to
revolt in any way against the mere caprice of a page de chambre meant
that the twenty youths of the first form, armed with their heavy oak
rulers, would assemble in a room, and, with Girardot’s tacit approval,
administer a severe beating to the boy who had shown such a spirit of
insubordination.
Accordingly, the first form did what they liked; and not farther back
than the preceding winter one of their favourite games had been to
assemble the ‘greenhorns’ at night in a room, in their night-shirts,
and to make them run round, like horses in a circus, while the pages
de chambre, armed with thick india-rubber whips, standing some in the
centre and the others on the outside, pitilessly whipped the boys. As a
rule the ‘circus’ ended in an Oriental fashion, in an abominable way.
The moral conceptions which prevailed at that time, and the foul talk
which went on in the school concerning what occurred at night after a
circus, were such that the least said about them the better.
The Colonel knew all this. He had a perfectly organized system of
espionage, and nothing escaped his knowledge. But so long as he was
not known to know it, all was right. To shut his eyes to what was done
by the first form was the foundation of his system of maintaining
discipline.
* * * * *
However, a new spirit was awakened in the school, and only a few
months before I entered it a revolution had taken place. That year the
third form was different from what it had hitherto been. It contained
a number of young men who really studied, and read a good deal; some
of them became, later, men of mark. My first acquaintance with one
of them--let me call him von Schauff--was when he was reading Kant’s
‘Critique of Pure Reason.’ Besides, they had amongst them some of the
strongest youths of the school. The tallest member of the corps was in
that form, as also a very strong young man, Kóshtoff, a great friend of
von Schauff.
This third form did not bear the yoke of the pages de chambre with the
same docility as their predecessors; they were disgusted with what was
going on, and in consequence of an incident, which I prefer not to
describe, a fight took place between the third and the first form,
with the result that the pages de chambre got a severe thrashing from
their subordinates. Girardot hushed up the affair, but the authority of
the first form was broken down. The india-rubber whips remained, but
were never again brought into use. The circuses and the like became
things of the past.
That much was won; but the lowest form, the fifth, composed almost
entirely of very young boys who had just entered the school, had still
to obey the petty caprices of the pages de chambre. We had a beautiful
garden, filled with old trees, but the boys of the fifth form could
enjoy it little; they were forced to run a roundabout, while the first
form boys sat in it and chattered, or to send back the balls when these
gentlemen played nine-pins. A couple of days after I had entered the
school, seeing how things stood in the garden, I did not go there, but
remained upstairs. I was reading, when a page de chambre, with carroty
hair and a face covered with freckles, came upon me, and ordered me to
go at once to the garden to run the roundabout.
‘I sha’n’t; don’t you see I am reading,’ was my reply.
Anger disfigured his never too pleasant face. He was ready to jump upon
me. I took the defensive. He tried to give me blows on the face with
his cap. I fenced as best I could. Then he flung his cap on the floor.
‘Pick it up.’
‘Pick it up yourself.’
Such an act of disobedience was unheard of in the school. Why he did
not beat me unmercifully on the spot I do not know. He was much older
and stronger than I was.
Next day and the following days I received similar commands, but
obstinately remained upstairs. Then began the most exasperating petty
persecutions at every step--enough to drive a boy to desperation.
Happily, I was always of a jovial disposition, and answered them with
jokes, or took little heed of them.
Moreover, it all soon came to an end. The weather turned rainy, and we
spent most of our time indoors. In the garden the first form smoked
freely enough, but when we were indoors the smoking club was ‘the
tower.’ It was kept beautifully clean, and a fire was always burning
there. The pages de chambre severely punished any of the other boys
whom they caught smoking, but they themselves sat continually at the
fireside chattering and enjoying cigarettes. Their favourite smoking
time was after ten o’clock at night, when all were supposed to have
gone to bed; they kept up their club till half-past eleven, and, to
protect themselves from an unexpected interruption by Girardot, they
ordered us to be on the watch. The small boys of the fifth form were
taken out of their beds in turn, two at a time, and they had to loiter
about the staircase till half-past eleven, to give notice of the
approach of the Colonel.
We decided to put an end to these night watches. Long were the
discussions, and the higher forms were consulted as to what was to
be done. At last the decision came: ‘Refuse, all of you, to keep the
watch; and when they begin to beat you, which they are sure to do, go,
as many of you as you can, in a block, and call in Girardot. He knows
it all, but then he will be bound to stop it.’ The question whether
that would not be ‘reporting’ was settled in the negative by experts
in matters of honour: the pages de chambre did not behave towards the
others like comrades.
The turn to watch fell that night to a Prince Shahovskóy, an old
hand, and to Selánoff, a new-comer, an extremely timid boy, who even
spoke in a girlish voice. The old hand was called upon first, but
refused to go, and was left alone. Then two pages de chambre went to
the timid new-comer, who was in bed; and as he refused to obey, they
began to flog him brutally with heavy leather braces. Shahovskóy woke
up several comrades who were near at hand, and they all ran to find
Girardot.
I was also in bed when the two came upon me, ordering me to take the
watch. I refused. Thereupon, seizing two pairs of braces--we always
used to put our clothes in perfect order on a bench by the bedside,
braces uppermost, and the necktie across them--they began to flog me.
Sitting up in bed, I fenced with my hands, and had already received
several heavy blows, when a command resounded, ‘The first form to the
Colonel!’ The fierce fighters became tame at once, and hurriedly put my
things in order.
‘Don’t say a word,’ they whispered.
‘The necktie across, in good order,’ I said to them, while my shoulders
and arms burned from the blows.
What Girardot’s talk with the first form was we did not know; but
next day, as we stood in the ranks before marching downstairs to the
dining-room, he addressed us in a minor key, saying how sad it was that
pages de chambre should have fallen upon a boy who was right in his
refusal. And upon whom? A new-comer, and so timid a boy as Selánoff
was! The whole school was disgusted at this Jesuitic speech.
* * * * *
It surely was also a blow to Girardot’s authority, and he resented it
very much. He regarded our form, and me especially, with great dislike
(the roundabout affair had been reported to him), and he manifested it
at every opportunity.
During the first winter I was a frequent inmate of the hospital. After
suffering from typhoid fever, during which the director and the doctor
bestowed on me a really parental care, I had very bad and persistently
recurring gastric attacks. Girardot, as he made his daily rounds of the
hospital, seeing me so often there, began to say to me every morning,
half-jokingly, in French, ‘Here is a young man who is as healthy as
the New Bridge, and loiters in the hospital.’ Once or twice I replied
jestingly, but at last, seeing malice in this constant repetition, I
lost patience and grew very angry.
‘How dare you say that?’ I exclaimed. ‘I shall ask the doctor to forbid
your entering this room,’ and so on.
Girardot recoiled two steps; his dark eyes glittered, his thin lip
became still thinner. At last he said, ‘I have offended you, have I?
Well, we have in the hall two artillery guns: shall we have a duel?’
‘I don’t make jokes, and I tell you that I shall bear no more of your
insinuations’, I continued.
He did not repeat his joke, but regarded me with even more dislike than
before.
Happily enough, there was little opportunity for punishing me. I did
not smoke; my clothes were always hooked and buttoned, and properly
folded at night. I liked all sorts of games, but, plunged as I was in
reading and in a correspondence with my brother, I could hardly find
time to play a _laptá_ match (a sort of cricket) in the garden, and
always hurried back to my books. But when I was caught in fault, it
was not I that Girardot punished, but the page de chambre who was my
superior. Once, for instance, at dinner, I made a physical discovery:
I noticed that the sound given out by a tumbler depends on the amount
of water it contains, and at once tried to obtain a chord with four
glasses. But there stood Girardot behind me, and without saying a word
to me he ordered my page de chambre under arrest. It so happened that
this young man was an excellent fellow, a third cousin of mine, who
refused even to listen to my excuses, saying, ‘All right. I know he
dislikes you.’ His comrades, though, gave me a warning. ‘Take care,
naughty boy; we are not going to be punished for you,’ they said; and
if reading had not been my all-absorbing occupation, they probably
would have made me pay dearly for my physical experiment.
Everyone spoke of Girardot’s dislike for me; but I paid no attention
to it, and probably increased it by my indifference. For full eighteen
months he refused to give me the epaulettes, which were usually given
to newly entered boys after one or two months’ stay at the school, when
they had learned some of the rudiments of military drill; but I felt
quite happy without that military decoration. At last, an officer--the
best teacher of drill in the school, a man simply enamoured of
drill--volunteered to teach me; and when he saw me performing all the
tricks to his entire satisfaction, he undertook to introduce me to
Girardot. The Colonel refused again, twice in succession, so that the
officer took it as a personal offence; and when the director of the
corps once asked him why I had no epaulettes yet, he bluntly answered,
‘The boy is all right; it is the Colonel who does not want him;’
whereupon, probably after the remark of the director, Girardot himself
asked to examine me again, and gave me the epaulettes that very day.
But the Colonel’s influence was rapidly vanishing. The whole character
of the school was changing. For twenty years Girardot had realized his
ideal, which was to have the boys nicely combed, curled, and girlish
looking, and to send to the court pages as refined as courtiers of
Louis XIV. Whether they learned or not, he cared little; his favourites
were those whose clothes-basket was best filled with all sorts of
nail-brushes and scent-bottles, whose ‘private’ uniform (which could
be put on when we went home on Sundays) was of the best make, and who
knew how to make the most elegant _salut oblique_. Formerly, when
Girardot had held rehearsals of court ceremonies, wrapping up a page
in a striped red cotton cover taken from one of our beds, in order
that he might represent the Empress at a _baisemain_, the boys almost
religiously approached the imaginary Empress, seriously performed
the ceremony of kissing the hand, and retired with a most elegant
oblique bow; but now, though they were very elegant at court, they
would perform at the rehearsals such bearlike bows that all roared
with laughter, while Girardot was simply raging. Formerly, the younger
boys who had been taken to a court levee, and had been curled for that
purpose, used to keep their curls as long as they would last; now, on
returning from the palace, they hurried to put their heads under the
cold water tap, to get rid of the curls. An effeminate appearance was
laughed at. To be sent to a levee, to stand there as a decoration, was
now considered a drudgery rather than a favour. And when the small boys
who were occasionally taken to the palace to play with the little grand
dukes remarked that one of the latter used, in some game, to make a
hard whip out of his handkerchief, and use it freely, one of our boys
did the same, and so whipped the grand duke that he cried. Girardot was
terrified, while the old Sebastopol admiral who was tutor of the grand
duke only praised our boy.
A new spirit, studious and serious, developed in the corps, as in all
other schools. In former years, the pages, being sure in one way or
another that they would get the necessary marks for being promoted
officers of the Guard, spent the first years in the school hardly
learning at all, and only began to study more or less in the last two
forms; now the lower forms learned very well. The moral tone also
became quite different from what it was a few years before. Oriental
amusements were looked upon with disgust, and an attempt or two to
revert to old manners resulted in scandals which reached the St.
Petersburg drawing-rooms. Girardot was dismissed. He was only allowed
to retain his bachelor apartment in the building of the corps, and we
often saw him afterward, wrapped in his long military cloak, pacing
along, plunged in reflections--sad, I suppose, because he could not but
condemn the new spirit which rapidly developed in the corps of pages.
II
All over Russia people were talking of education. As soon as peace
had been concluded at Paris, and the severity of censorship had been
slightly relaxed, educational matters began to be eagerly discussed.
The ignorance of the masses of the people, the obstacles that had
hitherto been put in the way of those who wanted to learn, the absence
of schools in the country, the obsolete methods of teaching, and the
remedies for these evils became favourite themes of discussion in
educated circles, in the press, and even in the drawing-rooms of the
aristocracy. The first high schools for girls had been opened in 1857,
on an excellent plan and with a splendid teaching staff. As by magic
a number of men and women came to the front who have not only devoted
their lives to education, but have proved to be remarkable practical
pedagogists: their writings would occupy a place of honour in every
civilized literature, if they were known abroad.
The corps of pages also felt the effect of that revival. Apart from a
few exceptions, the general tendency of the three younger forms was to
study. The head of the educational department, the inspector, Winkler,
who was a well-educated colonel of artillery, a good mathematician,
and a man of progressive opinions, hit upon an excellent plan for
stimulating that spirit. Instead of the indifferent teachers who
formerly used to teach in the lower forms, he endeavoured to secure
the best ones. In his opinion, no professor was too good to teach the
very beginnings of a subject to the youngest boys. Thus, to teach
the elements of algebra in the fourth form he invited a first-rate
mathematician and a born teacher, Captain Sukhónin, and the form took
at once to mathematics. By the way, it so happened that this captain
was a tutor of the heir of the throne (Nikolái Alexándrovich, who died
at the age of twenty-two), and the heir-apparent was brought once a
week to the corps of pages to be present at the algebra lessons of
Captain Sukhónin. The Empress Marie Alexándrovna, who was an educated
woman, thought that perhaps the contact with studious boys would
stimulate her son to learning. He sat among us, and had to answer
questions like all the others. But he managed mostly, while the teacher
spoke, to make drawings, very nicely, or to whisper all sorts of droll
things to his neighbours. He was good-natured and very gentle in
his behaviour, but superficial in learning and still more so in his
affections.
For the fifth form the inspector secured two remarkable men. He entered
our class-room, one day, quite radiant, and told us that we should
have a rare chance. Professor Klasóvsky, a great classical scholar
and expert in Russian literature, had consented to teach us Russian
grammar, and would take us through all the five forms in succession,
shifting with us every year to the next form. Another university
professor, Herr Becker, librarian of the imperial (national) library,
would do the same in German. Professor Klasóvsky, he added, was in weak
health that winter, but the inspector was sure that we would be very
quiet in his class. The chance of having such a teacher was too good to
be lost.
He had thought aright. We became very proud of having university
professors for teachers, and although there came voices from the
Kamchátka (in Russia, the back benches of each class bear the name
of that remote and uncivilized peninsula) to the effect that ‘the
sausage-maker’--that is, the German--must be kept by all means in
obedience, public opinion in our form was decidedly in favour of the
professors.
‘The sausage-maker’ won our respect at once. A tall man, with an
immense forehead and very kind, intelligent eyes, slightly veiled by
his spectacles, came into our class, and told us in quite good Russian
that he intended to divide our form into three sections. The first
section would be composed of Germans, who already knew the language,
and from whom he would require more serious work; to the second section
he would teach grammar, and later on German literature, in accordance
with the established programmes; and the third section, he concluded
with a charming smile, would be the Kamchátka, ‘From you,’ he said, ‘I
shall only require that at each lesson you copy four lines which I will
choose for you from a book. The four lines copied, you can do what you
like; only do not hinder the rest. And I promise you that in five years
you will learn something of German and German literature. Now, who
joins the Germans? You, Stackelberg? You, Lamsdorf? Perhaps some one
of the Russians? And who joins the Kamchátka?’ Five or six boys, who
knew not a word of German, took residence in the peninsula. They most
conscientiously copied their four lines--a dozen or a score of lines
in the higher forms--and Becker chose the lines so well, and bestowed
so much attention upon the boys that by the end of the five years they
really knew something of the language and its literature.
I joined the Germans. My brother Alexander insisted so much in his
letters upon my acquiring German, which possesses so rich a literature
and into which every book of value is translated, that I set myself
assiduously to learn it. I translated and studied most thoroughly one
page of a rather difficult poetical description of a thunderstorm; I
learned by heart, as the professor had advised me, the conjugations,
the adverbs, and the prepositions--and began to read. A splendid method
it is for learning languages. Becker advised me, moreover, to subscribe
to a cheap illustrated weekly, and its illustrations and short stories
were a continual inducement to read a few lines or a column. I soon
mastered the language.
Toward the end of the winter I asked Herr Becker to lend me a copy of
Goethe’s ‘Faust.’ I had read it in a Russian translation; I had also
read Turguéneff’s beautiful novel, ‘Faust’; and I now longed to read
the great work in the original. ‘You will understand nothing in it;
it is too philosophical,’ Becker said, with his gentle smile; but he
brought me, nevertheless, a little square book, with the pages yellowed
by age, containing the immortal drama. He little knew the unfathomable
joy that that small square book gave me. I drank in the sense and the
music of every line of it, beginning with the very first verses of
the ideally beautiful dedication, and soon knew full pages by heart.
Faust’s monologue in the forest, and especially the lines in which he
speaks of his understanding of nature,
Thou
Not only cold, amazed acquaintance yield’st,
But grantest that in her profoundest breast
I gaze, as in the bosom of a friend,
simply put me in ecstasy, and till now it has retained its power over
me. Every verse gradually became a dear friend. And then, is there
a higher æsthetic delight than to read poetry in a language which
one does not quite thoroughly understand? The whole is veiled with a
sort of slight haze, which admirably suits poetry. Words, the trivial
meanings of which, when one knows the language colloquially, sometimes
interfere with the poetical image they are intended to convey, retain
but their subtle, elevated sense; while the music of the poetry is only
the more strongly impressed upon the ear.
* * * * *
Professor Klasóvsky’s first lesson was a revelation to us. He was a
small man, about fifty years of age, very rapid in his movements, with
bright, intelligent eyes, a slightly sarcastic expression, and the high
forehead of a poet. When he came in for his first lesson, he said in a
low voice that, suffering from a protracted illness, he could not speak
loud enough, and asked us, therefore, to sit closer to him. He placed
his chair near the first row of tables, and we clustered round him
like a swarm of bees.
He was to teach us Russian grammar; but, instead of the dull grammar
lesson, we heard something quite different from what we expected. It
was grammar: but here came in a comparison of an old Russian folklore
expression with a line from Homer or from the Sanskrit Mahabharata,
the beauty of which was rendered in Russian words; there, a verse from
Schiller was introduced, and was followed by a sarcastic remark about
some modern society prejudice; then solid grammar again, and then some
wide poetical or philosophical generalization.
Of course, there was much in it that we did not understand, or of which
we missed the deeper sense. But do not the bewitching powers of all
studies lie in that they continually open up to us new and unsuspected
horizons, not yet understood, which entice us to proceed farther and
farther in the penetration of what appears at first sight only in vague
outline? Some with their hands placed on one another’s shoulders, some
leaning across the tables of the first row, others standing close
behind Klasóvsky, we all hung on his lips. As toward the end of the
hour his voice fell, the more breathlessly we listened. The inspector
opened the door of the class-room, to see how we behaved with our new
teacher; but on seeing that motionless swarm he retired on tiptoe. Even
Daúroff, a restless spirit, stared at Klasóvsky as if to say, ‘That
is the sort of man you are?’ Even von Kleinau, a hopelessly obtuse
Circassian with a German name, sat motionless. In most of the others
something good and elevated simmered at the bottom of their hearts,
as if a vision of an unsuspected world was opening before them. Upon
me Klasóvsky had an immense influence, which only grew with years.
Winkler’s prophecy, that, after all, I might like the school, was
fulfilled.
In western Europe, and probably in America, this type of teacher
seems not to be widely spread; but in Russia there is not a man or
woman of mark, in literature or in political life, who does not owe
the first impulse toward a higher development to his or her teacher of
literature. Every school in the world ought to have such a teacher.
Each teacher in a school has his own subject, and there is no link
between the different subjects. Only the teacher of literature, guided
by the general outlines of the programme, but left free to treat it as
he likes, can bind together the separate historical and humanitarian
sciences, unify them by a broad philosophical and humane conception,
and awaken higher ideas and inspirations in the brains and hearts of
young people. In Russia, that necessary task falls quite naturally upon
the teacher of Russian literature. As he speaks of the development of
the language, of the contents of the early epic poetry, of popular
songs and music, and, later on, of modern fiction, of the scientific,
political, and philosophical literature of his own country, and the
divers æsthetical, political, and philosophical currents it has
reflected, he is bound to introduce that generalized conception of the
development of the human mind which lies beyond the scope of each of
the subjects that are taught separately.
The same thing ought to be done for the natural sciences as well. It is
not enough to teach physics and chemistry, astronomy and meteorology,
zoology and botany. The philosophy of all the natural sciences--a
general view of nature as a whole, something on the lines of the
first volume of Humboldt’s ‘Cosmos’--must be conveyed to the pupils
and the students, whatsoever may be the extension given to the study
of the natural sciences in the school. The philosophy and the poetry
of nature, the methods of all the exact sciences, and an inspired
conception of the life of nature must make part of education. Perhaps
the teacher of geography might provisionally assume this function;
but then we should require quite a different set of teachers of this
subject, and a different set of professors of geography in the
universities would be needed. What is now taught under this name is
anything you like, but it is not geography.
* * * * *
Another teacher conquered our rather uproarious form in a quite
different manner. It was the teacher of writing, the last one of the
teaching staff. If the ‘heathen’--that is, the German and the French
teachers--were regarded with little respect, the teacher of writing,
Ebert, who was a German Jew, was a real martyr. To be insolent with him
was a sort of _chic_ amongst the pages. His poverty alone must have
been the reason why he kept to his lesson in our corps. The old hands,
who had stayed for two or three years in the fifth form without moving
higher up, treated him very badly; but by some means or other he had
made an agreement with them: ‘One frolic during each lesson, but no
more’--an agreement which, I am afraid, was not always honestly kept on
our side.
One day, one of the residents of the remote peninsula soaked the
blackboard sponge with ink and chalk and flung it at the caligraphy
martyr. ‘Get it, Ebert!’ he shouted, with a stupid smile. The sponge
touched Ebert’s shoulder, the grimy ink spirted into his face and down
on to his white shirt.
We were sure that this time Ebert would leave the room and report
the fact to the inspector. But he only exclaimed, as he took out his
cotton handkerchief and wiped his face, ‘Gentlemen, one frolic--no
more to-day! The shirt is spoiled,’ he added in a subdued voice, and
continued to correct someone’s book.
We looked stupefied and ashamed. Why, instead of reporting, he had
thought at once of the agreement! The feelings of the whole class
turned in his favour. ‘What you have done is stupid,’ we reproached our
comrade. ‘He is a poor man, and you have spoiled his shirt! Shame!’
somebody cried.
The culprit went at once to make excuses. ‘One must learn, sir,’ was
all that Ebert said in reply, with sadness in his voice.
All became silent after that, and at the next lesson, as if we
had settled it beforehand, most of us wrote in our best possible
handwriting, and took our books to Ebert, asking him to correct them.
He was radiant, he felt happy that day.
This fact deeply impressed me, and was never wiped out from my memory.
To this day I feel grateful to that remarkable man for his lesson.
With our teacher of drawing, who was named Ganz, we never arrived at
living on good terms. He continually reported those who played in his
class. This, in our opinion, he had no right to do, because he was only
a teacher of drawing, but especially because he was not an honest man.
In the class he paid little attention to most of us, and spent his
time in improving the drawings of those who took private lessons from
him, or paid him in order to show at the examinations a good drawing
and to get a good mark for it. Against the comrades who did so we had
no grudge. On the contrary, we thought it quite right that those who
had no capacity for mathematics or no memory for geography, should
improve their total of marks by ordering from a draughtsman a drawing
or a topographical map for which they would get ‘a full twelve.’ Only
for the first two pupils of the form it would not have been fair to
resort to such means, while the remainder could do it with untroubled
consciences. But the teacher had no business to make drawings to order;
and if he chose to act in this way, he ought to bear with resignation
the noise and the tricks of his pupils. These were our ethics. Instead
of this, no lesson passed without his lodging complaints, and each time
he grew more arrogant.
As soon as we were moved to the fourth form, and felt ourselves
naturalized citizens of the corps, we decided to tighten the bridle
upon him. ‘It is your own fault,’ our elder comrades told us, ‘that he
takes such airs with you; _we_ used to keep him in obedience.’ So we
decided to bring him into subjection.
One day, two excellent comrades of our form approached Ganz with
cigarettes in their mouths, and asked him to oblige them with a light.
Of course, that was only meant for a joke--no one ever thought of
smoking in the class-rooms--and, according to our rules of propriety,
Ganz had merely to send the two boys away; but he inscribed them in
the journal, and they were severely punished. That was the last drop.
We decided to give him a ‘benefit night.’ That meant that one day all
the form, provided with rulers borrowed from the upper forms, would
start an outrageous noise by striking the rulers against the tables,
and send the teacher out of the class. However, the plot offered many
difficulties. We had in our form a lot of ‘goody’ boys who would
promise to join in the demonstration, but at the last moment would grow
nervous and draw back, and then the teacher would name the others.
In such enterprises unanimity is the first requisite, because the
punishment, whatsoever it may be, is always lighter when it falls on
the whole class instead of on a few.
The difficulties were overcome with a truly Machiavellian craft. At
a given signal all were to turn their backs to Ganz, and then, with
the rulers laid in readiness on the desks of the next row, they would
produce the required noise. In this way the goody boys would not feel
terrified at Ganz staring at them. But the signal? Whistling, as in
robbers’ tales, shouting, or even sneezing would not do: Ganz would
be capable of naming anyone of us as having whistled or sneezed. The
signal must be a silent one. One of us who drew nicely, would take his
drawing to show it to Ganz, and the moment he returned and took his
seat--that was to be the time!
All went on admirably. Nesádoff took up his drawing, and Ganz corrected
it in a few minutes, which seemed to us an eternity. He returned
at last to his seat; he stopped for a moment, looking at us, he sat
down.... All the form turned suddenly on their seats, and the rulers
rattled merrily within the desks, while some of us shouted amidst
the noise, ‘Ganz out! Down with him!’ The noise was deafening; all
the forms knew that Ganz had got his benefit night. He stood there,
murmuring something, and finally went out. An officer ran in--the
noise continued; then the sub-inspector dashed in, and after him the
inspector. The noise stopped. Scolding began.
‘The elder under arrest, at once!’ the inspector commanded; and I, who
was the first in the form, and consequently the elder, was marched to
the black cell. That spared me seeing what followed. The director came;
Ganz was asked to name the ringleaders, but he could name nobody. ‘They
all turned their backs to me, and began the noise,’ was his reply.
Thereupon the form was taken downstairs, and although flogging had been
completely abandoned in our school, this time the two who had been
reported because they asked for a light were flogged with the birch
rod, under the pretext that the benefit night was a revenge for their
punishment.
I learned this ten days later, when I was allowed to return to the
class. My name, which had been inscribed on the red board in the class,
was wiped off. To this I was indifferent; but I must confess that the
ten days in the cell, without books, seemed to me rather long, so that
I composed (in horrible verses) a poem, in which the deeds of the
fourth form were duly glorified.
Of course our form became now the heroes of the school. For a month or
so we had to tell and retell all about the affair to the other forms,
and received congratulations for having managed it with such unanimity
that nobody was caught separately. And then came the Sundays--all the
Sundays down to Christmas--that the form had to remain at the school,
not being allowed to go home. Being all kept together, we managed to
make those Sundays very gay. The mammas of the goody boys brought them
heaps of sweets; those who had some money spent it in buying mountains
of pastry--substantial before dinner, and sweet after it--while in the
evenings the friends from the other forms smuggled in quantities of
fruit for the brave fourth form.
Ganz gave up inscribing anyone; but drawing was totally lost for us. No
one wanted to learn drawing from that mercenary man.
III
My brother Alexander was at that time at Moscow, in a corps of cadets,
and we maintained a lively correspondence. As long as I stayed at home
this was impossible, because our father considered it his prerogative
to read all letters addressed to our house, and he would soon have put
an end to any but a commonplace correspondence. Now we were free to
discuss in our letters whatever we liked. The only difficulty was to
get money for stamps; but we soon learned to write in so small a hand
that we could convey an incredible amount of matter in each letter.
Alexander, whose handwriting was beautiful, contrived to get four
printed pages on one single page of notepaper, and his microscopic
lines were as legible as the best small type print. It is a pity that
these letters, which he kept as precious relics, have disappeared.
The State police, during one of their raids, robbed him even of these
treasures.
Our first letters were mostly about the little details of my new
surroundings, but our correspondence soon took a more serious
character. My brother could not write about trifles. Even in society
he became animated only when some serious discussion was engaged in,
and complained of feeling ‘a dull pain in the brain’--a physical pain,
as he used to say--when he was with people who cared only for small
talk. He was very much in advance of me in his intellectual development
and he urged me forward, raising new scientific and philosophical
questions one after another, and advising me what to read or to study.
What a happiness it was for me to have such a brother!--a brother who,
moreover, loved me passionately. To him I owe the best part of my
development.
Sometimes he would advise me to read poetry, and would send me in
his letters quantities of verses and whole poems, which he wrote
from memory. ‘Read poetry,’ he wrote: ‘poetry makes men better.’ How
often, in my after life, I realized the truth of this remark of his!
Read poetry: it makes men better! He himself was a poet, and had a
wonderful facility for writing most musical verses; indeed, I think it
a great pity that he abandoned poetry. But the reaction against art,
which arose among the Russian youth in the early sixties, and which
Turguéneff has depicted in ‘Bazároff’ (_Fathers and Sons_), induced him
to look upon his verses with contempt, and to plunge headlong into the
natural sciences. I must say, however, that my favourite poet was none
of those whom his poetical gift, his musical ear, and his philosophical
turn of mind made him like best. His favourite Russian poet was
Venevítinoff, while mine was Nekrásoff, whose verses were very often
unmusical, but appealed most to my heart by their sympathy for ‘the
down-trodden and ill-treated.’
‘One must have a set purpose in his life,’ he wrote me once. ‘Without
an aim, without a purpose, life is not life.’ And he advised me to get
a purpose in my life worth living for. I was too young then to find
one; but something undetermined, vague, ‘good’ altogether, already rose
under that appeal, even though I could not say what that ‘good’ would
be.
Our father gave us very little spending money, and I never had any to
buy a single book; but if Alexander got a few roubles from some aunt,
he never spent a penny of it for pleasure, but bought a book and sent
it to me. He objected, though, to indiscriminate reading. ‘One must
have some question,’ he wrote, ‘addressed to the book one is going to
read.’ However, I did not then appreciate this remark, and cannot think
now without amazement of the number of books, often of a quite special
character, which I read, in all branches, but particularly in the
domain of history. I did not waste my time upon French novels, since
Alexander, years before, had characterized them in one blunt sentence:
‘They are stupid and full of bad language.’
The great questions concerning the conception we should form of the
universe--our _Weltanschauung_, as the Germans say--were, of course,
the dominant subjects in our correspondence. In our childhood we had
never been religious. We were taken to church; but in a Russian church,
in a small parish or in a village, the solemn attitude of the people
is far more impressive than the Mass itself. Of all that I ever had
heard in church only two things had impressed me: the twelve passages
from the Gospels, relative to the sufferings of the Christ, which are
read in Russia at the night service on the eve of Good Friday, and the
short prayer condemning the spirit of domination, which is recited
during the Great Lent, and is really beautiful by reason of its simple,
unpretentious words and feeling, Púshkin has rendered it into Russian
verse.
Later on, at St. Petersburg, I went several times to a Roman Catholic
church, but the theatrical character of the service and the absence of
real feeling in it shocked me, the more so when I saw there with what
simple faith some retired Polish soldier or a peasant woman would pray
in a remote corner. I also went to a Protestant church; but coming out
of it I caught myself murmuring Goethe’s words:---
But you will never link hearts together
Unless the linking springs from your own heart.
Alexander, in the meantime, had embraced with his usual passion the
Lutheran faith. He had read Michelet’s book on Servetus, and had
worked out for himself a religion on the lines of that great fighter.
He studied with enthusiasm the Augsburg declaration, which he copied
out and sent me, and our letters now became full of discussions about
grace, and of texts from the apostles Paul and James. I followed my
brother, but theological discussions did not deeply interest me. Since
I had recovered from the typhoid fever I had taken to quite different
reading.
Our sister Hélène, who was now married, was at St. Petersburg, and
every Saturday night I went to visit her. Her husband had a good
library, in which the French philosophers of the last century and the
modern French historians were well represented, and I plunged into
them. Such books were prohibited in Russia, and evidently could not
be taken to school; so I spent most of the night, every Saturday, in
reading the works of the encyclopædists, the ‘Philosophical Dictionary’
of Voltaire, the writings of the Stoics, especially Marcus Aurelius,
and so on. The infinite immensity of the universe, the greatness of
nature, its poetry, its ever throbbing life, impressed me more and
more; and that never-ceasing life and its harmonies gave me the ecstasy
of admiration which the young soul thirsts for, while my favourite
poets supplied me with an expression in words of that awakening love of
mankind and faith in its progress which make the best part of youth and
impress man for a life.
Alexander, by this time, had gradually come to a Kantian agnosticism,
and the ‘relativity of perceptions,’ ‘perceptions in time and space,
and time only,’ and so on, filled pages and pages in our letters, the
writing of which became more and more microscopical as the subjects
under discussion grew in importance. But neither then nor later on,
when we used to spend hours and hours in discussing Kant’s philosophy,
could my brother convert me to become a disciple of the Königsberg
philosopher.
Natural sciences--that is, mathematics, physics, and astronomy--were
my chief studies. In the year 1858, before Darwin had brought out
his immortal work, a professor of zoology at the Moscow University,
Roulier, published three lectures on transformism, and my brother took
up at once his ideas concerning the variability of species. He was not
satisfied, however, with approximate proofs only, and began to study
a number of special books on heredity and the like, communicating to
me in his letters the main facts, as well as his ideas and his doubts.
The appearance of the ‘Origin of Species’ did not settle his doubts
on several special points, but only raised new questions and gave him
the impulse for further studies. We afterward discussed--and that
discussion lasted for many years--various questions relative to the
origin of variations, their chances of being transmitted and being
accentuated; in short, those questions which have been raised quite
lately in the Weismann-Spencer controversy, in Galton’s researches, and
in the works of the modern Neo-Lamarckians. Owing to his philosophical
and critical mind, Alexander had noticed at once the fundamental
importance of these questions for the theory of variability of species,
even though they were so often overlooked then by many naturalists.
I must also mention a temporary excursion into the domain of political
economy. In the years 1858 and 1859 everyone in Russia spoke of
political economy; lectures on free trade and protective duties
attracted crowds of people, and my brother, who was not yet absorbed
by the variability of species, took a lively though temporary interest
in economical matters, sending me for reading the ‘Political Economy’
of Jean Baptiste Say. I read a few chapters only: tariffs and banking
operations did not interest me in the least; but Alexander took up
these matters so passionately that he even wrote letters to our
stepmother, trying to interest her in the intricacies of the customs
duties. Later on, in Siberia, as we were re-reading some of the letters
of that period, we laughed like children when we fell upon one of his
epistles in which he complained of our stepmother’s incapacity to be
moved even by such burning questions, and raged against a greengrocer
whom he had caught in the street, and who, ‘would you believe it,’ he
wrote with signs of exclamation, ‘although he was a tradesman, affected
a pig-headed indifference to tariff questions!’
* * * * *
Every summer about one-half of the pages were taken to a camp at
Peterhof. The lower forms, however, were dispensed from joining the
camp, and I spent the first two summers at Nikólskoye. To leave the
school, to take the train to Moscow, and there to meet Alexander was
such a happy prospect that I used to count the days that had to pass
till that glorious one should arrive. But on one occasion a great
disappointment awaited me at Moscow. Alexander had not passed his
examinations, and was left for another year in the same form. He was,
in fact, too young to enter the special classes; but our father was
very angry with him, nevertheless, and would not permit us to see each
other. I felt very sad. We were not children any more, and had so much
to say to each other. I tried to obtain permission to go to our aunt
Sulíma, at whose house I might meet Alexander, but it was absolutely
refused. After our father remarried we were never allowed to see our
mother’s relations.
That spring our Moscow house was full of guests. Every night the
reception-rooms were flooded with lights, the band played, the
confectioner was busy making ices and pastry, and card-playing went on
in the great hall till a late hour. I strolled aimlessly about in the
brilliantly illuminated rooms, and felt unhappy.
One night, after ten, a servant beckoned me, telling me to come out to
the entrance hall. I went. ‘Come to the coachmen’s house,’ the old
major-domo Frol whispered to me. ‘Alexander Alexéievich is here.’
I dashed across the yard, up the flight of steps leading to the
coachmen’s house, and into a wide, half-dark room, where, at the
immense dining-table of the servants, I saw Alexander.
‘Sásha, dear, how did you come?’ and in a moment we rushed into each
other’s arms, hugging each other and unable to speak from emotion.
‘Hush, hush! they may overhear you,’ said the servants’ cook,
Praskóvia, wiping away her tears with her apron. ‘Poor orphans! If your
mother were only alive----’
Old Frol stood, his head deeply bent, his eyes also twinkling.
‘Look here, Pétya, not a word to anyone; to no one,’ he said, while
Praskóvia placed on the table an earthenware jar full of porridge for
Alexander.
He, glowing with health, in his cadet uniform, already had begun to
talk about all sorts of matters, while he rapidly emptied the porridge
pot. I could hardly make him tell me how he came there at such a late
hour. We lived then near the Smolénsky boulevard, within a stone’s
throw of the house where our mother died, and the corps of cadets was
at the opposite outskirts of Moscow, full five miles away.
He had made a doll out of bedclothes, and had put it in his bed, under
the blankets; then he went to the tower, descended from a window, came
out unnoticed, and walked the whole distance.
‘Were you not afraid at night in the deserted fields round your corps?’
I asked.
‘What had I to fear? Only lots of dogs were upon me; I had teased them
myself. To-morrow I shall take my sword with me.’
The coachmen and other servants came in and out; they sighed as
they looked at us, and took seats at a distance, along the walls,
exchanging words in a subdued tone so as not to disturb us; while we
two, in each other’s arms, sat there till midnight, talking about
nebulæ and Laplace’s hypothesis, the structure of matter, the struggles
of the papacy under Boniface VIII. with the imperial power, and so on.
From time to time one of the servants would hurriedly run in, saying,
‘Pétinka, go and show thyself in the hall; they may ask for thee.’
I implored Sásha not to come next night; but he came, nevertheless--not
without having had a scrimmage with the dogs, against whom he had taken
his sword. I responded with feverish haste, when, earlier than the
day before, I was called once more to the coachmen’s house. Alexander
had made part of the journey in a cab. The previous night, one of the
servants had brought him what he had got from the card-players and
asked him to take it. He took some small coin to hire a cab, and so he
came earlier than on his first visit.
He intended to come next night, too, but for some reason it would
have been dangerous for the servants, and we decided to part till the
autumn. A short ‘official’ note made me understand next day that his
nocturnal escapades had passed unnoticed. How terrible would have been
the punishment, if they had been discovered. It is awful to think of
it: flogging before the corps till he was carried away unconscious on
a sheet, and then degradation to a soldiers’ sons’ battalion--anything
was possible, in those times.
What our servants would have suffered for hiding us, if information
of the affair had reached our father’s ears, would have been equally
terrible; but they knew how to keep secrets and not to betray one
another. They all knew of the visits of Alexander, but none of them
whispered a word to anyone of the family. They and I were the only ones
in the house who ever knew anything about it.
IV
That same year I made my first start as an explorer of popular life,
and this little work brought me one step nearer to our peasants, making
me see them under a new light; it also helped me later on a great deal
in Siberia.
Every year in July, on the day of ‘the Holy Virgin of Kazán’ which was
the fête of our church, a pretty large fair was held in Nikólskoye.
Tradesmen came from the neighbouring towns, and many thousands of
peasants flocked from thirty miles round to our village, which for a
couple of days had a most animated aspect. A remarkable description of
the village fairs of South Russia had just been published that year by
the Slavophile Aksákoff, and my brother, who was then at the height of
his politico-economical enthusiasm, advised me to make a statistical
description of our fair, and to determine the return of goods brought
in and sold. I followed his advice, and to my great amazement I really
succeeded: my estimate of returns, so far as I can judge now, was not
more unreliable than many similar estimates in books of statistics.
Our fair lasted only a little more than twenty-four hours. On the eve
of the fête, the great open space given to it was full of life and
animation. Long rows of stalls, to be used for the sale of cottons,
ribbons, and all sorts of peasant women’s attire, were hurriedly built.
The restaurant, a substantial stone building, was furnished with
tables, chairs and benches, and its floor was strewn over with bright
yellow sand. Three wine-shops were erected in three different places,
and freshly cut brooms, planted on high poles, rose high in the air
to attract the peasants from a distance. Rows and rows of light shops
for the sale of crockery, boots, stoneware, ginger-bread, and all
sorts of small things, rose as if by a magic wand; while in a special
corner holes were dug in the ground to receive immense cauldrons in
which bushels of millet and sarrasin and whole sheep were boiled,
for supplying the thousands of visitors with hot _schi_ and _kásha_
(soup and porridge). In the afternoon, the four roads leading to the
fair were blocked by hundreds of peasant carts, and cattle, corn,
casks filled with tar, and heaps of pottery were exhibited along the
roadsides.
The night service on the eve of the fête was performed in our church
with great solemnity. Half a dozen priests and deacons from the
neighbouring villages took part in it, and their chanters, reinforced
by young tradespeople, sang in the choir with such ritornellos as could
only be heard at the bishop’s in Kalúga. The church was crowded; all
prayed fervently. The tradespeople vied with each other in the number
and sizes of the wax candles which they lighted before the ikons, as
offerings to the local saints for the success of their trade; and
the crowd being so thick as not to allow the last comers to reach
the altar, candles of all sizes--thick and thin, white and yellow,
according to the offerer’s wealth--were transmitted from the back of
the church through the crowd, with whispers: ‘To the Holy Virgin of
Kazán, our Protector,’ ‘To Nicholas the Favourite,’ ‘To Frol and Laur’
(the horse saints--that was from those who had horses to sell), or
simply ‘the Saints’ without a further specification.
Immediately after the night service was over, the ‘fore-fair’ began,
and I had now to plunge headlong into my work of asking hundreds of
people what was the value of the goods they had brought in. To my great
astonishment my task went on admirably. Of course, I was myself asked
questions: ‘Why do you do this?’ ‘Is it not for the old prince, who
intends increasing the market dues?’ But the assurance that the ‘old
prince’ knew and would know nothing of it (he would have found it a
disgraceful occupation) settled all doubts at once. I soon caught the
proper way of asking questions, and after I had taken half a dozen cups
of tea in the restaurant with some tradespeople (oh, horror, if my
father had learned that!), all went on very well. Vasíly Ivánoff, the
elder of Nikólskoye, a beautiful young peasant with a fine intelligent
face and a silky fair beard, took an interest in my work. ‘Well, if
thou wantest it for thy learning, get at it; thou wilt tell us later on
what thou hast found out’--was his conclusion, and he told some of the
people that it was ‘all right.’ Everyone knew him for miles round, and
the word passed round the fair that no harm would ensue to the peasants
by giving me the information.
In short, the ‘imports’ were determined very nicely. But next day,
the ‘sales’ offered certain difficulties, chiefly with the dry goods’
merchants, who did not themselves yet know how much they had sold. On
the day of the fête the young peasant women simply stormed the shops,
each of them having sold some linen of her own making and now buying
some cotton print for a dress and a bright kerchief for herself, a
coloured handkerchief for her husband, perhaps some neck lace, a ribbon
or two, and a number of small gifts to grandmother, grandfather, and
the children who had remained at home. As to the peasants who sold
crockery, or ginger-cakes, or cattle and hemp, they at once determined
their sales, especially the old women. ‘Good sale, grandmother?’ I
would ask. ‘No need to complain, my son. Why should I anger God? Nearly
all is sold.’ And out of their small items the tens of thousand roubles
grew in my note-book. One point only remained unsettled. A wide space
was given up to many hundreds of peasant women who stood in the burning
sun, each with her piece of handwoven linen, sometimes exquisitely
fine, which she had brought for sale--scores of buyers, with gypsy
faces and shark-like looks, moving about in the crowd and buying. Only
rough estimates of these sales could evidently be made.
I made no reflections at that time about this new experience of mine; I
was simply happy to see that it was not a failure. But the serious good
sense and sound judgment of the Russian peasants which I witnessed
during this couple of days, left upon me a lasting impression. Later
on, when we were making socialist propaganda among the peasants,
I could not but wonder why some of my friends, who had received a
seemingly far more democratic education than myself, did not know how
to talk to the peasants or to the factory workers from the country.
They tried to imitate the ‘peasants’ talk,’ by introducing into it
lots of so-called ‘popular phrases,’ and only rendered it the more
incomprehensible.
Nothing of this sort is needed, either in talking to peasants or in
writing for them. The Great Russian peasant perfectly well understands
the educated man’s talk, provided that it is not stuffed with words
taken from foreign languages. What the peasant does not understand is
abstract notions when they are not illustrated by concrete examples.
But when you speak to the Russian peasant plainly, and start from
concrete facts--and the same is true with regard to village-folk of
all nationalities--my experience is that there is no generalization
from the whole world of science, social or natural, which could not be
conveyed to the averagely intelligent man if you yourself understand
it concretely. The chief difference between the educated and the
uneducated man is, I should say, in the latter not being able to follow
a chain of conclusions. He grasps the first of them, and maybe the
second, but he gets tired at the third, if he does not see what you
are driving at. But, how often do we meet with the same difficulty in
educated people!
One more impression I gathered from that work of my boyhood--an
impression which I formulated but later on, and which will probably
astonish many a reader. It is the spirit of equality which is highly
developed in the Russian peasant and, in fact, in the rural population
everywhere. The Russian peasant is capable of much servile obedience
to the landlord or to the police officer; he will bend before their
will in a servile manner; but he does not consider them superior men,
and if the next moment that same landlord or officer talks to the same
peasant about hay or ducks, the latter will converse with them as an
equal to an equal. I never saw in a Russian peasant that servility,
grown to be a second nature, with which a small functionary talks to
a highly placed one, or a valet to his master. The peasant much too
easily submits to force, but he does not worship it.
I returned that summer from Nikólskoye to Moscow in a new fashion.
There being then no railway between Kalúga and Moscow, a man, Buck
by name, kept some sort of carriages running between the two towns.
Our people never thought of travelling in such a way: they had their
own horses and conveyances; but when my father, in order to save my
stepmother a double journey, offered me, half in joke, to travel alone
in that way, I accepted his offer with delight.
An old and very stout tradesman’s wife and myself on the back seats,
and a small tradesman or artisan on the front seat, were the only
occupants of the carriage. I found the journey very pleasant--first
of all because I travelled by myself (I was not yet sixteen), and
next because the old lady, who had brought with her for a three days’
journey a colossal hamper full of provisions, treated me to all sorts
of home-made delicacies. All the surroundings during that journey were
delightful. One evening especially is still vivid in my memory. We
came at night to one of the great villages and stopped at some inn.
The old lady ordered a samovár for herself, while I went out in the
street, walking about anywhere. A small ‘white inn’ at which only food
is served, but no drinks, attracted my attention and I went in. Numbers
of peasants sat round the small tables, covered with white napkins, and
enjoyed their tea. I did the same.
All was so new for me in these surroundings. It was a village of
‘Crown peasants’--that is, peasants who had not been serfs and enjoyed
a relative well-being, probably owing to the weaving of linen which
they carried on as a home industry. Slow, serious conversations, with
occasional laughter, were going on at those tables, and after the usual
introductory questions, I soon found myself engaged in a conversation
with a dozen peasants about the crops in our neighbourhood, and
answering all sorts of questions. They wanted to know all about St.
Petersburg, and most of all about the rumours concerning the coming
abolition of serfdom. And a feeling of simplicity and of the natural
relations of equality, as well as of hearty good-will, which I always
felt afterwards when among peasants or in their houses, took possession
of me at that inn. Nothing extraordinary happened that night, so that
I even ask myself if the incident is worth mentioning at all; and yet
that warm, dark night in the village, that small inn, that talk with
the peasants, and the keen interest they took in hundreds of things
lying far beyond their habitual surroundings, have made ever since a
poor ‘white inn’ more attractive to me than the best restaurant in the
world.
V
Stormy times came now in the life of our corps. When Girardot was
dismissed, his place was taken by one of our officers, Captain B----.
He was rather good-natured than otherwise, but he had got into his head
that he was not treated by us with due reverence, corresponding to
the high position which he now occupied, and he tried to enforce upon
us more respect and awe toward himself. He began by quarrelling about
all sorts of petty things with the upper form, and--what was still
worse--he attempted to destroy our ‘liberties,’ the origin of which was
lost in the darkness of time, and which, insignificant in themselves,
were perhaps on that same account only the dearer to us.
The result of it was that the school broke for several days into an
open revolt, which ended in wholesale punishment, and the exclusion
from the corps of two of our favourite pages de chambre.
Then, the same captain began to intrude in the class-rooms, where we
used to spend one hour in the morning in preparing our lessons before
the classes began. We were considered to be there under our teaching
staff, and were happy to have nothing to do with our military chiefs.
We resented that intrusion very much, and one day I loudly expressed
our discontent, saying to the captain that this was the place of the
inspector of the classes, not his. I spent weeks under arrest for that
frankness, and perhaps should have been excluded from the school, were
it not that the inspector of the classes, his assistant, and even our
old director, judged that after all I had only expressed aloud what
they all used to say to themselves.
No sooner all these troubles were over, than the death of the
Dowager-Empress--the widow of Nicholas I.--brought a new interruption
in our work.
The burial of crowned heads is always so arranged as to produce a
deep impression on the crowds, and it must be owned that this object
is attained. The body of the empress was brought from Tsárkoye Seló,
where she died, to St. Petersburg, and here, followed by the imperial
family, all the high dignitaries of the state, and scores of thousands
of functionaries and corporations, and preceded by hundreds of clergy
and choirs, it was taken from the railway station through the main
thoroughfares to the fortress, where it had to lie in state for
several weeks. A hundred thousand men of the Guard were placed along
the streets, and thousands of people, dressed in the most gorgeous
uniforms, preceded, accompanied, and followed the hearse in a solemn
procession. Litanies were sung at every important crossing of the
streets, and here the ringing of the bells on the church towers, the
voices of vast choirs, and the sounds of the military bands united in
the most impressive way, so as to make people believe that the immense
crowds really mourned the loss of the empress.
As long as the body lay in state in the cathedral of the fortress, the
pages, among others, had to keep the watch round it, night and day.
Three pages de chambre and three maids of honour always stood close by
the coffin, placed on a high pedestal, while some twenty pages were
stationed on the platform upon which litanies were sung twice every
day, in the presence of the emperor and all his family. Consequently,
every week nearly one-half of the corps was taken in turns to the
fortress, to lodge there. We were relieved every two hours, and in the
daytime our service was not difficult; but when we had to rise in the
night, to dress in our court uniforms, and then to walk through the
dark and gloomy inner courts of the fortress to the cathedral, to the
sound of the gloomy chime of the fortress bells, a cold shiver seized
me at the thought of the prisoners who were immured somewhere in this
Russian Bastille. ‘Who knows,’ thought I, ‘whether in my turn I shall
not also have to join them one day or other?’
The burial did not pass without an accident which might have had
serious consequences. An immense canopy had been erected under the
dome of the cathedral over the coffin. A huge gilded crown rose above
it, and from this crown an immense purple mantle lined with ermine
hung towards the four thick pilasters which support the dome of the
cathedral. It was impressive, but we boys soon made out that the crown
was made of gilded cardboard and wood, the mantle was of velvet only in
its lower part, while higher up it was red cotton, and that the ermine
lining was simply cotton flannelette or swansdown to which black tails
of squirrels had been sewn, while the escutcheons which represented the
arms of Russia, veiled with black crêpe, were simple cardboard. But
the crowds which were allowed at certain hours of the night to pass by
the coffin, and to kiss in a hurry the gold brocade which covered it,
surely had no time to closely examine the flannelette ermine or the
cardboard escutcheons, and the desired theatrical effect was obtained
even by such cheap means.
When a litany is sung in Russia all the people present hold lighted wax
candles, which have to be put out after certain prayers have been read.
The Imperial family also held such candles, and one day the young son
of the grand duke Constantine, seeing that the others put out their
candles by turning them upside down, did the same. The black gauze
which hung behind him from an escutcheon took fire, and in a second the
escutcheon and the cotton stuff were ablaze. An immense tongue of fire
ran up the heavy folds of the supposed ermine mantle.
The service was stopped. All looks were directed with terror towards
the tongue of fire, which went higher and higher towards the cardboard
crown and the woodwork which supported the whole structure. Bits of
burning stuff began to fall down, threatening to set fire to the black
gauze veils of the ladies present.
Alexander II. lost his presence of mind for a couple of seconds only,
but he recovered immediately and said in a composed voice: ‘The coffin
must be taken!’ The pages de chambre at once covered it with the thick
gold brocade, and we all advanced to lift the heavy coffin; but in the
meantime the big tongue of flame had broken into a number of smaller
ones, which now slowly devoured only the fluffy outside of the cotton
stuff and, meeting more and more dust and soot in the upper part of the
structure, gradually died out in the folds.
I cannot say what I looked most at: the creeping fire or the stately
slender figures of the three ladies who stood by the coffin, the long
trains of their black dresses spreading over the steps which led to
the upper platform, and their black lace veils hanging down their
shoulders. None of them had made the slightest movement: they stood
like three beautiful carved images. Only in the dark eyes of one of
them, Mdlle. Gamaléya, tears glittered like pearls. She was a daughter
of South Russia, and was the only really handsome lady amongst the
maids of honour at the Court.
At the corps, in the meantime, everything was upside down. The classes
were interrupted; those of us who returned from the fortress were
lodged in temporary quarters, and, having nothing to do, spent the
whole day in all sorts of frolics. In one of them we managed to open a
cupboard which stood in the room and contained a splendid collection
of models of all kinds of animals for the teaching of natural history.
That was its official purpose; but it was never even so much as shown
to us, and now that we got hold of it we utilized it in our own way.
With the human skull which made part of the collection we made a
ghostly figure wherewith to frighten at night other comrades and the
officers. As to the animals, we placed them in the most unappropriate
positions and groups: monkeys were seen riding on lions, sheep were
playing with leopards, the giraffe danced with the elephant, and so on.
The worst was that a few days later one of the Prussian princes who
had come to assist at the burial ceremony (it was the one, I think,
who became later on the Emperor Frederick) visited our school, and
was shown all that concerned our education. Our director did not fail
to boast of the excellent educational appliances which we had at the
school, and brought him to that same unfortunate cupboard.... When
the German prince caught a glimpse of our zoological classification,
he drew a long face and quickly turned away. Our old director looked
horrified; he had lost the power of speech, and only pointed repeatedly
with his hand at some star-fishes which were placed in glass boxes on
the walls by the sides of the cupboard. The suite of the prince tried
to look as if they had noticed nothing, and only threw rapid glimpses
at the cause of so much disturbance, while we wicked boys made all
sorts of faces in order not to burst with laughter.
VI
The school years of a Russian youth are so very different from what
they are in West European schools that I must dwell upon my school
life. Russian youths, as a rule, while they are yet at a lyceum or
in a military school, already take an interest in a wide circle of
social, political, and philosophical matters. It is true that the corps
of pages was, of all schools, the least congenial medium for such a
development; but in those years of general revival, broader ideas
penetrated even into our midst and carried some of us away, without,
however, preventing us from taking a very lively part in ‘benefit
nights’ and all sorts of frolics.
While I was in the fourth form I took an interest in history, and
with the aid of notes made during the lessons--I knew that university
students do it that way--and helping myself with reading, I wrote
quite a course of early mediæval history for my own use. Next year the
struggle between Pope Boniface VIII. and the Imperial power attracted
my special attention, and now it became my ambition to gain admission
to the Imperial library as a reader, in order thoroughly to study that
great struggle. This was contrary to the rules of the library, pupils
of secondary schools not being admitted; our good Herr Becker, however,
smoothed the way out of the difficulty, and I was allowed one day to
enter the sanctuary and to take a seat at one of the readers’ small
tables, on one of the red velvet sofas with which the reading-room was
then furnished.
From various text-books and some books from our own library, I soon
got to the sources. Knowing no Latin, I discovered nevertheless
a rich supply of original sources in Old Teutonic and Old French,
and found an immense æsthetic enjoyment in the quaint structure and
expressiveness of the latter in the Chronicles. Quite a new structure
of society and quite a world of complicated relations opened before me;
and from that time I learned to value far more the original sources of
history than works in which it is generalized in accordance with modern
views--the prejudices of modern politics, or even mere current formulæ
being substituted for the real life of the period. Nothing gives more
impetus to one’s intellectual development than some sort of independent
research, and these studies of mine immensely helped me afterwards.
Unhappily, I had to abandon them when we reached the second form (the
last but one). The pages had to study during the last two years nearly
all that was taught in other military schools in three ‘special’ forms,
and we had an immense amount of work to do for the school. Natural
sciences, mathematics, and military sciences necessarily relegated
history to the background.
* * * * *
In the second form we began seriously to study physics. We had an
excellent teacher--a very intelligent man with a sarcastic turn of
mind, who hated learning from memory, and managed to make us _think_
instead of merely learning facts. He was a good mathematician, and
taught us physics on a mathematical basis, admirably explaining at
the same time the leading ideas of physical research and physical
apparatus. Some of his questions were so original and his explanations
so good that they have engraved themselves for ever on my memory.
Our text-book of physics was pretty good (most text-books for the
military schools had been written by the best men at the time), but
it was rather old, and our teacher, who followed his own system in
teaching, began to prepare a short summary of his lessons--a sort of
_aide-mémoire_--for the use of our form. However, after a few weeks it
so happened that the task of writing this summary fell upon me, and our
teacher, acting as a true pedagogist, trusted it entirely to me, only
reading the proofs. When we came to the chapters of heat, electricity,
and magnetism, they had to be written entirely anew, and this I did,
thus preparing a nearly complete text-book of physics, which was
printed for the use of the school.
In the second form we also began to study chemistry, and we also
had a first-rate teacher--a passionate lover of the subject who had
himself made valuable original researches. The years 1859-61 were
years of a universal revival of taste in the exact sciences: Grove,
Clausius, Joule, and Séguin showed that heat and all physical forces
are but divers modes of motion; Helmholtz began about that time his
epoch-making researches in sound; and Tyndall, in his popular lectures,
made one touch, so to say, the very atoms and molecules. Gerhardt and
Avogadro introduced the theory of substitutions, and Mendeléoff, Lothar
Meyer, and Newlands discovered the periodical law of elements; Darwin,
with his ‘Origin of Species,’ revolutionized all biological sciences;
while Karl Vogt and Moleschott, following Claude Bernard, laid the
foundations of true psychology in physiology. It was a great time of
scientific revival, and the current which directed men’s minds towards
natural science was irresistible. Numbers of excellent books were
published at that time in Russian translations, and I soon understood
that whatever one’s subsequent studies might be, a thorough knowledge
of the natural sciences and familiarity with their methods must lie at
the foundation.
Five or six of us joined together to get some sort of laboratory for
ourselves. With the elementary apparatus recommended for beginners in
Stöckhardt’s excellent text-book we started our laboratory in a small
bedroom of two of our comrades, the brothers Zasétsky. Their father,
an old retired admiral, was delighted to see his sons engaged in so
useful a pursuit, and did not object to our coming together on Sundays
and during the holidays in that room by the side of his own study. With
Stöckhardt’s book as a guide, we systematically made all experiments.
I must say that once we nearly set the house on fire, and that more
than once we poisoned all the rooms with chlorine and similar stuffs.
But the old admiral, when we related the adventure at dinner time, took
it very nicely, and told us how he and his comrades also nearly set a
house on fire in the far less useful pursuit of punch making; while the
mother only said, amidst her paroxysms of coughing: ‘Of course, if it
_is_ necessary for your learning to handle such nasty smelling things,
then there’s nothing to be done!’
After dinner she usually took her seat at the piano, and till late at
night we would go on singing duos, trios, and choruses from the operas.
Or else we would take the score of some Italian or Russian opera and
go through it from the beginning to the end, recitatives and all--the
mother and her daughter taking the parts of the _prime donne_, while we
managed more or rather less successfully to maintain all other parts.
Chemistry and music thus went hand in hand.
* * * * *
Higher mathematics also absorbed a great deal of my time. Four or
five of us had already decided that we should not enter a regiment of
the Guards, where all our time would be given to military drill and
parades, and we intended to enter, after promotion, one of the military
academies--artillery or engineering. In order to do so we had to
prepare in higher geometry, the differential and the beginnings of the
integral calculus, and we took private lessons for that purpose. At the
same time, elementary astronomy being taught to us under the name of
mathematical geography, I plunged into astronomical reading, especially
during the last year of my stay at school. The never-ceasing life of
the universe, which I conceived as _life_ and evolution, became for me
an inexhaustible source of higher poetical thought, and gradually the
sense of man’s oneness with Nature, both animate and inanimate--the
poetry of Nature--became the philosophy of my life.
If the teaching in our school were only limited to the subjects I have
mentioned, our time would already be pretty well occupied. But we also
had to study in the domain of humanitarian science, history, law (that
is, the main outlines of the Russian Code), and political economy in
its essential leading principles, including a course of comparative
statistics; and we had to master formidable courses of military
sciences: tactics, military history (the campaigns of 1812 and 1815 in
all their details), artillery, and field fortification. Looking now
back upon this education I think that apart from the subjects relative
to military warfare, which might have been advantageously substituted
by more detailed studies in the exact sciences, the variety of subjects
which we were taught was not beyond the capacities of the average
youth. Owing to a pretty good knowledge of elementary mathematics
and physics, which we gained in the lower forms, nearly all of us
managed to master all these subjects. Some subjects were neglected by
most of us, especially law, as also modern history, for which we had
unfortunately an old wreck of a master who was only kept at his post in
order to give him his full old age pension. Moreover, some latitude was
given to us in the choice of the subjects we liked best, and, while we
underwent severe examinations in these chosen subjects, we were treated
rather leniently in the remainder. But the chief cause of the relative
success which was obtained in the school was that the teaching was
rendered as concrete as possible. As soon as we had learned elementary
geometry on paper, we re-learned it in the field with poles and the
surveyor’s chain, and next with the astrolabe, the compass, and the
surveyor’s table. After such a concrete training, elementary astronomy
offered no difficulties, while the surveys themselves were an endless
source of enjoyment.
The same system of concrete teaching was applied to fortification. In
the winter we solved such problems as, for instance, the following:
‘Having a thousand men and a fortnight at your disposal, build the
strongest fortification you can build to protect that bridge for a
retreating army;’ and we hotly discussed our schemes with the teacher
when he criticized them. In the summer we applied that knowledge in the
field. To these practical and concrete exercises I entirely attribute
the easiness with which most of us mastered such a variety of subjects
at the age of seventeen and eighteen.
With all that, we had plenty of time for amusement. Our best time was
when the examinations were over, and we had three or four weeks quite
free before going to camp; or when we returned from the camp, and had
another three weeks free before the beginning of the lessons. The
few of us who remained then in the school were allowed, during the
vacations, to go out just as we liked, always finding bed and food
at the school. I worked then in the library, or visited the picture
galleries of the Hermitage, studying one by one all the best pictures
of each school separately; or I went to the different Crown factories
and works of playing cards, cottons, iron, china and glass, which
are open to the public. Or we went out rowing on the Nevá, spending
the whole night on the river, sometimes in the Gulf of Finland with
fishermen--a melancholy northern night, during which the morning dawn
meets the afterglow of the setting sun, and a book can be read in the
open air at midnight. For all this we found plenty of time.
Since those visits to the factories I took a liking to strong and
perfect machinery. Seeing how a gigantic paw, coming out of a shanty,
grasps a log floating in the Nevá, pulls it inside, and puts it under
the saws which cut it into boards; or how a huge red-hot iron bar is
transformed into a rail after it has passed between two cylinders, I
understood the poetry of machinery. In our present factories, machinery
work is killing for the worker, because he becomes a lifelong servant
to a given machine and never is anything else. But this is a matter
of bad organization, and has nothing to do with the machine itself.
Over-work and lifelong monotony are equally bad whether the work is
done with the hand, with plain tools, or with a machine. But, apart
from these, I fully understand the pleasure that man can derive
from the consciousness of the might of his machine, the intelligent
character of its work, the gracefulness of its movements, and the
correctness of what it is doing, and I think that William Morris’s
hatred of machines only proved that the conception of the machine’s
power and gracefulness was missing in his great poetical genius.
Music also played a very great part in my development. From it I
borrowed even greater joys and enthusiasm than from poetry. The Russian
opera hardly existed in those times; but the Italian opera, which had
a number of first-rate stars in it, was the most popular institution
at St. Petersburg. When the _prima donna_ Bósio fell ill, thousands
of people, chiefly of the youth, stood till late at night at the door
of her hotel to get news of her. She was not beautiful, but was so
much so when she sang that young men madly in love with her could be
counted by the hundred; and when she died she had a burial which no
one before had ever had at St. Petersburg. ‘All Petersburg’ was then
divided into two camps: the admirers of the Italian opera and those of
the French stage, which already then was showing in germ the putrid
Offenbachian current which a few years later infected all Europe. Our
form was also divided, half and half, between these two currents, and
I belonged to the former. We were not permitted to go to the pit or to
the balcony, while all the boxes in the Italian opera were always taken
months in advance by subscription, and even transmitted in certain
families as an hereditary possession. But we gained admission, on
Saturday nights, to the passages in the uppermost gallery, and had to
stand there on our legs in a Turkish bath atmosphere; while to conceal
our showy uniforms we used to wear, in that Turkish bath, our black
overcoats, lined with wadding and with a fur collar, tightly buttoned.
It is a wonder that none of us got pneumonia in this way, especially
as we came out overheated with the ovations which we used to make to
our favourite singers, and stood afterwards at the stage door to catch
once more a glimpse of our favourites, and to cheer them. The Italian
opera in those years was in some strange way intimately connected with
the Radical movement, and the revolutionary recitatives in ‘Wilhelm
Tell’ and ‘The Puritans’ were always met with stormy applause and
vociferations which went straight to the heart of Alexander II.;
while in the sixth story galleries, in the smoking-room of the opera,
and at the stage door the best part of the St. Petersburg youth came
together in a common idealist worship of a noble art. All this may seem
childish; but many higher ideas and pure inspirations were kindled in
us by this worship of our favourite artists.
VII
Every summer we went out camping at Peterhóf, with the other military
schools of the St. Petersburg district. All things considered, our life
there was very pleasant, and certainly was excellent for our health: we
slept in spacious tents, we bathed in the sea, and spent all the six
weeks in open-air exercise.
In military schools the main purpose of camp life was evidently
military drill, which we all disliked very much, but the dulness of
which was occasionally relieved by making us take part in manœuvres.
One night, as we were already going to bed, Alexander II. aroused the
camp by having the alert sounded. In a few minutes all the camp was
alive--several thousand boys gathering round their colours, and the
guns of the artillery school booming in the stillness of the night.
All military Peterhóf was galloping to our camp, but, owing to some
misunderstanding, the emperor remained on foot. Orderlies were sent
in all directions to get a horse for him, but there was none, and
he, not being a good rider, would not ride any horse but one of his
own. Alexander II. was very angry, and freely ventilated his anger.
‘Imbecile (_durák_), have I only one horse?’ I heard him shout to an
orderly who reported that his horse was in another camp.
What with the increasing darkness, the booming of the guns, and the
rattling of the cavalry, we boys grew very much excited, and when
Alexander ordered charging, our column charged straight upon him.
Tightly packed in the ranks, with lowered bayonets, we must have had
a menacing aspect, for I saw Alexander II. who was still on foot,
clearing the way for the column in three formidable jumps. I understood
then the meaning of a column which is marching in serried ranks under
the excitement of the music and the march itself. There stood before us
the emperor--our commander, whom we all venerated very much; but I felt
that in this moving mass not one page or cadet would have moved an inch
aside, or stopped awhile, to make room for him. We were the marching
column--he was but an obstacle--and the column would have marched over
him. ‘Why should he be in our way?’ the pages said afterwards. Boys,
rifle in hand, are even more terrible in such cases than old soldiers.
Next year, when we took part in the great manœuvres of the St.
Petersburg garrison, I got an insight into the sidelights of warfare.
For two days in succession we did nothing but march up and down on a
space of some twenty miles, without having the slightest idea of what
was going on round us or for what purpose we were marched. Cannon
boomed now in our neighbourhood and now far away: sharp musketry fire
was heard somewhere in the hills and the woods; orderlies galloped
up and down bringing the order to advance and next the order to
retreat--and we marched, marched, and marched, seeing no sense in all
these movements and counter-movements. Masses of cavalry had passed
along the same road, making out of it a deep mass of movable sand; and
we had to advance and retreat several times along the same road, till
at last our column broke all discipline and represented an incoherent
mass of pilgrims rather than a military unit. The colours alone
remained in the road; the remainder slowly paced along the sides of the
road, in the wood. The orders and supplications of the officers were of
no avail.
Suddenly a shout came from behind: ‘The emperor is coming! The
emperor!’ The officers ran about supplicating us to gather in the
ranks: no one listened to them.
The emperor came and ordered to retreat once more--‘Turn round!’
the words of command resounded. ‘The emperor is behind us, please
turn round,’ the officers whispered; but the battalion hardly took
any notice of the command, and none whatever of the presence of the
emperor. Happily, Alexander II. was no fanatic of militarism, and,
after having said a few words to cheer us with a promise of rest, he
galloped off.
I understood then how much depends in warfare upon the state of mind
of the troops, and how little can be done by mere discipline when
more than an average effort is required from the soldiers. What can
discipline do when tired troops have to make a supreme effort to reach
the field of battle at a given hour? It is absolutely powerless. Only
enthusiasm and confidence can at such moments induce the soldiers to
do ‘the impossible’--and it is the impossible that continually must
be accomplished to secure success. How often, later on in Siberia,
I recalled to memory that object lesson when we also had to do the
impossible during our scientific expeditions!
Comparatively little of our time was, however, given during our stay
in the camp to military drill and manœuvres. A good deal of it was
given to practical exercises in surveys and fortification. After a few
preliminary exercises we were given a reflecting compass and told:
‘Go and make a plan of, say, this lake or those roads, or that park,
measuring the angles with the compass and the distances with your
pace.’ And early in the morning, after a hurriedly swallowed breakfast,
the boy would fill his spacious military pockets with slices of rye
bread, and would go out for four or five hours every day in the parks,
miles away, mapping with his compass and paces the beautiful shady
roads, the rivulets, and the lakes. His work was later on compared
with accurate maps, and prizes in optical and drawing instruments
at the boy’s choice were awarded. For me these surveys were a deep
source of enjoyment. That independent work, that isolation under the
centuries-old trees, that life of the forest which I could enjoy
undisturbed, while there was at the same time the interest in the
work--all these left deep traces in my mind; and if I later on became
an explorer of Siberia and several of my comrades became explorers in
Central Asia, the ground for it was prepared in these surveys.
And finally, in the last form, parties of four boys were taken every
second day to some villages at a considerable distance from the camp,
and there they had to make a detailed survey of several square miles
with the aid of the surveyor’s table and a telescopic ruler. Officers
of the General Staff came from time to time to verify their work and
to advise them. This life amidst the peasants in the villages had the
best effect upon the intellectual and moral development of many boys.
At the same time, exercises were made in the construction of
natural-sized cross-sections of fortifications. We were taken out by an
officer in the open field, and there we had to make the cross-sections
of a bastion, or of a bridge head, nailing poles and battens together
in exactly the same way as railway engineers do in tracing a railway.
When it came to embrasures and barbettes, we had to calculate a great
deal to obtain the inclinations of the different planes, and after that
geometry in the space ceased to be difficult to understand.
We delighted in such work, and once, in town, finding in our garden a
heap of clay and gravel, we at once began to build a real fortification
on a reduced scale, with well-calculated straight and oblique
embrasures and barbettes. All was done very neatly, and our ambition
now was to obtain some planks for making the platforms for the guns,
and to place upon them the model guns which we had in our class-rooms.
But, alas, our trousers wore an alarming aspect. ‘What are you doing
there?’ our captain exclaimed. ‘Look at yourselves! You look like
navvies’ (that was exactly what we were proud of). ‘What if the Grand
Duke comes and finds you in such a state!’
‘We will show him our fortifications and ask him to get us tools and
boards for the platforms.’
All protests were vain. A dozen workers were sent next day to cart away
our beautiful work, as if it were a mere heap of mud!
I mention this to show how children and youths long for real
applications of what they learn at school in abstract, and how stupid
are the educators who are unable to see what a powerful aid they could
find in concrete applications for helping their pupils to grasp the
real sense of the things they learn.
In our school all was directed towards training us for warfare. But
we should have worked with the same enthusiasm at tracing a railway,
at building a log-house, or at cultivating a garden or a field.
But all this longing of the children and youths for _real_ work is
wasted simply because our idea of the school is still the mediæval
scholasticism, the mediæval monastery!
VIII
The years 1857-61 were years of rich growth in the intellectual forces
of Russia. All that had been whispered for the last decade, in the
secrecy of friendly meetings, by the generation represented in Russian
literature by Turguéneff, Tolstóy, Hérzen, Bakúnin, Ogaryóff, Kavélin,
Dostoévsky, Grigoróvich, Ostróvsky, and Nekrásoff, began now to leak
out in the press. Censorship was still very rigorous; but what could
not be said openly in political articles was smuggled in under the
form of novels, humorous sketches, or veiled comments on West European
events, and everyone read between the lines and understood.
Having no acquaintances at St. Petersburg apart from the school and a
narrow circle of relatives, I stood outside the radical movement of
those years--miles, in fact, away from it. And yet this was, perhaps,
the main feature of the movement--that it had the power to penetrate
into so ‘well meaning’ a school as our corps was, and to find an echo
in such a circle as that of my Moscow relatives.
I used at that time to spend my Sundays and holidays at the house of
my aunt, mentioned in a previous chapter under the name of Princess
Mírski. Prince Mírski thought only of extraordinary lunches and
dinners, while his wife and their young daughter led a very gay
life. My cousin was a beautiful girl of nineteen, of a most amiable
disposition, and nearly all her male cousins were madly in love
with her. She, in turn, fell in love with one of them, and wanted to
marry him. But to marry a cousin is considered a great sin by the
Russian Church, and the old princess tried in vain to obtain a special
permission from the high ecclesiastical dignitaries. Now she brought
her daughter to St. Petersburg, hoping that she might choose among
her many admirers a more suitable husband than her own cousin. It was
labour lost, I must add; but their fashionable apartment was full of
brilliant young men from the Guards and from the diplomatic service.
Such a house would be the last to be thought of in connection with
revolutionary ideas; and yet it was in that house that I made my
first acquaintance with the revolutionary literature of the times.
The great refugee, Hérzen, had just begun to issue at London his
review, ‘The Polar Star, which made a commotion in Russia, even in the
palace circles, and was widely circulated secretly at St. Petersburg.
My cousin got it in some way, and we used to read it together. Her
heart revolted against the obstacles which were put in the way of her
happiness, and her mind was the more open to the powerful criticisms
which the great writer launched against the Russian autocracy and all
the rotten system of misgovernment. With a feeling near to worship I
used to look on the medallion which was printed on the paper cover
of ‘The Polar Star,’ and which represented the noble heads of the
five ‘Decembrists’ whom Nicholas I. had hanged after the rebellion
of December 14, 1825--Bestúzheff, Kahóvskiy, Péstel, Ryléeff, and
Muravióv-Apóstol.
The beauty of the style of Hérzen--of whom Turguéneff has truly said
that he wrote in tears and blood, and that no other Russian had ever
so written--the breadth of his ideas, and his deep love of Russia took
possession of me, and I used to read and re-read those pages, even more
full of heart than of brain.
In 1859, or early in 1860, I began to edit my first revolutionary
paper. At that age, what could I be but a constitutionalist?--and my
paper advocated the necessity of a constitution for Russia. I wrote
about the foolish expenses of the Court, the sums of money which were
spent at Nice to keep quite a squadron of the navy in attendance on
the dowager Empress, who died in 1860; I mentioned the misdeeds of the
functionaries which I continually heard spoken of, and I urged the
necessity of constitutional rule. I wrote three copies of my paper, and
slipped them into the desks of three comrades of the higher forms, who,
I thought, might be interested in public affairs. I asked my readers to
put their remarks behind the Scotch grandfather clock in our library.
With a throbbing heart, I went next day to see if there was something
for me behind the clock. Two notes were there, indeed. Two comrades
wrote that they fully sympathized with my paper, and only advised me
not to risk too much. I wrote my second number, still more vigorously
insisting upon the necessity of uniting all forces in the name of
liberty. But this time there was no reply behind the clock. Instead the
two comrades came to me.
‘We are sure,’ they said, ‘that it is you who edit the paper, and we
want to talk about it. We are quite agreed with you, and we are here
to say, “Let us be friends.” Your paper has done its work--it has
brought us together; but there is no need to continue it. In all the
school there are only two more who would take any interest in such
matters, while if it becomes known that there is a paper of this kind
the consequences will be terrible for all of us. Let us constitute a
circle and talk about everything; perhaps we shall put something into
the heads of a few others.’
This was so sensible that I could only agree, and we sealed our union
by a hearty shaking of hands. From that time we three became firm
friends, and used to read a great deal together and discuss all sorts
of things.
The abolition of serfdom was the question which then engrossed the
attention of all thinking men.
The Revolution of 1848 had had its distinct echo in the hearts of the
Russian peasant folk, and from the year 1850 the insurrections of
revolted serfs began to take serious proportions. When the Crimean war
broke out, and militia was levied all over Russia, these revolts spread
with a violence never before heard of. Several serf-owners were killed
by their serfs, and the peasant uprisings became so serious that whole
regiments, with artillery, were sent to quell them, whereas in former
times small detachments of soldiers would have been sufficient to
terrorize the peasants into obedience.
These outbreaks on the one side, and the profound aversion to serfdom
which had grown up in the generation which came to the front with the
advent of Alexander II. to the throne, rendered the emancipation of
the peasants more and more imperative. The emperor, himself averse
to serfdom, and supported, or rather influenced, in his own family
by his wife, his brother Constantine, and the grand duchess Hélène
Pávlovna, took the first steps in that direction. His intention was
that the initiative of the reform should come from the nobility, the
serf-owners themselves. But in no province of Russia could the nobility
be induced to send a petition to the Tsar to that effect. In March
1856 he himself addressed the Moscow nobility on the necessity of such
a step; but a stubborn silence was all their reply to his speech, so
that Alexander II., growing quite angry, concluded with those memorable
words of Hérzen: ‘It is better, gentlemen, that it should come from
above than to wait till it comes from beneath.’ Even these words had no
effect, and it was to the provinces of Old Poland--Gródno, Wílno, and
Kóvno--where Napoleon I. had abolished serfdom (on paper) in 1812, that
recourse was had. The Governor-General of those provinces, Nazímoff,
managed to obtain the desired address from the Polish nobility. In
November 1857 the famous ‘rescript’ to the Governor-General of the
Lithuanian provinces, announcing the intention of the emperor to
abolish serfdom, was launched, and we read, with tears in our eyes,
the beautiful article of Hérzen, ‘Thou hast conquered, Galilean,’ in
which the refugees in London declared that they would no more look upon
Alexander II. as an enemy, but would support him in the great work of
emancipation.
The attitude of the peasants was very remarkable. No sooner had the
news spread that the liberation long sighed for was coming than the
insurrections nearly stopped. The peasants waited now, and during a
journey which Alexander made in Middle Russia they flocked around
him as he passed, beseeching him to grant them liberty--a petition,
however, which Alexander received with great repugnance. It is most
remarkable--so strong is the force of tradition--that the rumour went
among the peasants that it was Napoleon III. who had required of the
Tsar, in the treaty of peace, that the peasants should be freed. I
frequently heard this rumour; and on the very eve of the emancipation
they seemed to doubt that it would be done without pressure from
abroad. ‘Nothing will be done unless Garibaldi comes,’ was the reply
which a peasant made at St. Petersburg to a comrade of mine who talked
to him about ‘freedom coming.’
But after these moments of general rejoicing years of incertitude and
disquiet followed. Specially appointed committees in the provinces
and at St. Petersburg discussed the proposed liberation of the serfs,
but the intentions of Alexander II. seemed unsettled. A check was
continually put upon the press, in order to prevent it from discussing
details. Sinister rumours circulated at St. Petersburg and reached our
corps.
There was no lack of young men amongst the nobility who earnestly
worked for a frank abolition of the old servitude; but the serfdom
party drew closer and closer round the emperor, and got power over his
mind. They whispered into his ears that the day serfdom was abolished
the peasants would begin to kill the landlords wholesale, and Russia
would witness a new Pugachóff uprising, far more terrible than that
of 1773. Alexander, who was a man of weak character, only too readily
lent his ear to such predictions. But the huge machine for working out
the emancipation law had been set to work. The committees had their
sittings; scores of schemes of emancipation, addressed to the emperor,
circulated in manuscript or were printed in London. Hérzen, seconded by
Turguéneff, who kept him well informed about all that was going on in
government circles, discussed in his ‘Bell’ and his ‘Polar Star’ the
details of the various schemes, and Chernyshévsky in the ‘Contemporary’
(_Sovreménnik_). The Slavophiles, especially Aksákoff and Bélyáeff, had
taken advantage of the first moments of relative freedom allowed the
press, to give the matter a wide publicity in Russia, and to discuss
the features of the emancipation with a thorough understanding of its
technical aspects. All intellectual St. Petersburg was with Hérzen, and
particularly with Chernyshévsky, and I remember how the officers of the
Horse Guards, whom I saw on Sundays, after the church parade, at the
home of my cousin (Dmítri Nikoláevich Kropótkin, who was aide-de-camp
of that regiment and aide-de-camp of the emperor), used to side with
Chernyshévsky, the leader of the advanced party in the emancipation
struggle. The whole disposition of St. Petersburg, in the drawing-rooms
and in the street, was such that it was impossible to go back. The
liberation of the serfs had to be accomplished; and another important
point was won--the liberated serfs would receive, besides their
homesteads, the land that they had hitherto cultivated for themselves.
However, the party of the old nobility were not discouraged. They
centred their efforts on obtaining a postponement of the reform,
on reducing the size of the allotments, and on imposing upon the
emancipated serfs so high a redemption tax for the land that it would
render their economical freedom illusory; and in this they fully
succeeded. Alexander II. dismissed the real soul of the whole business,
Nikolái Milútin (brother of the minister of war), saying to him, ‘I am
so sorry to part with you, but I must: the nobility describe you as one
of the Reds.’ The first committees, which had worked out the scheme of
emancipation, were dismissed too, and new committees revised the whole
work in the interest of the serf-owners; the press was muzzled once
more.
Things assumed a very gloomy aspect. The question whether the
liberation would take place at all was now asked. I feverishly followed
the struggle, and every Sunday, when my comrades returned from their
homes, I asked them what their parents said. By the end of 1860 the
news became worse and worse. ‘The Valúeff party has got the upper
hand.’ ‘They intend to revise the whole work.’ ‘The relatives of the
Princess X. [a friend of the Tsar] work hard upon him,’ ‘The liberation
will be postponed: they fear a revolution.’
* * * * *
In January 1861 slightly better rumours began to circulate, and it was
generally hoped that something would be heard of the emancipation on
the day of the emperor’s accession to the throne, February 19.
The 19th came, but it brought nothing with it. I was on that day at
the palace. There was no grand _levée_, only a small one; and pages of
the second form were sent to such _levées_ in order to get accustomed
to the palace ways. It was my turn that day; and as I was seeing off
one of the grand duchesses who came to the palace to assist at the
Mass, her husband did not appear and I went to fetch him. He was called
out of the emperor’s study, and I told him, in a half jocose way, of
the perplexity of his wife, without having the slightest suspicion
of the important matters that may have been talked of in the study at
that time. Apart from a few of the initiated, no one in the palace
suspected that the manifesto had been signed on February 19, and was
kept back for a fortnight only because the next Sunday, the 26th, was
the beginning of the carnival week, and it was feared that, owing to
the drinking which goes on in the villages during the carnival, peasant
insurrections might break out. Even the carnival fair, which used
to be held at St. Petersburg on the square near the winter palace,
was removed that year to another square, from fear of a popular
insurrection in the capital. Most sanguinary instructions had been
issued to the army as to the ways of repressing peasant uprisings.
A fortnight later, on the last Sunday of the carnival (March 5, or
rather March 17, new style), I was at the corps, having to take part
in the military parade at the riding-school. I was still in bed, when
my soldier servant, Ivánoff, dashed in with the tea-tray, exclaiming,
‘Prince, freedom! The manifesto is posted on the Gostínoi Dvor’ (the
shops opposite the corps).
‘Did you see it yourself?’
‘Yes. People stand round; one reads, the others listen. It _is_
freedom!’
In a couple of minutes I was dressed and out. A comrade was coming in.
‘Kropótkin, freedom!’ he shouted. ‘Here is the manifesto. My uncle
learned last night that it would be read at the early Mass at the Isaac
Cathedral; so we went. There were not many people there; peasants
only. The manifesto was read and distributed after the Mass. They well
understood what it meant: when I came out of the church, two peasants,
who stood in the gateway, said to me in such a droll way, “Well, sir?
now--all gone?”’ And he mimicked how they had shown him the way out.
Years of expectation were in that gesture of sending away the master.
I read and re-read the manifesto. It was written in an elevated style
by the old metropolitan of Moscow, Philarète, but with a useless
mixture of Russian and old Slavonian which obscured the sense. It was
liberty; but it was not liberty yet, the peasants having to remain
serfs for two years more, till February 19, 1863. Notwithstanding all
this, one thing was evident: serfdom was abolished, and the liberated
serfs would get the land and their homesteads. They would have to pay
for it, but the old stain of slavery was removed. They would be slaves
no more; the reaction had _not_ got the upper hand.
We went to the parade; and when all the military performances were
over, Alexander II., remaining on horseback, loudly called out, ‘The
officers to me!’ They gathered round him, and he began, in a loud
voice, a speech about the great event of the day.
‘The officers ... the representatives of the nobility in the
army’--these scraps of sentences reached our ears--‘an end has been put
to centuries of injustice.... I expect sacrifices from the nobility
... the loyal nobility will gather round the throne’ ... and so on.
Enthusiastic hurrahs resounded amongst the officers as he ended.
We ran rather than marched back on our way to the corps--hurrying to
be in time for the Italian opera, of which the last performance in the
season was to be given that afternoon; some manifestation was sure to
take place then. Our military attire was flung off with great haste,
and several of us dashed, lightfooted, to the sixth-story gallery. The
house was crowded.
During the first entr’acte the smoking-room of the opera filled with
excited young men, who all talked to one another, whether acquainted or
not. We planned at once to return to the hall, and to sing, with the
whole public in a mass choir, the hymn ‘God save the Tsar.’
However, sounds of music reached our ears, and we all hurried back to
the hall. The band of the opera was already playing the hymn, which was
drowned immediately in enthusiastic hurrahs coming from the galleries,
the boxes, the pit. I saw Bavéri, the conductor, waving his stick,
but not a sound could be heard from the powerful band. Then Bavéri
stopped, but the hurrahs continued. I saw the stick waved again in
the air; I saw the fiddle bows moving and musicians blowing the brass
instruments, but again the sound of voices overwhelmed the band. Bavéri
began conducting the hymn once more, and it was only by the end of that
third repetition that isolated sounds of the brass instruments pierced
through the clamour of human voices.
The same enthusiasm was in the streets. Crowds of peasants and educated
men stood in front of the palace, shouting hurrahs, and the Tsar could
not appear without being followed by demonstrative crowds running after
his carriage. Hérzen was right when, two years later, as Alexander was
drowning the Polish insurrection in blood, and ‘Muravióff the Hanger’
was strangling it on the scaffold, he wrote, ‘Alexander Nikoláevich,
why did you not die on that day? Your name would have been transmitted
in history as that of a hero.’
* * * * *
Where were the uprisings which had been predicted by the champions
of slavery? Conditions more indefinite than those which had been
created by the Polozhénie (the emancipation law) could not have been
invented. If anything could have provoked revolts, it was precisely
the perplexing vagueness of the conditions created by the new law.
And yet--except in two places where there were insurrections, and
a very few other spots where small disturbances, entirely due to
misunderstandings and immediately appeased, took place--Russia remained
quiet, more quiet than ever. With their usual good sense, the peasants
had understood that serfdom was done away with, that ‘freedom had
come,’ and they accepted the conditions imposed upon them, although
these conditions were very heavy.
I was in Nikólskoye in August 1861, and again in the summer of
1862, and I was struck with the quiet intelligent way in which the
peasants had accepted the new conditions. They knew perfectly well how
difficult it would be to pay the redemption tax for the land, which
was in reality an indemnity to the nobles in lieu of the obligations
of serfdom. But they so much valued the abolition of their personal
enslavement that they accepted the ruinous charges--not without
murmuring, but as a hard necessity--the moment that personal freedom
was obtained. For the first months they kept two holidays a week,
saying that it was a sin to work on Friday; but when the summer came
they resumed work with even more energy than before.
When I saw our Nikólskoye peasants, fifteen months after the
liberation, I could not but admire them. Their inborn good nature
and softness remained with them, but all traces of servility had
disappeared. They talked to their masters as equals talk to equals,
as if they never had stood in different relations. Besides, such men
came out from among them as could make a stand for their rights. The
Polozhénie was a large and difficult book, which it took me a good
deal of time to understand; but when Vasíli Ivánoff, the elder of
Nikólskoye, came one day to ask me to explain to him some obscurity
in it, I saw that he, who was not even a fluent reader, had admirably
found his way amongst the intricacies of the chapters and paragraphs of
the law.
The ‘household people’--that is, the servants--came out the worst
of all. They got no land, and would hardly have known what to do
with it if they had. They got freedom, and nothing besides. In our
neighbourhood nearly all of them left their masters; none, for
example, remained in the household of my father. They went in search
of positions elsewhere, and a number of them found employment at once
with the merchant class, who were proud of having the coachman of
Prince So-and-So, or the cook of General So-and-So. Those who knew a
trade found work in the towns: for instance, my father’s band remained
a band, and made a good living at Kalúga, retaining amiable relations
with us. But those who had no trade had hard times before them, and yet
the majority preferred to live anyhow rather than remain with their old
masters.
As to the landlords, while the larger ones made all possible efforts
at St. Petersburg to re-introduce the old conditions under one name
or another (they succeeded in doing so to some extent under Alexander
III.), by far the greater number submitted to the abolition of serfdom
as to a sort of necessary calamity. The young generation gave to Russia
that remarkable staff of ‘peace mediators’ and justices of the peace
who contributed so much to the peaceful issue of the emancipation.
As to the old generation, most of them had already discounted the
considerable sums of money they were to receive from the peasants for
the land which was granted to the liberated serfs, and which was valued
much above its market price; they schemed as to how they would squander
that money in the restaurants of the capitals, or at the green tables
in gambling. And they did squander it, almost all of them, as soon as
they got it.
For many landlords the liberation of the serfs was an excellent
money transaction. Thus, land which my father, in anticipation of
the emancipation, sold in parcels at the rate of eleven roubles the
Russian acre, was now estimated at forty roubles in the peasants’
allotments--that is, three and a half times above its market
value--and this was the rule in all our neighbourhood; while in my
father’s Tambóv estate, on the prairies, the _mir_--that is, the
village community--rented all his land for twelve years at a price
which represented twice as much as he used to get from that land by
cultivating it with servile labour.
Eleven years after that memorable time I went to the Tambóv estate,
which I had inherited from my father. I stayed there for a few weeks,
and on the evening of my departure our village priest--an intelligent
man of independent opinions, such as one meets occasionally in our
southern provinces--went out for a walk round the village. The
sunset was glorious; a balmy air came from the prairies. He found a
middle-aged peasant--Antón Savélieff--sitting on a small eminence
outside the village and reading a book of psalms. The peasant hardly
knew how to spell in Old Slavonic, and often he would read a book
from the last page, turning the pages backward; it was the process of
reading which he liked most, and then a word would strike him, and its
repetition pleased him. He was reading now a psalm of which each verse
began with the word ‘rejoice.’
‘What are you reading?’ he was asked.
‘Well, father, I will tell you,’ was his reply. ‘Fourteen years ago
the old prince came here. It was in the winter. I had just returned
home, quite frozen. A snowstorm was raging. I had scarcely begun
undressing when we heard a knock at the window: it was the elder, who
was shouting, “Go to the prince! He wants you!” We all--my wife and
our children--were thunderstricken. “What can he want of you?” my wife
cried in alarm. I signed myself with the cross and went; the snowstorm
almost blinded me as I crossed the bridge. Well, it ended all right.
The old prince was taking his afternoon sleep, and when he woke up he
asked me if I knew plastering work, and only told me, “Come to-morrow
to repair the plaster in that room.” So I went home quite happy, and
when I came to the bridge I found my wife standing there. She had stood
there all the time in the snowstorm, with the baby in her arms, waiting
for me. “What has happened, Savélich?” she cried. “Well,” I said, “no
harm; he only asked me to make some repairs.” That, father, was under
the old prince. And now, the young prince came here the other day. I
went to see him, and found him in the garden, at the tea table, in the
shadow of the house; you, father, sat with him, and the elder of the
canton, with his mayor’s chain upon his breast. “Will you have tea,
Savélich?” he asks me. “Take a chair. Petr Grigórieff”--he says that
to the old one--“give us one more chair.” And Petr Grigórieff--you
know what a terror for us he was when he was the manager of the old
prince--brought the chair, and we all sat round the tea table, talking,
and he poured out tea for all of us. Well, now, father, the evening is
so beautiful, the balm comes from the prairies, and I sit and read,
“Rejoice! Rejoice!”’
* * * * *
This is what the abolition of serfdom meant for the peasants.
IX
In June 1861 I was nominated sergeant of the Corps of Pages. Some of
our officers, I must say, did not like the idea of it, saying that
there would be no discipline with me acting as a sergeant, but it could
not be helped; it was usually the first pupil of the upper form who was
nominated sergeant, and I had been at the top of our form for several
years in succession. This appointment was considered very enviable, not
only because the sergeant occupied a privileged position in the school
and was treated like an officer, but especially because he was also the
page de chambre of the emperor for the time being; and to be personally
known to the emperor was of course considered as a stepping-stone to
further distinctions. The most important point to me was, however,
that it freed me from all the drudgery of the inner service of the
school, which fell on the pages de chambre, and that I should have
for my studies a separate room where I could isolate myself from the
bustle of the school. True, there was also an important drawback to it:
I had always found it tedious to pace up and down, many times a day,
the whole length of our rooms, and used therefore to run the distance
full speed, which was severely prohibited; and now I should have to
walk very solemnly, with the service book under my arm, instead of
running! A consultation was even held among a few friends of mine upon
this serious matter, and it was decided that from time to time I could
still find opportunities to take my favourite runs; as to my relations
with all the others, it depended upon myself to put them on a new
comradelike footing, and this I did.
The pages de chambre had to be at the palace frequently, in attendance
at the great and small _levées_, the balls, the receptions, the gala
dinners, and so on. During Christmas, New Year, and Easter weeks we
were summoned to the palace almost every day, and sometimes twice a
day. Moreover, in my military capacity of sergeant I had to report to
the emperor every Sunday, at the parade in the riding-school, that ‘all
was well at the company of the Corps of Pages,’ even when one-third
of the school was ill of some contagious disease. ‘Shall I not report
to-day that all is not quite well?’ I asked the colonel on this
occasion. ‘God bless you,’ was his reply, ‘you ought only to say so if
there were an insurrection!’
Court life has undoubtedly much that is picturesque about it. With its
elegant refinement of manners--superficial though it may be--its strict
etiquette, and its brilliant surroundings, it is certainly meant to
be impressive. A great _levée_ is a fine pageant, and even the simple
reception of a few ladies by the empress becomes quite different from
a common call when it takes place in a richly decorated drawing-room
of the palace--the guests ushered by chamberlains in gold-embroidered
uniforms, the hostess followed by brilliantly dressed pages and a
suite of ladies, and everything conducted with striking solemnity.
To be an actor in the Court ceremonies, in attendance upon the chief
personages, offered something more than the mere interest of curiosity
for a boy of my age. Besides, I then looked upon Alexander II. as a
sort of hero; a man who attached no importance to the Court ceremonies,
but who, at this period of his reign, began his working day at six
in the morning, and was engaged in a hard struggle with a powerful
reactionary party in order to carry through a series of reforms in
which the abolition of serfdom was only the first step.
But gradually, as I saw more of the spectacular side of Court life,
and caught now and then a glimpse of what was going on behind the
scenes, I realized not only the futility of these shows and the things
they were intended to conceal, but also that these small things so
much absorbed the Court as to prevent consideration of matters of far
greater importance. The realities were often lost in the acting. And
then from Alexander II. himself slowly faded the aureole with which my
imagination had surrounded him; so that by the end of the year, even if
at the outset I had cherished some illusions as to useful activity in
the spheres nearest to the palace, I should have retained none.
On every important holiday, as also on the birthdays and name days
of the emperor and empress, on the coronation day, and on other
similar occasions, a great _levée_ was held at the palace. Thousands
of generals and officers of all ranks, down to that of captain, as
well as the high functionaries of the civil service, were arranged in
lines in the immense halls of the palace, to bow at the passage of the
emperor and his family, as they solemnly proceeded to the church. All
the members of the imperial family came on those days to the palace,
meeting together in a drawing-room and merrily chatting till the moment
arrived for putting on the mask of solemnity. Then the column was
formed. The emperor, giving his hand to the empress, opened the march.
He was followed by his page de chambre, and he in turn by the general
aide-de-camp, the aide-de-camp on duty that day, and the minister of
the imperial household; while the empress, or rather the immense train
of her dress, was attended by her two pages de chambre, who had to
support the train at the turnings and to spread it out again in all its
beauty. The heir-apparent, who was a young man of eighteen, and all
the other grand dukes and duchesses, came next, in the order of their
right of succession to the throne--each of the grand duchesses followed
by her page de chambre; then there was a long procession of the ladies
in attendance, old and young, all wearing the so-called Russian
costume--that is, an evening dress which was supposed to resemble the
costume worn by the women of Old Russia.
As the procession passed I could see how each of the eldest military
and civil functionaries, before making his bow, would try to catch the
eye of the emperor, and if he had his bow acknowledged by a smiling
look of the Tsar, or by a hardly perceptible nod of the head, or
perchance by a word or two, he would look round upon his neighbours,
full of pride, in the expectation of their congratulations.
From the church the procession returned in the same way, and then
everyone hurried back to his own affairs. Apart from a few devotees and
some young ladies, not one in ten present at these _levées_ regarded
them otherwise than as a tedious duty.
Twice or thrice during the winter great balls were given at the palace,
and thousands of people were invited to them. After the emperor had
opened the dances with a polonaise, full liberty was left to every one
to enjoy the time as he liked. There was plenty of room in the immense
brightly illuminated halls, where young girls were easily lost to the
watchful eyes of their parents and aunts, and many thoroughly enjoyed
the dances and the supper, during which the young people managed to be
left to themselves.
My duties at these balls were rather difficult. Alexander II. did
not dance, nor did he sit down, but he moved all the time amongst
his guests, his page de chambre having to follow him at a distance,
so as to be within easy call, and yet not inconveniently near. This
combination of presence with absence was not easy to attain, nor did
the emperor require it: he would have preferred to be left entirely to
himself; but such was the tradition, and he had to submit to it. The
worst was when he entered a dense crowd of ladies who stood round the
circle in which the grand dukes danced, and slowly circulated among
them. It was not at all easy to make a way through this living garden,
which opened to give passage to the emperor, but closed in immediately
behind him. Instead of dancing themselves, hundreds of ladies and girls
stood there, closely packed, each in the expectation that one of the
grand dukes would perhaps notice her and invite her to dance a waltz
or a polka. Such was the influence of the Court upon St. Petersburg
society that if one of the grand dukes cast his eye upon a girl, her
parents would do all in their power to make their child fall madly
in love with the great personage, even though they knew well that
no marriage could result from it--the Russian grand dukes not being
allowed to marry ‘subjects’ of the Tsar. The conversations which I once
heard in a ‘respectable’ family, connected with the Court, after the
heir-apparent had danced twice or thrice with a girl of seventeen, and
the hopes which were expressed by her parents, surpassed all that I
could possibly have imagined.
* * * * *
Every time that we were at the palace we had lunch or dinner there,
and the footmen would whisper to us bits of news from the scandalous
chronicle of the place, whether we cared for it or not. They knew
everything that was going on in the different palaces--that was their
domain. For truth’s sake, I must say that during the year which I speak
of that sort of chronicle was not as rich in events as it became in the
seventies. The brothers of the Tsar were only recently married, and
his sons were all very young. But the relations of the emperor himself
with the Princess X., whom Turguéneff has so admirably depicted in
‘Smoke’ under the name of Irène, were even more freely spoken of by
the servants than by St. Petersburg society. One day, however, when
we entered the room where we used to dress, we were told, ‘The X. has
to-day got her dismissal--a complete one this time.’ Half an hour
later we saw the lady in question coming to assist at Mass, with her
eyes swollen from weeping, and swallowing her tears during the Mass,
while the other ladies managed so to stand at a distance from her as
to put her in evidence. The footmen were already informed about the
incident, and commented upon it in their own way. There was something
truly repulsive in the talk of these men, who the day before would have
crouched down before the same lady.
The system of espionage which is exercised in the palace, especially
around the emperor himself, would seem almost incredible to the
uninitiated. The following incident will give some idea of it. A few
years later, one of the grand dukes received a severe lesson from a
St. Petersburg gentleman. The latter had forbidden the grand duke
his house, but, returning home unexpectedly, he found him in his
drawing-room and rushed upon him with his lifted stick. The young man
dashed down the staircase, and was already jumping into his carriage
when the pursuer caught him, and dealt him a blow with his stick. The
policeman who stood at the door saw the adventure and ran to report
it to the chief of the police, General Trépoff, who, in his turn,
jumped into his carriage and hastened to the emperor, to be the first
to report the ‘sad incident.’ Alexander II. summoned the grand duke
and had a talk with him. A couple of days later, an old functionary
who belonged to the Third Section of the emperor’s chancery--that is,
to the state police--and who was a friend at the house of one of my
comrades, related the whole conversation. ‘The emperor,’ he informed
us, ‘was very angry, and said to the grand duke in conclusion, “You
should know better how to manage your little affairs.”’ He was asked,
of course, how he could know anything about a private conversation, but
the reply was very characteristic: ‘The words and the opinions of his
Majesty must be known to our department. How otherwise could such a
delicate institution as the state police be managed? Be sure that the
emperor is the most closely watched person in all St. Petersburg.’
There was no boasting in these words. Every minister, every
governor-general, before entering the emperor’s study with his reports,
had a talk with the private valet of the emperor, to know what was
the mood of the master that day; and according to that mood he either
laid before him some knotty affair, or let it lie at the bottom of
his portfolio in hope of a more lucky day. The governor-general of
East Siberia, when he came to St. Petersburg, always sent his private
aide-de-camp with a handsome gift to the private valet of the emperor.
‘There are days,’ he used to say, ‘when the emperor would get into a
rage, and order a searching inquest upon everyone and myself, if I
should lay before him on such a day certain reports; whereas there are
other days when all will go off quite smoothly. A precious man that
valet is.’ To know from day to day the frame of mind of the emperor
was a substantial part of the art of retaining a high position--an
art which later on Count Shuváloff and General Trépoff understood to
perfection; also Count Ignátieff, who, I suppose from what I saw of
him, possessed that art even without the help of the valet.
At the beginning of my service I felt a great admiration for Alexander
II., the liberator of the serfs. Imagination often carries a boy beyond
the realities of the moment, and my frame of mind at that time was such
that if an attempt had been made in my presence upon the Tsar I should
have covered him with my body. One day, at the beginning of January
1862, I saw him leave the procession and rapidly walk alone toward the
halls where parts of all the regiments of the St. Petersburg garrison
were aligned for a parade. This parade usually took place outdoors, but
this year, on account of the frost, it was held indoors, and Alexander
II., who generally galloped at full speed in front of the troops at
the reviews, had now to march in front of the regiments. I knew that
my Court duties ended as soon as the emperor appeared in his capacity
of military commander of the troops, and that I had to follow him to
this spot, but no further. However, on looking round, I saw that he was
quite alone. The two aides-de-camp had disappeared, and there was with
him not a single man of his suite. ‘I will not leave him alone!’ I said
to myself, and followed him.
Whether Alexander II. was in a great hurry that day, or had other
reasons to wish that the review should be over as soon as possible, I
cannot say, but he dashed in front of the troops, and marched along
their rows at such a speed, making such big and rapid steps--he was
very tall--that I had the greatest difficulty in following him at my
most rapid pace, and in places had almost to run in order to keep close
behind him. He hurried as if he ran away from a danger. His excitement
communicated itself to me, and every moment I was ready to jump in
front of him, regretting only that I had on my ordnance sword and not
my own sword, with a Toledo blade, which pierced coppers and was a far
better weapon. It was only after he had passed in front of the last
battalion that he slackened his pace, and, on entering another hall,
looked round, to meet my eyes glittering with the excitement of that
mad march. The younger aide-de-camp was running at full speed, two
halls behind. I was prepared to get a severe scolding, instead of which
Alexander II. said to me, perhaps betraying his own inner thoughts:
‘You here? Brave boy!’ and as he slowly walked away he turned into
space that problematic, absent-minded gaze which I had begun often to
notice.
Such was then the attitude of my mind. However, various small
incidents, as well as the reactionary character which the policy of
Alexander II. was decidedly taking, instilled more and more doubts
into my heart. Every year, on January 6, a half Christian and half
pagan ceremony of sanctifying the waters is performed in Russia. It is
also performed at the palace. A pavilion is built on the Nevá River,
opposite the palace, and the imperial family, headed by the clergy,
proceed from the palace, across the superb quay, to the pavilion, where
a Te Deum is sung, and the cross is plunged into the water of the
river. Thousands of people stand on the quay and on the ice of the Nevá
to witness the ceremony from a distance. All have to stand bareheaded
during the service. This year, as the frost was rather sharp, an old
general had put on a wig, and in the hurry of drawing on his cape,
his wig had been dislodged and now lay across his head, without his
noticing it. The grand duke Constantine, having caught sight of it,
laughed the whole time the Te Deum was being sung, with the younger
grand dukes, looking in the direction of the unhappy general, who
smiled stupidly without knowing why he was the cause of so much
hilarity. Constantine finally whispered to the emperor, who also looked
at the general and laughed.
A few minutes later, as the procession once more crossed the quay, on
its way back to the palace, an old peasant, bareheaded too, pushed
himself through the double hedge of soldiers who lined the path of the
procession, and fell on his knees just at the feet of the emperor,
holding out a petition, and crying with tears in his eyes, ‘Father,
defend us!’ Ages of oppression of the Russian peasantry was in this
exclamation; but Alexander II., who a few minutes before laughed during
the church service at a wig lying the wrong way, now passed by the
peasant without taking the slightest notice of him. I was close behind
him, and only saw in him a shudder of fear at the sudden appearance
of the peasant, after which he went on without deigning even to
cast a glance on the human figure at his feet. I looked round. The
aides-de-camp were not there; the grand duke Constantine, who followed,
took no more notice of the peasant than his brother did; there was
nobody even to take the petition, so that I took it, although I knew
that I should get a scolding for doing so. It was not my business to
receive petitions, but I remembered what it must have cost the peasant
before he could make his way to the capital, and then through the lines
of police and soldiers who surrounded the procession. Like all peasants
who hand petitions to the Tsar, he was going to be put under arrest,
for no one knows how long.
* * * * *
On the day of the emancipation of the serfs Alexander II. was
worshipped at St. Petersburg; but it is most remarkable that, apart
from that moment of general enthusiasm, he had not the love of the
city. His brother Nicholas--no one could say why--was at least very
popular among the small tradespeople and the cabmen; but neither
Alexander II., nor his brother Constantine, the leader of the reform
party, nor his third brother, Michael, had won the hearts of any class
of people in St. Petersburg. Alexander II. had retained too much of
the despotic character of his father, which pierced now and then
through his usually good-natured manners. He easily lost his temper,
and often treated his courtiers in the most contemptuous way. He was
not what one would describe as a reliable man, either in his policy
or in his personal sympathies, and he was vindictive. I doubt whether
he was sincerely attached to anyone. Some of the men in his nearest
surroundings were of the worst description--Count Adlerberg, for
instance, who made him pay over and over again his enormous debts, and
others renowned for their colossal thefts. From the beginning of 1862
he commenced to show himself capable of reviving the worst practices
of his father’s reign. It was known that he still wanted to carry
through a series of important reforms in the judicial organization
and in the army; that the terrible corporal punishments were about to
be abolished, and that a sort of local self-government, and perhaps
a constitution of some sort, would be granted. But the slightest
disturbance was repressed under his orders with a stern severity; he
took each movement as a personal offence, so that at any moment one
might expect from him the most reactionary measures.
The disorders which broke out at the universities of St.
Petersburg, Moscow, and Kazán in October 1861 were repressed with
an ever-increasing strictness. The university of St. Petersburg
was closed, and although free courses were opened by most of the
professors at the Town Hall, they also were soon closed, and the best
professors left the university. Immediately after the abolition of
serfdom, a great movement began for the opening of Sunday schools; they
were opened everywhere by private persons and corporations--all the
teachers being volunteers--and the peasants and workers, old and young,
flocked to these schools. Officers, students, even a few pages, became
teachers; and such excellent methods were worked out that (Russian
having a phonetic spelling) we succeeded in teaching a peasant to read
in nine or ten lessons. But suddenly all Sunday schools, in which
the mass of the peasantry would have learned to read in a few years,
without any expenditure by the State, were closed. In Poland, where a
series of patriotic manifestations had begun, the Cossacks were sent
out to disperse the crowds with their whips, and to arrest hundreds of
people in the churches with their usual brutality. Men were shot in the
streets of Warsaw by the end of 1861, and for the suppression of the
few peasant insurrections which broke out the horrible flogging through
the double line of soldiers--that favourite punishment of Nicholas
I.--was applied. The despot that Alexander II. became in the years
1870-81 was foreshadowed in 1862.
* * * * *
Of all the imperial family, undoubtedly the most sympathetic was
the empress Marie Alexándrovna. She was sincere, and when she said
something pleasant she meant it. The way in which she once thanked me
for a little courtesy (it was after her reception of the ambassador
of the United States, who had just come to St. Petersburg) deeply
impressed me: it was not the way of a lady spoiled by courtesies, as
an empress is supposed to be. She certainly was not happy in her home
life; nor was she liked by the ladies of the court, who found her too
severe, and could not understand why she should take so much to heart
the _étourderies_ of her husband. It is now known that she played a by
no means unimportant part in bringing about the abolition of serfdom.
But at that time her influence in this direction seems to have been
little known, the grand duke Constantine and the grand duchess Hélène
Pávlovna, who was the main support of Nicholas Milútin at the Court,
being considered the two leaders of the reform party in the palace
spheres. The empress was better known for the decisive part she had
taken in the creation of girls’ gymnasia (high schools), which received
from the outset a high standard of organization and a truly democratic
character. Her friendly relations with Ushínsky, a great pedagogist,
saved him from sharing the fate of all men of mark of that time--that
is, exile.
Being very well educated herself, Marie Alexándrovna did her best to
give a good education to her eldest son. The best men in all branches
of knowledge were sought as teachers, and she even invited for that
purpose Kavélin, although she knew well his friendly relations with
Hérzen. When he mentioned to her that friendship, she replied that she
had no grudge against Hérzen, except for his violent language about the
empress dowager.
The heir-apparent was extremely handsome--perhaps, even too femininely
handsome. He was not proud in the least, and during the _levées_
he used to chatter in the most comradelike way with the pages de
chambre. (I even remember, at the reception of the diplomatic corps on
New Year’s Day, trying to make him appreciate the simplicity of the
uniform of the ambassador of the United States as compared with the
parrot-coloured uniforms of the other ambassadors.) However, those who
knew him well described him as profoundly egoistic, a man absolutely
incapable of contracting an attachment to anyone. This feature was
prominent in him, even more than it was in his father. As to his
education, all the pains taken by his mother were of no avail. In
August 1861 his examinations, which were made in the presence of his
father, proved to be a dead failure, and I remember Alexander II., at a
parade of which the heir-apparent was the commander, and during which
he made some mistake, loudly shouting out, so that everyone would hear
it, ‘Even that you could not learn!’ He died, as is known, at the age
of twenty-two, from some disease of the spinal cord.
His brother, Alexander, who became the heir-apparent in 1865, and later
on was Alexander III., was a decided contrast to Nikolái Alexándrovich.
He reminded me so much of Paul I. by his face, his figure, and his
contemplation of his own grandeur, that I used to say, ‘If he ever
reigns, he will be another Paul I. in the Gátchina palace, and will
have the same end as his great-grandfather had at the hands of his
own courtiers.’ He obstinately refused to learn. It was rumoured
that Alexander II., having had so many difficulties with his brother
Constantine, who was better educated than himself, adopted the policy
of concentrating all his attention on the heir-apparent and neglecting
the education of his other sons; however, I doubt if such was the
case: Alexander Alexándrovich must have been averse to any education
from childhood; in fact, his spelling, which I saw in the telegrams he
addressed to his bride at Copenhagen, was unimaginably bad. I cannot
render here his Russian spelling, but in French he wrote, ‘_Ecri_ à
oncle à propos parade ... les nouvelles sont _mauvaisent_,’ and so on.
He is said to have improved in his manners toward the end of his life,
but in 1870, and also much later, he was a true descendant of Paul I.
I knew at St. Petersburg an officer, of Swedish origin (from Finland),
who had been sent to the United States to order rifles for the Russian
army. On his return he had to report about his mission to Alexander
Alexándrovich, who had been appointed to superintend the re-arming of
the army. During this interview, the Tsarevich, giving full vent to his
violent temper, began to scold the officer, who probably replied with
dignity, whereupon the prince fell into a real fit of rage, insulting
the officer in bad language. The officer, who belonged to that type of
very loyal but self-respecting men who are frequently met with amongst
the Swedish nobility in Russia, left at once, and wrote a letter in
which he asked the heir-apparent to apologize within twenty-four hours,
adding that if the apology did not come he would shoot himself. It was
a sort of Japanese duel. Alexander Alexándrovich sent no excuses, and
the officer kept his word. I saw him at the house of a warm friend
of mine, his intimate friend, when he was expecting every minute to
receive the apology. Next morning he was dead. The Tsar was very angry
with his son, and ordered him to follow the hearse of the officer to
the grave. But even this terrible lesson did not cure the young man of
his Románoff haughtiness and impetuosity.
PART THIRD
SIBERIA
I
In the middle of May 1862, a few weeks before our promotion, I was told
one day by the Captain to make up the final list of the regiments which
each of us intended to join. We had the choice of all the regiments of
the Guards, which we could enter with the first officer’s grade, and of
the Army with the third grade of lieutenant. I took a list of our form,
and went the round of my comrades. Everyone knew well the regiment
he was going to join, most of them already wearing in the garden the
officer’s cap of that regiment.
‘Her Majesty’s Cuirassiers,’ ‘The Body Guard Preobrazhénsky,’ ‘The
Horse Guards,’ were the replies which I inscribed in my list.
‘But you, Kropótkin? The artillery? The Cossacks?’ I was asked on all
sides. I could not stand these questions, and at last, asking a comrade
to complete the list, I went to my room to think once more over my
final decision.
That I should not enter a regiment of the Guard, and give my life to
parades and court balls, I had settled long before. My dream was to
enter the university--to study, to live the student’s life. That meant,
of course, to break entirely with my father, whose ambitions were quite
different, and to rely for my living upon what I might earn by means
of lessons. Thousands of Russian students live in that way, and such a
life did not frighten me in the least. But--how should I get over the
first steps in that life? In a few weeks I should have to leave the
school, to don my own clothes, to have my own lodging, and I saw no
possibility of providing even the little money which would be required
for the most modest start. Then, failing the university, I had been
often thinking of late that I could enter the Artillery Academy. That
would free me for two years from the drudgery of military service, and
by the side of the military sciences I could study mathematics and
physics. But the wind of reaction was blowing, and the officers of the
academies had been treated during the previous winter as if they were
schoolboys; in two academies they had revolted, and in one of them they
had left in a body.
My thoughts turned more and more toward Siberia. The Amúr region had
recently been annexed by Russia; I had read all about that Mississippi
of the East, the mountains it pierces, the sub-tropical vegetation of
its tributary, the Usurí, and my thoughts went further--to the tropical
regions which Humboldt had described, and to the great generalizations
of Ritter, which I delighted to read. Besides, I reasoned, there is
in Siberia an immense field for the application of the great reforms
which have been made or are coming: the workers must be few there, and
I shall find a field of action to my tastes. The worst would be that
I should have to separate from my brother Alexander; but he had been
compelled to leave the university of Moscow after the last disorders,
and in a year or two, I guessed (and guessed rightly), in one way
or another we should be together. There remained only the choice of
the regiment in the Amúr region. The Usurí attracted me most; but,
alas, there was on the Usurí only one regiment of infantry Cossacks.
A Cossack not on horseback--that was too bad for the boy that I still
was, and I settled upon ‘the mounted Cossacks of the Amúr.’
This I wrote on the list, to the great consternation of all my
comrades. ‘It is so far,’ they said, while my friend Daúroff, seizing
the Officers’ Handbook, read out of it, to the horror of all present:
‘Uniform, black, with a plain red collar without braids; fur bonnet
made of dog’s fur or any other fur; trousers, gray.’
‘Only look at that uniform!’ he exclaimed. ‘Bother the cap!--you can
wear one of wolf or bear fur; but think only of the trousers! Gray,
like a soldier of the Train!’ The consternation reached its climax
after that reading.
I joked as best I could, and took the list to the captain.
‘Kropótkin must always have his joke!’ he cried. ‘Did I not tell you
that the list must be sent to the grand duke to-day?’
I had some difficulty in making him believe that the list really stated
my intention.
However, next day my resolution almost gave way when I saw how
Klasóvsky took my decision. He had hoped to see me in the university,
and had given me lessons in Latin and Greek for that purpose; and I
did not dare to tell him what really prevented me from entering the
university: I knew that if I told him the truth he would offer to share
with me the little that he had.
Then my father telegraphed to the director that he forbade my going to
Siberia, and the matter was reported to the grand duke, who was the
chief of the military schools. I was called before his assistant, and
talked about the vegetation of the Amúr and like things, because I
had strong reasons for believing that if I said I wanted to go to the
university and could not afford it, a bursary would be offered to me by
some one of the imperial family--an offer which by all means I wished
to avoid.
It is impossible to say how all this would have ended, but an event of
much importance--the great fire at St. Petersburg--brought about in an
indirect way a solution to my difficulties.
On the Monday after Trinity--the day of the Holy Ghost, which was
that year on May 26, O.S.--a terrible fire broke out in the so-called
Apráxin Dvor. The Apráxin Dvor was an immense space, nearly half a mile
square, which was entirely covered with small shops--mere shanties of
wood--where all sorts of second- and third-hand goods were sold. Old
furniture and bedding, second-hand dresses and books, poured in from
every quarter of the city, and were stored in the small shanties, in
the passages between them, and even on their roofs. This accumulation
of inflammable materials had at its back the Ministry of the Interior
and its archives, where all the documents concerning the liberation
of the serfs were kept; and in the front of it, which was lined by a
row of shops built of stone, was the State Bank. A narrow lane, also
bordered with stone shops, separated the Apráxin Dvor from a wing of
the Corps of Pages, which was occupied by grocery and oil shops in
its lower story and with the apartments of the officers in its upper
story. Almost opposite the Ministry of the Interior, on the other side
of a canal, there were extensive timber yards. This labyrinth of small
shanties and the timber yards opposite took fire almost at the same
moment, at four o’clock in the afternoon.
If there had been wind on that day, half the city would have perished
in the flames, including the Bank, several Ministries, the Gostínoi
Dvor (another great block of shops on the Nevsky Perspective), the
Corps of Pages, and the National Library.
I was that afternoon at the Corps, dining at the house of one of our
officers, and we dashed to the spot as soon as we noticed from the
windows the first clouds of smoke rising in our close neighbourhood.
The sight was terrific. Like an immense snake, rattling and whistling,
the fire threw itself in all directions, right and left, enveloped the
shanties, and suddenly rose in a huge column, darting out its whistling
tongues to lick up more shanties with their contents. Whirlwinds of
smoke and fire were formed; and when the whirls of burning feathers
from the bedding shops began to sweep about the space, it became
impossible to remain any longer inside the burning market. The whole
had to be abandoned.
* * * * *
The authorities had entirely lost their heads. There was not, at that
time, a single steam fire-engine in St. Petersburg, and it was workmen
who suggested bringing one from the iron works of Kólpino, situated
twenty miles by rail from the capital. When the engine reached the
railway station, it was the people who dragged it to the conflagration.
Of its four lines of hose, one was damaged by an unknown hand, and the
other three were directed upon the Ministry of the Interior.
The grand dukes came to the spot and went away again. Late in the
evening, when the Bank was out of danger, the emperor also made his
appearance, and said, what everyone knew already, that the Corps of
Pages was now the key of the battle, and must be saved by all means. It
was evident that if the Corps had taken fire, the National Library and
half of the Nevsky Perspective would have perished in the flames.
It was the crowd, the people, who did everything to prevent the fire
from spreading further and further. There was a moment when the Bank
was seriously menaced. The goods cleared from the shops opposite
were thrown into the Sadóvaya street, and lay in great heaps upon
the walls of the left wing of the Bank. The articles which covered
the street itself continually took fire, but the people, roasting
there in an almost unbearable heat, prevented the flames from being
communicated to the piles of goods on the other side. They swore at
all the authorities, seeing that there was not a pump on the spot.
‘What are they all doing at the Ministry of the Interior, when the Bank
and the Foundlings’ House are going to take fire? They have all lost
their heads! Where is the chief of police that he cannot send a fire
brigade to the Bank?’ they said. I knew the chief, General Annenkoff,
personally, as I had met him once or twice at our sub-inspector’s
house, whereto he came with his brother the well-known literary
critic, and I volunteered to find him. I found him, indeed, walking
aimlessly in a street; and when I reported to him the state of affairs,
incredible though it may seem, it was to me, a boy, that he gave the
order to move one of the fire brigades from the Ministry to the Bank.
I exclaimed, of course, that the men would never listen to me, and I
asked for a written order; but General Annenkoff had not, or pretended
not to have, a scrap of paper, so that I asked one of our officers, L.
L. Gosse, to come with me to transmit the order. We at last prevailed
upon the captain of one fire brigade--who swore at all the world and at
his chiefs--to move his men and engines to the Bank.
The Ministry itself was not on fire; it was the archives which were
burning, and many boys, chiefly cadets and pages, together with a
number of clerks, carried bundles of papers out of the burning building
and loaded them into cabs. Often a bundle would fall out, and the wind,
taking possession of its leaves, would strew them about the square.
Through the smoke a sinister fire could be seen raging in the timber
yards on the other side of the canal.
The narrow lane which separated the Corps of Pages from the Apráxin
Dvor was in a deplorable state. The shops which lined it were full of
brimstone, oil, turpentine, and the like, and immense tongues of fire
of many hues, thrown out by explosions, licked the roofs of the wing
of the Corps, which bordered the lane on its other side. The windows
and the pilasters under the roof began already to smoulder, while
the pages and some cadets, after having cleared the lodgings, pumped
water through a small fire engine, which received at long intervals
scanty supplies from old-fashioned barrels, which had to be filled
with ladles. A couple of firemen who stood on the hot roof continually
shouted out, ‘Water! Water!’ in tones which were heartrending. I could
not stand these cries, and rushed into the Sadóvaya street, where, by
sheer force, I compelled the driver of one of the barrels belonging
to a police fire brigade to enter our yard and to supply our pump
with water. But when I attempted to do the same once more, I met with
an absolute refusal from the driver, ‘I shall be court-martialled,’
he said, ‘if I obey you.’ On all sides my comrades urged me, ‘Go and
find somebody--the chief of the police, the grand duke, anyone--and
tell them that without water we shall have to abandon the Corps to the
fire.’ ‘Ought we not to report to our director?’ somebody would remark.
‘Bother the whole lot! you won’t find them with a lantern. Go and do it
yourself.’
I went once more in search of General Annenkoff, and was at last told
that he must be in the yard of the Bank. Several officers stood there,
indeed, around a general in whom I recognized the Governor-General
of St. Petersburg, Prince Suvóroff. The gate, however, was locked,
and a Bank official who stood at it refused to let me in. I insisted,
menaced, and finally was admitted. Then I went straight up to Prince
Suvóroff, who was writing a note on the shoulder of his aide-de-camp.
When I reported to him the state of affairs, his first question was,
‘Who has sent you?’ ‘Nobody--the comrades,’ was my reply. ‘So you
say the Corps will soon be on fire?’ ‘Yes.’ He started at once, and
seizing in the street an empty hatbox, covered his head with it, in
order to protect himself from the scorching heat that came from the
burning shops of the Apráxin Dvor and ran full speed to the lane.
Empty barrels, straw, wooden boxes, and the like covered the lane,
between the flames of the oil shops on the one side and the buildings
of our Corps, of which the window frames and the pilasters were
smouldering, on the other side. Prince Suvóroff acted resolutely.
‘There is a company of soldiers in your garden,’ he said to me: ‘take a
detachment and clear that lane--at once. A hose from the steam engine
will be brought here immediately. Keep it playing. I trust it to you
personally.’
It was not easy to move the soldiers out of our garden. They had
cleared the barrels and boxes of their contents, and with their pockets
full of coffee, and with conical lumps of sugar concealed in their
_képis_, they were enjoying the warm night under the trees, cracking
nuts. No one cared to move till an officer interfered. The lane was
cleared, and the pump kept going. The comrades were delighted, and
every twenty minutes we relieved the men who directed the jet of water,
standing by their side in an almost unbearable heat.
About three or four in the morning it was evident that bounds had been
put to the fire; the danger of its spreading to the Corps was over, and
after having quenched my thirst with half a dozen glasses of tea, in
a small ‘white inn’ which happened to be open, I fell, half dead from
fatigue, on the first bed that I found unoccupied in the hospital of
the corps.
Next morning I woke up early and went to see the site of the
conflagration, when on my return to the corps I met the Grand Duke
Michael, whom I accompanied, as was my duty, on his round. The pages,
with their faces quite black from the smoke, with swollen eyes and
inflamed lids, some of them with their hair burned, raised their heads
from the pillows. It was hard to recognize them. They were proud,
though, of feeling that they had not been merely ‘white hands,’ and had
worked as hard as anyone else.
This visit of the grand duke settled my difficulties. He asked me why
did I conceive that fancy of going to the Amúr--whether I had friends
there? whether the Governor-General knew me? and, learning that I had
no relatives in Siberia and knew nobody there, he exclaimed, ‘But how
are you going, then? They may send you to a lonely Cossack village.
What will you be doing there? I had better write about you to the
Governor-General, to recommend you.’
After such an offer I was sure that my father’s objection would be
removed; and so it was. I was free to go to Siberia.
* * * * *
This great conflagration became a turning-point not only in the policy
of Alexander II., but also in the history of Russia in that part of
the century. That it was not a mere accident was self-evident. Trinity
and the day of the Holy Ghost are great holidays in Russia, and there
was nobody inside the market except a few watchmen; besides, the
Apráxin market and the timber yards took fire at the same time, and the
conflagration at St. Petersburg was followed by similar disasters in
several provincial towns. The fire was lit by somebody, but by whom?
This question remains unanswered to the present time.
Katkóff, the ex-Whig, who was inspired with personal hatred of Hérzen,
and especially of Bakúnin, with whom he had once to fight a duel,
on the very day after the fire accused the Poles and the Russian
revolutionists of being the cause of it; and that opinion prevailed at
St. Petersburg and Moscow.
Poland was preparing then for the revolution which broke out in
the following January, and the secret revolutionary government had
concluded an alliance with the London refugees, and had its men in
the very heart of the St. Petersburg administration. Only a short
time after the conflagration occurred, the Lord Lieutenant of Poland,
Count Lüders, was shot at by a Russian officer; and when the grand
duke Constantine was nominated in his place (with intention, it was
said, of making Poland a separate kingdom for Constantine) he also was
immediately shot at, on June 26. Similar attempts were made in August
against the Marquis Wielepólsky, the Polish leader of the pro-Russian
Union party. Napoleon III. maintained among the Poles the hope of an
armed intervention in favour of their independence. In such conditions,
judging from the ordinary narrow military standpoint, to destroy the
Bank of Russia and several Ministries, and to spread a panic in the
capital might have been considered a good plan of warfare; but there
never was the slightest scrap of evidence forthcoming to support this
hypothesis.
On the other side, the advanced parties in Russia saw that no hope
could any longer be placed in Alexander’s reformatory initiative: he
was clearly drifting into the reactionary camp. To men of forethought
it was evident that the liberation of the serfs, under the conditions
of redemption which were imposed upon them, meant their certain ruin,
and revolutionary proclamations were issued in May at St. Petersburg
calling the people and the army to a general revolt, while the
educated classes were asked to insist upon the necessity of a National
Convention. Under such circumstances, to disorganize the machine of the
government might have entered into the plans of some revolutionists.
Finally, the indefinite character of the emancipation had produced
a great deal of fermentation among the peasants, who constitute a
considerable part of the population in all Russian cities; and through
all the history of Russia, every time such a fermentation has begun it
has resulted in anonymous letters foretelling fires, and eventually in
incendiarism.
It was possible that the idea of setting the Apráxin market on fire
might occur to isolated men in the revolutionary camp, but neither the
most searching inquiries nor the wholesale arrests which began all over
Russia and Poland immediately after the fire revealed the slightest
indication showing that such was really the case. If anything of the
sort had been found, the reactionary party would have made capital
out of it. Many reminiscences and volumes of correspondence from those
times have since been published, but they contain no hint whatever in
support of this suspicion.
On the contrary, when similar conflagrations broke out in several towns
on the Vólga, and especially at Sarátoff, and when Zhdánoff, a member
of the Senate, was sent by the Tsar to make a searching inquiry, he
returned with the firm conviction that the conflagration at Sarátoff
was the work of the reactionary party. There was among that party
a general belief that it would be possible to induce Alexander II.
to postpone the final abolition of serfdom, which was to take place
on February 19, 1863. They knew the weakness of his character, and
immediately after the great fire at St. Petersburg they began a violent
campaign for postponement, and for the revision of the emancipation
law in its practical applications. It was rumoured in well-informed
legal circles that Senator Zhdánoff was in fact returning with positive
proofs of the culpability of the reactionaries at Sarátoff; but he died
on his way back, his portfolio disappeared, and it has never been found.
Be it as it may, the Apráxin fire had the most deplorable consequences.
After it Alexander II. surrendered to the reactionaries, and--what
was still worse--the public opinion of that part of society at St.
Petersburg, and especially at Moscow, which carried most weight
with the government suddenly threw off its liberal garb, and turned
against not only the more advanced section of the reform party, but
even against its moderate wing. A few days after the conflagration I
went on Sunday to see my cousin, the aide-de-camp of the emperor, in
whose apartment I had often heard the Horse Guard officers expressing
sympathy with Chernyshévsky; my cousin himself had been up till then
an assiduous reader of ‘The Contemporary’ (the organ of the advanced
reform party). Now he brought several numbers of ‘The Contemporary,’
and, putting them on the table I was sitting at, said to me: ‘Well,
now, after this I will have no more of that incendiary stuff; enough
of it’--and these words expressed the opinion of ‘all St. Petersburg.’
It became improper to talk of reforms. The whole atmosphere was laden
with a reactionary spirit. ‘The Contemporary’ and other similar reviews
were suppressed; the Sunday schools were prohibited under any form;
wholesale arrests began. The capital was placed under a state of siege.
* * * * *
A fortnight later, on June 13 (25), the time which we pages and
cadets had so long looked for came at last. The emperor gave us a
sort of military examination in all kinds of evolutions--during
which we commanded the companies and I paraded on a horse before the
battalion--and we were promoted to be officers.
When the parade was over, Alexander II. loudly called out, ‘The
promoted officers to me!’ and we gathered round him. He remained on
horseback.
Here I saw him in a quite new light. The man who the next year appeared
in the _rôle_ of a bloodthirsty and vindictive suppressor of the
insurrection in Poland rose now, full size, before my eyes, in the
speech he addressed to us.
He began in a quiet tone. ‘I congratulate you: you are officers.’ He
spoke about military duty and loyalty as they are usually spoken of on
such occasions. ‘But if any one of you,’ he went on, distinctly shouting
out every word, his face suddenly contorted with anger, ‘but if any one
of you--which God preserve you from--should under any circumstances
prove disloyal to the Tsar, the throne, and the fatherland--take heed
of what I say--he will be treated with all the se-ve-ri-ty of the laws,
without the slightest com-mi-se-ra-tion!’
His voice failed; his face was peevish, full of that expression of
blind rage which I saw in my childhood on the faces of landlords when
they threatened their serfs ‘to skin them under the rods.’ He violently
spurred his horse, and rode out of our circle. Next morning, June 14,
by his orders three officers were shot at Módlin in Poland, and one
soldier, Szur by name, was killed under the rods.
‘Reaction, full speed backwards,’ I said to myself as we made our way
back to the corps.
* * * * *
I saw Alexander II. once more before leaving St. Petersburg. Some
days after our promotion, all the newly appointed officers were at
the palace, to be presented to him. My more than modest uniform, with
its prominent gray trousers, attracted universal attention, and every
moment I had to satisfy the curiosity of officers of all ranks, who
came to ask me what was the uniform that I wore. The Amúr Cossacks
being then the youngest regiment of the Russian army, I stood somewhere
near the end of the hundreds of officers who were present. Alexander
II. found me and asked, ‘So you go to Siberia? Did your father consent
to it, after all?’ I answered in the affirmative. ‘Are you not afraid
to go so far?’ I warmly replied: ‘No, I want to work. There must be so
much to do in Siberia to apply the great reforms which are going to be
made.’ He looked straight at me; he became pensive; at last he said,
‘Well, go; one can be useful everywhere;’ and his face took on such an
expression of fatigue, such a character of complete surrender, that I
thought at once, ‘He is a used-up man; he is going to give it all up.’
St. Petersburg had assumed a gloomy aspect. Soldiers marched in the
streets. Cossack patrols rode round the palace, the fortress was filled
with prisoners. Wherever I went I saw the same thing--the triumph of
the reaction. I left St. Petersburg without regret.
I went every day to the Cossack administration to ask them to make
haste and deliver me my papers, and as soon as they were ready I
hurried to Moscow to join my brother Alexander.
II
The five years that I spent in Siberia were for me a genuine education
in life and human character. I was brought into contact with men of all
descriptions: the best and the worst; those who stood at the top of
society and those who vegetated at the very bottom--the tramps and the
so-called incorrigible criminals. I had ample opportunities to watch
the ways and habits of the peasants in their daily life, and still more
opportunities to appreciate how little the State administration could
give to them, even if it were animated by the very best intentions.
Finally, my extensive journeys, during which I travelled over fifty
thousand miles in carts, on board steamers, in boats, but chiefly on
horseback, had a wonderful effect in strengthening my health. They also
taught me how little man really needs as soon as he comes out of the
enchanted circle of conventional civilization. With a few pounds of
bread and a few ounces of tea in a leather bag, a kettle and a hatchet
hanging at the side of the saddle, and under the saddle a blanket, to
be spread at the camp fire upon a bed of freshly cut spruce twigs,
a man feels wonderfully independent, even amidst unknown mountains
thickly clothed with woods or capped with snow. A book might be written
about this part of my life, but I must rapidly glide over it here,
there being so much more to say about the later periods.
Siberia is not the frozen land buried in snow and peopled with exiles
only that it is imagined to be, even by many Russians. In its southern
parts it is as rich in natural productions as are the southern parts
of Canada, which it resembles very much in its physical aspects; and
beside half a million of natives, it has a population of more than
four millions of Russians. The southern parts of West Siberia are as
thoroughly Russian as the provinces to the north of Moscow.
In 1862 the upper administration of Siberia was far more enlightened
and far better all round than that of any province of Russia proper.
For several years the post of Governor-General of East Siberia had
been occupied by a remarkable personage, Count N. N. Muravióff, who
annexed the Amúr region to Russia. He was very intelligent, very
active, extremely amiable, and desirous to work for the good of the
country. Like all men of action of the governmental school, he was
a despot at the bottom of his heart; but he held advanced opinions,
and a democratic republic would not have quite satisfied him. He had
succeeded to a great extent in getting rid of the old staff of civil
service officials, who considered Siberia a camp to be plundered, and
he had gathered around him a number of young officials, quite honest,
and many of them animated by the same excellent intentions as himself.
In his own study, the young officers, with the exile Bakúnin among them
(he escaped from Siberia in the autumn of 1861), discussed the chances
of creating the United States of Siberia, federated across the Pacific
Ocean with the United States of America.
* * * * *
When I came to Irkútsk, the capital of East Siberia, the wave of
reaction which I saw rising at St. Petersburg had not yet reached
these distant dominions. I was very well received by the young
Governor-General, Korsákoff, who had just succeeded Muravióff, and
he told me that he was delighted to have about him men of liberal
opinions. As to the commander of the General Staff, Kúkel--a young
general not yet thirty-five years old, whose personal aide-de-camp
I became--he at once took me to a room in his house, where I found,
together with the best Russian reviews, complete collections of the
London revolutionary editions of Hérzen. We were soon warm friends.
General Kúkel temporarily occupied at that time the post of Governor
of Transbaikália, and a few weeks later we crossed the beautiful
Lake Baikál and went further east, to the little town of Chitá, the
capital of the province. There I had to give myself, heart and soul,
without loss of time, to the great reforms which were then under
discussion. The St. Petersburg Ministries had applied to the local
authorities, asking them to work out schemes of complete reform in the
administration of the provinces, the organization of the police, the
tribunals, the prisons, the system of exile, the self-government of the
townships--all on broadly liberal bases laid down by the emperor in his
manifestoes.
Kúkel, supported by an intelligent and practical man, Colonel
Pedashénko, and by a couple of well-meaning civil service officials,
worked all day long, and often a good deal of the night. I became
the secretary of two committees--for the reform of the prisons and
the whole system of exile, and for preparing a scheme of municipal
self-government--and I set to work with all the enthusiasm of a youth
of nineteen years. I read much about the historical development of
these institutions in Russia and their present condition abroad,
excellent works and papers dealing with these subjects having been
published by the Ministries of the Interior and of Justice; but what we
did in Transbaikália was by no means merely theoretical. I discussed
first the general outlines, and subsequently every point of detail,
with practical men, well acquainted with the real needs and the local
possibilities; and for that purpose I met a considerable number of men
both in town and in the province. Then the conclusions we arrived at
were re-discussed with Kúkel and Pedashénko; and when I had put the
results into a preliminary shape, every point was again very thoroughly
thrashed out in the committees. One of these committees, for preparing
the municipal government scheme, was composed of citizens of Chitá,
elected by all the population, as freely as they might have been
elected in the United States. In short, our work was very serious; and
even now, looking back at it through the perspective of so many years,
I can say in full confidence that if municipal self-government had been
granted then, in the modest shape which we gave to it, the towns of
Siberia would be very different from what they are. But nothing came of
it all, as will presently be seen.
There was no lack of other incidental occupations. Money had to
be found for the support of charitable institutions; an economic
description of the province had to be written in connection with a
local agricultural exhibition; or some serious inquiry had to be made.
‘It is a great epoch we live in; work, my dear friend; remember that
you are the secretary of all existing and future committees’, Kúkel
would sometimes say to me,--and I worked with doubled energy.
One example or two will show with what results. There was in our
province a ‘district chief’--that is, a police officer invested with
very wide and indeterminate rights--who was simply a disgrace. He
robbed the peasants and flogged them right and left--even women, which
was against the law; and when a criminal affair fell into his hands, it
might lie there for months, men being kept in the meantime in prison
till they gave him a bribe. Kúkel would have dismissed this man long
before, but the Governor-General did not like the idea of it, because
he had strong protectors at St. Petersburg. After much hesitation, it
was decided at last that I should go to make an investigation on the
spot, and collect evidence against the man. This was not by any means
easy, because the peasants, terrorized by him, and well knowing an old
Russian saying, ‘God is far away, while your chief is your next-door
neighbour,’ did not dare to testify. Even the woman he had flogged was
afraid at first to make a written statement. It was only after I had
stayed a fortnight with the peasants, and had won their confidence,
that the misdeeds of their chief could be brought to light. I
collected crushing evidence, and the district chief was dismissed. We
congratulated ourselves on having got rid of such a pest. What was,
however, our astonishment when, a few months later, we learned that
this same man had been nominated to a higher post in Kamchátka! There
he could plunder the natives free of any control, and so he did. A few
years later he returned to St. Petersburg a rich man. The articles he
occasionally contributes now to the reactionary press are, as one might
expect, full of high ‘patriotic’ spirit.
The wave of reaction, as I have already said, had not then reached
Siberia, and the political exiles continued to be treated with
all possible leniency, as in Muravióff’s time. When, in 1861, the
poet Mikháiloff was condemned to hard labour for a revolutionary
proclamation which he had issued, and was sent to Siberia, the Governor
of the first Siberian town on his way, Tobólsk, gave a dinner in his
honour, in which all the officials took part. In Transbaikália he
was not kept at hard labour, but was allowed officially to stay in
the hospital prison of a small mining village. His health being very
poor--he was dying from consumption, and did actually die a few months
later--General Kúkel gave him permission to stay in the house of his
brother, a mining engineer, who had rented a gold mine from the Crown
on his own account. Unofficially that was well known in East Siberia.
But one day we learned from Irkútsk that, in consequence of a secret
denunciation, a General of the gendarmes (state police) was on his way
to Chitá to make a strict inquiry into the affair. An aide-de-camp of
the Governor-General brought us the news. I was despatched in great
haste to warn Mikháiloff, and to tell him that he must return at once
to the hospital prison, while the General of the gendarmes was kept
at Chitá. As that gentleman found himself every night the winner of
considerable sums of money at the green table in Kúkel’s house, he soon
decided not to exchange this pleasant pastime for a long journey to
the mines in a temperature which was then a dozen degrees below the
freezing-point of mercury, and eventually went back to Irkútsk quite
satisfied with his lucrative mission.
The storm, however, was coming nearer and nearer, and it swept
everything before it soon after the insurrection broke out in Poland.
III
In January 1863 Poland rose against Russian rule. Insurrectionary bands
were formed, and a war began which lasted for full eighteen months. The
London refugees had implored the Polish revolutionary committees to
postpone the movement. They foresaw that it would be crushed, and would
put an end to the reform period in Russia. But it could not be helped.
The repression of the nationalist manifestations which took place
at Warsaw in 1861, and the cruel, quite unprovoked executions which
followed, exasperated the Poles. The die was cast.
Never before had the Polish cause so many sympathizers in Russia as
at that time. I do not speak of the revolutionists; but even among
the more moderate elements of Russian society it was thought, and was
openly said, that it would be a benefit for Russia to have in Poland a
friendly neighbour instead of a hostile subject. Poland will never lose
her national character, it is too strongly developed; she has, and will
have, her own literature, her own art and industry. Russia can keep her
in servitude only by means of sheer force and oppression--a condition
of things which has hitherto favoured, and necessarily will favour,
oppression in Russia herself. Even the peaceful Slavophiles were of
that opinion; and while I was at school St. Petersburg society greeted
with full approval the ‘dream’ which the Slavophile Iván Aksákoff had
the courage to print in his paper, ‘The Day.’ His dream was that the
Russian troops had evacuated Poland, and he discussed the excellent
results which would follow.
When the revolution of 1863 broke out, several Russian officers
refused to march against the Poles, while others openly took their
part, and died either on the scaffold or on the battlefield. Funds
for the insurrection were collected all over Russia--quite openly in
Siberia--and in the Russian universities the students equipped those of
their comrades who were going to join the revolutionists.
Then, amidst this effervescence, the news spread over Russia that
during the night of January 10 bands of insurgents had fallen upon
the soldiers who were cantoned in the villages, and had murdered them
in their beds, although on the very eve of that day the relations of
the troops with the Poles seemed to be quite friendly. There was some
exaggeration in the report, but unfortunately there was also truth in
it, and the impression it produced in Russia was most disastrous. The
old antipathies between the two nations, so akin in their origins but
so different in their national characters, woke up once more.
Gradually the bad feeling faded away to some extent. The gallant fight
of the always brave sons of Poland, and the indomitable energy with
which they resisted a formidable army, won sympathy for that heroic
nation. But it became known that the Polish revolutionary committee, in
its demand for the re-establishment of Poland with its old frontiers,
included the Little Russian or Ukraínian provinces, the Greek Orthodox
population of which hated their Polish rulers, and more than once in
the course of the last three centuries slaughtered them wholesale.
Moreover, Napoleon III. began to menace Russia with a new war--a vain
menace, which did more harm to the Poles than all other things put
together. And finally, the radical elements of Russia saw with regret
that now the purely nationalist elements of Poland had got the upper
hand, the revolutionary government did not care in the least to grant
the land to the serfs--a blunder of which the Russian government did
not fail to take advantage, in order to appear in the position of
protector of the peasants against their Polish landlords.
When the revolution broke out in Poland it was generally believed in
Russia that it would take a democratic, republican turn; and that the
liberation of the serfs on a broad democratic basis would be the first
thing which a revolutionary government, fighting for the independence
of the country, would accomplish.
The Emancipation Law, as it had been enacted at St. Petersburg in
1861, provided ample opportunity for such a course of action. The
personal obligations of the serfs towards their owners only came to
an end on February 19, 1863. Then a very slow process had to be gone
through in order to obtain a sort of agreement between the landlords
and the serfs as to the size and the locality of the land allotments
which were to be given to the liberated serfs. The yearly payments
for these allotments (disproportionately high) were fixed by law at
so much per acre; but the peasants had also to pay an additional sum
for their homesteads, and of this sum the maximum only had been fixed
by the statute--it having been thought that the landlords might be
induced to forgo that additional payment, or to be satisfied with only
a part of it. As to the so-called ‘redemption’ of the land--in which
case the Government undertook to pay the landlord its full value in
State bonds and the peasants receiving the land had to pay in return,
for forty-nine years, six per cent. on that sum as interest and
annuities--not only were these payments extravagant and ruinous for
the peasants, but no term was even fixed for the redemption: it was
left to the will of the landlord; and in an immense number of cases the
redemption arrangements had not been entered upon twenty years after
the emancipation.
Under such conditions a revolutionary government had ample opportunity
for immensely improving upon the Russian law. It was bound to
accomplish an act of justice towards the serfs--whose condition in
Poland was as bad as, and often worse than, in Russia itself--by
granting them better and more definite conditions of emancipation. But
nothing of the sort was done. The purely nationalist party and the
aristocratic one having obtained the upper hand in the movement, this
all-absorbing matter was left out of sight. It was thus easy for the
Russian Government to win the peasants to its side.
Full advantage was taken of this fault when Nicholas Milútin was sent
to Poland by Alexander II. with the mission to liberate the peasants in
the way he intended doing it in Russia. ‘Go to Poland; apply there your
Red programme against the Polish landlords,’ said Alexander II. to him;
and Milútin, together with Prince Cherkássky and many others, really
did their best to take the land from the landlords and give full-sized
allotments to the peasants.
* * * * *
I once met one of the Russian functionaries who went to Poland under
Milútin and Prince Cherkássky. ‘We had full liberty,’ he said to me,
‘to hold out the hand to the peasants. My usual plan was to go to a
village and convoke the peasants’ assembly. “Tell me first,” I would
say, “what land do you hold at this moment?” They would point it out
to me. “Is this all the land you ever held?” I would then ask. “Surely
not,” they would reply with one voice; “years ago these meadows were
ours; this wood was once in our possession; and these fields belonged
to us.” I would let them go on talking it all over, and then would
ask: “Now, which of you can certify under oath that this land or that
land has ever been held by you?” Of course there would be nobody
forthcoming--it was all too long ago. At last, some old man would be
thrust out from the crowd, the rest saying: “He knows all about it, he
can swear to it.” The old man would begin a long story about what he
knew in his youth, or had heard from his father, but I would cut the
story short.... “State on oath what you know to have been held by the
_gmina_ (the village community)--and the land is yours.” And as soon
as he took the oath--one could trust that oath implicitly--I wrote out
the papers and declared to the assembly: “Now, this land is yours. You
stand no longer under any obligations whatever to your late masters:
you are simply their neighbours; all you will have to do is to pay the
redemption tax, so much every year, to the Government. Your homesteads
go with the land: you get them free.”’
One can imagine the effect which such a policy produced upon the
peasants. A cousin of mine, Petr Nikoláevich, a brother of the
aide-de-camp whom I have mentioned, was in Poland or in Lithuania with
his regiment of uhlans of the Guard. The revolution was so serious
that even the regiments of the Guard had been sent against it from St.
Petersburg; and it is now known that when Mikhael Muravióff was ordered
to Lithuania, and came to take leave of the Empress Marie, she said to
him: ‘Save at least Lithuania for Russia.’ Poland was regarded as lost.
‘The armed bands of the revolutionists held the country,’ my cousin
said to me, ‘and we were powerless to defeat them, or even to find
them. Small bands over and over again attacked our small detachments,
and as they fought admirably, and knew the country and found support
in the population, they often had the best of the skirmishes. We were
thus compelled to march in large columns only. We would cross a region,
marching through the woods without finding any trace of the bands;
but when we marched back again we learned that bands had appeared in
our rear, that they had levied the patriotic tax in the country, and
if some peasant had rendered himself useful in any way to our troops
we found him hanged on a tree by the revolutionary bands. So it went
on for months, with no chance of improvement, until Milútin came and
freed the peasants, giving them the land. Then--all was over. The
peasants sided with us; they helped us to lay hold of the bands, and
the insurrection came to an end.’
I often spoke with the Polish exiles in Siberia upon this subject,
and some of them understood the fault that had been committed. A
revolution, from its very outset, must be an act of justice towards
the ‘down-trodden and the oppressed’--not a promise of making such
reparation later on--otherwise it is sure to fail. Unfortunately,
it often happens that the leaders are so much absorbed with mere
questions of military tactics that they forget the main thing. To be
revolutionists, and fail to prove to the masses that a new era has
really begun for them, is to ensure the certain ruin of the attempt.
The disastrous consequences for Poland of this revolution are known;
they belong to the domain of history. How many thousand men perished in
battle, how many hundreds were hanged, and how many scores of thousands
were transported to various provinces of Russia and Siberia, is not yet
fully known. But even the official figures which were printed in Russia
a few years ago show that in the Lithuanian provinces alone--not to
speak of Poland proper--that terrible man Mikhael Muravióff, to whom
the Russian Government has just erected a monument at Wílno, hanged
by his own authority 128 Poles, and transported to Russia and Siberia
9,423 men and women. Officials lists, also published in Russia, give
18,672 men and women exiled to Siberia from Poland, of whom 10,407 were
sent to East Siberia. I remember that the Governor-General of East
Siberia mentioned to me the same number, about 11,000 persons, sent to
hard labour or exile in his domains. I saw them there, and witnessed
their sufferings. Altogether, something like 60,000 or 70,000 persons,
if not more, were torn out of Poland and transported to different
provinces of Russia, to the Urals, to Caucasus, and to Siberia.
For Russia the consequences were equally disastrous. The Polish
insurrection was the definitive close of the reform period. True, the
law of provincial self-government (_Zémstvos_) and the reform of the
law courts were promulgated in 1864 and 1866; but both were ready in
1862, and, moreover, at the last moment Alexander II. gave preference
to the scheme of self-government which had been prepared by the
reactionary party of Valúeff, as against the scheme which had been
prepared by Nicholas Milútin; and immediately after the promulgation of
both reforms their importance was reduced, and in some cases destroyed,
by the enactment of a number of by-laws.
Worst of all, public opinion itself took a further step backward. The
hero of the hour was Katkóff, the leader of the serfdom party, who
appeared now as a Russian ‘patriot,’ and carried with him most of the
St. Petersburg and Moscow society. After that time, those who dared
to speak of reforms were at once classed by Katkóff as ‘traitors to
Russia.’
* * * * *
The wave of reaction soon reached our remote province. One day in March
a paper was brought by a special messenger from Irkútsk. It intimated
to General Kúkel that he was at once to leave the post of Governor of
Transbaikália and go to Irkútsk, waiting there for further orders, but
without reassuming there the post of commander of the general staff.
Why? What did that mean? There was not a word of explanation. Even the
Governor-General, a personal friend of Kúkel, had not run the risk of
adding a single word to the mysterious order. Did it mean that Kúkel
was going to be taken between two gendarmes to St. Petersburg, and
immured in that huge stone coffin, the fortress of St. Peter and St.
Paul? All was possible. Later on we learned that such was indeed the
intention; and so it would and have been done but for the energetic
intervention of Count Nicholas Muravióff, ‘the conqueror of the Amúr,’
who personally implored the Tsar that Kúkel should be spared that fate.
Our parting with Kúkel and his charming family was like a funeral. My
heart was very heavy. I not only lost in him a dear personal friend,
but I felt also that this parting was the burial of a whole epoch, full
of long-cherished hopes--‘full of illusions,’ as it became the fashion
to say.
So it was. A new Governor came--a good-natured, ‘leave-me-in-peace’
man. With renewed energy, seeing that there was no time to lose, I
completed our plans of reform of the system of exile and municipal
self-government. The Governor made a few objections here and there for
formality’s sake, but finally signed the schemes, and they were sent
to headquarters. But at St. Petersburg reforms were no longer wanted.
There our projects lie buried still, with hundreds of similar ones
from all parts of Russia. A few ‘improved’ prisons, even more terrible
than the old unimproved ones, have been built in the capitals, to be
shown during prison congresses to distinguished foreigners; but the
remainder, and the whole system of exile, were found by George Kennan
in 1886 in exactly the same state in which I left them in 1862. Only
now, after thirty-six years have passed away, the authorities are
introducing the reformed tribunals and a parody of self-government in
Siberia, and committees have been nominated again to inquire into the
system of exile.
When Kennan came back to London from his journey to Siberia he managed,
on the very next day after his arrival in London, to hunt up Stepniák,
Tchaykóvsky, myself, and another Russian refugee. In the evening we
all met at Kennan’s room in a small hotel near Charing Cross. We
saw him for the first time, and having no excess of confidence in
enterprising Englishmen who had previously undertaken to learn all
about the Siberian prisons without even learning a word of Russian, we
began to cross-examine Kennan. To our astonishment, he not only spoke
excellent Russian, but he knew everything worth knowing about Siberia.
One or another of us had been acquainted with the greater proportion of
all political exiles in Siberia, and we besieged Kennan with questions:
‘Where is So-and-So? Is he married? Is he happy in his marriage? Does
he still keep fresh in spirit?’ We were soon satisfied that Kennan knew
all about every one of them.
When this questioning was over, and we were preparing to leave, I
asked, ‘Do you know, Mr. Kennan, if they have built a watchtower for
the fire brigade at Chitá?’ Stepniák looked at me, as if to reproach me
for abusing Kennan’s good-will. Kennan, however, began to laugh, and I
soon joined him. And with much laughter we tossed each other questions
and answers: ‘Why, do you know about that?’ ‘And you too?’ ‘Built?’
‘Yes, double estimates!’ and so on, till at last Stepniák interfered,
and in his most severely good-natured way objected: ‘Tell us at least
what you are laughing about.’ Whereupon Kennan told the story of that
watchtower which his readers must remember. In 1859 the Chitá people
wanted to build a watchtower, and collected the money for it; but their
estimates had to be sent to the Ministry of the Interior. So they went
to St. Petersburg; but when they came back, two years later, duly
approved, all the prices for timber and work had gone up in that rising
young town. This was in 1862, while I was at Chitá. New estimates were
made and sent to St. Petersburg, and the story was repeated for full
twenty-five years, till at last the Chitá people, losing patience, put
in their estimates prices nearly double the real ones. These fantastic
estimates were solemnly considered at St. Petersburg, and approved.
This is how Chitá got its watchtower.
It has often been said that Alexander II. committed a great fault,
and brought about his own ruin, by raising so many hopes which later
on he did not satisfy. It is seen from what I have just said--and
the story of little Chitá was the story of all Russia--that he did
worse than that. It was not merely that he raised hopes. Yielding
for a moment to the current of public opinion around him, he induced
men all over Russia to set to work, to issue from the domain of mere
hopes and dreams, and to touch with the finger the reforms that were
required. He made them realize what could be done immediately, and how
easy it was to do it; he induced them to sacrifice whatever of their
ideals could not be immediately realized, and to demand only what was
practically possible at the time. And when they had framed their ideas,
and had shaped them into laws which merely required his signature to
become realities, then he refused that signature. No reactionist could
raise, or ever has raised, his voice to assert that what was left--the
unreformed tribunals, the absence of municipal government, or the
system of exile--was good and was worth maintaining: no one has dared
to say that. And yet, owing to the fear of doing anything, all was
left as it was; for thirty-five years those who ventured to mention
the necessity of a change were treated as ‘suspects;’ and institutions
unanimously recognized as bad were permitted to continue in existence
only that nothing more might be heard of that abhorred word ‘reform.’
IV
Seeing that there was nothing more to be done at Chitá in the way of
reforms, I gladly accepted the offer to visit the Amúr that same summer
of 1863.
The immense domain on the left (northern) bank of the Amúr, and
along the Pacific Coast as far south as the Bay of Peter the Great
(Vladivostók), had been annexed to Russia by Count Muravióff, almost
against the will of the St. Petersburg authorities and certainly
without much help from them. When he conceived the bold plan of taking
possession of the great river whose southern position and fertile lands
had for the last two hundred years always attracted the Siberians; and
when, on the eve of the opening of Japan to Europe, he decided to take
for Russia a strong position on the Pacific coast and to join hands
with the United States, he had almost everybody against him at St.
Petersburg: the Ministry of War, which had no men to dispose of, the
Ministry of Finance, which had no money for annexations, and especially
the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, always guided by its pre-occupation
of avoiding ‘diplomatic complications.’ Muravióff had thus to act on
his own responsibility, and to rely upon the scanty means which thinly
populated Eastern Siberia could afford for this grand enterprise.
Moreover, everything had to be done in a hurry, in order to oppose the
‘accomplished fact’ to the protests of the West European diplomatists,
which would certainly be raised.
A nominal occupation would have been of no avail, and the idea was
to have on the whole length of the great river and of its southern
tributary, the Usurí--full 2,500 miles--a chain of self-supporting
settlements, and thus to establish a regular communication between
Siberia and the Pacific Coast. Men were wanted for these settlements,
and as the scanty population of East Siberia could not supply them,
Muravióff did not recoil before any kind of means of getting men.
Released convicts who, after having served their time, had become serfs
to the Imperial mines, were freed and organized as Transbaikálian
Cossacks, part of whom were settled along the Amúr and the Usurí,
forming two new Cossack communities. Then Muravióff obtained the
release of a thousand hard-labour convicts (mostly robbers and
murderers), who had to be settled as free men on the lower Amúr.
He came himself to see them off, and, as they were going to leave,
addressed them on the beach: ‘Go, my children, be free there, cultivate
the land, make it Russian soil, start a new life,’ and so on. The
Russian peasant women nearly always follow, of their own free will,
their husbands if the latter happen to be sent to hard labour to
Siberia, and many of the would-be colonists had their families with
them. But those who had none ventured to remark to Muravióff: ‘What
is agriculture without a wife? We ought to be married.’ Whereupon
Muravióff ordered to release all the hard-labour convict women of the
place--about a hundred--and offered them the choice of the man each of
them would like to marry and to follow. However, there was little time
to lose; the high water in the river was rapidly going down, the rafts
had to start, and Muravióff, asking the people to stand in pairs on the
beach, blessed them, saying: ‘I marry you, children. Be kind to each
other; you men, don’t ill-treat your wives--and be happy!’
I saw these settlers some six years after that scene. Their villages
were poor, the land they had been settled on having had to be cleared
from under virgin forests; but, all taken, their settlements were
not a failure, and ‘the Muravióff marriages’ were not less happy
than marriages are on the average. That excellent, intelligent man,
Innocentus, bishop of the Amúr, recognized, later on, these marriages,
as well as the children which were born, as quite legal, and had them
inscribed on the Church registers.
Muravióff was less successful, though, with another batch of men that
he added to the population of East Siberia. In his penury of men he had
accepted a couple of thousand soldiers from the punishment battalions.
They were incorporated as ‘adopted sons’ in the families of the
Cossacks, or were settled in joint households in the villages. But ten
or twenty years of barrack life under the horrid discipline of Nicholas
I.’s time surely was not a preparation for an agricultural life. The
‘sons’ deserted their adopted fathers and constituted the floating
population of the towns, living from hand to mouth on occasional jobs,
spending chiefly in drink what they earned, and then again living as
birds in the sky in the expectation of another job turning up.
The motley crowd of Transbaikálian Cossacks, of ex-convicts, and
‘sons,’ who were settled in a hurry and often in a haphazard way along
the banks of the Amúr, certainly did not attain prosperity, especially
in the lower parts of the river and on the Usurí, where every square
yard had often to be won upon a virgin sub-tropical forest, and deluges
of rain brought by the monsoons in July, inundations on a gigantic
scale, millions of migrating birds, and the like continually destroyed
the crops, finally bringing whole populations to sheer despair and
apathy.
Considerable supplies of salt, flour, cured meat, and so on had thus
to be shipped every year to support both the regular troops and the
settlements on the lower Amúr, and for that purpose some hundred and
fifty barges used to be built and loaded at Chitá, and floated with
the early spring floods down the Ingodá, the Shílka, and the Amúr. The
whole flotilla was divided into detachments of from twenty to thirty
barges, which were placed under the orders of a number of Cossack
and civil-service officers. Most of them did not know much about
navigation, but they could be trusted, at least, not to steal the
provisions and then report them as lost. I was nominated assistant to
the chief of all that flotilla--let me name him, Major Maróvsky.
My first experiences in my new capacity of navigator were all but
successful. It so happened that I had to proceed with a few barges
as rapidly as possible to a certain point on the Amúr, and there to
hand over my vessels. For that purpose I had to hire men exactly from
among those ‘sons’ whom I have already mentioned. None of them had
ever had any experience in river navigation, nor had I. On the morning
of our start my crew had to be collected from the public-houses of
the place, most of them being so drunk at that early hour that they
had to be bathed in the river to bring them back to their senses.
When we were afloat, I had to teach them everything that had to be
done. Still, things went pretty well during the day; the barges,
carried along by a swift current, floated down the river, and my crew,
inexperienced though they were, had no interest in throwing their
vessels upon the shore--that would have required special exertion. But
when dusk came, and our huge heavily laden fifty-ton barges had to
be brought to the shore and fastened to it for the night, one of the
barges, which was far ahead of the one upon which I was, was stopped
only when it was fast upon a rock, at the foot of a tremendously high
inaccessible cliff. There it stood immovable, while the level of the
river, temporarily swollen by rains, was rapidly going down. My ten
men evidently could not move it. So I rowed down to the next village
to ask assistance from the Cossacks, and at the same time despatched a
messenger to a friend--a Cossack officer who stayed some twenty miles
away and who had experience in such things.
The morning came; a hundred Cossacks--men and women--had come to my
aid, but there was no means whatever to connect the barge with the
shore, in order to unload it--so deep was the water under the cliff.
And, as soon as we attempted to push it off the rock, its bottom
was broken in and water freely entered it, sweeping away the flour
and the salt of the cargo. To my great horror, I perceived lots of
small fish entering through the hole and freely swimming about in the
barge--and I stood there helpless, not knowing what to do next. There
is a very simple and effective remedy for such emergencies. A sack of
flour is thrust into the hole, and it soon takes its shape, while the
outer crust of paste which is formed in the sack prevents water from
penetrating through the flour; but none of us knew anything about it.
Happily enough, a few minutes later a barge was signalled coming down
the river towards us. The appearance of the swan who carried Lohengrin
was not greeted with more enthusiasm by the despairing Elsa than that
clumsy vessel was greeted by me. The haze which covered the beautiful
Shílka at that early hour in the morning added even more to the poetry
of the vision. It was my friend the Cossack officer, who had realized
by my description that no human force could drag my barge off the
rock--that it was lost--and taking an empty barge which by chance was
at hand, came with it to place upon it the cargo of my doomed craft.
Now the hole was filled up, the water was pumped out, and the cargo was
transferred to the new barge, which was fastened alongside mine; and
next morning I could continue my journey. This little experience was
of great profit to me, and I soon reached my destination on the Amúr
without further adventures worth mentioning. Every night we found out
some stretch of steep but relatively low shore where to stop with the
barges for the night, and our fires were soon lighted on the bank of
the swift and clear river, amidst most beautiful mountain scenery. In
daytime, one could hardly imagine a more pleasant journey than on board
a barge which leisurely floats down, without any of the noises of a
steamer--one or two strokes being occasionally given with its immense
stern rudder to keep it in the main current. For the lover of nature,
the lower part of the Shílka and the upper part of the Amúr, where one
sees a most beautiful, wide, and swift river flowing amidst mountains
rising in steep wooded cliffs a couple of thousand feet above the
water, offers one of the most delightful scenes in the world. But on
that very account communication along the shore, on horseback, along a
narrow trail, is extremely difficult. I learned this that same autumn
at my own expense. In East Siberia the seven last stations along the
Shílka (about 120 miles) were known as the Seven Mortal Sins. This
stretch of the Trans-Siberian railway--if it is ever built--will cost
unimaginable sums of money: much more than the stretch of the Canadian
Pacific line in the Rocky Mountains, in the Canyon of the Fraser River,
has cost.
* * * * *
After I had delivered my barges, I made about a thousand miles down the
Amúr in one of the post boats which are used on the river. The boat is
covered with a light shed in its back part, and has on its stem a box
filled with earth upon which a fire is kept to cook the food. My crew
consisted of three men. We had to make haste, and therefore used to row
in turns all day long, while at night the boat was left to float with
the current, and I kept the watch for three or four hours to maintain
the boat in the midst of the river and to prevent it from being dragged
into some side branch. These watches--the full moon shining above,
and the dark hills reflected in the river--were beautiful beyond
description. My rowers were taken from the same ‘sons;’ they were
three tramps who had the reputation of being incorrigible thieves and
robbers--and I carried with me a heavy sack full of bank-notes, silver,
and copper. In Western Europe such a journey on a lonely river would
have been considered risky--not so in East Siberia; I made it without
even having so much as an old pistol, and I found my three tramps
excellent company. Only as we approached Blagovéschensk they became
restless. ‘Khánshina’ (the Chinese brandy) ‘is cheap there,’ they
reasoned with deep sighs. ‘We are sure to get into trouble! It’s cheap,
and it knocks you over in no time from want of being used to it!’ ...
I offered to leave the money which was due to them with a friend, who
would see them off with the first steamer. ‘That would not help us,’
they replied mournfully; ‘somebody will offer a glass ... it’s cheap,
... and a glass knocks you over!’ they persisted in saying. They were
really perplexed, and when, a few months later, I returned through
the town I learned that one of ‘my sons’--as people called them in
town--had really got into trouble. When he had sold the last pair of
boots to get the poisonous drink, he had made some theft and was locked
up. My friend finally obtained his release and shipped him back.
Only those who have seen the Amúr, or know the Mississippi or the
Yang-tse-kiang, can imagine what an immense river the Amúr becomes
after it has joined the Sungarí and can realize what tremendous waves
roll up its bed if the weather is stormy. When the rainy season, due to
the monsoons, comes in July, the Sungarí, the Usurí, and the Amúr are
swollen by unimaginable quantities of water; thousands of low islands,
usually covered with willow thickets, are inundated or torn away, and
the width of the river attains in places two, three, and even five
miles; water rushes into hundreds of branches and lakes which spread
in the lowlands along the main channel; and when a fresh wind blows
from an eastern quarter, against the current, tremendous waves, higher
than those which one sees in the estuary of the St. Lawrence, roll up
the main channel as well as up its branches. Still worse is it when a
typhoon blows from the Chinese Sea and spreads over the Amúr region.
We experienced such a typhoon. I was then on board a large decked boat,
with Major Maróvsky, whom I had joined at Blagovéschensk. He had well
provided his boat with sails, which permitted us to sail close to the
wind, and when the storm began we managed, nevertheless, to bring our
boat on the sheltered side of the river and to find refuge in some
small tributary. There we stayed for two days while the storm raged
with such fury that when I ventured for a few hundred yards into
the surrounding forest, I had to retreat on account of the number of
immense trees which the wind was blowing down round me. We began to
feel very uneasy for our barges. It was evident that if they had been
afloat this morning, they never would have been able to reach the
sheltered side of the river, but must have been driven by the storm to
the bank exposed to the full rage of the wind, and there they must have
been destroyed. A disaster was almost certain.
We sailed out as soon as the main fury of the storm had abated. We knew
that we must soon overtake two detachments of barges; but we sailed one
day, two days, and there was no trace of them. My friend Maróvsky lost
both sleep and appetite, and looked as if he had just had a serious
illness. He sat whole days on the deck, motionless, murmuring: ‘All is
lost, all is lost!’ The villages are few and rare in this part of the
Amúr, and nobody could give us any information. A new storm came on,
and when we reached at last a village, we learned that no barges had
passed by it, and that quantities of wreck had been seen floating down
the river during the previous day. It was evident that at least forty
barges, which carried a cargo of about 2,000 tons, must have perished.
It meant a certain famine next spring on the lower Amúr if no supplies
were brought in time. We were late in the season, navigation would soon
be closed, and there was no telegraph yet along the river.
We held a council and decided that Maróvsky should sail as quickly
as possible to the mouth of the Amúr. Some purchases of grain might
perhaps be made in Japan before the close of the navigation. Meanwhile
I was to go with all possible speed up the river, to determine the
losses, and do my best to cover the two thousand miles of the Amúr and
the Shílka--in boats, on horseback, or on board steamer if I met one.
The sooner I could warn the Chitá authorities, and despatch any amount
of provisions available, the better it would be. Perhaps part of them
would reach this same autumn the upper Amúr, whence it would be easier
to ship them in the early spring to the lowlands. Even if a few weeks
or only days could be won, it might make an immense difference in case
of a famine.
I began my two thousand miles’ journey in a rowing boat, changing
rowers each twenty miles or so, at each village. It was very slow
progress, but there might be no steamer coming up the river for a
fortnight, and in the meantime I could reach the spots where the barges
were wrecked, and see if any of the provisions had been saved. Then,
at the mouth of the Usurí (Khabaróvsk) I might find a steamer. The
boats which I took in the villages were miserable, and the weather
very stormy. We kept evidently along the shore, but we had to cross
some branches of the Amúr of great width, and the waves, driven by
the high wind, threatened continually to swamp our little craft. One
day we had to cross a branch of the Amúr nearly half a mile wide.
Chopped waves rose like mountains as they rolled up that branch. My
rowers, two peasants, were seized with terror; their faces were white
as paper; their blue lips trembled, they murmured prayers. Only a boy
of fifteen, who held the rudder, calmly kept a watchful eye upon the
waves. He glided between them as they seemed to sink around us for a
moment; but when he saw them rising to a menacing height in front of
us he gave a slight turn to the boat and steadied it across the waves.
The boat shipped water from each wave, and I threw it out with an old
ladle, noting at times that it accumulated more rapidly than I could
get rid of it. There was a moment when the boat shipped two such big
waves that, on a sign given to me by one of the trembling rowers, I
unfastened the heavy sackful of copper and silver that I carried across
my shoulder.... For several days in succession we had such crossings. I
never forced the men to cross, but they themselves, knowing why I had
to hurry, would decide at a given moment that an attempt must be made.
‘There are not seven deaths in one’s life, and one cannot be avoided,’
they would say, and, signing themselves with the cross, would seize the
oars and pull over.
I soon reached the places where the main destruction of our barges took
place. Forty-four barges had been destroyed by the storm. Unloading
had been impossible, and very little of the cargo had been saved. Two
thousand tons of flour had perished in the waves. With this message I
continued my journey.
A few days later a steamer slowly creeping up the river overtook me,
and when I boarded her the passengers told me that the captain had
drunk so much that he was seized with delirium and jumped overboard.
He was saved, though, and was now lying ill in his cabin. They asked
me to take the command of the steamer, and I had to accept it; but
soon I realized, to my great astonishment, that everything went on by
itself in such an excellent routine way that, though I paraded all day
on the bridge, I had almost nothing to do. Apart from a few minutes
of real responsibility when the steamer had to be brought to the
landing-places, where we took wood for fuel, and saying a few words now
and then for encouraging the stokers to start as soon as dawn permitted
us faintly to distinguish the outlines of the shores, everything went
on by itself, requiring but little interference of mine. A pilot who
would have been able to interpret the map would have managed as well.
Travelling by steamer and a great deal on horseback I reached at last
Transbaikália. The idea of a famine that might break out next spring
on the lower Amúr oppressed me all the time. I found that the small
steamer on board of which I was did not progress up the swift Shílka
rapidly enough, and in order to gain some twenty hours, or even less, I
abandoned it and rode with a Cossack a couple of hundred miles up the
Argúñ, along one of the wildest mountain tracks in Siberia, stopping to
light our camp fire only after midnight would have overtaken us in the
woods. Even the ten or twenty hours that I might gain by this exertion
had not to be despised, because every day brought us nearer to the
close of navigation: at nights, ice was already forming on the river.
At last I met the Governor of Transbaikdália, and my friend, Colonel
Pedashénko, on the Shílka, at the convict settlement of Kará, and the
latter took in hand the care of shipping immediately all available
provisions. As to me, I left immediately to report all about the matter
at Irkútsk.
People at Irkútsk wondered that I had managed to make this long journey
so rapidly, but I was quite worn out. However, youth quickly recovers
its strength, and I recovered mine by sleeping for some time such a
number of hours every day that I should be ashamed to say how many.
‘Have you taken some rest?’ the Governor-General asked me a week or so
after my arrival. ‘Could you start to-morrow for St. Petersburg, as a
courier, to report there yourself upon the loss of the barges?’
It meant to cover in twenty days--not one day more--another distance
of 3,200 miles between Irkútsk and Níjni-Nóvgorod, where I could take
the railway to St. Petersburg; to gallop day and night in post-carts
which had to be changed at every station, because no carriage would
stand such a journey full speed over the ruts of the roads frozen at
the end of the autumn. But to see my brother Alexander was too great
an attraction for me not to accept the offer, and I started the next
night. When I reached the lowlands of West Siberia and the Urals the
journey really became a torture. There were days when the wheels of the
carts would be broken over the frozen ruts at every successive station.
The rivers were freezing, and I had to cross the Ob in a boat amidst
the floating ice, which menaced at every moment to crush our small
craft. When I reached the Tom river, on which the ice had only stopped
floating during the preceding night, the peasants refused for some time
to take me over, asking me to give them ‘a receipt.’
‘What sort of receipt do you want?’
‘Well, you write on a paper: “I, undersigned, hereby testify that I was
drowned by the will of God and by no fault of the peasants,” and you
give us that paper.’
‘With pleasure, on the other shore.’
At last they took me over. A boy--a brave, bright boy whom I had
selected in the crowd--opened the procession, testing the strength of
the ice with a pole; I followed him, carrying my despatch-box on my
shoulders, and we two were attached to long reins which five peasants
held, following us at a distance--one of them carrying a bundle of
straw, to be thrown on the ice if it should not seem strong enough.
At last I reached Moscow, where my brother met me at the station, and
we proceeded at once to St. Petersburg.
Youth is a grand thing. After such a journey, which lasted twenty-four
days and nights, when I came, early in the morning, to St. Petersburg,
I went the same day to deliver my despatches, and did not fail also
to call upon an aunt--or, rather, upon a cousin--who resided at St.
Petersburg. She was radiant. ‘We have a dancing party to-night. Will
you come?’ she said. Of course I would! And not only come, but dance
until an early hour of the morning.
* * * * *
When I came to St. Petersburg and saw the authorities, I understood
why I had been sent to make the report. Nobody would believe the
possibility of such a destruction of the barges. ‘Have you been on the
spot? Did you see the destruction with your own eyes? Are you perfectly
sure that “they” have not simply stolen the provisions and shown you
the wreck of some barges?’ Such were the questions I had to answer.
The high functionaries who stood at the head of Siberian affairs at
St. Petersburg were simply charming in their innocent ignorance of
Siberia. ‘_Mais, mon cher_,’ one of them said to me--he always spoke
French---‘how _is_ it possible that forty barges should be destroyed
on the Nevá without anyone rushing to help save them?’ ‘The Nevá,’ I
exclaimed; ‘put three, four Nevás side by side, and you will have the
lower Amúr!’
‘Is it really as big as that?’ And two minutes later he was chatting,
in excellent French, about all sorts of things. ‘When did you last
see Schwartz, the painter? Is not his “John the Terrible” a wonderful
picture? Do you know for what reason Kúkel was going to be arrested? Do
you know that Chernyshévsky is arrested? He is now in the fortress.’
‘What for? What has he done?’ I asked.
‘Nothing particular; nothing! But, _mon cher_, you know, State
considerations! Such a clever man, awfully clever! And such an
influence he has upon the youth. You understand that a Government
cannot tolerate that: that’s impossible! _intolérable, mon cher, dans
un État bien ordonné!_’
Count Ignátieff made no such questions; he knew the Amúr very well,
and he knew St. Petersburg too. Amidst all sorts of jokes, and witty
remarks about Siberia which he made with an astounding vivacity, he
dropped to me: ‘It is a very lucky thing that you were there on the
spot, and saw the wrecks. And “they” were clever to send you with the
report! Well done! At first, nobody wanted to believe about the barges.
Some new swindling, it was thought. But now people say that you were
well known as a page, and you have only been a few months in Siberia;
so you would not shelter the people there if it were swindling. They
trust in you.’
The Minister of War, Dmítri Milútin, was the only man in the high
administration of St. Petersburg who took the matter seriously. He
asked me many questions: all to the point. He mastered the subject at
once, and all our conversation was in short sentences, without hurry,
but without any waste of words. ‘The coast settlements to be supplied
from the sea, you mean? The remainder only from Chitá? Quite right. But
if a storm happens next year, will there be the same destruction once
more?’ ‘No, if there are two small tugs to convoy the barges.’ ‘Will it
do?’ ‘Yes, with one tug the loss would not have been half so heavy.’
‘Very probably. Write to me, please; state all you have said, quite
plainly; no formalities.’
V
I did not stay long at St. Petersburg, and returned to Irkútsk the same
winter. My brother was going to join me there in a few months; he was
accepted as an officer of the Irkútsk Cossacks.
Travelling across Siberia in the winter is supposed to be a terrible
experience; but, all things considered, it is on the whole more
comfortable than at any other season of the year. The snow-covered
roads are excellent, and, although the cold is fearful, one can stand
it well enough. Lying full length in the sledge--as everyone does in
Siberia--wrapped in fur blankets, fur inside and fur outside, one
does not suffer much from the cold, even when the temperature is
forty or sixty Fahrenheit degrees below zero. Travelling in courier
fashion--that is, rapidly changing horses at each station and stopping
only once a day for one hour to take a meal--I reached Irkútsk nineteen
days after I had left St. Petersburg. Two hundred miles a day is the
normal speed in such cases, and I remember having covered the last 660
miles before Irkútsk in seventy hours. The frost was not severe then,
the roads were in an excellent condition, the drivers were kept in good
spirits by a free allowance of silver coins, and the team of three
small and light horses seemed to enjoy running swiftly across hill
and vale, and across rivers frozen as hard as steel, amidst forests
glistening in their silver attire in the rays of the sun.
I was now nominated attaché to the Governor-General of East Siberia for
Cossack affairs, and had to reside at Irkútsk; but there was nothing
particular to do. To let everything go on, according to the established
routine, with no more reference to changes, such was the watchword that
came now from St. Petersburg. I therefore gladly accepted the proposal
to undertake geographical exploration in Manchuria.
If one casts a glance on a map of Asia one sees that the Russian
frontier, which runs in Siberia, broadly speaking, along the fiftieth
degree of latitude, suddenly bends in Transbaikália to the north. It
follows for three hundred miles the Argúñ river; then, on reaching
the Amúr, it turns south-eastwards--the town of Blagovéschensk, which
was the capital of the Amúr land, being situated again in about the
same latitude of fifty degrees. Between the south-eastern corner of
Transbaikália (New Tsurukháitu) and Blagovéschensk on the Amúr, the
distance west to east is only five hundred miles; but along the Argúñ
and the Amúr it is over a thousand miles, and moreover communication
along the Argúñ, which is not navigable, is extremely difficult. In its
lower parts there is nothing but a most wild mountain track.
Transbaikália is very rich in cattle, and the Cossacks who occupy
its south-eastern corner, and are wealthy cattle-breeders, wanted to
establish a direct communication with the middle Amúr, which would be
a good market for their cattle. They used to trade with the Mongols,
and they had heard from them that it would not be difficult to reach
the Amúr, travelling eastwards across the Great Khingán. Going straight
towards the east, they were told, one would fall in with an old Chinese
route which crosses the Khingán and leads to the Manchurian town of
Merghén (on the Nónni river, a tributary to the Sungarí), whence an
excellent road leads to the middle Amúr.
I was offered the leadership of a trading caravan which the Cossacks
intended to organize in order to find that route, and I accepted it
with enthusiasm. No European had ever visited that region, and a
Russian topographer who went that way a few years before was killed.
Only two Jesuits, in the time of the emperor Kan-si, had penetrated
from the south as far as Merghén, and had determined its latitude. All
the immense region to the north of it, five hundred miles wide and
five hundred miles deep, was totally, absolutely unknown. I consulted
all the available sources about this region. Nobody, not even the
Chinese geographers, knew anything about it. Besides, the very fact
of connecting the middle Amúr with Transbaikália had its importance;
Tsurukháitu is now going to be the head of the Trans-Manchuria railway.
We were thus the pioneers of that great enterprise.
There was, however, one difficulty. The treaty with China granted
to the Russians free trade with the ‘Empire of China and Mongolia.’
Manchuria was not mentioned in it, and could as well be excluded as
included in the treaty. The Chinese frontier authorities interpreted
it one way, and the Russians the other way. Moreover, only trade being
mentioned, an officer would not be allowed to enter Manchuria. I had
thus to go as a trader, and accordingly I bought at Irkútsk various
goods, and went disguised as a merchant. The Governor-General delivered
me a passport, ‘To the Irkútsk second guild merchant Petr Alexéiev
and his companions,’ and he warned me that if the Chinese authorities
arrested me and took me to Pekin, and thence across the Góbi to
the Russian frontier--in a cage on a camel’s back was their way of
conveying prisoners across Mongolia--I must not betray him by naming
myself. I accepted, of course, all the conditions, the temptation to
visit a country which no European had ever seen being too great for an
explorer.
It would not have been easy to conceal my identity while I was in
Transbaikália. The Cossacks are an extremely inquisitive sort of
people--real Mongols--and as soon as a stranger comes to one of their
villages, while treating him with the greatest hospitality, the master
of the house submits the new-comer to a formal interrogatory.
‘A tedious journey, I suppose,’ he begins; ‘a long way from Chitá, is
it not? And then, perhaps, longer still for one who comes from some
place beyond Chitá? Maybe from Irkútsk? Trading there, I believe? Many
tradesmen come this way. You are going also to Nerchínsk, I should
say?--Yes, people are often married at your age; and you, too, must
have left a family, I suppose? Many children? Not all boys, I should
say?’ And so on for quite half an hour.
The local commander of the Cossacks, Captain Buxhövden, knew his
people, and consequently we had taken our precautions. At Chitá and at
Irkútsk we often had had amateur theatricals, playing in preference
dramas of Ostróvsky, in which the scene of action is nearly always
amongst the merchant classes. I played several times in different
dramas, and found such great pleasure in acting that I even wrote on
one occasion to my brother an enthusiastic letter confessing to him my
passionate desire to abandon my military career and to go on the stage.
I played mostly young merchants, and had so well got hold of their
ways of talking and gesticulating, and tea drinking from the saucer--I
knew these ways since my Nikólskoye experiences--that now I had a good
opportunity to act it all out in reality for useful purposes.
‘Take your seat, Petr Alexéievich,’ Captain Buxhövden would say to me,
when the boiling tea-urn, throwing out clouds of steam, was placed on
the table.
‘Thank you; we may stay here’, I would reply, sitting on the edge
of a chair at a distance, and beginning to drink my tea in true
Moscow-merchant fashion. Buxhövden meanwhile nearly exploded with
laughter as I blew upon my saucer with staring eyes, and bit off in a
special way microscopic particles from a small lump of sugar which was
to serve for half a dozen cups.
We knew that the Cossacks would soon make out the truth about me,
but the important thing was to win a few days only, and to cross the
frontier while my identity was not yet discovered. I must have played
my part pretty well, as the Cossacks treated me as a small merchant.
In one village an old woman beckoned me in the passage and asked me:
‘Are there more people coming behind you on the road, my dear?’ ‘None,
grandmother, that we heard of.’ ‘They said a prince, Rapótsky, was
going to come. Is he coming?’
‘Oh, I see. You are right, grandmother. His Highness intended to go,
too, from Irkútsk. But how can he? Such a journey! Not suitable for
them. So they remained where they were.’
‘Of course, how can he?’
In short, we crossed the frontier unmolested. We were eleven Cossacks,
one Tungus, and myself, all on horseback. We had with us about forty
horses for sale and two carts, one of which, two-wheeled, belonged to
me, and contained the cloth, the velveteen, the gold braid, and so on,
which I had taken in my capacity of merchant. I attended to it and to
my horses entirely myself, while we chose one of the Cossacks to be the
‘elder’ of our caravan. He had to manage all the diplomatic talk with
the Chinese authorities. All Cossacks spoke Mongolian, and the Tungus
understood Manchurian. The Cossacks of the caravan knew, of course, who
I was--one of them knew me at Irkútsk--but they never betrayed that
knowledge, understanding that the success of the expedition depended
upon it. I wore a long blue cotton dress, like the others, and the
Chinese paid no attention to me, so that I could make, unnoticed by
them, the compass survey of the route. The first day only, when all
sorts of Chinese soldiers hung about us in the hope of getting a glass
of whisky, I had often to cast only a furtive glance at my compass and
to inscribe the bearings and the distances in my pocket, without taking
my paper out. We had with us no arms whatever. Only our Tungus, who was
going to marry, had taken his matchlock gun and used it to hunt for
fallow deer, bringing us meat for supper, and making a provision of
furs with which to pay for his future wife.
When there was no more whisky to be obtained from us the Chinese
soldiers left us alone. So we went straight eastwards, finding our way
as best we could across hill and dale, and after a four or five days’
march we really fell in with the Chinese track which had to take us
across the Khingán to Merghén.
To our astonishment we discovered that the crossing of the great ridge,
which looked so black and terrible on the maps, was most easy. We
overtook on the road an old Chinese functionary, miserably wretched,
who travelled in the same direction in a two-wheeled cart. For the last
two days the road was going up hill, and the country bore testimony
to its high altitude. The ground became marshy, and the road was
muddy; the grass was very poor, and the trees grew thin, undeveloped,
often crippled and covered with lichens. Mountains devoid of forests
rose right and left, and we thought already of the difficulties we
should experience in crossing the ridge, when we saw the old Chinese
functionary alighting from his cart before an _obó_--that is, before a
heap made of stones and branches of trees to which bundles of horsehair
and small rags had been attached. He drew several hairs out of the mane
of his horse, and attached them to the branches.
‘What is that?’ we asked.
‘The _obó_--the waters before us flow now to the Amúr.’
‘Is that all of the Khingán?’
‘Yes! No mountains more to cross as far as the Amúr: only hills!’
Quite a commotion spread in our caravan. ‘The rivers flow to the Amúr,
the Amúr!’ shouted the Cossacks to each other. All their lives they had
heard the old Cossacks talking about the great river where the vine
grows wild, where the prairies extend for hundreds of miles and could
give wealth to millions of men; then, after the Amúr was annexed to
Russia, they heard of the long journey to it, the difficulties of the
first settlers, and the prosperity of their relatives settled on the
upper Amúr; and now we had found the short way to it! We had before us
a steep slope upon which the road went downwards in zig-zags leading
to a small river, which pierced its way through a chopped sea of
mountains, and led to the Amúr. No more obstacles lay between us and
the great river. A traveller will imagine my delight at this unexpected
geographical discovery. As to the Cossacks, they hastened to dismount
and to attach in their turn bundles of hair taken from their horses to
the branches thrown on the _obó_. The Siberians altogether have a sort
of awe for the gods of the heathen. They don’t think much of them, but
these gods, they say, are wicked creatures, bent on mischief, and it is
never good to be on bad terms with them. It is far better to bribe them
with small tokens of respect.
‘Look, here is a strange tree: it must be an oak,’ they exclaimed,
as we went down the steep slope. The oak does not grow, indeed, in
Siberia. None is found until the eastern slope of the high plateau
has been reached. ‘Look, nut trees!’ they exclaimed next. ‘And what
tree is that?’ they said, seeing a lime tree, or some other tree
which does not grow in Russia either, but which I knew as part of the
Manchurian flora. The northerners, who for centuries had dreamed of
warmer lands, and now saw them, were in delight. Lying on the ground
covered with rich grass, they caressed it with their eyes--they would
have kissed it. Now they burned with the desire to reach the Amúr as
soon as possible. When, a fortnight later, we stopped at our last camp
fire within twenty miles from the river, they grew impatient like
children. They began to saddle their horses shortly after midnight,
and hurried me to start long before daybreak; and when at last we
caught from an eminence a sight of the mighty stream, the eyes of these
unimpressionable Siberians, generally devoid of poetical feeling,
gleamed with poetical ardour as they looked upon the blue waters of the
majestic Amúr. It was evident that, sooner or later--with or without
the support, or even against the wish, of the Russian Government--both
banks of this river, a desert now but rich in possibilities, as well
as the immense unpopulated stretches of North Manchuria, would be
invaded by Russian settlers, just as the shores of the Mississippi were
colonized by the Canadian _voyageurs_.
In the meantime the old half-blind Chinese functionary with whom we had
crossed the Khingán, having donned his blue coat and official hat with
a glass button on its top, declared to us next morning that he would
not let us go further. Our ‘elder’ had received him and his clerk in
our tent, and the old man, repeating what the clerk whispered to him,
raised all sorts of objections to our further progress. He wanted us to
camp on the spot while he would send our pass to Pekin to get orders,
which we absolutely refused to do. Then he sought to quarrel with our
passport.
‘What sort of a passport is that?’ he said, looking with disdain into
our pass, which was written in a few lines on a plain sheet of foolscap
paper, in Russian and Mongolian, and had a simple sealing-wax seal.
‘You may have written it yourselves and sealed it with a copper,’ he
remarked, ‘Look at my pass: this is worth something,’ and he unrolled
before us a sheet of paper, two feet long, covered with Chinese
characters.
I sat quietly aside during this conference, packing something in my
box, when a sheet of the ‘Moscow Gazette’ fell under my hand. The
Gazette, being the property of the Moscow University, had an eagle
printed on its title-heading. ‘Show him this,’ I said to our elder.
He unfolded the large sheet of print and pointed out the eagle. ‘That
pass was to show to you,’ our elder said, ‘but this is what we have for
ourselves.’
‘Why, is it all written about you?’ the old man asked with terror.
‘All about us,’ our elder replied, without even a twinkle in his eyes.
The old man--a true functionary--looked quite dumbfounded at seeing
such a profusion of writing. He examined every one of us, nodding with
his head. But the clerk was still whispering something to his chief,
who finally declared that he would not let us continue the journey.
‘Enough of talking,’ I said to the elder; ‘give the order to saddle
the horses.’ The Cossacks were of the same opinion, and in no time our
caravan started, bidding good-bye to the old functionary and promising
him to report that short of resorting to violence--which he was not
able to do--he had done all in his power to prevent us from entering
Manchuria, and that it was our fault if we went nevertheless.
A few days later we were at Merghén, where we traded a little, and soon
reached the Chinese town of Aigún, on the right bank of the Amúr, and
the Russian town of Blagovéschensk, on the left bank. We had discovered
the direct route and many interesting things besides: the border-ridge
character of the Great Khinghán, the ease with which it can be crossed,
the tertiary volcanoes of the Uyún Kholdontsí region, which had so long
been a puzzle in geographical literature, and so on. I cannot say that
I was a sharp tradesman, for at Merghén I persisted (in broken Chinese)
in asking thirty-five roubles for a watch when the Chinese buyer had
already offered me forty-five; but the Cossacks traded all right. They
sold very well all their horses, and when my horses, my goods, and the
rest were sold by the Cossacks it appeared that the expedition had cost
the government the modest sum of twenty-two roubles--a little over two
pounds.
VI
All this summer I travelled on the Amúr. I went as far as its mouth, or
rather its estuary--Nikoláevsk--to join the Governor-General, whom I
accompanied in a steamer up the Usurí; and after that, in the autumn, I
made a still more interesting journey up the Sungarí, to the very heart
of Manchuria, as far as Ghirín (or Kirín, according to the southern
pronunciation).
Many rivers in Asia are formed by the junction of two equally important
streams, so that it is difficult for the geographer to say which of
the two is the main one and which is a tributary. The Ingodá and the
Onón join to make the Shílka; the Shílka and the Argúñ join to make
the Amúr; and the Amúr joins the Sungarí to form that mighty stream
which flows north-eastwards and enters the Pacific in the inhospitable
latitudes of the Tartar Strait.
Up to the year 1864 the great river of Manchuria remained very little
known. All information about it dated from the times of the Jesuits,
and that was scanty. Now that a revival in the exploration of Mongolia
and Manchuria was going to take place, and the fear of China which had
hitherto been entertained in Russia appeared to be exaggerated, all of
us younger people pressed upon the Governor-General the necessity of
exploring the Sungarí. To have next door to the Amúr an immense region
almost as little known as an African desert seemed to us provoking.
Quite unexpectedly, General Korsákoff decided that same autumn to send
a steamer up the Sungarí, under the pretext of carrying some message of
friendship to the Governor-General of the Ghirín province. A Russian
consul from Urgá had to take the message. A doctor, an astronomer, two
topographers, and myself, all placed under the command of a Colonel
Chernyáeff, had to take part in the expedition on board a tiny steamer,
_Usuri_, which had in tow a barge with coal. Twenty-five soldiers,
whose rifles were carefully concealed in the coal, went with us on the
barge.
All was organized very hurriedly, and there was no accommodation on the
small steamer to receive such a numerous company; but we were all full
of enthusiasm, and huddled as best we could in the tiny cabins. One of
us had to sleep on a table, and when we started we found that there
were even no knives and forks for all of us--not to speak of other
necessaries. One of us resorted to his penknife at dinner time, and
my Chinese knife with two ivory sticks was a welcome addition to our
equipment.
It was not an easy task to go up the Sungarí. The great river, in its
lower parts, where it flows through the same lowlands as the Amúr, is
very shallow, and, although our steamer had only three feet draught,
we often could not find a channel deep enough to pass through. There
were days when we advanced but some forty miles, and scraped many times
the sandy bottom of the river with our keel; over and over again a
rowing boat was sent out to find the necessary depth. But our young
captain had made up his mind that he would reach Ghirín this autumn,
and we progressed every day. As we advanced higher and higher up we
found the river more and more beautiful, and more and more easy for
navigation; and when we had passed the sandy deserts at its junction
with its sister-river, the Nónni, navigation became easy and pleasant.
In a few weeks we reached the capital of this province of Manchuria. An
excellent map of the river was made by the topographers.
There was no time, unfortunately, to spare, and so we very seldom
landed in any village or town. The villages are few and rare along the
banks of the river, and in its lower parts we found only lowlands,
which are inundated every year. Higher up we sailed for a hundred miles
amidst sand dunes. It was only when we reached the upper Sungarí and
began to approach Ghirín that we found a dense population.
If our aim had been to establish friendly relations with Manchuria--and
not simply to learn what the Sungarí is--our expedition ought to have
been considered a dead failure. The Manchurian authorities had it fresh
in their memories how, eight years before, the ‘visit’ of Muravióff
ended in the annexation of the Amúr and the Usurí, and they could
not but look with suspicion on these new and uncalled-for visitors.
The twenty-five rifles concealed in the coal, which had been duly
reported to the Chinese authorities before we left, still more provoked
their suspicions; and when our steamer cast her anchor in front of
the populous city of Ghirín we found all its merchants armed with
rusty swords, unearthed from some old arsenal. We were not prevented,
however, from walking in the streets, but all shops were closed as soon
as we landed and the merchants were not allowed to sell anything. Some
provisions were sent on board the steamer--as a gift, but no money was
taken in return.
The autumn was rapidly coming to its end, the frosts began already,
and we had to hurry back, as we could not winter on the Sungarí. In
short, we saw Ghirín, but spoke to none but the couple of interpreters
who came every morning on board our steamer. Our aim, however, was
fulfilled. We had ascertained that the river is navigable, and a
detailed map of it was made, from its mouth to Ghirín, with the aid
of which we were able to steam on our return journey at full speed
without any accident. Our steamer only once touched the ground. But the
Ghirín authorities, desirous above all that we should not be compelled
to winter on the river, sent us two hundred Chinese, who aided us in
getting off the sands. When I jumped into the water and, also taking a
stick, began to sing our river song, ‘_Dubínushka_,’ which helps all
present to give a sudden push at the same moment, the Chinese enjoyed
immensely the fun of it, and after several such pushes the steamer was
soon afloat. The most cordial relations were established after this
little adventure between ourselves and the Chinese--I mean, of course,
the people, who seemed to dislike very much their arrogant Manchurian
officials.
We called at several Chinese villages peopled with exiles from the
celestial empire, and we were received in the most cordial way.
One evening especially impressed itself on my memory. We came to a
small, picturesque village as night was already falling. Some of us
landed, and I went alone through the village. A thick crowd of a
hundred Chinese soon surrounded me, and although I knew not a word of
their tongue, and they knew no more of mine, we chatted in the most
amicable way by mimicry and we understood each other. To pat one on the
shoulders in sign of friendship is decidedly international language.
To offer each other tobacco and to be offered a light is again an
international expression of friendship. One thing interested them--why
had I, though young, a beard? They wear none before they are sixty. And
when I told them by signs that in case I should have nothing to eat I
might eat it--the joke was transmitted from one to the other through
the whole crowd. They roared with laughter, and began to pat me even
more caressingly on the shoulders; they took me about, showing me their
houses, everyone offered me his pipe, and the whole crowd accompanied
me as a friend to the steamer. I must say that there was not one
single _boshkó_ (policeman) in that village. In other villages our
soldiers and the young officers always made friends with the Chinese,
but as soon as a _boshkó_ appeared all was spoiled. In return, one must
have seen what ‘faces’ they used to make at the _boshkó_ behind his
back! They evidently hated these representatives of authority.
Our expedition has since been forgotten. The astronomer, Th. Usóltzeff,
and I published reports about it in the ‘Memoirs’ of the Siberian
Geographical Society; but a few years later a great conflagration
at Irkútsk destroyed all the copies left of the Memoirs as well as
the original map of the Sungarí, and it was only last year, when the
Trans-Manchurian railway began to be built, that Russian geographers
unearthed our reports, and found that the great river had been explored
five-and-thirty years ago.
VII
As there was nothing more to be done in the direction of reform,
I tried to do what seemed to be possible under the existing
circumstances--only to become convinced of the absolute uselessness of
such efforts. In my new capacity of attaché to the Governor-General for
Cossack affairs, I made, for instance, a most thorough investigation of
the economical condition of the Usurí Cossacks, whose crops used to be
lost every year, so that the government had every winter to feed them
in order to save them from famine. When I returned from the Usurí with
my report, I received congratulations on all sides, I was promoted,
I got special rewards. All the measures I recommended were accepted,
and special grants of money were given for aiding the emigration of
some and for supplying cattle to others, as I had suggested. But the
practical realization of the measures went into the hands of some
old drunkard, who would squander the money and pitilessly flog the
unfortunate Cossacks for the purpose of converting them into good
agriculturists. And thus it went on in all directions, beginning with
the winter palace at St. Petersburg and ending with the Usurí and
Kamchátka.
The higher administration of Siberia was influenced by excellent
intentions, and I can only repeat that, everything considered, it
was far better, far more enlightened, and far more interested in the
welfare of the people than the administration of any other province of
Russia. But it was an administration--a branch of the tree which had
its roots at St. Petersburg--and that was enough to paralyze all its
excellent intentions, enough to make it interfere with and kill all
the beginnings of local life and progress. Whatever was started for
the good of the country by local men was looked at with distrust, and
was immediately paralyzed by hosts of difficulties which came, not so
much from the bad intentions of the administrators, but simply from
the fact that these officials belonged to a pyramidal, centralized
administration. The very fact of their belonging to a government which
radiated from a distant capital caused them to look upon everything
from the point of view of functionaries of the government, who think
first of all about what their superiors will say, and how this or that
will appear in the administrative machinery. The interests of the
country are a secondary matter.
Gradually I turned my energy more and more toward scientific
exploration. In 1865 I explored the western Sayáns, where I caught
a new glimpse of the structure of the Siberian highlands and came
upon another important volcanic region on the Chinese frontier; and
finally, the year following, I undertook a long journey to discover a
direct communication between the gold mines of the Yakútsk province
(on the Vitím and the Olókma) and Transbaikália. For many years the
members of the Siberian expedition (1860-1864) had tried to find
such a passage, and had endeavoured to cross the series of very wild,
stony parallel ridges which separate these mines from the plains of
Transbaikália; but when, coming from the south, they reached that
gloomy mountain region, and saw before them the dreary mountains
spreading for hundreds of miles northward, all of these explorers, save
one who was killed by natives, returned southward. It was evident that
in order to be successful the expedition had to move from the north
to the south--from the dreary unknown wilderness to the warmer and
populated regions. It so happened, also, that while I was preparing
for the expedition I was shown a map which a Tungus had traced with
his knife on a piece of bark. This little map--a splendid specimen,
by the way, of the usefulness of the geometrical sense in the lowest
stages of civilization, and one which would consequently interest A.
R. Wallace--so struck me by its seeming truth to nature that I fully
trusted to it, and began my journey from the north, following the
indications of the map.
In company with a young and promising naturalist, Polakóff, and a
topographer, we went first down the Léna to the northern gold mines.
There we equipped the expedition, taking provisions for three months,
and started southward. An old Yakút hunter, who twenty years before
had once followed the passage indicated in the Tungus map, undertook
to act for us as a guide and to cross the mountain region--250 miles
wide--following the river-valleys and gorges indicated by the Tungus
with his knife on the birch-bark map. He really accomplished that
astounding feat, although there was no track of any sort to follow,
and all the valleys that one saw from the top of a mountain pass,
all equally covered with wood, seemed to be absolutely alike to the
unpractised eye. This time the passage was found. For three months we
wandered in the almost totally uninhabited mountain deserts and over
the marshy plateau, till at last we reached our destination, Chitá. I
am told that this passage is now of value for bringing cattle from the
south to the gold mines; as for me, the journey helped me immensely
afterwards in finding the key to the structure of the mountains and
plateaus of Siberia--but I am not writing a book of travel, and must
stop.
* * * * *
The years that I spent in Siberia taught me many lessons which I
could hardly have learned elsewhere. I soon realized the absolute
impossibility of doing anything really useful for the masses of the
people by means of the administrative machinery. With this illusion
I parted for ever. Then I began to understand not only men and human
character, but also the inner springs of the life of human society.
The constructive work of the unknown masses, which so seldom finds
any mention in books, and the importance of that constructive work in
the growth of forms of society, appeared before my eyes in a clear
light. To witness, for instance, the ways in which the communities of
Dukhobórtsy (brothers of those who are now settling in Canada, and who
found such a hearty support in England and the United States) migrated
to the Amúr region; to see the immense advantages which they got from
their semi-communistic brotherly organization; and to realize what
a success their colonization was, amidst all the failures of State
colonization, was learning something which cannot be learned from
books. Again, to live with natives, to see at work the complex forms
of social organization which they have elaborated far away from the
influence of any civilization, was, as it were, to store up floods
of light which illuminated my subsequent reading. The part which the
unknown masses play in the accomplishment of all important historical
events, and even in war, became evident to me from direct observation,
and I came to hold ideas similar to those which Tolstóy expresses
concerning the leaders and the masses in his monumental work, ‘War and
Peace.’
Having been brought up in a serf-owner’s family, I entered active life,
like all young men of my time, with a great deal of confidence in the
necessity of commanding, ordering, scolding, punishing, and the like.
But when, at an early stage, I had to manage serious enterprises and
to deal with men, and when each mistake would lead at once to heavy
consequences, I began to appreciate the difference between acting on
the principle of command and discipline, and acting on the principle of
common understanding. The former works admirably in a military parade,
but it is worth nothing where real life is concerned and the aim can
be achieved only through the severe effort of many converging wills.
Although I did not then formulate my observations in terms borrowed
from party struggles, I may say now that I lost in Siberia whatever
faith in State discipline I had cherished before. I was prepared to
become an anarchist.
From the age of nineteen to twenty-five I had to work out important
schemes of reform, to deal with hundreds of men on the Amúr, to
prepare and to make risky expeditions with ridiculously small means,
and so on; and if all these things ended more or less successfully,
I account for it only by the fact that I soon understood that in
serious work commanding and discipline are of little avail. Men of
initiative are required everywhere; but once the impulse has been
given, the enterprise must be conducted, especially in Russia, not in
military fashion, but in a sort of communal way, by means of common
understanding. I wish that all framers of plans of State discipline
could pass through the school of real life before they begin to frame
their State Utopias: we should then hear far less than at present of
schemes of military and pyramidal organization of society.
With all that, life in Siberia became less and less attractive for
me, although my brother Alexander had joined me in 1864 at Irkútsk,
where he commanded a squadron of Cossacks. We were happy to be
together; we read a great deal and discussed all the philosophical,
scientific, and sociological questions of the day; but we both longed
after intellectual life, and there was none in Siberia. The occasional
passage through Irkútsk of Raphael Pumpelly or of Adolph Bastian--the
only two men of science who visited our capital during my stay
there--was quite an event for both of us. The scientific and especially
the political life of Western Europe, of which we heard through the
papers, attracted us, and the return to Russia was the subject to
which we continually came back in our conversations. Finally, the
insurrection of the Polish exiles in 1866 opened our eyes to the false
position we both occupied as officers of the Russian army.
VIII
I was far away in the Vitím mountains when some Polish exiles, who were
employed in piercing a new road in the cliffs round Lake Baikál, made
a desperate attempt to break their chains and to force their way to
China across Mongolia. Troops were sent out against them, and a Russian
officer was killed by the insurgents. I heard of it on my return to
Irkútsk, where some fifty Poles were to be tried by a court-martial.
The sittings of courts-martial being open in Russia, I followed
this, taking detailed notes of the proceedings, which I sent to a
St. Petersburg paper, and which were published in full, to the great
dissatisfaction of the Governor-General.
Eleven thousand Poles, men and women, had been transported to East
Siberia in consequence of the insurrection of 1863. They were chiefly
students, artists, ex-officers, nobles, and especially skilled
artisans from the intelligent and highly developed working-men’s
population of Warsaw and other towns. A great number of them were
kept in hard labour, while the remainder were settled all over the
country in villages where they could find no work whatever and lived
in a state of semi-starvation. Those who were condemned to hard labour
worked either at Chitá, building the barges for the Amúr--these were
the happiest--or in iron works of the Crown, or in salt works. I saw
some of the latter, on the Léna, standing half-naked in a shanty, round
an immense cauldron filled with salt-brine, and mixing the thick,
boiling brine with long shovels, in an infernal temperature, while the
gates of the shanty were wide open to make a strong current of glacial
air. After two years of such work these martyrs were sure to die from
consumption.
Lately, a considerable number of Polish exiles were employed as
navvies building a road along the southern coast of Lake Baikál. This
narrow Alpine lake, four hundred miles long, surrounded by beautiful
mountains rising three to five thousand feet above its level, cuts off
Transbaikália and the Amúr from Irkútsk. In winter it may be crossed
over the ice and in summer there are steamers, but for six weeks in
the spring and another six weeks in the autumn the only means to reach
Chitá and Kyákhta (for Pekin) from Irkútsk was to travel on horseback
a long circuitous route, across mountains 7,000 to 8,000 feet in
altitude. I once travelled along this track, greatly enjoying the
scenery of the mountains, which were snow-clad in May, but otherwise
the journey was really awful. To climb eight miles only, to the top of
the main pass, Khamár-dabán, it took me the whole day from three in the
morning till eight at night. Our horses continually fell through the
thawing snow, plunging with the rider many times a day into icy water
which flowed underneath the snow-crust. It was decided accordingly to
build a permanent road along the southern coast of the lake, blowing
up a passage in the steep, almost vertical cliffs which rise along
the shore, and spanning with bridges a hundred wild torrents which
furiously rush from the mountains into the lake. Polish exiles were
employed at this hard work.
Several batches of Russian political exiles had been sent during the
last century to Siberia, but, with the submissiveness to fate which
is characteristic of the Russians, they never revolted; they allowed
themselves to be killed inch by inch, without ever attempting to free
themselves. The Poles, on the contrary--this must be said to their
honour--were never so submissive as that, and this time they broke into
open revolt. They evidently had no chance of success--they revolted
nevertheless. They had before them the great lake, and behind them a
girdle of absolutely impracticable mountains, beyond which begin the
wildernesses of North Mongolia; but they nevertheless conceived the
idea of disarming the soldiers who guarded them, forging those terrible
weapons of the Polish insurrections--scythes planted as pikes on long
poles--and making their way across the mountains and across Mongolia,
towards China, where they would find English ships to take them. One
day the news came to Irkútsk that part of those Poles who were at work
on the Baikál road had disarmed a dozen soldiers and broken out into
revolt. Eighty soldiers were all that could be despatched against them
from Irkútsk. Crossing the lake in a steamer, they went to meet the
insurgents on the other side of the lake.
The winter of 1866 had been unusually dull at Irkútsk. In the Siberian
capital there is no such distinction between the different classes
as one sees in Russian provincial towns; and the Irkútsk ‘society,’
composed of numerous officers and officials, together with the wives
and daughters of local traders and even clergymen, met during the
winter, every Thursday, at the Assembly Rooms. This winter, however,
there was no ‘go’ in the evening parties. Amateur theatricals, too,
were not successful; and gambling, which was usually pursued on a grand
scale at Irkútsk, only dragged just along: a want of money was felt
this winter among the officials, and even the arrival of several mining
officers did not bring with it the heaps of bank-notes with which
these privileged gentlemen usually enlivened the knights of the green
tables. The season was decidedly dull--just the season for starting
spiritualistic experiences with talking tables and talkative spirits.
A gentleman who had been during the previous winter the pet of Irkútsk
society on account of the tales which he recited with great talent,
seeing that interest in himself and his tales was failing, now took
to spiritualism as a new amusement. He was clever, and in a week’s
time the Irkútsk ladies were mad over talking spirits. A new life
was infused amongst those who did not know how to kill time. Talking
tables appeared in every drawing-room, and love-making went hand in
hand with spirit rapping. An officer, whom I will call Pótaloff, took
it all in deadly earnest--talking tables and love. Perhaps he was less
fortunate with the latter than with the tables; at any rate, when the
news of the Polish insurrection came he asked to be sent to the spot
with the eighty soldiers. He hoped to return with a halo of military
glory. ‘I go against the Poles,’ he wrote in his diary; ‘it would be so
interesting to be slightly wounded!’
He was killed. He rode on horseback by the side of the Colonel who
commanded the soldiers, when ‘the battle with the insurgents’--the
glowing description of which may be found in the annals of the General
Staff--began. The soldiers slowly advanced along the road, when they
met some fifty Poles, five or six of whom were armed with rifles and
the remainder with sticks and scythes; they occupied the forest, and
from time to time fired their guns. The chain of soldiers did the
same. Lieutenant Pótaloff twice asked permission of the Colonel to
dismount and to dash into the forest. The Colonel very angrily ordered
him to stay where he was. Notwithstanding this, the next moment the
Lieutenant had disappeared. Several shots resounded in the wood,
followed by wild cries; the soldiers rushed that way, and found the
Lieutenant bleeding on the grass. The Poles fired their last shots and
surrendered; the battle was over, Pótaloff was dead. He had rushed,
revolver in hand, into the thicket, where he found several Poles armed
with pikes. He fired all his shots at them in a haphazard way, wounding
one of them, whereupon the others rushed upon him with their pikes.
At the other end of the road, on this side of the lake, two Russian
officers behaved in the most abominable way towards those Poles who
were building the same road but took no part in the insurrection. One
of the two officers rushed into their tent, swearing and shooting at
the peaceful convicts with his revolver, badly wounding two of them.
Now, the logic of the Siberian military authorities was that as a
Russian officer had been killed several Poles had to be executed. The
court-martial condemned five of them to death: Szaramówicz, a pianist,
a handsome man of thirty who was the leader of the insurrection;
Celínski, an ex-officer of the Russian army, a man of sixty, because
he had once been an officer; and three others whose names I do not
remember.
The Governor-General telegraphed to St. Petersburg asking permission to
reprieve the condemned insurgents, but no answer came. He had promised
us not to execute them, but after having waited several days for the
reply, he ordered the sentence to be carried out secretly early in
the morning. The reply from St. Petersburg came four weeks later,
by post: the Governor was left to act ‘according to the best of his
understanding.’ In the meantime five brave men had been shot.
The insurrection, people said, was foolish. And yet this handful of
insurgents obtained something. The news of it reached Europe. The
executions, the brutalities of the two officers, which became known
through the proceedings of the court, produced a commotion in Austria,
and Austria interfered in favour of the Galicians who had taken part
in the revolution of 1863 and had been sent to Siberia. Soon after
the Baikál insurrection the fate of the Polish exiles in Siberia was
substantially bettered, and they owed it to their insurgents--to those
five brave men who were shot at Irkútsk, and those who had taken arms
by their side.
For my brother and myself this insurrection was a great lesson. We
realized what it meant to belong in any way to the army. I was away;
but my brother was at Irkútsk, and his squadron was dispatched against
the insurgents. Happily, the commander of the regiment to which my
brother belonged knew him well, and, under some pretext, he ordered
another officer to take command of the mobilized part of the squadron.
Otherwise Alexander, of course, would have refused to march. If I had
been at Irkútsk, I should have done the same.
We decided, then, to leave the military service and to return to
Russia. This was not an easy matter, especially as Alexander had
married in Siberia; but at last all was arranged, and early in 1867 we
were on our way to St. Petersburg.
PART FOURTH
ST. PETERSBURG--FIRST JOURNEY TO WESTERN EUROPE
I
Early in the autumn of 1867 my brother and I, with his family, were
settled at St. Petersburg. I entered the university, and sat on the
benches among young men, almost boys, much younger than myself. What I
had so longed for five years before was accomplished: I could study;
and, acting upon the idea that a thorough training in mathematics is
the only solid basis for all subsequent scientific work and thought, I
joined the physico-mathematical faculty in its mathematical section.
My brother entered the Military Academy for Jurisprudence, whilst I
entirely gave up military service, to the great dissatisfaction of my
father, who hated the very sight of a civilian dress. We both had now
to rely entirely upon ourselves.
Study at the university and scientific work absorbed all my time for
the next five years. A student of the mathematical faculty has, of
course, very much to do, but my previous studies in higher mathematics
permitted me to devote part of my time to geography; and, moreover, I
had not lost in Siberia the habit of hard work.
The report of my last expedition was in print; but in the meantime a
vast problem rose before me. The journeys that I had made in Siberia
had convinced me that the mountains which at that time were drawn on
the maps of Northern Asia were mostly fantastic, and gave no idea
whatever of the structure of the country. The great plateaux which
are so prominent a feature of Asia were not even suspected by those
who drew the maps. Instead of them several great ridges, such as,
for instance, the eastern portion of the Stanovói, which used to be
drawn on the maps as a black worm creeping eastward, had grown up
in the topographic bureaux, contrary to the indications and even to
the sketches of such explorers as L. Schwartz. These ridges have no
existence in nature. The heads of the rivers which flow toward the
Arctic Ocean on the one side, and toward the Pacific on the other, lie
intermingled on the surface of a vast plateau; they rise in the same
marshes. But, in the European topographer’s imagination, the highest
mountain ridges must run along the chief water-partings, and the
topographers had drawn there the highest Alps, of which there is no
trace in reality. Many such imaginary mountains were made to intersect
the maps of Northern Asia in all directions.
To discover the true leading principles in the disposition of the
mountains of Asia--the harmony of mountain formation--now became a
question which for years absorbed my attention. For a considerable
time the old maps, and still more the generalizations of Alexander von
Humboldt, who, after a long study of Chinese sources, had covered Asia
with a network of mountains running along the meridians and parallels,
hampered me in my researches, until at last I saw that even Humboldt’s
generalizations, stimulating though they had been, did not agree with
the facts.
Beginning, then, with the beginning, in a purely inductive way, I
collected all the barometrical observations of previous travellers, and
from them calculated hundreds of altitudes; I marked on a large-scale
map all geological and physical observations that had been made by
different travellers--the facts, not the hypotheses--and I tried to
find out what structural lines would answer best to the observed
realities. This preparatory work took me more than two years; and
then followed months of intense thought, in order to find out what
the bewildering chaos of scattered observations meant, until one day,
all of a sudden, the whole became clear and comprehensible, as if it
were illuminated with a flash of light. The main structural lines
of Asia are _not_ north and south, or west and east; they are from
the south-west to the north-east--just as, in the Rocky Mountains
and the plateaux of America, the lines are north-west to south-east;
only secondary ridges shoot out north-west. Moreover the mountains of
Asia are _not_ bundles of independent ridges, like the Alps, but are
subordinated to an immense plateau--an old continent which once pointed
towards Behring Strait. High border ridges have towered up along its
fringes, and in the course of ages terraces, formed by later sediments,
have emerged from the sea, thus adding on both sides to the width of
that primitive backbone of Asia.
There are not many joys in human life equal to the joy of the sudden
birth of a generalization, illuminating the mind after a long period
of patient research. What has seemed for years so chaotic, so
contradictory, and so problematic takes at once its proper position
within an harmonious whole. Out of the wild confusion of facts and
from behind the fog of guesses--contradicted almost as soon as they
are born--a stately picture makes its appearance, like an Alpine chain
suddenly emerging in all its grandeur from the mists which concealed
it the moment before, glittering under the rays of the sun in all its
simplicity and variety, in all its mightiness and beauty. And when the
generalization is put to a test, by applying it to hundreds of separate
facts which seemed to be hopelessly contradictory the moment before,
each of them assumes its due position, increasing the impressiveness
of the picture, accentuating some characteristic outline, or adding
an unsuspected detail full of meaning. The generalization gains in
strength and extent; its foundations grow in width and solidity; while
in the distance, through the far-off mist on the horizon, the eye
detects the outlines of new and still wider generalizations.
He who has once in his life experienced this joy of scientific creation
will never forget it; he will be longing to renew it; and he cannot
but feel with pain that this sort of happiness is the lot of so few of
us, while so many could also live through it--on a small or on a grand
scale--if scientific methods and leisure were not limited to a handful
of men.
This work I consider my chief contribution to science. My first
intention was to produce a bulky volume, in which the new ideas about
the mountains and plateaux of Northern Asia should be supported by a
detailed examination of each separate region; but in 1873, when I saw
that I should soon be arrested, I only prepared a map which embodied
my views and wrote an explanatory paper. Both were published by the
Geographical Society, under the supervision of my brother, while I
was already in the fortress of St. Peter and St. Paul. Petermann,
who was then preparing a map of Asia, and knew my preliminary work,
adopted my scheme for his map, and it has been accepted since by most
cartographers. The map of Asia, as it is now understood, explains, I
believe, the main physical features of the great continent, as well
as the distribution of its climates, faunas, and floras, and even its
history. It reveals, also, as I was able to see during my last journey
to America, striking analogies between the structure and the geological
growth of the two continents of the northern hemisphere. Very few
cartographers could say now whence all these changes in the map of Asia
have come; but in science it is better that new ideas should make their
way independently of any name attached to them. The errors which are
unavoidable in a first generalization are easier to rectify.
II
At the same time I worked a great deal for the Russian Geographical
Society in my capacity of secretary to its section of physical
geography.
Great interest was taken then in the exploration of Turkestan and the
Pamírs. Syévertsoff had just returned after several years of travel. A
great zoologist, a gifted geographer, and one of the most intelligent
men I ever came across, he, like so many Russians, disliked writing.
When he had made an oral communication at a meeting of the Society he
could not be induced to write anything beyond revising the reports
of his communication, so that all that has been published under his
signature is very far from doing full justice to the real value of
the observations and the generalizations he had made. This reluctance
to put down in writing the results of thought and observation is
unfortunately not uncommon in Russia. His remarks on the orography of
Turkestan, on the geographical distribution of plants and animals,
and especially on the part played by hybrids in the production of new
species of birds, which I have heard him make, or on the importance of
mutual support in the progressive development of species which I have
found just mentioned in a couple of lines in some report of a meeting,
bore the stamp of more than an ordinary talent and originality; but he
did not possess the exuberant force of exposition in an appropriately
beautiful form, which might have made of him one of the most prominent
men of science of our time.
Miklúkho Makláy, well known in Australia, which towards the end of his
life became the country of his adoption, belonged to the same order
of men--the men who have had so much more to say than they have said
in print. He was a tiny, nervous man, always suffering from malaria,
who had just returned from the coasts of the Red Sea, when I made his
acquaintance. A follower of Hæckel, he had worked a great deal upon
the marine invertebrates in their life surroundings. The Geographical
Society managed next to get him taken on board a Russian man-of-war
to some unknown part of the coast of New Guinea, where he wanted to
study the most primitive savages. Accompanied by one sailor only, he
was left on this inhospitable shore, the inhabitants of which had the
reputation of being cannibals. A hut was built for the two Robinsons,
and they lived eighteen months or more by the side of a native village
on excellent terms with the natives. Always to be straightforward
towards them, and never to deceive them--not even in the most trifling
matters--not even for scientific purposes--was his ethics. On this
point he was most scrupulous. When he was travelling some time later
on in the Malayan peninsula he had with him a native who had entered
into his service on the express condition of never being photographed.
The natives, as everyone knows, consider that something is taken out
of them when their likeness is taken by photography. Makláy, who was
collecting anthropological materials, confessed that one day, when the
man was fast asleep, he was awfully tempted to photograph him, the
more so as he was a typical representative of his tribe and he would
have never known that he had been photographed. But Makláy remembered
his promise and never did it. When he left New Guinea the natives
made him promise to return; and a few years later, although he was
severely ill, he kept his word and did return. This remarkable man has,
however, published only an infinitesimal part of the truly invaluable
observations he had made.
Fédchenko, who had made extensive travels and zoological observations
in Turkestan--in company with his wife, Olga Fédchenko, also a
naturalist--was, as we used to say, a ‘West European.’ He worked hard
to bring out in an elaborated form the results of his observations; but
he was, unfortunately, killed in climbing a mountain in Switzerland.
Glowing with youthful ardour after his journeys in the Turkestan
mountains, and full of confidence in his own powers, he undertook an
ascent without proper guides, and perished in a snowstorm. His wife,
happily, completed the publication of his ‘Travels’ after his death,
and I believe she has now a son who continues the work of his father
and mother.
I also saw a great deal of Prjeválsky, or rather Przewalski, as his
Polish name ought to be spelt, although he himself preferred to appear
as a ‘Russian patriot.’ He was a passionate hunter, and the enthusiasm
with which he made his explorations of Central Asia was almost as much
the result of his desire to hunt all sorts of difficult game--bucks,
wild camels, wild horses, and so on--as of his desire to discover lands
new and difficult to approach. When he was induced to speak of his
discoveries he would soon interrupt his modest descriptions with an
enthusiastic exclamation: ‘But what game there! What hunting! ...’ and
he would describe passionately how he crept such and such a distance
to approach a wild horse within shooting range. No sooner was he back
at St. Petersburg than he schemed a new expedition, and parsimoniously
laid aside all his money, trying to increase it by Stock Exchange
operations, for a new expedition. He was the type of a traveller
by his strong physique and his capacity for enduring the life of a
mountain hunter, full of privations. He delighted in leading such a
life. He made his first journey with only three comrades, and always
kept on excellent terms with the natives. However, as his subsequent
expeditions took a more military character, he began unfortunately to
rely upon the force of his armed escort in preference to a peaceful
intercourse with the natives, and I heard it said in well-informed
quarters that if he had not died at the very start of his Tibet
expedition--so admirably and peacefully conducted after his death by
his companions, Pyevtsóff, Roboróvsky, and Kozlóff--he very probably
would not have returned alive.
There was considerable activity at that time in the Geographical
Society, and numerous were the geographical questions in which our
section, and consequently its secretary, took a lively interest. Most
of them were too technical to be mentioned in this place, but I must
allude to the awakening of interest in navigation, in the fisheries
and trade in the Russian portion of the Arctic Ocean, which took place
in these years. A Siberian merchant and goldminer, Sídoroff, made the
most persevering efforts to awaken that interest. He foresaw that
with a little aid in the shape of naval schools, the exploration of
the Norman Coast and the White Sea, and so on, the Russian fisheries
and Russian navigation could be largely developed. But unfortunately
that little had to be done all through St. Petersburg, and the ruling
portion of that courtly, bureaucratic, red-tapist, literary, artistic,
and cosmopolitan city could not be moved to take an interest in
anything ‘provincial.’ Poor Sídoroff was simply ridiculed for his
efforts. Interest in our far North had to be enforced upon the Russian
Geographical Society from abroad.
In the years 1869-71 the bold Norwegian seal-hunters had quite
unexpectedly opened the Kara Sea to navigation. To our extreme
astonishment we learned one day at the Society that the sea which lies
between the island of Nóvaya Zemlyá and the Siberian coast, and which
we used confidently to describe in our writings as ‘an ice cellar
permanently stocked with ice’, had been entered by a number of small
Norwegian schooners and crossed by them in all directions. Even the
wintering place of the famous Dutchman Barentz, which we believed to
be concealed for ever from the eyes of man by ice-fields hundreds of
years old, had been visited by these adventurous Norsemen.
‘Exceptional seasons and an exceptional state of the ice’ was what our
elder navigators said. But to a few of us it was quite evident that,
with their small schooners and their small crews, the bold Norwegian
hunters, who feel at home amid the ice, had ventured to pierce the
floating ice which usually bars the way to the Kara Sea, while the
commanders of Government ships, hampered by the responsibilities of the
naval service, had never risked doing so.
A general interest in Arctic exploration was awakened by these
discoveries. In fact, it was the seal-hunters who opened the new era of
Arctic enthusiasm which culminated in Nordenskjöld’s circumnavigation
of Asia, in the permanent establishment of the north-eastern passage
to Siberia, in Peary’s discovery of North Greenland, and in Nansen’s
‘Fram’ expedition. Our Russian Geographical Society also began to move,
and a committee was appointed to prepare the scheme of a Russian Arctic
expedition, and to indicate the scientific work that could be done
by it. Specialists undertook to write each of the special scientific
chapters of this report; but, as often happens, a few chapters
only--botany, geology, and meteorology--were ready in time, and I,
as secretary of the committee, had to write the remainder. Several
subjects, such as marine zoology, the tides, pendulum observations, and
terrestrial magnetism, were quite new to me; but the amount of work
which a healthy man can accomplish in a short time, if he strains all
his forces and goes straight to the root of the subject, no one would
suppose beforehand--and so my report was ready.
It concluded by advocating a great Arctic expedition, which would
awaken in Russia a permanent interest in Arctic questions and Arctic
navigation, and in the meantime a reconnoitring expedition on board
a schooner chartered in Norway with its captain, pushing north or
north-east of Nóvaya Zemlyá. This expedition, we suggested, might
also try to reach, or at least to sight, an unknown land which must
be situated at no great distance from Nóvaya Zemlyá. The probable
existence of such a land had been indicated by an officer of the
Russian navy, Baron Schilling, in an excellent but little known paper
on the currents in the Arctic Ocean. When I read this paper, as also
Lütke’s ‘Journey to Nóvaya Zemlyá,’ and made myself acquainted with the
general conditions of this part of the Arctic Ocean, I saw at once that
the supposition must be correct. There must be a land to the north-west
of Nóvaya Zemlyá, and it must reach a higher latitude than Spitzbergen.
The steady position of the ice at the west of Nóvaya Zemlyá, the mud
and stones on it, and various other smaller indications confirmed the
hypothesis. Besides, if such a land were not located there, the ice
current which flows westward from the meridian of Behring Strait to
Greenland (the current of the ‘Fram’s’ drift) would, as Baron Schilling
had truly remarked, reach the North Cape and cover the coasts of
Laponia with masses of ice, just as it covers the northern extremity of
Greenland. The warm current alone--a feeble continuation of the Gulf
Stream--could not have prevented the accumulation of ice on the coasts
of Northern Europe. This land, as is known, was discovered a couple of
years later by the Austrian expedition, and named Franz Josef Land.
The Arctic report had a quite unexpected result for me. I was offered
the leadership of the reconnoitring expedition, on board a Norwegian
schooner chartered for the purpose. I replied, of course, that I had
never been to sea; but I was told that by combining the experience of a
Carlsen or a Johansen with the initiative of a man of science something
valuable could be done; and I should have accepted had not the Ministry
of Finance at this juncture interposed with its veto. It replied that
the Exchequer could not grant the three or four thousand pounds which
would be required for the expedition. Since that time Russia has taken
no part in the exploration of the Arctic seas. The land which we
distinguished through the subpolar mists was discovered by Payer and
Weyprecht, and the archipelagoes which must exist to the north-east of
Nóvaya Zemlyá--I am even more firmly persuaded of it now than I was
then--remain undiscovered.
Instead of joining an Arctic expedition I was sent out by the
Geographical Society on a modest tour in Finland and Sweden, to explore
the glacial deposits; and that journey drifted me in a quite different
direction.
The Russian Academy of Sciences sent out this summer two of its
members--the old geologist General Helmersen and Friedrich Schmidt, the
indefatigable explorer of Siberia--to study the structure of those long
ridges of drift which are known as _åsar_ in Sweden and Finland, and
as _esker_, _kames_, and so on, in the British Isles. The Geographical
Society sent me to Finland for the same purpose. We visited, all three,
the beautiful ridge of Pungaharju and then separated. I worked hard
during this summer. I travelled a great deal in Finland, and crossed
over to Sweden, where I spent many happy hours in the company of A.
Nordenskjöld. Already then (in 1871) he mentioned to me his schemes
of reaching the mouths of the Siberian rivers, and even the Behring
Strait, by the northern route. Returning to Finland I continued my
researches till late in the autumn, and collected a mass of most
interesting observations relative to the glaciation of the country.
But I also thought a great deal during this journey about social
matters, and these thoughts had a decisive influence upon my subsequent
development.
All sorts of valuable materials relative to the geography of Russia
passed through my hands in the Geographical Society, and the idea
gradually came to me of writing an exhaustive physical geography of
that immense part of the world. My intention was to give a thorough
geographical description of the country, basing it upon the main lines
of the surface structure which I began to disentangle for European
Russia; and to sketch in that description the different forms of
economic life which ought to prevail in different physical regions.
Take, for instance, the wide prairies of Southern Russia, so often
visited by droughts and failures of crops. These droughts and failures
must not be treated as accidental calamities: they are as much a
natural feature of that region as its position on a southern slope,
its fertility, and the rest; and the whole of the economic life of the
southern prairies ought to be organized in prevision of the unavoidable
recurrence of periodical droughts. Each region of the Russian Empire
ought to be treated in the same scientific way, as Karl Ritter treated
parts of Asia in his beautiful monographs.
But such a work would have required plenty of time and full freedom for
the writer, and I often thought how helpful to this end it would be
were I to occupy some day the position of secretary to the Geographical
Society. Now, in the autumn of 1871, as I was working in Finland,
slowly moving on foot toward the sea coast along the newly built
railway, and closely watching the spot where the first unmistakable
traces of the former extension of the post-glacial sea would appear, I
received a telegram from the Geographical Society: ‘The council begs
you to accept the position of secretary to the Society.’ At the same
time the outgoing secretary strongly urged me to accept the proposal.
My hopes were realized. But in the meantime other thoughts and other
longings had pervaded my mind. I seriously thought over the reply, and
wired, ‘Most cordial thanks, but cannot accept.’
III
It often happens that men pull in a certain political, social, or
familiar harness simply because they never have time to ask themselves
whether the position they stand in and the work they accomplish are
right; whether their occupations really suit their inner desires and
capacities, and give them the satisfaction which everyone has the right
to expect from his work. Active men are especially liable to find
themselves in such a position. Every day brings with it a fresh batch
of work, and a man throws himself into his bed late at night without
having completed what he expected to have done; then in the morning
he hurries to the unfinished task of the previous day. Life goes, and
there is no time left to think, no time to consider the direction that
one’s life is taking. So it was with me.
But now, during my journey in Finland, I had leisure. When I was
crossing in a Finnish two-wheeled _karria_ some plain which offered
no interest to the geologist, or when I was walking, hammer on
shoulder, from one gravel pit to another, I could think; and, amidst
the undoubtedly interesting geological work I was carrying on, one
idea, which appealed far more strongly to my inner self than geology,
persistently worked in my mind.
I saw what an immense amount of labour the Finnish peasant spends in
clearing the land and in breaking up the hard boulder clay, and I said
to myself, ‘I will write, let me say, the physical geography of this
part of Russia, and tell the peasant the best means of cultivating
this soil. Here an American stump-extractor would be invaluable; there
certain methods of manuring would be indicated by science.... But what
is the use of talking to this peasant about American machines, when he
has barely enough bread to live upon from one crop to the next; when
the rent which he has to pay for that boulder clay grows heavier and
heavier in proportion to his success in improving the soil? He gnaws at
his hard-as-a-stone rye-flour cake, which he bakes twice a year; he has
with it a morsel of fearfully salted cod and a drink of skimmed milk.
How dare I talk to him of American machines, when all that he can raise
must be sold to pay rent and taxes? He needs me to live with him, to
help him to become the owner or the free occupier of that land. Then he
will read books with profit, but not now.’
And my thoughts wandered from Finland to our Nikólskoye peasants, whom
I had lately seen. Now they are free, and they value freedom very much.
But they have no meadows. In one way or another the landlords have got
nearly all the meadows for themselves. When I was a child the Savókhins
used to send out six horses for night pasture; the Tolkachóffs had
seven. Now these families have only three horses each; other families,
which formerly had three horses, have only one or none. What can be
done with one miserable horse? No meadows, no horses, no manure! How
can I talk to them of grass-sowing? They are already ruined--poor as
Lazarus--and in a few years they will be made still poorer by a foolish
taxation. How happy they were when I told them that my father gave them
permission to mow the grass in the small open spaces in his Kóstino
forest! ‘Your Nikólskoye peasants are _ferocious_ for work,’ that is
the common saying about them in our neighbourhood; but the arable land,
which our stepmother has taken out of their allotments in virtue of the
‘law of minimum’--that diabolic clause introduced by the serf-owners
when they were allowed to revise the emancipation law--is now a forest
of thistles, and the ‘ferocious’ workers are not allowed to till it.
And the same sort of thing goes on throughout Russia. Even at that time
it was evident, and official commissioners gave warning of it, that
the first serious failure of crops in Middle Russia would result in a
terrible famine--and famine came, in 1876, in 1884, in 1891, in 1895,
and again in 1898.
Science is an excellent thing. I knew its joys and valued them,
perhaps more than many of my colleagues did. Even now, as I was
looking on the lakes and the hillocks of Finland, new and beautiful
generalizations arose before my eyes. I saw in a remote past, at the
very dawn of mankind, the ice accumulating from year to year in the
northern archipelagoes, over Scandinavia and Finland. An immense
growth of ice invaded the north of Europe and slowly spread as far
as its middle portions. Life dwindled in that part of the northern
hemisphere, and, wretchedly poor, uncertain, it fled further and
further south before the icy breath which came from that immense
frozen mass. Man--miserable, weak, ignorant--had every difficulty in
maintaining a precarious existence. Ages passed away, till the melting
of the ice began, and with it came the lake period, when countless
lakes were formed in the cavities, and a wretched subpolar vegetation
began timidly to invade the unfathomable marshes with which every lake
was surrounded. Another series of ages passed before an extremely
slow process of drying up set in, and vegetation began its slow
invasion from the south. And now we are fully in the period of a rapid
desiccation, accompanied by the formation of dry prairies and steppes,
and man has to find out the means to put a check to that desiccation
to which Central Asia already has fallen a victim, and which menaces
South-Eastern Europe.
Belief in an ice cap reaching Middle Europe was at that time rank
heresy; but before my eyes a grand picture was rising, and I wanted
to draw it, with the thousands of details I saw in it; to use it as a
key to the present distribution of floras and faunas; to open up new
horizons to geology and physical geography.
But what right had I to these higher joys, when all round me was
nothing but misery and struggle for a mouldy bit of bread; when
whatsoever I should spend to enable me to live in that world of higher
emotions must needs be taken from the very mouths of those who grew
the wheat and had not bread enough for their children? From somebody’s
mouth it must be taken, because the aggregate production of mankind
remains still so low.
Knowledge is an immense power. Man must know. But we already know much!
What if that knowledge--and only that--should become the possession of
all? Would not science itself progress in leaps and cause mankind to
make strides in production, invention, and social creation, of which we
are hardly in a condition now to measure the speed?
The masses want to know: they are willing to learn; they _can_ learn.
There, on the crest of that immense moraine which runs between the
lakes, as if giants had heaped it up in a hurry to connect the two
shores, there stands a Finnish peasant plunged in contemplation of the
beautiful lakes, studded with islands, which lie before him. Not one
of these peasants, poor and downtrodden though they may be, will pass
this spot without stopping to admire the scene. Or there, on the shore
of a lake, stands another peasant, and sings something so beautiful
that the best musician would envy him his melody for its feeling and
its meditative power. Both deeply feel, both meditate, both think; they
are ready to widen their knowledge: only give it to them; only give
them the means of getting leisure. This is the direction in which,
and these are the kind of people for whom, I must work. All those
sonorous phrases about making mankind progress, while at the same time
the progress-makers stand aloof from those whom they pretend to push
onwards, are mere sophisms made up by minds anxious to shake off a
fretting contradiction.
So I sent my negative reply to the Geographical Society.
IV
St. Petersburg had changed greatly from what it was when I left it in
1862. ‘Oh yes, you knew the St. Petersburg of Chernyshévsky,’ the poet
Máikoff remarked to me once. True, I knew the St. Petersburg of which
Chernyshévsky was the favourite. But how shall I describe the city
which I found on my return? Perhaps as the St. Petersburg of the _cafés
chantants_, of the music halls, if the words ‘all St. Petersburg’ ought
really to mean the upper circles of society, which took their keynote
from the Court.
At the Court, and in its circles, liberal ideas were in sorely bad
repute. All prominent men of the sixties, even such moderates as Count
Nicholas Muravióff and Nicholas Milútin, were treated as suspects.
Only Dmítri Milútin, the Minister of War, was kept by Alexander II. at
his post, because the reform which he had to accomplish in the army
required many years for its realization. All other active men of the
reform period had been brushed aside.
I spoke once with a high dignitary of the Ministry for foreign affairs.
He sharply criticized another high functionary, and I remarked in the
latter’s defence, ‘Still there is this to be said for him, that he
never accepted service under Nicholas I.’ ‘And now he is in service
under the reign of Shuváloff and Trépoff!’ was the reply, which so
correctly described the situation that I could say nothing more.
General Shuváloff, the chief of the State police, and General Trépoff,
the chief of the St. Petersburg police, were indeed the real rulers
of Russia. Alexander II. was their executive, their tool. And they
ruled by fear. Trépoff had so frightened Alexander by the spectre of a
revolution which was going to break out at St. Petersburg, that if the
omnipotent chief of the police was a few minutes late in appearing with
his daily report at the palace, the Emperor would ask, ‘Is everything
quiet at St. Petersburg?’
Shortly after Alexander II, had given an ‘entire dismissal’ to Princess
X. he conceived a warm friendship for General Fleury, the aide-de-camp
of Napoleon III., that sinister man who was the soul of the _coup
d’état_ of December 2, 1852. They were continually seen together,
and Fleury once informed the Parisians of the great honour which was
bestowed upon him by the Russian Tsar. As the latter was riding along
the Nevsky Perspective he saw Fleury, and asked him to mount into his
carriage, an _égoïste_ which had a seat only twelve inches wide, for a
single person; and the French general recounted at length how the Tsar
and he, holding fast to each other, had to leave half of their bodies
hanging in the air on account of the narrowness of the seat. It is
enough to name this friend, fresh from Compiègne, to suggest what the
friendship meant.
Shuváloff took every advantage of the present state of mind of his
master. He prepared one reactionary measure after another, and when
Alexander showed reluctance to sign any of them Shuváloff would speak
of the coming revolution and the fate of Louis XVI., and, ‘for the
salvation of the dynasty,’ would implore him to sign the new additions
to the laws of repression. For all that sadness and remorse would from
time to time besiege Alexander. He would fall into a gloomy melancholy,
and speak in a sad tone of the brilliant beginning of his reign, and
of the reactionary character which it was taking. Then Shuváloff would
organize an especially lively bear hunt. Hunters, merry courtiers, and
carriages full of ballet girls would go to the forests of Nóvgorod. A
couple of bears would be killed by Alexander II., who was a good shot
and used to let the animal approach to within a few yards of his rifle;
and there, in the excitement of the hunting festivities, Shuváloff
would obtain his master’s consent to any scheme of repression which he
had concocted.
Alexander II. certainly was not a rank and file man, but two different
men lived in him, both strongly developed, struggling with each other;
and this inner struggle became more and more violent as he advanced in
age. He could be charming in his behaviour, and the next moment display
sheer brutality. He was possessed of a calm, reasoned courage in the
face of a real danger, but he lived in constant fear of dangers which
existed in his brain only. He assuredly was not a coward; he would meet
a bear face to face; on one occasion, when the animal was not killed
outright by his first bullet, and the man who stood behind him with a
lance, rushing forward, was knocked down by the bear, the Tsar came
to his rescue, and killed the bear close to the muzzle of his gun (I
know this from the man himself); yet he was haunted all his life by the
fears of his own imagination and of an uneasy conscience. He was very
kind in his manner toward his friends, but that kindness existed side
by side with the terrible cold-blooded cruelty--a seventeenth-century
cruelty--which he displayed in crushing the Polish insurrection, and
later on in 1880, when similar measures were taken to crush the revolt
of the Russian youth--a cruelty of which no one would have thought him
capable. He thus lived a double life, and at the period of which I am
speaking he merrily signed the most reactionary decrees, and afterward
became despondent about them. Towards the end of his life this inner
struggle, as will be seen later on, became still stronger, and assumed
an almost tragical character.
In 1872 Shuváloff was nominated ambassador in England, but his friend
General Potápoff continued the same policy till the beginning of
the Turkish war in 1877. During all this time the most scandalous
plundering of the State exchequer, and also of the Crown lands, of the
estates confiscated in Lithuania after the insurrection, of the Bashkir
lands in Orenbúrg, and so on, was proceeding on a grand scale. Several
such scandals were subsequently brought to light and some of them were
judged by the Senate, acting as high court of justice, after Potápoff,
who became insane, and Trépoff had been dismissed, and their rivals at
the palace wanted to show them to Alexander II. in their true light. In
one of these judicial inquiries it came out that a friend of Potápoff
had most shamelessly robbed the peasants of a Lithuanian estate of
their lands, and afterward, empowered by his friends at the Ministry
of the Interior, he had caused the peasants, who sought redress, to
be imprisoned, subjected to wholesale flogging, and shot down by the
troops. This was one of the most revolting stories of the kind even
in the annals of Russia, which teem with similar robberies up to the
present time. It was only after Véra Zasúlich had shot at Trépoff
and wounded him (to avenge his having ordered one of the political
prisoners to be flogged in prison) that the thefts of this party became
widely known and Trépoff was dismissed. Thinking he was going to die,
he wrote his will, from which it became known that this man, who had
made the Tsar believe he was poor, even though he had occupied for
years the lucrative post of chief of the St. Petersburg police, left in
reality to his heirs a considerable fortune. Some courtiers carried the
report to Alexander II. Trépoff lost his credit, and it was then that
a few of the robberies of the Shuváloff-Potápoff-Trépoff party were
brought before the Senate.
* * * * *
The pillage which went on in all the ministries, especially in
connection with the railways and all sorts of industrial enterprises,
was really enormous. Immense fortunes were made at that time. The navy,
as Alexander II. himself said to one of his sons, was ‘in the pockets
of So-and-so.’ The cost of the railways, guaranteed by the State, was
simply fabulous. As to commercial enterprises, it was openly known that
none could be launched unless a specified percentage of the dividends
was promised to different functionaries in the several ministries.
A friend of mine, who intended to start some enterprise at St.
Petersburg, was frankly told at the Ministry of the Interior that he
would have to pay twenty-five per cent. of the net profits to a certain
person, fifteen per cent. to one man at the Ministry of Finances, ten
per cent. to another man in the same ministry, and five per cent.
to a fourth person. The bargains were made without concealment, and
Alexander II. knew it. His own remarks, written on the reports of the
Comptroller-General, bear testimony to this. But he saw in the thieves
his protectors from the revolution, and kept them until their robberies
became an open scandal.
The young grand dukes, with the exception of the heir-apparent,
afterwards Alexander III., who always was a good and thrifty
_paterfamilias_, followed the example of the head of the family. The
orgies which one of them used to arrange in a small restaurant on
the Nevsky Perspective were so degradingly notorious that one night
the chief of the police had to interfere and warned the owner of the
restaurant that he would be marched to Siberia if he ever again let his
‘grand duke’s room’ to the grand duke. ‘Imagine my perplexity,’ this
man said to me on one occasion, when he was showing me that room, the
walls and ceiling of which were upholstered with thick satin cushions,
‘On the one side I had to offend a member of the Imperial Family, who
could do with me what he liked, and on the other side General Trépoff
menaced me with Siberia! Of course I obeyed the General; he is, as
you know, omnipotent now.’ Another grand duke became conspicuous for
ways belonging to the domain of psychopathy; and a third was exiled to
Turkestan, after he had stolen the diamonds of his mother.
The Empress Marie Alexándrovna, abandoned by her husband, and probably
horrified at the turn which Court life was taking, became more and
more a devotee, and soon she was entirely in the hands of the
palace priests, a representative of a quite new type in the Russian
Church--the Jesuitic. This new genus of well-combed, depraved, and
Jesuitic clergy made rapid Progress at that time; already they were
working hard and with success to become a power in the State and to lay
hands on the schools.
It has been proved over and over again that the village clergy in
Russia are so much taken up by their functions--performing baptisms
and marriages, administering Communion to the dying, and so on--that
they cannot pay due attention to the schools; even when the priest is
paid for giving the Scripture lesson at a village school he usually
passes that lesson to some one else, as he has no time to attend to
it himself. Nevertheless the higher clergy, exploiting the hatred of
Alexander II. toward the so-called revolutionary spirit, began their
campaign for laying their hands upon the schools. ‘No schools unless
clerical ones’ became their motto. All Russia wanted education, but
even the ridiculously small sum of two million roubles included every
year in the State budget for primary schools used _not_ to be spent
by the Ministry of Public Instruction, while nearly as much was given
to the Synod as an aid for establishing schools under the village
clergy--schools most of which existed, and now exist, on paper only.
All Russia wanted technical education, but the Ministry opened
only classical gymnasia, because formidable courses of Latin and
Greek were considered the best means of preventing the pupils from
reading and thinking. In these gymnasia only two or three per cent.
of the pupils succeeded in completing an eight years’ course, all
boys promising to become something and to show some independence of
thought being carefully sifted out before they could reach the last
form, and all sorts of measures were taken to _reduce_ the numbers
of pupils. Education was considered as a sort of luxury, for the
few only. At the same time the Ministry of Education was engaged
in a continuous, passionate struggle against all private persons
and institutions--district and county councils, municipalities,
and the like--which endeavoured to open teachers’ seminaries or
technical schools, or even simple primary schools. Technical
education--in a country which was so much in want of engineers,
educated agriculturists, and geologists--was treated as equivalent to
revolutionism. It was prohibited, prosecuted; so that up to the present
time, every autumn, something like two or three thousand young men are
refused admission to the higher technical schools from mere lack of
vacancies. A feeling of despair took possession of all those who wished
to do anything useful in public life; while the peasantry were ruined
at an appalling rate by over-taxation, and by ‘beating out’ of them the
arrears of the taxes by means of semi-military executions, which ruined
them for ever. Only those governors of the provinces were in favour at
the capital who managed to beat out the taxes in the most severe ways.
Such was the official St. Petersburg. Such was the influence it
exercised upon Russia.
V
When we were leaving Siberia we often talked, my brother and I, of
the intellectual life which we should find at St. Petersburg, and of
the interesting acquaintances we should make in the literary circles.
We made such acquaintances, indeed, both among the radicals and among
the moderate Slavophiles; but I must confess that they were rather
disappointing. We found plenty of excellent men--Russia is full of
excellent men--but they did not quite correspond to our ideal of
political writers. The best writers--Chernyshévsky, Mikháiloff,
Lavróff--were in exile, or were kept in the fortress of St. Peter and
St. Paul, like Písareff. Others, taking a gloomy view of the situation,
had changed their ideas, and were leaning toward a sort of paternal
absolutism; while the greater number, though holding still to their
beliefs, had become so cautious in expressing them that their prudence
was almost equal to desertion.
At the height of the reform period nearly everyone in the advanced
literary circles had had some relations either with Hérzen or with
Turguéneff and his friends, or with the ‘Great Russian’ or the ‘Land
and Freedom’ secret societies, which had at that period an ephemeral
existence. Now, these same men were only the more anxious to bury their
former sympathies as deep as possible, so as to appear above political
suspicion.
One or two of the liberal reviews which were tolerated at that time,
owing chiefly to the superior diplomatic talents of their editors,
contained excellent material, showing the ever-growing misery and
the desperate conditions of the great mass of the peasants, and
making clear enough the obstacles that were put in the way of every
progressive worker. The amount of such facts was enough to drive one
to despair. But no one dared to suggest any remedy, or to hint at any
field of action, at any outcome from a position which was represented
as hopeless. Some writers still cherished the hope that Alexander II.
would once more assume the character of reformer; but with the majority
the fear of seeing their reviews suppressed, and both editors and
contributors marched ‘to some more or less remote part of the empire,’
dominated all other feelings. Fear and hope equally paralyzed them.
The more radical they had been ten years before, the greater were their
fears. My brother and I were very well received in one or two literary
circles, and we went occasionally to their friendly gatherings; but
the moment the conversation began to lose its frivolous character,
or my brother, who had a great talent for raising serious questions,
directed it toward home affairs, or toward the state of France,
where Napoleon III. was hastening to his fall in 1870, some sort of
interruption was sure to occur. ‘What do you think, gentlemen, of the
latest performance of “La Belle Hélène”?’ or, ‘What is your opinion of
that cured fish?’ was loudly asked by one of the elder guests, and the
conversation was brought to an end.
Outside the literary circles things were even worse. In the sixties
Russia, especially in St. Petersburg, was full of men of advanced
opinions, who seemed ready at that time to make any sacrifices for
their ideas. ‘What has become of them?’ I asked myself. I looked up
some of them; but, ‘Prudence, young man!’ was all they had to say.
‘Iron is stronger than straw,’ or ‘One cannot break a stone wall with
his forehead,’ and similar proverbs, unfortunately too numerous in the
Russian language, constituted now their code of practical philosophy.
‘We have done something in our life: ask no more from us;’ or, ‘Have
patience: this sort of thing will not last,’ they told us, while we,
the youth, were ready to resume the struggle, to act, to risk, to
sacrifice everything, if necessary, and only asked them to give us
advice, some guidance and some intellectual support.
Turguéneff has depicted in ‘Smoke’ some of the ex-reformers from
the upper layers of society, and his picture is disheartening. But
it is especially in the heartrending novels and sketches of Madame
Kohanóvskaya, who wrote under the pseudonym of ‘V. Krestóvsky’
(she must not be confounded with another novel-writer, Vsévolod
Krestóvsky), that one can follow the many aspects which the degradation
of the ‘liberals of the sixties’ took at that time. ‘The joy of
living’--perhaps the joy of having survived--became their goddess,
as soon as the nameless crowd which ten years before made the
force of the reform movement refused to hear any more of ‘all that
sentimentalism.’ They hastened to enjoy the riches which poured into
the hands of ‘practical’ men.
Many new ways to fortune had been opened since serfdom had been
abolished, and the crowd rushed with eagerness into these channels.
Railways were feverishly made in Russia; to the lately opened private
banks the landlords went in numbers to mortgage their estates; the
newly established private notaries and lawyers at the courts were in
the possession of large incomes; the shareholders’ companies multiplied
with an appalling rapidity and the promoters flourished. A class of men
who formerly would have lived in the country on the modest income of a
small estate cultivated by a hundred serfs, or on a still more modest
salary of a functionary in a law court, now made fortunes, or had such
yearly incomes as in the times of serfdom were possible only for the
land magnates.
The very taste of ‘society’ sank lower and lower. The Italian Opera,
formerly a forum for radical demonstrations, was now deserted; the
Russian Opera, timidly asserting the rights of its great composers, was
frequented by a few enthusiasts only. Both were found ‘tedious,’ and
the cream of St. Petersburg society crowded to a vulgar theatre where
the second-rate stars of the Paris small theatres won easy laurels from
their _jeunesse dorée_ admirers, or went to see ‘La Belle Hélène,’
which was played on the Russian stage, while our great dramatists were
forgotten. Offenbach’s music reigned supreme.
* * * * *
It must be said that the political atmosphere was such that the best
men had reasons, or had at least weighty excuses, for keeping quiet.
After Karakózoff had shot at Alexander II. in April 1866 the State
police had become omnipotent. Everyone suspected of ‘radicalism,’ no
matter what he had done or what he had not done, had to live under
the fear of being arrested any night for the sympathy he might have
shown to some one involved in this or that political affair, or for
an innocent letter intercepted in a midnight search, or simply for
his ‘dangerous’ opinions; and arrest for political reasons might mean
anything--years of seclusion in the fortress of St. Peter and St. Paul,
transportation to Siberia, or even torture in the casemates of the
fortress.
This movement of the circles of Karakózoff remains up to this date very
imperfectly known, even in Russia. I was at that time in Siberia, and
know of it only by hearsay. It appears, however, that two different
currents combined in it. One of them was the beginning of that great
movement ‘towards the people’ which later on took such a formidable
extension, while the other current was mainly political. Groups of
young men, some of whom were on the road to become brilliant university
professors, or men of mark as historians and ethnographers, had come
together about 1864, with the intention of carrying to the people
education and knowledge in spite of the opposition of the Government.
They went as mere artisans to great industrial towns, and started there
co-operative associations, as well as informal schools, hoping that by
the exercise of much tact and patience they might be able to educate
the people, and thus to create the first centres from which better and
higher conceptions would gradually radiate amongst the masses. Their
zeal was great; considerable fortunes were brought into the service of
the cause; and I am inclined to think that, compared with all similar
movements which took place later on, this one stood perhaps on the most
practical basis. Its initiators certainly were very near to the working
people.
On the other side, with some of the members of these
circles--Karakózoff, Ishútin, and their nearest friends--the movement
took a political direction. During the years from 1862 to 1866 the
policy of Alexander II. had assumed a decidedly reactionary character;
he had surrounded himself with men of the most reactionary type, taking
them as his nearest advisers; the very reforms which made the glory
of the beginning of his reign were now wrecked wholesale by means of
by-laws and ministerial circulars: a return to manorial justice and
serfdom in a disguised form was openly expected in the old camp; while
no one could hope at that time that the main reform--the abolition of
serfdom--could withstand the assaults directed against it from the
Winter Palace itself. All this must have brought Karakózoff and his
friends to the idea that a further continuance of Alexander II.’s
reign would be a menace even to the little that had been won; that
Russia would have to return to the horrors of Nicholas I. if Alexander
continued to rule. Great hopes were felt at the same time--this is ‘an
often repeated story, but always new’--as to the liberal inclinations
of the heir to the throne and his uncle Constantine. I must also
say that before 1866 such fears and such considerations were not
unfrequently expressed in much higher circles than those with which
Karakózoff seems to have been in contact. At any rate Karakózoff shot
at Alexander II. one day, as he was coming out of the Summer Garden to
take his carriage. The shot missed, and Karakózoff was arrested on the
spot.
Katkóff, the leader of the Moscow reactionary party, and a great
master in extracting pecuniary profits from every political
disturbance, at once accused all radicals and liberals of complicity
with Karakózoff--which was certainly false--and insinuated in his
paper--making all Moscow believe it--that Karakózoff was a mere
instrument in the hands of the Grand Duke Constantine, the leader of
the reform party in the highest spheres. One can imagine how the two
rulers, Shuváloff and Trépoff, exploited these accusations and the
fears of Alexander II.
Mikhael Muravióff, who had won during the Polish insurrection his
nickname of ‘the Hangman,’ received orders to make a most searching
inquiry, and to discover by every possible means the plot which was
supposed to exist. He made arrests in all classes of society, ordered
hundreds of searches, and boasted that he ‘would find the means to
render the prisoners more talkative.’ He certainly was not the man
to recoil even before torture; and public opinion in St. Petersburg
was almost unanimous in saying that Karakózoff was tortured to obtain
avowals, but made none.
State secrets are well kept in fortresses, especially in that huge
mass of stone opposite the Winter Palace, which has seen so many
horrors, only in recent times disclosed by historians. It still keeps
Muravióff’s secrets. However the following may perhaps throw some light
on this matter.
In 1866 I was in Siberia. One of our Siberian officers, who travelled
from Russia to Irkútsk toward the end of that year, met at a post
station two gendarmes. They had accompanied to Siberia a functionary
exiled for theft, and were now returning home. Our Irkútsk officer, who
was a very amiable man, finding the gendarmes at the tea table on a
cold winter night, joined them and chatted with them while the horses
were being changed. One of the men knew Karakózoff.
‘He was cunning, he was,’ he said. ‘When he was in the fortress we
were ordered, two of us--we were relieved every two hours--not to let
him sleep. So we kept him sitting on a small stool, and as soon as he
began to doze we shook him to keep him awake.... What will you? we were
ordered to do so!... Well, see how cunning he was: he would sit with
crossed legs, swinging one of his legs to make us believe that he was
awake, and himself, in the meantime, would get a nap, continuing to
swing his leg. But we soon made it out and told those who relieved us,
so that he was shaken and waked up every few minutes, whether he swung
his legs or not.’ ‘And how long did that last?’ my friend asked. ‘Oh,
many days--more than one week.’
The naïve character of this description is in itself a proof of
veracity: it could not have been invented; and that Karakózoff was
tortured to this degree may be taken for granted.
When Karakózoff was hanged one of my comrades from the corps of pages
was present at the execution with his regiment of cuirassiers. ‘When
he was taken out of the fortress,’ my comrade told me, ‘sitting on
the high platform of the cart which was jolting on the rough glacis
of the fortress, my first impression was that they were bringing out
an india-rubber doll to be hanged, that Karakózoff was already dead.
Imagine that the head, the hands, the whole body were absolutely loose,
as if there were no bones in the body, or as if the bones had all been
broken. It was a terrible thing to see, and to think what it meant.
However, when two soldiers took him down from the cart I saw that he
moved his legs and made strenuous endeavours to walk by himself and to
ascend the steps of the scaffold. So it was not a doll, nor could he
have been in a swoon. All the officers were very much puzzled at the
circumstance and could not explain it.’ When, however, I suggested to
my comrade that perhaps Karakózoff had been tortured the colour came
into his face, and he replied, ‘So we all thought.’
Absence of sleep for weeks would alone be sufficient to explain the
state in which that morally very strong man was during the execution.
I may add that I have the absolute certitude that--at least in one
case--drugs were administered to a prisoner in the fortress--namely,
‘Sabúroff,’ in 1879. Did Muravióff limit the torture to this only? Was
he prevented from going any further, or not? I do not know. But this
much I know: that I often heard from high officials at St. Petersburg
that torture had been resorted to in this case.
Muravióff had promised to root out all radical elements in St.
Petersburg, and all those who had had in any degree a radical past now
lived under the fear of falling into the despot’s clutches. Above all
they kept aloof from the younger people, from fear of being involved
with them in some perilous political associations. In this way a chasm
was opened not only between the ‘fathers’ and the ‘sons,’ as Turguéneff
described it in his novel, not only between the two generations, but
also between all men who had passed the age of thirty and those who
were in their early twenties. Russian youth stood consequently in the
position not only of having to fight in their fathers the defenders
of serfdom, but of being left entirely to themselves by their elder
brothers, who were unwilling to join them in their leanings toward
socialism, and were afraid to give them support even in their struggle
for more political freedom. Was there ever before in history, I ask
myself, a youthful band engaging in a fight against so formidable a
foe, so deserted by fathers and even by elder brothers, although those
young men had merely taken to heart, and had tried to realize in life,
the intellectual inheritance of these same fathers and brothers? Was
there ever a struggle undertaken in more tragical conditions than these?
VI
The only bright point which I saw in the life of St. Petersburg was the
movement which was going on amongst the youth of both sexes. Various
currents joined to produce the mighty agitation which soon took an
underground and revolutionary character, and engrossed the attention of
Russia for the next fifteen years. I shall speak of it in a subsequent
chapter; but I must mention in this place the movement which was
carried on, quite openly, by our women for obtaining access to higher
education. St. Petersburg was at that time its main centre.
Every afternoon the young wife of my brother, on her return from the
women’s pedagogical courses which she followed, had something new to
tell us about the animation which prevailed there. Schemes were laid
for opening a medical academy and universities for women; debates
upon schools or upon different methods of education were organized in
connection with the courses, and hundreds of women took a passionate
interest in these questions, discussing them over and over again
in private. Societies of translators, publishers, printers, and
bookbinders were started, in order that work might be provided for the
poorest members of the sisterhood who flocked to St. Petersburg, ready
to do any sort of work, only to live in the hope that they, too, would
some day have their share of higher education. A vigorous, exuberant
life reigned in those feminine centres, in striking contrast to what I
met with elsewhere.
Since the Government had shown its determined intention not to admit
women to the existing universities they had directed all their efforts
toward opening universities of their own. They were told at the
Ministry of Education that the girls who had passed through the girls’
gymnasia (the high schools) were not prepared to follow university
lectures. ‘Very well,’ they replied, ‘permit us to open intermediate
courses, preparatory to the university, and impose upon us any
programme you like. We ask no grants from the State. Only give us the
permission, and it will be done.’ Of course the permission was not
given.
Then they started private courses and drawing-room lectures in all
parts of St. Petersburg. Many university professors, in sympathy with
the new movement, volunteered to give lectures. Poor men themselves,
they warned the organizers that any mention of remuneration would be
taken as a personal offence. Natural science excursions used to be
made every summer in the neighbourhood of St. Petersburg, under the
guidance of university professors, and women constituted the bulk
of the excursionists. In the courses for midwives they forced the
professors to treat each subject in a far more exhaustive way than was
required by the programme, or to open additional courses. They took
advantage of every possibility, of every breach in the fortress, to
storm it. They gained admission to the anatomical laboratory of old
Dr. Gruber, and by their admirable work they won this enthusiast of
anatomy entirely to their side. If they learned that a professor had
no objection to letting them work in his laboratory on Sundays and at
night on week days, they took advantage of the opening, working late on
week days and all day on Sunday.
At last, notwithstanding all the opposition of the Ministry, they
opened the intermediate courses, only giving them the name of
pedagogical courses. Was it possible, indeed, to forbid future mothers
studying the methods of education? But as the methods of teaching
botany or mathematics could not be taught in the abstract, botany,
mathematics, and the rest were soon introduced into the curriculum of
the pedagogical courses, which became preparatory for the university.
Step by step the women thus widened their rights. As soon as it became
known that at some German university a certain professor might open
his lecture-room to a few women, they knocked at his door and were
admitted. They studied law and history at Heidelberg, and mathematics
at Berlin; at Zürich more than a hundred girls and women worked at
the University and the Polytechnicum. There they won something more
valuable than the degree of Doctor of Medicine; they won the esteem of
the most learned professors, who expressed it publicly several times.
When I came to Zürich in 1872, and became acquainted with some of the
students, I was astonished to see quite young girls, who were studying
at the Polytechnicum, solving intricate problems of the theory of heat,
with the aid of the differential calculus, as easily as if they had had
years of mathematical training. One of the Russian girls who studied
mathematics under Weierstrass at Berlin, Sophie Kovalévsky, became a
mathematician of high repute, and was invited to a professorship at
Stockholm; she was, I believe, the first woman in our century to hold a
professorship in a university for men. She was so young that in Sweden
no one wanted to call her anything but by her diminutive name of Sónya.
In spite of the open hatred of Alexander II. for educated women--when
he met in his walks a girl wearing spectacles and a round Garibaldian
cap he began to tremble, thinking that she must be a Nihilist bent on
shooting him--in spite of the bitter opposition of the State police,
who represented every woman student as a revolutionist; in spite of the
thunders and the vile accusations which Katkóff directed against the
whole of the movement in almost every number of his venomous gazette,
the women succeeded, in the teeth of the Government, in opening a
series of educational institutions. When several of them had obtained
medical degrees abroad they forced the Government, in 1872, to let
them open a medical academy with their own private means. And when the
Russian women were recalled by their Government from Zürich, to prevent
their intercourse with the revolutionist refugees, they forced the
Government to let them open in Russia four universities of their own,
which soon had nearly a thousand pupils. It seems almost incredible,
but it is a fact that notwithstanding all the prosecutions which the
Women’s Medical Academy had to live through, and its temporary closure,
there are now in Russia more than six hundred and seventy women
practising as doctors.
* * * * *
It was certainly a grand movement, astounding in its success and
instructive in a high degree. Above all it was through the unlimited
devotion of a mass of women in all possible capacities that they gained
their successes. They had already worked as sisters of charity during
the Crimean war, as organizers of schools later on, as the most devoted
schoolmistresses in the villages, as educated midwives and doctors’
assistants amongst the peasants. They went afterward as nurses and
doctors in the fever-stricken hospitals during the Turkish war of 1878,
and won the admiration of the military commanders and of Alexander II.
himself. I know two ladies, both very eagerly ‘wanted’ by the State
police, who served as nurses during the war, under assumed names which
were guaranteed by false passports; one of them, the greater ‘criminal’
of the two, who had taken a prominent part in my escape, was even
appointed head nurse of a large hospital for wounded soldiers, while
her friend nearly died from typhoid fever. In short, women took any
position, no matter how low in the social scale, and no matter what
privations it involved, if only they could be in any way useful to
the people; not a few of them, but hundreds and thousands. They have
_conquered_ their rights in the true sense of the word.
Another feature of this movement was that in it the chasm between the
two generations--the older and the younger sisters--did not exist; or,
at least, it was bridged over to a great extent. Those who were the
leaders of the movement from its origin never broke the link which
connected them with their younger sisters, even though the latter were
far more advanced in their ideals than the older women were.
They pursued their aims in the higher spheres; they kept strictly aloof
from any political agitation; but they never committed the fault of
forgetting that their true force was in the masses of younger women,
of whom a great number finally joined the radical or revolutionary
circles. These leaders were correctness itself--I considered them
too correct--but they did not break with those younger students who
went about as typical Nihilists, with short-cropped hair, disdaining
crinoline, and betraying their democratic spirit in all their
behaviour. The leaders did not mix with them, and occasionally there
was friction, but they never repudiated them--a great thing, I believe,
in those times of madly raging prosecutions.
They seemed to say to the younger and more democratic people, ‘We
shall wear our velvet dresses and chignons, because we have to deal
with fools who see in a velvet dress and a chignon the tokens of
“political reliability;” but you, girls, remain free in your tastes
and inclinations.’ When the women who studied at Zürich were ordered
by the Russian Government to return, these correct ladies did not turn
against the rebels. They simply said to the Government, ‘You don’t like
it? Well, then, open women’s universities at home; otherwise our girls
will go abroad in still greater numbers, and of course will enter into
relations with the political refugees.’ When they were reproached with
breeding revolutionists, and were menaced with the closing of their
academy and universities, they retorted, ‘Yes, many students become
revolutionists; but is that a reason for closing all universities?’ How
few political leaders have the moral courage not to turn against the
more advanced wing of their own party!
The real secret of their wise and fully successful attitude was
that none of the women who were the soul of that movement were mere
‘feminists,’ desirous to get their share of the privileged positions in
society and the State. Far from that. The sympathies of most of them
went with the masses. I remember the lively part which Miss Stásova,
the veteran leader of the agitation, took in the Sunday schools in
1861, the friendships she and her friends made among the factory girls,
the interest they manifested in the hard life of those girls outside
the school, the fights they fought against their greedy employers. I
recall the keen interest which the women showed, at their pedagogical
courses, in the village schools and in the work of those few who, like
Baron Korff, were permitted for some time to do something in that
direction, and the social spirit which permeated their courses. The
rights they strove for--both the leaders and the great bulk of the
women--were not only the individual right to higher instruction, but
much more, far more, the right to be useful workers among the people,
the masses. This was why they succeeded to such an extent.
VII
For the last few years the health of my father had been going from
bad to worse, and when my brother Alexander and I came to see him, in
the spring of 1871, we were told by the doctors that with the first
frosts of autumn he would be gone. He had continued to live in the old
style, in the Stáraya Konúshennaya, but around him everything in this
aristocratic quarter had changed. The rich serf-owners, who once were
so prominent there, had gone. After having spent in a reckless way
the redemption money which they had received at the emancipation of
the serfs, and after having mortgaged and re-mortgaged their estates
in the new land banks which preyed upon their helplessness, they had
withdrawn at last to the country or to provincial towns, there to sink
into oblivion. Their houses had been taken by ‘the intruders’--rich
merchants, railway contractors, and the like--while in nearly every
one of the old families which remained in the Old Equerries’ Quarters
a young life struggled to assert its rights upon the ruins of the
old one. A couple of retired generals, who cursed the new ways, and
relieved their griefs by predicting for Russia a certain and speedy
ruin under the new order, or some relative occasionally dropping in,
were all the company my father had now. Out of our many relatives,
numbering nearly a score of families at Moscow alone in my childhood,
two families only had remained in the capital, and these had joined the
current of the new life, the mothers discussing with their girls and
boys such matters as schools for the people and women’s universities.
My father looked upon them with contempt. My stepmother and my younger
stepsister, Pauline, who had not changed, did their best to comfort
him; but they themselves felt strange in their unwonted surroundings.
My father had always been unkind and most unjust toward my brother
Alexander, but Alexander was utterly incapable of holding a grudge
against anyone. When he entered our father’s sick-room, with the deep,
kind look of his dark blue eyes and with a smile revealing his infinite
kindness, and when he immediately found out what could be done to
render the sufferer more comfortable in his sick-chair, and did it
as naturally as if he had left the sick-room only an hour before, my
father was simply bewildered; he stared at him without being able to
understand. Our visit brought life into the dull, gloomy house; nursing
became more bright; my stepmother, Pauline, the servants themselves,
grew more animated, and my father felt the change.
One thing worried him, however. He had expected to see us come as
repentant sons, imploring his support. But when he tried to direct
conversation into that channel we stopped him with such a cheerful
‘Don’t bother about that; we get on very nicely,’ that he was still
more bewildered. He looked for a scene in the old style--his sons
begging pardon, and money--perhaps he even regretted for a moment that
this did not happen; but he regarded us with a greater esteem. We were
all three affected at parting. He seemed almost to dread returning
to his gloomy loneliness amidst the wreckage of a system he had lived
to maintain. But Alexander had to go back to his service, and I was
leaving for Finland.
When I was called home again, from Finland, I hurried to Moscow, to
find the burial ceremony just beginning, in that same old red church
where my father had been baptized, and where the last prayers had
been said over his mother. As the funeral procession passed along the
streets, of which every house was familiar to me in my childhood, I
noticed that the houses had changed little, but I knew that in all of
them a new life had begun.
In the house which had formerly belonged to our father’s mother and
then to Princess Mírski, and which now was bought by General N----,
an old inhabitant of the Quarter, the only daughter of the family
maintained for a couple of years a painful struggle against her
good-natured but obstinate parents, who worshipped her but would not
allow her to study at the university courses which had been opened for
ladies at Moscow. At last she was allowed to join these courses, but
was taken to them in an elegant carriage, under the close supervision
of her mother, who courageously sat for hours on the benches
amongst the students, by the side of her beloved daughter; and yet,
notwithstanding all this care and watchfulness, a couple of years later
the daughter joined the revolutionary party, was arrested, and spent
one year in the fortress of St. Peter and St. Paul.
In the house opposite, the despotic heads of the family, Count and
Countess Z----, were in a bitter struggle against their two daughters,
who were sick of the idle and useless existence their parents forced
them to lead, and who wanted to join those other girls who, free and
happy, flocked to the university courses. The struggle lasted for
years; the parents did not yield in this case, and the result of it
was that the elder girl ended her life by poisoning herself, when her
younger sister was allowed to follow her own inclinations.
In the house next door, which had been our family residence for a year,
when I entered it with Tchaykóvsky to hold in it the first secret
meeting of a circle which we founded at Moscow, I at once recognized
the rooms which had been so familiar to me, in such a different
atmosphere, in my childhood. It now belonged to the family of Nathalie
Armfeld, that highly sympathetic Kará ‘convict’ whom George Kennan has
so touchingly described in his book on Siberia.
And in a house within a stone’s throw of that where my father had died,
and within a few months after his death, I received Stepniák, clothed
as a peasant, he having escaped from a country village where he had
been arrested for socialist propaganda amongst the peasants.
Such was the change which had been accomplished in the Old Equerries’
Quarter within the last fifteen years. The last stronghold of the old
nobility was now invaded by the new spirit.
VIII
The next year, early in the spring, I made my first journey to
Western Europe. In crossing the Russian frontier I experienced, even
more intensely than I was prepared to do, what every Russian feels
on leaving his mother country. So long as the train runs on Russian
ground, through the thinly populated north-western provinces, one has
the feeling of crossing a desert. Hundreds of miles are covered with
low growths which hardly deserve the name of forests. Here and there
the eye discovers a small, miserably poor village buried in the snow,
or an impracticable, muddy, narrow, and winding village road. But
everything--scenery and surroundings--changes all of a sudden as soon
as the train enters Prussia, with its clean-looking villages and farms,
its gardens, and its paved roads; and the sense of contrast grows
stronger and stronger as one penetrates further into Germany. Even dull
Berlin seemed animated after our Russian towns.
And the contrast of climate! Two days before I had left St. Petersburg
thickly covered with snow, and now, in Middle Germany, I walked without
an overcoat along the railway platform, in warm sunshine, admiring
the budding flowers. Then came the Rhine, and further on Switzerland,
bathed in the rays of a bright sun, with its small, clean hotels, where
breakfast was served out of doors, in view of the snow-clad mountains.
I never before had realized so vividly what Russia’s northern position
meant, and how the history of the Russian nation had been influenced
by the fact that the main centres of its life had to develop in high
latitudes, as far north as the shores of the Gulf of Finland. Only then
I fully understood the uncontrollable attraction which southern lands
have exercised on the Russians, the colossal efforts which they have
made to reach the Black Sea, and the steady pressure of the Siberian
colonists southward, further into Manchuria.
* * * * *
At that time Zürich was full of Russian students, both women and men.
The famous Oberstrass, near the Polytechnicum, was a corner of Russia,
where the Russian language prevailed over all others. The students
lived as most Russian students do, especially the women--that is,
upon very little. Tea and bread, some milk, and a thin slice of meat
cooked over a spirit lamp, amidst animated discussions about the latest
news of the socialistic world or the last book read, that was their
regular fare. Those who had more money than was needed for such a mode
of living gave it for the ‘common cause’--the library, the Russian
review which was going to be published, the support of the Swiss labour
papers. As to their dress, the most parsimonious economy reigned in
that direction. Pushkin has written in a well-known verse, ‘What hat
may not suit a girl of sixteen?’ Our girls at Zürich seemed defiantly
to throw this question at the population of the old Zwinglian city:
‘Can there be a simplicity in dress which does not become a girl, when
she is young, intelligent, and full of energy?’
With all this the busy little community worked harder than any other
students have ever worked since there were universities in existence,
and the Zürich professors were never tired of showing the progress
accomplished by the women at the university as an example to the male
students.
* * * * *
For many years I had longed to learn all about the International
Workingmen’s Association. Russian papers mentioned it pretty frequently
in their columns, but they were not allowed to speak of its principles
or what it was doing, I felt that it must be a great movement, full of
consequences, but I could not grasp its aims and tendencies. Now that I
was in Switzerland I determined to satisfy my longings.
The Association was then at the height of its development. Great hopes
had been awakened in the years 1840-48 in the hearts of European
workers. Only now we begin to realize what a formidable amount of
socialist literature was circulated in those years by socialists of all
denominations, Christian socialists, State socialists, Fourierists,
Saint-Simonists, Owenites, and so on; and only now we begin to
understand the depth of that movement, and to discover how much of what
our generation has considered the product of contemporary thought was
already developed and said--often with great penetration--during those
years. The republicans understood then under the name of ‘republic’ a
quite different thing from the democratic organization of capitalist
rule which now goes under that name. When they spoke of the United
States of Europe they understood the brotherhood of workers, the
weapons of war transformed into tools, and these tools used by all
members of society for the benefit of all--‘the iron returned to the
labourer,’ as Pierre Dupont said in one of his songs. They meant not
only the reign of equality as regards criminal law and political
rights, but particularly economic equality. The nationalists themselves
saw in their dreams Young Italy, Young Germany, and Young Hungary
taking the lead in far-reaching agrarian and economic reforms.
The defeat of the June insurrection at Paris, of Hungary by the armies
of Nicholas I., and of Italy by the French and the Austrians, and the
fearful reaction, political and intellectual, which followed everywhere
in Europe, totally destroyed that movement. Its literature, its
achievements, its very principles of economic revolution and universal
brotherhood were simply forgotten, lost, during the next twenty years.
However, one idea had survived--the idea of an international
brotherhood of all the workers, which a few French emigrants continued
to preach in the United States, and the followers of Robert Owen in
England. The understanding which was reached by some English workers
and a few French workers’ delegates to the London International
Exhibition of 1862 became then the starting point for a formidable
movement, which soon spread all over Europe, and included several
million workers. The hopes which had been dormant for twenty years
were awakened once more, when the workers were called upon to unite,
‘without distinction of creed, sex, nationality, race, or colour,’ to
proclaim that ‘the emancipation of the workers must be their own work,’
and to throw the weight of a strong, united, international organization
into the evolution of mankind--not in the name of love and charity,
but in the name of justice, of the force that belongs to a body of men
moved by a reasoned consciousness of their own aims and aspirations.
Two strikes at Paris, in 1868 and 1869, more or less helped by small
contributions sent from abroad, especially from England, insignificant
though they were in themselves, and the prosecutions which the Imperial
Government directed against the International, became the origin of
an immense movement, in which the solidarity of the workers of all
nations was proclaimed in the face of the rivalries of the States.
The idea of an international union of all trades, and of a struggle
against capital with the aid of international support, carried away the
most indifferent of the workers. The movement spread like wildfire in
France, Belgium, Italy, and Spain, bringing to the front a great number
of intelligent, active, and devoted workers, and attracting to it some
decidedly superior men and women from the wealthier educated classes.
A force, never before suspected to exist, grew stronger every day in
Europe; and if the movement had not been arrested in its growth by the
Franco-German war, great things would probably have happened in Europe,
deeply modifying the aspects of our civilization, and undoubtedly
accelerating human progress. Unfortunately, the crushing victory of the
Germans brought about abnormal conditions in Europe; it stopped for a
quarter of a century the normal development of France, and threw all
Europe into a period of militarism, which we are still living in at the
present moment.
* * * * *
All sorts of partial solutions of the great social question had
currency at that time among the workers--co-operation, productive
associations supported by the State, people’s banks, gratuitous credit,
and so on. Each of these solutions was brought before the ‘sections’
of the Association, and then before the local, regional, national,
and international congresses, and eagerly discussed. Every annual
congress of the Association marked a new step in advance, in the
development of ideas about the great social problem which stands before
our generation and calls for a solution. The amount of intelligent
things which were said at these congresses, and of scientifically
correct, deeply thought over ideas which were circulated--all being
the results of the _collective_ thought of the workers--has never yet
been sufficiently appreciated; but there is no exaggeration in saying
that all schemes of social reconstruction which are now in vogue
under the name of ‘scientific socialism’ or ‘anarchism’ had their
origin in the discussions and reports of the different congresses of
the International Association. The few educated men who joined the
movement have only put into a theoretical shape the criticisms and the
aspirations which were expressed in the sections, and subsequently in
the congresses, by the workers themselves.
The war of 1870-71 had hampered the development of the Association,
but had not stopped it. In all the industrial centres of Switzerland
numerous and animated sections of the International existed, and
thousands of workers flocked to their meetings, at which war was
declared upon the existing system of private ownership of land and
factories, and the near end of the capitalist system was proclaimed.
Local congresses were held in various parts of the country, and at each
of these gatherings most arduous and difficult problems of the present
social organization were discussed, with a knowledge of the matter and
a depth of conception which alarmed the middle classes even more than
did the numbers of adherents who joined the sections, or groups, of
the International. The jealousies and prejudices which had hitherto
existed in Switzerland between the privileged trades (the watchmakers
and jewellers) and the rougher trades (weavers, building trades, and
so on), and which had prevented joint action in labour disputes, were
disappearing. The workers asserted with increasing emphasis that of all
the divisions which exist in modern society by far the most important
is that between the owners of capital and those who not only come into
the world penniless, but are doomed to remain producers of wealth for
the favoured few.
Italy, especially middle and northern Italy, was honeycombed with
groups and sections of the International; and in these the Italian
unity so long struggled for was declared a mere illusion. The workers
were called upon to make their own revolution--to take the land for the
peasants and the factories for the workers themselves, and to abolish
the oppressive centralized organization of the State, whose historical
mission always was to protect and to maintain the exploitation of man
by man.
In Spain similar organizations covered Catalonia, Valencia, and
Andalusia; they were supported by, and united with, the powerful
labour unions of Barcelona, which already then had introduced the
eight hours’ day in the building trades. The International had no less
than eighty thousand regularly paying Spanish members; it embodied
all the active and thinking elements of the population; and by its
distinct refusal to meddle with the political intrigues during 1871-72
it had drawn to itself in an immense degree the sympathies of the
masses. The proceedings of its provincial and national congresses, and
the manifestoes which they issued, were models of a severe logical
criticism of the existing conditions, as well as admirably lucid
statements of the workers’ ideals.
In Belgium, Holland, and even in Portugal the same movement was
spreading, and it had already brought into the Association the great
mass and the best elements of the Belgian coal miners and weavers. In
England the trades unions had also joined the movement, at least in
principle, and, without committing themselves to Socialism, were ready
to support their Continental brethren in direct struggles against
capital, especially in strikes. In Germany the socialists had concluded
a union with the rather numerous followers of Lassalle, and the first
foundations of a social democratic party had been laid. Austria and
Hungary followed in the same track; and although no international
organization was possible at that time in France, after the defeat
of the Commune and the reaction which followed (Draconic laws having
been enacted against the adherents of the Association), everyone was
persuaded, nevertheless, that this period of reaction would not last,
and that France would soon join the Association again and take the lead
in it.
When I came to Zürich I joined one of the local sections of the
International Workingmen’s Association. I also asked my Russian friends
where I could learn more about the great movement which was going on
in other countries. ‘Read,’ was their reply, and my sister-in-law, who
was then studying at Zürich, brought me large numbers of books and
collections of newspapers for the last two years. I spent days and
nights in reading, and received a deep impression which nothing will
efface; the flood of new thoughts awakened is associated in my mind
with a tiny clean room in the Oberstrass, commanding from a window
a view of the blue lake, with the mountains beyond it, where the
Swiss fought for their independence, and the high spires of the old
town--that scene of so many religious struggles.
Socialistic literature has never been rich in books. It is written
for workers, for whom one penny is money, and its main force lies in
its small pamphlets and its newspapers. Moreover he who seeks for
information about socialism finds in books little of what he requires
most. They contain the theories or the scientific arguments in favour
of socialist aspirations, but they give no idea how the workers accept
socialist ideals, and how they could put them into practice. There
remains nothing but to take collections of papers and read them all
through--the news as well as the leading articles--the former, perhaps,
even more than the latter. Quite a new world of social relations and
methods of thought and action is revealed by this reading, which gives
an insight into what cannot be found anywhere else--namely, the depth
and the moral force of the movement, the degree to which men are
imbued with the new theories, their readiness to carry them out in
their daily life and to suffer for them. All discussions about the
impracticability of socialism and the necessary slowness of evolution
are of little value, because the speed of evolution can only be judged
from a close knowledge of the human beings of whose evolution we are
speaking. What estimate of a sum can be made without knowing its
components?
The more I read the more I saw that there was before me a new
world, unknown to me, and totally unknown to the learned makers of
sociological theories--a world that I could know only by living in the
Workingmen’s Association and by meeting the workers in their everyday
life. I decided, accordingly, to spend a couple of months in such a
life. My Russian friends encouraged me, and after a few days’ stay
at Zürich I left for Geneva, which was then a great centre of the
international movement.
* * * * *
The place where the Geneva sections used to meet was the spacious
Masonic Temple Unique. More than two thousand men could come together
in its large hall at the general meetings, while every evening all
sorts of committee and section meetings took place in the side-rooms,
or classes in history, physics, engineering, and so on, were held.
Free instruction was given there to the workers by the few, very few,
middle-class men who had joined the movement, mainly French refugees of
the Paris Commune. It was a people’s university as well as a people’s
forum.
One of the chief leaders of the movement at the Temple Unique was a
Russian, Nicholas Ootin, a bright, clever, and active man; and the
real soul of it was a most sympathetic Russian lady, who was known
far and wide amongst the workers as Madame Olga. She was the working
force in all the committees. Both Ootin and Madame Olga received me
cordially, made me acquainted with all the men of mark in the sections
of the different trades, and invited me to be present at the committee
meetings. So I went, but I preferred being with the workers themselves.
Taking a glass of sour wine at one of the tables in the hall, I used to
sit there every evening amid the workers, and soon became friendly with
several of them, especially with a stonemason from Alsace, who had left
France after the insurrection of the Commune. He had children, just
about the age of the two whom my brother had so suddenly lost a few
months before, and through the children I was soon on good terms with
the family and their friends. I could thus follow the movement from the
inside, and know the workers’ view of it.
The workers had built all their hopes on the international movement.
Young and old flocked to the Temple Unique after their long day’s work,
to get hold of the scraps of instruction which they could obtain there,
or to listen to the speakers who promised them a grand future, based
upon the common possession of all that man requires for the production
of wealth, and upon a brotherhood of men, without distinction of
caste, race, or nationality. All hoped that a great social revolution,
peaceful or not, would soon come and totally change the economic
conditions. No one desired class war, but all said that if the ruling
classes rendered it unavoidable, through their blind obstinacy, the war
must be fought over, provided it would bring with it well-being and
liberty to the down-trodden masses.
One must have lived among the workers at that time to realize the
effect which the sudden growth of the Association had upon their
minds--the trust they put in it, the love with which they spoke of it,
the sacrifices they made for it. Every day, week after week and year
after year, thousands of workers gave their time and their coppers,
taken upon their very food, in order to support the life of each
group, to secure the appearance of the papers, to defray the expenses
of the congresses, to support the comrades who had suffered for the
Association. Another thing that impressed me deeply was the elevating
influence which the International exercised. Most of the Paris
Internationalists were almost total abstainers from drink, and all had
abandoned smoking. ‘Why should I nurture in myself that weakness?’ they
said. The mean, the trivial disappeared to leave room for the grand,
the elevating inspirations.
Outsiders never realize the sacrifices which are made by the workers in
order to keep their labour movements alive. No small amount of moral
courage was required to join openly a section of the International
Association, and to face the discontent of the master and a probable
dismissal at the first opportunity, with the long months out of work
which usually followed. But, even under the best circumstances,
belonging to a trade union, or to any advanced party, requires a series
of uninterrupted sacrifices. Even a few pence given for the common
cause represent a burden on the meagre budget of the European worker,
and many pence have to be disbursed every week. Frequent attendance
at the meetings means a sacrifice too. For us it may be a pleasure to
spend a couple of hours at a meeting, but for men whose working day
begins at five or six in the morning those hours have to be stolen from
necessary rest.
I felt this devotion as a standing reproach. I saw how eager the
workers were to gain instruction, and how despairingly few were those
who volunteered to aid them. I saw how much the toiling masses needed
to be helped by men possessed of education and leisure in their
endeavours to spread and to develop the organization; but few and rare
were those who came to assist without the intention of making political
capital out of this very helplessness of the people! More and more I
began to feel that I was bound to cast in my lot with them. Stepniák
says, in his ‘Career of a Nihilist,’ that every revolutionist has had
a moment in his life when some circumstance, maybe unimportant in
itself, has brought him to pronounce his oath of giving himself to the
cause of revolution. I know that moment; I lived through it after one
of the meetings at the Temple Unique, when I felt more acutely than
ever before how cowardly are the educated men who hesitate to put their
education, their knowledge, their energy at the service of those who
are so much in need of that education and that energy. ‘Here are men,’
I said to myself, ‘who are conscious of their servitude, who work to
get rid of it; but where are the helpers? Where are those who will come
to serve the masses--not to utilize them for their own ambitions?’
* * * * *
Gradually some doubts began, however, to creep into my mind as to the
soundness of the agitation which was carried on at the Temple Unique.
One night a well-known Geneva lawyer, Monsieur A., came to the meeting,
and stated that if he had not hitherto joined the Association it was
because he had first to settle his own business affairs; having now
succeeded in that direction, he came to join the labour movement.
I felt shocked at this cynical avowal, and when I communicated my
reflections to my stone-mason friend he explained to me that this
gentleman, having been defeated at the previous election, when he
sought the support of the radical party, now hoped to be elected by the
support of the labour vote. ‘We accept their services for the present,’
my friend concluded, ‘but when the revolution comes our first move will
be to throw all of them overboard.’
Then came a great meeting, hastily convoked, to protest, as it was
said, against the calumnies of the ‘Journal de Genève.’ This organ of
the moneyed classes of Geneva had ventured to suggest that mischief was
brewing at the Temple Unique, and that the building trades were going
once more to make a general strike, such as they had made in 1869. The
leaders at the Temple Unique called the meeting. Thousands of workers
filled the hall, and Ootin asked them to pass a resolution, the wording
of which seemed to me very strange: an indignant protest was expressed
in it against the inoffensive suggestion that the workers were going
to strike. ‘Why should this suggestion be described as a calumny?’ I
asked myself. ‘Is it, then, a crime to strike?’ Ootin concluded in the
meantime a hurried speech in support of his resolution with the words,
‘If you agree, citizens, with it I will send it at once to the press.’
He was going to leave the platform, when somebody in the hall suggested
that discussion would not be out of place; and then the representatives
of all branches of the building trades stood up in succession, saying
that the wages had lately been so low that they could hardly live upon
them; that with the opening of the spring there was plenty of work in
view, of which they intended to take advantage to increase their wages;
and that if an increase were refused they intended to begin a general
strike.
I was furious, and next day hotly reproached Ootin for his behaviour.
‘As a leader,’ I told him, ‘you were bound to know that a strike had
really been spoken of.’ In my innocence I did not suspect the real
motives of the leaders, and it was Ootin himself who made me understand
that a strike at that time would be disastrous for the election of the
lawyer, Monsieur A.
I could not reconcile this wire-pulling by the leaders with the
burning speeches I had heard them pronounce from the platform. I
felt disheartened, and spoke to Ootin of my intention to make myself
acquainted with the other section of the International Association at
Geneva, which was known as the Bakunísts. The name ‘anarchist’ was
not much in use then. Ootin gave me at once a word of introduction to
another Russian, Nicholas Joukóvsky, who belonged to that section, and,
looking straight into my face, he added with a sigh, ‘Well, you won’t
return to us; you will remain with them.’ He had guessed right.
IX
I went first to Neuchâtel, and then spent a week or so among the
watchmakers in the Jura Mountains. I thus made my first acquaintance
with that famous Jura Federation which played for the next few years an
important part in the development of socialism, introducing into it the
no-government, or anarchist, tendency.
In 1872, the Jura Federation was becoming a rebel against the authority
of the general council of the International Workingmen’s Association.
The Association was essentially a working-men’s organization, the
workers understanding it as a labour movement and not as a political
party. In East Belgium, for instance, they had introduced into the
statutes a clause in virtue of which no one could be a member of a
section unless employed in a manual trade; even foremen were excluded.
The workers were moreover federalist in principle. Each nation, each
separate region, and even each local section had to be left free
to develop on its own lines. But the middle-class revolutionists
of the old school who had entered the International, imbued as
they were with the notions of the centralized, pyramidal secret
organizations of earlier times, had introduced the same notions
into the Workingmen’s Association. Beside the federal and national
councils, a general council was nominated at London, to act as a
sort of intermediary between the councils of the different nations.
Marx and Engels were its leading spirits. It soon appeared, however,
that the mere fact of having such a central body became a source of
substantial inconvenience. The general council was not satisfied with
playing the part of a correspondence bureau; it strove to govern the
movement, to approve or to censure the action of the local federations
and sections, and even of individual members. When the Commune
insurrection began in Paris--and ‘the leaders had only to follow,’
without being able to say whereto they would be led within the next
twenty-four hours--the general council insisted upon directing
the insurrection from London. It required daily reports about the
events, gave orders, favoured this and hampered that, and thus put in
evidence the disadvantage of having a governing body, even within the
Association. The disadvantage became still more apparent when, at a
secret conference held in 1871, the general council, supported by a
few delegates, decided to direct the forces of the Association towards
electoral agitation. It set people thinking about the evils of any
government, however democratic its origin. This was the first spark of
anarchism. The Jura Federation became the centre of opposition against
the general council.
* * * * *
The separation between leaders and workers which I had noticed at
Geneva in the Temple Unique did not exist in the Jura Mountains.
There were a number of men who were more intelligent, and especially
more active, than the others; but that was all. James Guillaume, one
of the most intelligent and broadly educated men I ever met, was a
proof-reader and the manager of a small printing office. His earnings
in this capacity were so small that he had to give his nights to
translating novels from German into French, for which he was paid eight
francs for sixteen pages.
When I came to Neuchâtel, he told me that unfortunately he could not
spare even as much as a couple of hours for a friendly chat. The
printing office was just issuing that afternoon the first number of a
local paper, and in addition to his usual duties of proof-reader and
co-editor, he had to write on the wrappers a thousand addresses of
persons to whom the first three numbers would be sent, and to fasten
himself the wrappers.
I offered to aid him in writing the addresses, but that was not
practicable, because they were either kept in memory or written on
scraps of paper in an unreadable hand.... ‘Well, then,’ said I, ‘I will
come in the afternoon to the office and fasten the wrappers, and you
will give me the time which you may thus save.’
We understood each other. Guillaume warmly shook my hand, and that
was the beginning of our friendship. We spent all the afternoon in
the office, he writing the addresses, I fastening the wrappers, and a
French Communard, who was a compositor, chatting with us all the while
as he rapidly composed a novel, intermingling his conversation with the
sentences which he had to put in type and which he read aloud.
‘The fight in the streets,’ he would say, ‘became very sharp.’... ‘Dear
Mary, I love you.’... ‘The workers were furious and fought like lions
at Montmartre,’ ... ‘and he fell on his knees before her,’ ... ‘and
that lasted for four days. We knew that Galliffet was shooting all
prisoners--the more terrible still was the fight,’ and so on he went,
rapidly lifting the type from the case.
It was late in the evening that Guillaume took off his working blouse,
and we went out for a friendly chat for a couple of hours, when he had
to resume his work as editor of the ‘Bulletin’ of the Jura Federation.
At Neuchâtel I also made the acquaintance of Malon. He was born in a
village, and in his childhood he was a shepherd. Later on he came to
Paris, learned there a trade--basket-making--and, like the book-binder
Varlin and the carpenter Pindy, with whom he was associated in the
International, had come to be widely known as one of the leading
spirits of the Association when it was prosecuted in 1869 by Napoleon
III. All three had entirely won the hearts of the Paris workers, and
when the Commune insurrection broke out they were elected members of
the Council of the Commune, all three receiving formidable numbers of
votes. Malon was also mayor of one of the Paris _arrondissements_.
Now, in Switzerland, he was earning his living as a basket-maker. He
had rented for a few coppers a month a small open shed out of the
town, on the slope of a hill, from which he enjoyed while at work an
extensive view of the Lake of Neuchâtel. At night he wrote letters, a
book on the Commune, short articles for the labour papers--and thus
he became a writer. Every day I went to see him and to hear what this
broad-faced, laborious, slightly poetical, quiet, and most good-hearted
Communard had to tell me about the insurrection in which he took a
prominent part, and which he had just described in a book, ‘The Third
Defeat of the French Proletariate.’
One morning when I had climbed the hill and reached his shed, he met
me quite radiant with the words: ‘You know, Pindy is alive! Here is a
letter from him; he is in Switzerland.’ Nothing had been heard of Pindy
since he was seen last on May 25 or May 26 at the Tuileries, and he
was supposed to be dead, while in reality he remained in concealment
at Paris. And while Malon’s fingers continued to ply the wickers and
to shape them into an elegant basket, he told me in his quiet voice,
which only slightly trembled at times, how many men had been shot by
the Versailles troops on the supposition that they were Pindy, Varlin,
himself, or some other leader. He told me what he knew of the death
of Varlin, the book-binder whom the Paris workers worshipped, or old
Delécluze, who did not want to survive the defeat, and many others; and
he related the horrors which he had witnessed during that carnival of
blood with which the wealthy classes of Paris celebrated their return
to the capital, and then--the spirit of retaliation which took hold
of a crowd, led by Raoul Rigault, which executed the hostages of the
Commune.
His lips quivered when he spoke of the heroism of the children; and
he quite broke down when he told me the story of that boy whom the
Versailles troops were going to shoot, and who asked the officer’s
permission to hand first a silver watch, which he had on, to his
mother, who lived close by. The officer, yielding to a moment of pity,
let the boy go, probably hoping that he would never return. But a
quarter of an hour later the boy was back and, taking his place amidst
the corpses at the wall, said: ‘I am ready.’ Twelve bullets put an end
to his young life.
I think I never suffered so much as when I read that terrible book, ‘Le
Livre Rouge de la Justice Rurale,’ which contained nothing but extracts
from the letters of the _Standard_, _Daily Telegraph_, and _Times_
correspondents, written from Paris during the last days of May 1871,
relating the horrors committed by the Versailles army under Galliffet,
together with a few quotations from the Paris _Figaro_, imbued with a
bloodthirsty spirit towards the insurgents. In reading these pages I
was filled with despair concerning mankind, and should have continued
to despair, had I not afterwards seen in those of the defeated party
who had lived through all these horrors, that absence of hatred, that
confidence in the final triumph of their ideas, that calm though sad
gaze of their eyes directed towards the future, that readiness to
forget the nightmare of the past, which struck me in Malon; in fact, in
nearly all the refugees of the Commune whom I met at Geneva, and which
I still see in Louise Michel, Lefrançais, Elisée Reclus, and other
friends.
From Neuchâtel I went to Sonvilliers. In a little valley in the Jura
hills there is a succession of small towns and villages of which
the French-speaking population was at that time entirely employed
in the various branches of watchmaking; whole families used to work
in small workshops. In one of them I found another leader, Adhémar
Schwitzguébel, with whom, also, I afterward became very closely
connected. He sat among a dozen young men who were engraving lids of
gold and silver watches. I was asked to take a seat on a bench or
table, and soon we were all engaged in a lively conversation upon
socialism, government or no government, and the coming congresses.
In the evening a heavy snowstorm raged; it blinded us, and froze
the blood in our veins, as we struggled to the next village. But,
notwithstanding the storm, about fifty watchmakers, chiefly old people,
came from the neighbouring towns and villages--some of them as far
as seven miles distant--to join in a small informal meeting that was
called for that evening.
The very organization of the watch trade, which permits men to know
one another thoroughly and to work in their own houses, where they
are free to talk, explains why the level of intellectual development
in this population is higher than that of workers who spend all their
life from early childhood in the factories. There is more independence
and more originality among petty trades’ workers. But the absence of
a division between the leaders and the masses in the Jura Federation
was also the reason why there was not a question upon which every
member of the federation would not strive to form his own independent
opinion. Here I saw that the workers were not a mass that was being led
and made subservient to the political ends of a few men; their leaders
were simply their more active comrades--initiators rather than leaders.
The clearness of insight, the soundness of judgment, the capacity for
disentangling complex social questions, which I noticed amongst these
workers, especially the middle-aged ones, deeply impressed me; and I
am firmly persuaded that if the Jura Federation has played a prominent
part in the development of socialism, it is not only on account of the
importance of the no-government and federalist ideas of which it was
the champion, but also on account of the expression which was given to
these ideas by the good sense of the Jura watchmakers. Without their
aid, these conceptions might have remained mere abstractions for a long
time.
The theoretical aspects of anarchism, as they were then beginning to be
expressed in the Jura Federation, especially by Bakúnin; the criticisms
of state socialism--the fear of an economic despotism, far more
dangerous than the merely political despotism--which I heard formulated
there; and the revolutionary character of the agitation, appealed
strongly to my mind. But the equalitarian relations which I found in
the Jura Mountains, the independence of thought and expression which
I saw developing in the workers, and their unlimited devotion to the
cause appealed even more strongly to my feelings; and when I came away
from the mountains, after a week’s stay with the watchmakers, my views
upon socialism were settled. I was an anarchist.
A subsequent journey to Belgium, where I could compare once more the
centralized political agitation at Brussels with the economic and
independent agitation that was going on amongst the clothiers at
Verviers, only strengthened my views. These clothiers were one of the
most sympathetic populations that I have ever met with in Western
Europe.
X
Bakúnin was at that time at Locarno. I did not see him, and now regret
it very much, because he was dead when I returned four years later to
Switzerland. It was he who had helped the Jura friends to clear up
their ideas and to formulate their aspirations; he who had inspired
them with his powerful, burning, irresistible revolutionary enthusiasm.
As soon as he saw that a small newspaper, which Guillaume began to edit
in the Jura hills (at Locle), was sounding a new note of independent
thought in the socialist movement, he came to Locle, talked for whole
days and whole nights long to his new friends about the historical
necessity of a new move in the anarchist direction; he wrote for that
paper a series of profound and brilliant articles on the historical
progress of mankind towards freedom; he infused enthusiasm into his new
friends, and he created that centre of propaganda from which anarchism
spread later on to other parts of Europe.
After he had moved to Locarno--from whence he started a similar
movement in Italy and, through his sympathetic and gifted emissary,
Fanelli, also in Spain--the work that he had begun in the Jura hills
was continued independently by the Jurassians themselves. The name
of ‘Michel’ often recurred in their conversations--not, however, as
that of an absent chief whose opinions would make law, but as that of
a personal friend of whom everyone spoke with love, in a spirit of
comradeship. What struck me most was that Bakúnin’s influence was felt
much less as the influence of an intellectual authority than as the
influence of a moral personality. In conversations about anarchism,
or about the attitude of the federation, I never heard it said,
‘Bakúnin has said so’ or ‘Bakúnin thinks so,’ as if it clenched the
discussion. His writings and his sayings were not a text that one had
to obey--as is often unfortunately the case in political parties. In
all such matters, in which intellect is the supreme judge, everyone in
discussion used his own arguments. Their general drift and tenor might
have been suggested by Bakúnin, or Bakúnin might have borrowed them
from his Jura friends--at any rate, in each individual the arguments
retained their own individual character. I only once heard Bakúnin’s
name invoked as an authority in itself, and that struck me so much that
I even now remember the spot where the conversation took place and its
surroundings. The young men began once in the presence of women some
young men’s talk, not very respectful towards the other sex, when one
of the women present put a sudden stop to it by exclaiming: ‘Pity that
Michel is not here: he would have put you in your place!’ The colossal
figure of the revolutionist who had given up everything for the sake of
the revolution, and lived for it alone, borrowing from his conception
of it the highest and purest conceptions of life, continued to inspire
them.
* * * * *
I returned from this journey with distinct sociological conceptions
which I have retained since, doing my best to develop them in more and
more definite, concrete forms.
There was, however, one point which I did not accept without having
given to it a great deal of thinking and many hours of my nights. I
clearly saw that the immense change which would hand over everything
that is necessary for life and production into the hands of society--be
it the Folk State of the social democrats, or the free unions of freely
associated groups, as the anarchists say--would imply a revolution far
more profound than any of those which history has on record. Moreover,
in such a revolution the workers would have against them, not the
rotten generation of aristocrats against whom the French peasants
and republicans had to fight in the last century--and even that
fight was a desperate one--but the far more powerful, intellectually
and physically, middle classes, which have at their service all the
potent machinery of the modern State. However, I soon noticed that
no revolution, whether peaceful or violent, has ever taken place
without the new ideals having deeply penetrated into the very class
itself whose economical and political privileges had to be assailed.
I had witnessed the abolition of serfdom in Russia, and I knew that
if a conviction of the injustice of their rights had not widely
spread within the serf-owners’ class itself (as a consequence of the
previous evolution and revolutions accomplished in Western Europe),
the emancipation of the serfs would never have been accomplished as
easily as it was in 1861. And I saw that the idea of emancipation of
the workers from the present wage-system was making headway amongst
the middle classes themselves. The most ardent defenders of the present
economical conditions had already abandoned the plea of _right_ in
defending the present privileges--questions as to the _opportuneness_
of such a change having already taken its place. They did not deny
the desirability of some such change, and only asked whether the new
economical organization advocated by the socialists would really be
better than the present one; whether a society in which the workers
would have a dominant voice would be able to manage production better
than the individual capitalists, actuated by mere considerations of
self-interest, manage it at the present time.
Besides, I began gradually to understand that revolutions, _i.e._
periods of accelerated rapid evolution and rapid changes, are as much
in the nature of human society as the slow evolution which incessantly
goes on now among the civilized races of mankind. And each time that
such a period of accelerated evolution and thorough reconstruction
begins, civil war may break out on a small or on a grand scale. The
question is, then, not so much how to avoid revolutions as how to
attain the greatest results with the most limited amount of civil war,
the least number of victims, and a minimum of mutual embitterment.
For that end there is only one means; namely, that the oppressed part
of society should obtain the clearest possible conception of what
they intend to achieve and how, and that they should be imbued with
the enthusiasm which is necessary for that achievement--in which case
they will be sure to attract to their cause the best and the freshest
intellectual forces of the class which is possessed of historically
grown-up privileges.
The Commune of Paris was a terrible example of an outbreak with yet
undetermined ideals. When the workers became, in March 1871, the
masters of the great city, they did not attack the property rights
vested in the middle classes. On the contrary, they took these rights
under their protection. The leaders of the Commune covered the National
Bank with their bodies, and notwithstanding the crisis which had
paralysed industry, and the consequent absence of earning for a mass
of workers, they protected the rights of the owners of the factories,
the trade establishments, and the dwelling-houses at Paris with their
decrees. However, when the movement was crushed, no account was taken
by the middle classes of the modesty of the Communalist claims of the
insurgents. Having lived for two months in fear that the workers would
make an assault upon their property rights, the rich men of France took
upon the workers just the same revenge as if they had made the assault
in reality. Nearly thirty thousand workers were slaughtered, as is
known, not in battle but after they had lost the battle. If the workers
had taken steps towards the socialization of property, the revenge
could not have been more terrible.
If, then, my conclusion was that there are periods in human development
when a conflict is unavoidable, and civil war breaks out quite
independently of the will of particular individuals, let, at least,
these conflicts take place, not on the ground of vague aspirations, but
upon definite issues; not upon secondary points, the insignificance
of which does not diminish the violence of the conflict, but upon
broad ideas which inspire men by the grandness of the horizon which
they bring into view. In this last case the conflict itself will
depend much less upon the efficacy of firearms and guns than upon the
force of the creative genius which will be brought into action in the
work of reconstruction of society. It will depend chiefly upon the
constructive forces of society taking for the moment a free course;
upon the inspirations being of a higher standard, and so winning more
sympathy even from those who, as a class, are opposed to the change.
The conflict, being thus engaged in on larger issues, will purify the
social atmosphere itself; and the numbers of victims on both sides will
certainly be much smaller than they would have been in case the fight
had been fought upon matters of secondary importance in which the lower
instincts of men find a free play.
With these ideas I returned to Russia.
XI
During my journey I had bought a number of books and collections of
socialist newspapers. In Russia such books were ‘unconditionally
prohibited’ by censorship; and some of the collections of newspapers
and reports of international congresses could not be bought for any
amount of money even in Belgium. ‘Shall I part with them, while
my brother and my friends would be so glad to have them at St.
Petersburg?’ I asked myself; and I decided that by all means I must get
them into Russia.
I returned to St. Petersburg _viâ_ Vienna and Warsaw. Thousands of
Jews live by smuggling on the Polish frontier, and I thought that if I
could succeed in discovering only one of them my books would be carried
in safety across the border. However, to alight at a small railway
station near the frontier while every other passenger went on, and to
hunt there for smugglers, would hardly have been reasonable; so I took
a side branch of the railway and went to Cracow. ‘The capital of Old
Poland is near to the frontier,’ I thought, ‘and I shall find there
some Jew who will lead me to the men I seek.’
I reached the once renowned and brilliant city in the evening,
and early next morning went out from my hotel on my search. To my
bewilderment I saw, however, at every street corner and wherever I
turned my eyes in the otherwise deserted market place a Jew, wearing
the traditional long dress and locks of his forefathers, and watching
there for some Polish nobleman or tradesman who might send him on an
errand and pay him a few coppers for the service. I wanted to find
_one_ Jew; and now there were too many of them. Whom should I approach?
I made the round of the town, and then, in my despair, I decided
to accost the Jew who stood at the entrance gate of my hotel--an
immense old palace, of which in former days every hall was filled with
elegant crowds of gaily dressed dancers, but which now fulfilled the
more prosaic function of giving food and shelter to a few occasional
travellers. I explained to the man my desire of smuggling into Russia a
rather heavy bundle of books and newspapers.
‘Very easily done, sir,’ he replied. ‘I will just bring to you the
representative of the Universal Company for the International Exchange
of (let me say) Rags and Bones. They carry on the largest smuggling
business in the world, and he is sure to oblige you.’ Half an hour
later he really returned with the representative of the company--a most
elegant young man, who spoke in perfection Russian, German, and Polish.
He looked at my bundle, weighed it with his hands, and asked what sort
of books were in it.
‘All severely prohibited by Russian censorship; that is why they must
be smuggled in.’
‘Books,’ he said, ‘are not exactly in our line of trade; our business
lies in costly silks. If I were going to pay my men by weight,
according to our silk tariff, I should have to ask you a quite
extravagant price. And then, to tell the truth, I don’t much like
meddling with books. The slightest mishap, and “they” would make of it
a political affair, and then it would cost the Universal Rags and Bones
Company a tremendous sum of money to get clear of it.’
I probably looked very sad, for the elegant young man who represented
the Universal Rags and Bones Company immediately added: ‘Don’t be
troubled. He [the hotel commissionnaire] will arrange it for you in
some other way.’
‘Oh yes. There are scores of ways to arrange such a trifle, to oblige
the gentleman,’ jovially remarked the commissionnaire, as he left me.
In an hour’s time he came back with another young man. This one took
the bundle, put it by the side of the door, and said: ‘It’s all right.
If you leave to-morrow, you shall have your books at such a station in
Russia,’ and he explained to me how it would be managed.
‘How much will it cost?’ I asked.
‘How much are you disposed to pay?’ was the reply.
I emptied my purse on the table, and said: ‘That much for my journey.
The remainder is yours, I will travel third class!’
‘Wai! wai! wai!’ exclaimed both men at once, ‘What are you saying, sir?
Such a gentleman travel third class! Never! No, no, no, that won’t
do.... Eight roubles will do for us, and then one rouble or so for the
commissionnaire, if you are agreeable to it--just as much as you like.
We are not highway robbers, but honest tradesmen.’ And they bluntly
refused to take more money.
I had often heard of the honesty of the Jewish smugglers on the
frontier; but I had never expected to have such a proof of it. Later
on, when our circle imported many books from abroad, or still later,
when so many revolutionists and refugees crossed the frontier in
entering or leaving Russia, there was not a case in which the smugglers
betrayed anyone, or took advantage of the circumstances to exact an
exorbitant price for their services.
Next day I left Cracow; and at the designated Russian station a porter
approached my compartment, and, speaking loudly, so as to be heard by
the gendarme who was walking along the platform, said to me, ‘Here is
the bag your highness left the other day,’ and handed me my precious
parcel.
I was so pleased to have it that I did not even stop at Warsaw, but
continued my journey directly to St. Petersburg, to show my trophies to
my brother.
XII
A formidable movement was developing in the meantime amongst the
educated youth of Russia. Serfdom was abolished. But quite a network
of habits and customs of domestic slavery, of utter disregard of
human individuality, of despotism on the part of the fathers, and
of hypocritical submission on that of the wives, the sons, and the
daughters, had developed during the two hundred and fifty years that
serfdom had existed. Everywhere in Europe, at the beginning of this
century, there was a great deal of domestic despotism--the writings of
Thackeray and Dickens bear ample testimony to it--but nowhere else had
that tyranny attained such a luxurious development as in Russia. All
Russian life, in the family, in the relations between commander and
subordinate, military chief and soldier, employer and employee, bore
the stamp of it. Quite a world of customs and manners of thinking, of
prejudices and moral cowardice, of habits bred by a lazy existence, had
grown up; and even the best men of the time paid a large tribute to
these products of the serfdom period.
Law could have no grip upon these things. Only a vigorous social
movement, which would attack the very roots of the evil, could
reform the habits and customs of everyday life; and in Russia this
movement--this revolt of the individual--took a far more powerful
character, and became far more sweeping in its criticisms, than
anywhere in Western Europe or America. ‘Nihilism’ was the name that
Turguéneff gave it in his epoch-making novel, ‘Fathers and Sons.’
The movement is often misunderstood in western Europe. In the press,
for example, Nihilism is confused with terrorism. The revolutionary
disturbance which broke out in Russia toward the close of the reign
of Alexander II., and ended in the tragical death of the Tsar, is
constantly described as Nihilism. This is, however, a mistake.
To confuse Nihilism with terrorism is as wrong as to confuse a
philosophical movement like Stoicism or Positivism with a political
movement, such as, for example, republicanism. Terrorism was called
into existence by certain special conditions of the political struggle
at a given historical moment. It has lived, and has died. It may revive
and die out again. But Nihilism has impressed its stamp upon the whole
of the life of the educated classes of Russia, and that stamp will be
retained for many years to come. It is Nihilism, divested of some of
its rougher aspects--which were unavoidable in a young movement of that
sort--which gives now to the life of a great portion of the educated
classes of Russia a certain peculiar character which we Russians regret
not to find in the life of Western Europe. It is Nihilism, again, in
its various manifestations which gives to many of our writers that
remarkable sincerity, that habit of ‘thinking aloud,’ which astounds
western European readers.
First of all, the Nihilist declared war upon what may be described as
the ‘conventional lies of civilized mankind.’ Absolute sincerity was
his distinctive feature, and in the name of that sincerity he gave up,
and asked others to give up, those superstitions, prejudices, habits,
and customs which their own reason could not justify. He refused to
bend before any authority except that of reason, and in the analysis of
every social institution or habit he revolted against any sort of more
or less masked sophism.
He broke, of course, with the superstitions of his fathers, and
in his philosophical conceptions he was a positivist, an agnostic,
a Spencerian evolutionist, or a scientific materialist; and while
he never attacked the simple, sincere religious belief which is a
psychological necessity of feeling, he bitterly fought against the
hypocrisy that leads people to assume the outward mask of a religion
which they continually throw aside as useless ballast.
The life of civilized people is full of little conventional lies.
Persons who dislike each other, meeting in the street, make their faces
radiant with a happy smile; the Nihilist remained unmoved, and smiled
only for those whom he was really glad to meet. All those forms of
outward politeness which are mere hypocrisy were equally repugnant to
him, and he assumed a certain external roughness as a protest against
the smooth amiability of his fathers. He saw them wildly talking
as idealist sentimentalists, and at the same time acting as real
barbarians toward their wives, their children, and their serfs; and he
rose in revolt against that sort of sentimentalism, which, after all,
so nicely accommodated itself to the anything but ideal conditions of
Russian life. Art was involved in the same sweeping negation. Continual
talk about beauty, the ideal, art for art’s sake, æsthetics, and the
like, so willingly indulged in--while every object of art was bought
with money exacted from starving peasants or from underpaid workers,
and the so-called ‘worship of the beautiful’ was but a mask to cover
the most commonplace dissoluteness--inspired him with disgust; and the
criticisms of art which one of the greatest artists of the century,
Tolstóy, has now powerfully formulated, the Nihilist expressed in the
sweeping assertion, ‘A pair of boots is more important than all your
Madonnas and all your refined talk about Shakespeare.’
Marriage without love and familiarity without friendship were
repudiated. The Nihilist girl, compelled by her parents to be a doll in
a doll’s house, and to marry for property’s sake, preferred to abandon
her house and her silk dresses; she put on a black woollen dress of the
plainest description, cut off her hair, and went to a high school, in
order to win there her personal independence. The woman who saw that
her marriage was no longer a marriage--that neither love nor friendship
connected any more those who were legally considered husband and
wife--preferred to break a bond which retained none of its essential
features; and she often went with her children to face poverty,
preferring loneliness and misery to a life which, under conventional
conditions, would have given a perpetual lie to her best self.
The Nihilist carried his love of sincerity even into the minutest
details of everyday life. He discarded the conventional forms of
society talk, and expressed his opinions in a blunt and terse way, even
with a certain affectation of outward roughness.
We used in Irkútsk to meet once a week in a club, and to have some
dancing, I was for a time a regular visitor at these _soirées_, but
gradually, having to work, I abandoned them. One night, as I had not
made my appearance for several weeks in succession, a young friend of
mine was asked by one of the ladies why I did not come any more to
their gatherings. ‘He takes a ride now when he wants exercise,’ was the
rather rough reply of my friend. ‘But he might come to spend a couple
of hours with us, without dancing,’ one of the ladies ventured to say.
‘What would he do here?’ retorted my Nihilist friend, ‘talk with you
about fashions and furbelows? He has had enough of that nonsense.’
‘But he sees occasionally Miss So-and-So,’ timidly remarked one of
the young ladies present. ‘Yes, but she is a studious girl,’ bluntly
replied my friend, ‘he helps her with her German.’ I must add that
this undoubtedly rough rebuke had the effect that most of the Irkútsk
girls began next to besiege my brother, my friend, and myself with
questions as to what we should advise them to read or to study. With
the same frankness the Nihilist spoke to his acquaintances, telling
them that all their talk about ‘this poor people’ was sheer hypocrisy
so long as they lived upon the underpaid work of these people whom they
commiserated at their ease as they chatted together in richly decorated
rooms; and with the same frankness a Nihilist would inform a high
functionary that he (the said functionary) cared not a straw for the
welfare of those whom he ruled, but was simply a thief!
With a certain austerity the Nihilist would rebuke the woman who
indulged in small talk, and prided herself on her ‘womanly’ manners
and elaborate toilette. He would bluntly say to a pretty young person:
‘How is it that you are not ashamed to talk this nonsense and to wear
that chignon of false hair?’ In a woman he wanted to find a comrade,
a human personality--not a doll or a ‘muslin girl’--and he absolutely
refused to join in those petty tokens of politeness with which men
surround those whom they like so much to consider as ‘the weaker sex.’
When a lady entered a room a Nihilist did not jump off his seat to
offer it to her--unless he saw that she looked tired and there was no
other seat in the room. He behaved towards her as he would have behaved
towards a comrade of his own sex; but if a lady--who might have been a
total stranger to him---manifested the desire to learn something which
he knew and she knew not, he would walk every night to the far end of
a great city to help her with his lessons. The young man who would
not move his hand to serve a lady with a cup of tea, would transfer
to the girl who came to study at Moscow or St. Petersburg the only
lesson which he had got and which gave him daily bread, simply saying
to her: ‘It is easier for a man to find work than it is for a woman.
There is no attempt at knighthood in my offer, it is simply a matter of
equality.’
Two great Russian novelists, Turguéneff and Goncharóff, have tried to
represent this new type in their novels. Goncharóff, in _Precipice_,
taking a real but unrepresentative individual of this class, made a
caricature of Nihilism. Turguéneff was too good an artist, and had
himself conceived too much admiration for the new type, to let himself
be drawn into caricature painting; but even his Nihilist, Bazároff, did
not satisfy us. We found him too harsh, especially in his relations
with his old parents, and, above all, we reproached him with his
seeming neglect of his duties as a citizen. Russian youth could not
be satisfied with the merely negative attitude of Turguéneff’s hero.
Nihilism, with its affirmation of the rights of the individual and its
negation of all hypocrisy, was but a first step toward a higher type
of men and women, who are equally free, but live for a great cause. In
the Nihilists of Chernyshévsky, as they are depicted in his far less
artistic novel, ‘What is to be Done?’ they saw better portraits of
themselves.
* * * * *
‘It is bitter, the bread that has been made by slaves,’ our poet
Nekrásoff wrote. The young generation actually refused to eat that
bread, and to enjoy the riches that had been accumulated in their
fathers’ houses by means of servile labour, whether the labourers were
actual serfs or slaves of the present industrial system.
All Russia read with astonishment, in the indictment which was produced
at the court against Karakózoff and his friends, that these young men,
owners of considerable fortunes, used to live three or four in the
same room, never spending more than ten roubles (one pound) apiece a
month for all their needs, and giving at the same time their fortunes
for co-operative associations, co-operative workshops (where they
themselves worked), and the like. Five years later, thousands and
thousands of the Russian youth--the best part of it--were doing the
same. Their watchword was, ‘V naród!’ (To the people; be the people.)
During the years 1860-65 in nearly every wealthy family a bitter
struggle was going on between the fathers, who wanted to maintain the
old traditions, and the sons and daughters, who defended their right to
dispose of their life according to their own ideals. Young men left the
military service, the counter, the shop, and flocked to the university
towns. Girls, bred in the most aristocratic families, rushed penniless
to St. Petersburg, Moscow, and Kíeff, eager to learn a profession which
would free them from the domestic yoke, and some day, perhaps, also
from the possible yoke of a husband. After hard and bitter struggles,
many of them won that personal freedom. Now they wanted to utilize it,
not for their own personal enjoyment, but for carrying to the people
the knowledge that had emancipated them.
In every town of Russia, in every quarter of St. Petersburg, small
groups were formed for self-improvement and self-education; the works
of the philosophers, the writings of the economists, the researches
of the young Russian historical school, were carefully read in these
circles, and the reading was followed by endless discussions. The aim
of all that reading and discussion was to solve the great question
which rose before them: In what way could they be useful to the masses?
Gradually, they came to the idea that the only way was to settle
amongst the people and to live the people’s life. Young men went
into the villages as doctors, doctors’ assistants, teachers, village
scribes, even as agricultural labourers, blacksmiths, woodcutters, and
so on, and tried to live there in close contact with the peasants.
Girls passed teachers’ examinations, learned midwifery or nursing, and
went by the hundred into the villages, devoting themselves entirely to
the poorest part of the population.
They went without even having any ideals of social reconstruction or
any thought of revolution; merely and simply they wanted to teach the
mass of the peasants to read, to instruct them, to give them medical
help, or in any way to aid to raise them from their darkness and
misery, and to learn at the same time from them what were _their_
popular ideals of a better social life.
When I returned from Switzerland I found this movement in full swing.
XIII
I hastened, of course, to share with my friends my impressions of the
International Workingmen’s Association and my books. At the university
I had no friends, properly speaking; I was older than most of my
companions, and among young people a difference of a few years is
always an obstacle to complete comradeship. It must also be said that
since the new rules of admission to the university had been introduced
in 1861, the best of the young men, the most developed and the most
independent in thought, were sifted out of the gymnasia, and did not
gain admittance to the university. Consequently, the majority of my
comrades were good boys, laborious, but taking no interest in anything
besides the examinations.
I was friendly with only one of them: let me call him Dmítri Kelnitz.
He was born in South Russia, and, although his name was German, he
hardly spoke German, and his face was South Russian rather than
Teutonic. He was very intelligent, had read a great deal, and had
seriously thought over what he had read. He loved science and deeply
respected it, but, like many of us, he soon came to the conclusion that
to follow the career of a scientific man meant to join the camp of the
Philistines, and that there was plenty of other and more urgent work
that he could do. He attended the university lectures for two years,
and then abandoned them, giving himself entirely to social work. He
lived anyhow; I even doubt if he had a permanent lodging. Sometimes he
would come to me and ask, ‘Have you some paper?’ and, having taken
a supply of it, he would sit at the corner of a table for an hour or
two, diligently making a translation. The little that he earned in this
way was more than sufficient to satisfy all his limited wants. Then he
would hurry to a distant part of the town to see a comrade or to help
a needy friend; or he would cross St. Petersburg on foot, to a remote
suburb, in order to obtain free admission to a college for some boy in
whom the comrades were interested. He was undoubtedly a gifted man.
In Western Europe a man far less gifted would have worked his way to
a position of political or socialist leadership. No such thought ever
entered the brain of Kelnitz. To lead men was by no means his ambition,
and there was no work too insignificant for him to do. This trait,
however, was not distinctive of him alone; all those who had lived some
years in the students’ circles of those times were possessed of it to a
high degree.
Soon after my return Kelnitz invited me to join a circle which was
known among the youth as ‘the Circle of Tchaykóvsky.’ Under this name
it played an important part in the history of the social movement in
Russia, and under this name it will go down to history. ‘Its members,’
Kelnitz said to me, ‘have hitherto been mostly constitutionalists; but
they are excellent men, with minds open to any honest idea; they have
plenty of friends all over Russia, and you will see later on what you
can do.’ I already knew Tchaykóvsky and a few other members of this
circle. Tchaykóvsky had won my heart at our first meeting, and our
friendship has remained unshaken for twenty-seven years.
The beginning of this circle was a very small group of young men and
women--one of whom was Sophie Peróvskaya--who had united for purposes
of self-education and self-improvement. Tchaykóvsky was of their
number. In 1869 Necháieff had tried to start, amidst the youth imbued
with the above-mentioned desire of working amongst the people, a secret
revolutionary organization, and to secure this end he resorted to the
ways of old conspirators, without recoiling even before deceit when
he wanted to force his associates to follow his lead. Such methods
could have no success in Russia, and very soon his society broke down.
All the members were arrested, and some of the best and purest of
the Russian youth went to Siberia before they had done anything. The
circle of self-education of which I am speaking was constituted in
opposition to the methods of Necháieff. The few friends had judged,
quite correctly, that a morally developed individuality must be the
foundation of every organization, whatever political character it
may take afterward and whatever programme of action it may adopt in
the course of future events. This was why the circle of Tchaykóvsky,
gradually widening its programme, spread so extensively in Russia,
achieved such important results, and later on, when the ferocious
prosecutions of the government created a revolutionary struggle,
produced that remarkable set of men and women who fell in the terrible
contest they waged against autocracy.
At that time, however--that is, in 1872--the circle had nothing
revolutionary in it. If it had remained a mere circle of
self-improvement, it would soon have petrified like a monastery.
But the members found a suitable work. They began to spread good
books. They bought the works of Lassalle, Bervi (on the condition of
the labouring classes in Russia), Marx, Russian historical works,
and so on--whole editions--and distributed them among students in
the provinces. In a few years there was not a town of importance
in ‘thirty-eight provinces of the Russian Empire,’ to use official
language, where this circle did not have a group of comrades engaged
in the spreading of that sort of literature. Gradually, following the
general drift of the times, and stimulated by the news which came from
Western Europe about the rapid growth of the labour movement, the
circle became more and more a centre of socialistic propaganda among
the educated youth, and a natural intermediary between numbers of
provincial circles; and then, one day, the ice between students and
workers was broken, and direct relations were established with working
people at St. Petersburg and in some of the provinces. It was at that
juncture that I joined the circle, in the spring of 1872.
All secret societies are fiercely prosecuted in Russia, and the western
reader will perhaps expect from me a description of my initiation and
of the oath of allegiance which I took. I must disappoint him, because
there was nothing of the sort, and could not be; we should have been
the first to laugh at such ceremonies, and Kelnitz would not have
missed the opportunity of putting in one of his sarcastic remarks,
which would have killed any ritual. There was not even a statute. The
circle accepted as members only persons who were well known and had
been tested in various circumstances, and of whom it was felt that they
could be trusted absolutely. Before a new member was received, his
character was discussed with the frankness and seriousness which were
characteristic of the Nihilist. The slightest token of insincerity or
conceit would have barred the way to admission. The circle did not care
either to make a show of numbers, and had no tendency to concentrate
in its hands all the activity that was going on among the youth, or
to include in one organization the scores of different circles which
existed in the capitals and the provinces. With most of them friendly
relations were maintained; they were helped, and they helped us, when
necessity arose, but no assault was made on their autonomy.
The circle preferred to remain a closely united group of friends; and
never did I meet elsewhere such a collection of morally superior men
and women as the score of persons whose acquaintance I made at the
first meeting of the circle of Tchaykóvsky. I still feel proud of
having been received into that family.
XIV
When I joined the circle of Tchaykóvsky, I found its members hotly
discussing the direction to be given to their activity. Some were in
favour of continuing to carry on radical and socialistic propaganda
among the educated youth; but others thought that the sole aim of this
work should be to prepare men who would be capable of arousing the
great inert labouring masses, and that their chief activity ought to
be among the peasants and workmen in the towns. In all the circles and
groups which were formed at that time by the hundred at St. Petersburg
and in the provinces the same discussions went on, and everywhere the
second programme prevailed over the first.
If our youth had merely taken to socialism in the abstract, it might
have felt satisfied with a mere declaration of socialist principles,
including as a distant aim ‘the communistic possession of the
instruments of production,’ and in the meantime it might have carried
on some sort of political agitation. Many middle-class socialist
politicians in Western Europe and America really take this course.
But our youth had been drawn to socialism in quite another way. They
were not theorisers about socialism, but had become socialists by
living no richer than the workers live, by making no distinction
between ‘mine and thine’ in their circles, and by refusing to enjoy
for their own satisfaction the riches they had inherited from their
fathers. They had done with regard to capitalism what Tolstóy advises
should now be done with regard to war--that is, that people, instead
of criticizing war and continuing to wear the military uniform, should
refuse, each one for himself, to be a soldier and to use arms. In the
same way our Russian youth, each one for himself or herself, refused
to take personal advantage of the revenues of their fathers, Such a
youth had to go to the people--and they went. Thousands and thousands
of young men and women had already left their homes, and tried now
to live in the villages and the industrial towns in all possible
capacities. This was not an organized movement: it was one of those
mass movements which occur at certain periods of sudden awakening of
human conscience. Now that small organized groups were formed, ready to
try a systematic effort for spreading ideas of freedom and revolt in
Russia, they were forcibly brought to carry on that propaganda amidst
the dark masses of peasants and workers in the towns. Various writers
have tried to explain this movement ‘to the people’ by influences from
abroad--‘foreign agitators’ is everywhere a favourite explanation.
It is certainly true that our youth listened to the mighty voice of
Bakúnin, and that the agitation of the International Workingmen’s
Association had a fascinating effect upon us. But the movement ‘V
naród’--To the people--had a far deeper origin: it began before
‘foreign agitators’ had spoken to the Russian youth, and even before
the International Association had been founded. It began already in the
groups of Karakózoff in 1866; Turguéneff saw it coming, and already in
1859 faintly indicated it. I did my best to promote that movement in
the circle of Tchaykóvsky; but I was only working with the tide, which
was infinitely more powerful than any individual efforts.
We often spoke, of course, of the necessity of a political agitation
against our absolute government. We saw already that the mass of the
peasants were being driven to unavoidable and irremediable ruin by
foolish taxation, and by the still more foolish selling off of their
cattle to cover the arrears of taxes. We, ‘visionaries,’ saw coming
that complete ruin of a whole population which by this time, alas, has
been accomplished to an appalling extent in Central Russia, and is
confessed by the government itself. We knew how, in every direction,
Russia was being plundered in a most scandalous manner. We knew, and
we learned more every day, of the lawlessness of the functionaries,
and the almost incredible bestiality of many among them. We heard
continually of friends whose houses were raided at night by the police,
who disappeared in prisons, and who--we ascertained later on--had
been transported without judgment to hamlets in some remote province
of Russia. We felt, therefore, the necessity of a political struggle
against this terrible power, which was crushing the best intellectual
forces of the nation. But we saw no possible ground, legal or
semi-legal, for such a struggle.
Our elder brothers did not want our socialistic aspirations, and we
could not part with them. Nay, even if some of us had done so, it
would have been of no avail. The young generation, as a whole, were
treated as ‘suspects,’ and the elder generation feared to have anything
to do with them. Every young man of democratic tastes, every young
woman following a course of higher education, was a suspect in the
eyes of the state police, and was denounced by Katkóff as an enemy of
the state. Cropped hair and blue spectacles worn by a girl, a Scotch
plaid worn in winter by a student, instead of an overcoat, which were
evidences of Nihilist simplicity and democracy, were denounced as
tokens of ‘political unreliability.’ If any student’s lodging came to
be frequently visited by other students, it was periodically invaded
by the state police and searched. So common were the night raids in
certain students’ lodgings that Kelnitz once said, in his mildly
humorous way, to the police officer who was searching the rooms: ‘Why
should you go through all our books, each time you come to make a
search? You might as well have a list of them, and then come once a
month to see if they are all on the shelves; and you might, from time
to time, add the titles of the new ones.’ The slightest suspicion of
political unreliability was sufficient ground upon which to take a
young man from a high school, to imprison him for several months,
and finally to send him to some remote province of the Urals--‘for
an undetermined term,’ as they used to say in their bureaucratic
slang. Even at the time when the circle of Tchaykóvsky did nothing
but distribute books, all of which had been printed with the censor’s
approval, Tchaykóvsky was twice arrested and kept some four or six
months in prison--on the second occasion at a critical time of his
career as a chemist. His researches had recently been published in the
Bulletin of the Academy of Sciences, and he had come up for his final
university examinations. He was released at last, because the police
could not discover sufficient evidence against him to warrant his
transportation to the Urals! ‘But if we arrest you once more,’ he was
told, ‘we shall send you to Siberia.’ In fact, it was a favourite dream
of Alexander II. to have, somewhere in the steppes, a special town,
guarded night and day by patrols of Cossacks, where all suspected young
people could be sent, so as to make of them a city of ten or twenty
thousand inhabitants. Only the menace which such a city might some day
offer prevented him from carrying out this truly Asiatic scheme.
* * * * *
One of our members, an officer, had belonged to a group of young men
whose ambition was to serve in the provincial _Zémstvos_ (district
and county councils). They regarded work in this direction as a high
mission, and prepared themselves for it by serious studies of the
economical conditions of Central Russia. Many young people cherished
for a time the same hopes; but all these hopes vanished at the first
contact with the actual government machinery.
Having granted institutions of a very limited form of self-government
to certain provinces of Russia, the government, immediately after
having passed that law, directed all its efforts to reduce that reform
to nothing and to deprive it of all its meaning and vitality. The
provincial ‘self-government’ had to content itself with the mere
function of state officials who would collect additional local taxes
and spend them for the local needs of the state. Every attempt of the
county councils to take the initiative in any improvement--schools,
teachers’ colleges, sanitary measures, agricultural improvements,
etc.--was met by the central government with suspicion--nay with
hatred--and denounced by the ‘Moscow Gazette’ as ‘separatism,’ as the
creation of ‘a state within the state,’ as rebellion against autocracy.
If anyone were to tell the true history, for example, of the teachers’
college of Tver, or of any similar undertaking of a Zémstvo in
those years, with all the petty persecutions, the prohibitions, the
suspensions, and what not with which the institution was harassed,
no West European, and especially no American reader, would believe
it. He would throw the book aside, saying, ‘It cannot be true; it
is too stupid to be true.’ And yet it was so. Whole groups of the
elected representatives of several Zémstvos were deprived of their
functions, ordered to leave their province and their estates, or were
simply exiled, for having dared to petition the emperor in the most
loyal manner concerning such rights as belonged to the Zémstvos by
law. ‘The elected members of the provincial councils must be simple
ministerial functionaries, and obey the Minister of the Interior:’
such was the theory of the St. Petersburg government. As to the less
prominent people--teachers, doctors, and the like, in the service
of the local councils--they were removed and exiled by the state
police in twenty-four hours, without further ceremony than an order
of the omnipotent Third Section of the imperial chancelry. No longer
ago than last year, a lady whose husband is a rich landowner and
occupies a prominent position in one of the Zémstvos, and who is
herself interested in education, invited eight schoolmasters to her
birthday party. ‘Poor men,’ she said to herself, ‘they never have
the opportunity of seeing anyone but the peasants.’ The day after
the party the village policeman called at the mansion and insisted
upon having the names of the eight teachers, in order to report them
to the police authorities. The lady refused to give the names. ‘Very
well,’ he replied, ‘I will find them out, nevertheless, and make my
report. Teachers _must not_ come together, and I am bound to report
if they do.’ The high position of the lady sheltered the teachers in
this case; but if they had met in the lodgings of one of their own
number they would have received a visit from the state police, and
half of them would have been dismissed by the Ministry of Education;
and if, moreover, an angry word had escaped from one of them during
the police raid, he or she would have been sent to some province of
the Urals. This is what happens to-day, thirty-three years after the
opening of the county and district councils; but it was far worse in
the seventies. What sort of basis for a political struggle could such
institutions offer?
When I inherited from my father his Tambóv estate, I thought very
seriously for a time of settling on that estate, and devoting my energy
to work in the local Zémstvo. Some peasants and the poorer priests of
the neighbourhood asked me to do so. As for myself, I should have been
content with anything I could do, no matter how small it might be, if
only it would help to raise the intellectual level and the well-being
of the peasants. But one day, when several of my advisers were
together, I asked them: ‘Supposing I were to try to start a school, an
experimental farm, a co-operative enterprise, and, at the same time,
also took upon myself the defence of that peasant from our village who
has lately been wronged--would the authorities let me do it?’ ‘Never!’
was the unanimous reply.
An old grey-haired priest, a man who was held in great esteem in our
neighbourhood, came to me a few days later, with two influential
dissenting leaders, and said: ‘Talk with these two men. If you can
manage it, go with them and, Bible in hand, preach to the peasants....
Well, you know what to preach.... No police in the world will find you,
if they conceal you.... There’s nothing to be done besides; that’s what
I, an old man, advise you.’
I told them frankly why I could not assume the part of Wiclif. But
the old man was right. A movement similar to that of the Lollards is
rapidly growing now amongst the Russian peasants. Such tortures as have
been inflicted on the peace-loving Dukhobórs, and such raids upon the
peasant dissenters in South Russia as were made in 1897, when children
were kidnapped so that they might be educated in orthodox monasteries,
will only give to that movement a force that it could not have attained
five-and-twenty years ago.
* * * * *
As the question of agitation for a constitution was continually being
raised in our discussions, I once proposed to our circle to take it up
seriously and to choose an appropriate plan of action. I was always
of the opinion that when the circle decided anything unanimously,
each member ought to put aside his personal feeling and give all his
strength to the task. ‘If you decide to agitate for a constitution,’ I
said, ‘this is my plan: I will separate myself from you, for appearance
sake, and maintain relations with only one member of the circle--for
instance, Tchaykóvsky--through whom I shall be kept informed how you
succeed in your work, and can communicate to you in a general way
what I am doing. My work will be among the courtiers and the higher
functionaries. I have among them many acquaintances, and know a
number of persons who are disgusted with the present conditions. I
will bring them together and unite them, if possible, into a sort of
organization; and then, some day, there is sure to be an opportunity
to direct all these forces toward compelling Alexander II. to give
Russia a constitution. There certainly will come a time when all these
people, feeling that they are compromised, will in their own interest
take a decisive step. If it is necessary, some of us, who have been
officers, might be very helpful in extending the propaganda amongst
the officers in the army; but this action must be quite separate from
yours, though parallel with it. I have seriously thought of it. I know
what connections I have and who can be trusted, and I believe some of
the discontented already look upon me as a possible centre for some
action of this sort. This course is not the one I should take of my own
choice; but if you think that it is best, I will give myself to it with
might and main.’
The circle did not accept that proposal. Knowing one another as well as
they did, my comrades probably thought that if I went in this direction
I should cease to be true to myself. For my own personal happiness, for
my own personal life, I cannot feel too grateful now that my proposal
was not accepted. I should have gone in a direction which was not the
one dictated by my own nature, and I should not have found in it the
personal happiness which I have found in other paths. But when, six
or seven years later, the terrorists were engaged in their terrible
struggle against Alexander II., I regretted that there had not been
somebody else to do the sort of work I had proposed to do in the higher
circles at St. Petersburg. With some understanding there beforehand,
and with the ramifications which such an understanding probably would
have taken all over the empire, the holocausts of victims would not
have been made in vain. At any rate, the underground work of the
executive committee ought by all means to have been supported by a
parallel agitation at the Winter Palace.
Over and over again the necessity of a political effort thus came under
discussion in our little group, with no result. The apathy and the
indifference of the wealthier classes were hopeless, and the irritation
among the persecuted youth had not yet been brought to that high pitch
which ended, six years later, in the struggle of the terrorists under
the Executive Committee. Nay--and this is one of the most tragical
ironies of history--it was the same youth whom Alexander II., in
his blind fear and fury, ordered to be sent by the hundred to hard
labour and condemned to slow death in exile; it was the same youth who
protected him in 1871-78. The very teachings of the socialist circles
were such as to prevent the repetition of a Karakózoff attempt on the
Tsar’s life. ‘Prepare in Russia a great socialist mass movement amongst
the workers and the peasants,’ was the watchword in those times. ‘Don’t
trouble about the Tsar and his counsellors. If such a movement begins,
if the peasants join in the mass movement to claim the land and to
abolish the serfdom redemption taxes, the imperial power will be the
first to seek support in the moneyed classes and the landlords and to
convoke a Parliament--just as the peasant insurrection in France in
1789 compelled the royal power to convoke the National Assembly; so it
will be in Russia.’
But there was more than that. Separate men and groups, seeing that the
reign of Alexander II. was hopelessly doomed to sink deeper and deeper
in reaction, and entertaining at the same time vague hopes as to the
supposed ‘liberalism’ of the heir-apparent--all young heirs to thrones
are supposed to be liberal--persistently reverted to the idea that the
example of Karakózoff ought to be followed. The organized circles,
however, strenuously opposed such an idea, and urged their comrades not
to resort to that course of action. I may now divulge the following
fact, which has hitherto remained unknown. When a young man came to
St. Petersburg from one of the southern provinces with the firm
intention of killing Alexander II., and some members of the Tchaykóvsky
circle learned of his plan, they not only applied all the weight of
their arguments to dissuade the young man, but, when he would not be
dissuaded, they informed him that they would keep a watch over him and
prevent him by force from making any such attempt. Knowing well how
loosely guarded the Winter Palace was at that time, I can positively
say that they saved the life of Alexander II. So firmly were the youth
opposed at that time to the war in which later, when the cup of their
sufferings was filled to overflowing, they took part.
XV
The two years that I worked with the circle of Tchaykóvsky, before I
was arrested, left a deep impression upon all my subsequent life and
thought. During those two years it was life under high pressure--that
exuberance of life when one feels at every moment the full throbbing of
all the fibres of the inner self, and when life is really worth living.
I was in a family of men and women so closely united by their common
object, and so broadly and delicately humane in their mutual relations,
that I cannot now recall a single moment of even temporary friction
marring the life of our circle. Those who have had any experience of
political agitation will appreciate the value of this statement.
Before abandoning entirely my scientific career, I considered
myself bound to finish the report of my journey to Finland for the
Geographical Society, as well as some other work that I had in hand
for the same society; and my new friends were the first to confirm me
in that decision. It would not be fair, they said, to do otherwise.
Consequently, I worked hard to finish my geological and geographical
books.
Meetings of our circle were frequent, and I never missed them. We used
to meet then in a suburban part of St. Petersburg, in a small house
of which Sophie Peróvskaya, under the assumed name and the fabricated
passport of an artisan’s wife, was the supposed tenant. She was born
of a very aristocratic family, and her father had been for some time
the military governor of St. Petersburg; but, with the approval of
her mother, who adored her, she had left her home to join a high
school, and with the three sisters Korníloff--daughters of a rich
manufacturer--she had founded that little circle of self-education
which later on became our circle. Now, in the capacity of an artisan’s
wife, in her cotton dress and men’s boots, her head covered with a
cotton kerchief, as she carried on her shoulders her two pails of
water from the Nevá, no one would have recognized in her the girl who
a few years before shone in one of the most fashionable drawing-rooms
of the capital. She was a general favourite, and every one of us,
on entering the house, had a specially friendly smile for her--even
when she, making a point of honour of keeping the house relatively
clean, quarrelled with us about the dirt which we, dressed in peasant
top-boots and sheepskins, brought in after walking the muddy streets
of the suburbs. She tried then to give to her girlish, innocent, and
very intelligent little face the most severe expression possible to it.
In her moral conceptions she was a ‘rigorist,’ but not in the least of
the sermon-preaching type. When she was dissatisfied with some one’s
conduct, she would cast a severe glance at him from beneath her brows;
but in that glance one saw her open-minded, generous nature, which
understood all that is human. On one point only she was inexorable. ‘A
women’s man,’ she once said, speaking of some one, and the expression
and the manner in which she said it, without interrupting her work, is
engraved for ever in my memory.
Peróvskaya was a ‘popularist’ to the very bottom of her heart, and
at the same time a revolutionist, a fighter of the truest steel. She
had no need to embellish the workers and the peasants with imaginary
virtues in order to love them and to work for them. She took them as
they were, and said to me once: ‘We have begun a great thing. Two
generations, perhaps, will succumb in the task, and yet it must be
done.’ None of the women of our circle would have given way before
the certainty of death on the scaffold. Each would have looked
death straight in the face. But none of them, at that stage of our
propaganda, thought of such a fate. Peróvskaya’s well-known portrait
is exceptionally good; it records so well her earnest courage, her
bright intelligence, and her loving nature. The letter she wrote to her
mother a few hours before she went to the scaffold is one of the best
expressions of a loving soul that a woman’s heart ever dictated.
The following incident will show what the other women of our circle
were. One night, Kupreyánoff and I went to Varvara B., to whom we had
to make an urgent communication. It was past midnight, but, seeing a
light in her window, we went upstairs. She sat in her tiny room at a
table copying a programme of our circle. We knew how resolute she was,
and the idea came to us to make one of those stupid jokes men sometimes
think funny. ‘B.,’ I said, ‘we come to fetch you: we are going to
try a rather mad attempt to liberate our friends from the fortress.’
She asked not one question. She quietly laid down her pen, rose from
her chair, and said only, ‘Let us go.’ She spoke in so simple, so
unaffected a voice that I felt at once how foolishly I had acted, and
told her the truth. She dropped back into her chair, with tears in her
eyes, and in a despairing voice asked: ‘It was only a joke? Why do you
make _such_ jokes?’ I fully realized then the cruelty of what I had
done.
* * * * *
Another general favourite in our circle was Serghéi Kravchínsky, who
became so well known, both in England and in the United States, under
the name of Stepniák. He was often called ‘the Baby,’ so unconcerned
was he about his own security: but his carelessness about himself was
merely the result of a complete absence of fear, which, after all, is
often the best policy for one who is hunted by the police. He soon
became well known for his propaganda in the circles of workers, under
his real Christian name of Serghéi, and consequently was very much
wanted by the police; notwithstanding that, he took no precautions
whatever to conceal himself, and I remember that one day he was
severely scolded at one of our meetings for what was described as a
gross imprudence. Being late for the meeting, as he often was, and
having a long distance to cover in order to reach our house, he,
dressed as a peasant in his sheepskin, ran the whole length of a great
main thoroughfare at full speed in the middle of the street. ‘How
could you do it?’ he was reproachfully asked. ‘You might have aroused
suspicion, and have been arrested as a common thief.’ But I wish that
everyone had been as cautious as he was in affairs where other people
could be compromised.
We made our first intimate acquaintance over Stanley’s book, ‘How
I Discovered Livingstone.’ One night our meeting had lasted till
twelve, and as we were about to leave, one of the Korníloffs entered
with a book in her hand, and asked who among us could undertake to
translate by the next morning at eight o’clock sixteen printed pages
of Stanley’s book. I looked at the size of the pages, and said that if
somebody would help me the work could be done during the night. Serghéi
volunteered, and by four o’clock the sixteen pages were done. We read
to each other our translations, one of us following the English text;
then we emptied a jar of Russian porridge which had been left on the
table for us, and went out together to return home. We became close
friends from that night.
I have always liked people capable of working, and doing their work
properly. So Serghéi’s translation and his capacity of working rapidly
had already influenced me in his favour. But when I came to know more
of him, I felt real love for his honest, frank nature, for his youthful
energy and good sense, for his superior intelligence, simplicity, and
truthfulness, and for his courage and tenacity. He had read and thought
a great deal, and upon the revolutionary character of the struggle
which we had undertaken it appeared we had similar views. He was ten
years younger than I was, and perhaps did not quite realize what a
hard contest the coming revolution would be. He told us later on, with
much humour, how he once worked among the peasants in the country.
‘One day,’ he said, ‘I was walking along the road with a comrade
when we were overtaken by a peasant in a sleigh. I began to tell the
peasant that he must not pay taxes, that the functionaries plunder the
people, and I tried to convince him by quotations from the Bible that
they must revolt. The peasant whipped up his horse, but we followed
rapidly; he made his horse trot, and we began to run behind him; all
the time I continued to talk to him about taxes and revolt. Finally he
made his horse gallop; but the animal was not worth much--an underfed
peasant pony--so my comrade and I did not fall behind, but kept up our
propaganda till we were quite out of breath.’
For some time Serghéi stayed in Kazán, and I had to correspond with
him. He always hated writing letters in cipher, so I proposed a means
of correspondence which had often been used before in conspiracies.
You write an ordinary letter about all sorts of things, but in this
letter it is only certain words--let us say, every fifth word--which
has a meaning. You write, for instance: ‘Excuse my hurried letter.
Come to-night to see me; to-morrow I shall go away to my sister. My
brother Nicholas feels worse; it was late to make an operation.’
Reading each fifth word, you find: ‘Come to-morrow to Nicholas, late.’
We had to write letters of six or seven pages to transmit one page
of information, and we had to cultivate our imagination in order to
fill the letters with all sorts of things by way of introducing the
words that were required. Serghéi, from whom it was impossible to
obtain a cipher letter, took to this kind of correspondence, and used
to send me letters containing stories with thrilling incidents and
dramatic endings. He said to me afterward that this correspondence
helped to develop his literary talent. When one has talent, everything
contributes to its development.
In January or February 1874 I was at Moscow, in one of the houses in
which I had spent my childhood. Early in the morning I was told that
a peasant desired to see me. I went out and found it was Serghéi, who
had just escaped from Tver. He was strongly built, and he, with another
ex-officer, Rogachóff, endowed with equal physical strength, went
travelling about the country as lumber sawyers. The work was very hard,
especially for inexperienced hands, but both of them liked it; and no
one would have thought to look for disguised officers in these two
strong sawyers. They wandered in this capacity for about a fortnight
without arousing suspicion, and made revolutionary propaganda right
and left without fear. Sometimes Serghéi, who knew the New Testament
almost by heart, spoke to the peasants as a religious preacher,
proving to them by quotations from the Bible that they ought to start
a revolution. Sometimes he formed his arguments of quotations from the
economists. The peasants listened to the two men as to real apostles,
took them from one house to another, and refused to be paid for food.
In a fortnight they had produced quite a stir in a number of villages.
Their fame was spreading far and wide. The peasants, young and old,
began to whisper to one another in the barns about the ‘delegates;’
they began to speak out more loudly than they usually did that the land
would soon be taken from the landlords, who would receive pensions from
the Tsar. The younger people became more aggressive toward the police
officers, saying: ‘Wait a little; our turn will come soon: you Herods
will not rule long now.’ But the fame of the sawyers reached the ears
of one of the police authorities, and they were arrested. An order was
given to take them to the next police official, ten miles away.
They were taken under the guard of several peasants, and on their
way had to pass through a village which was holding its festival.
‘Prisoners? All right! Come on here, my uncle,’ said the peasants, who
were all drinking in honour of the occasion. They were kept nearly the
whole day in that village, the peasants taking them from one house to
another, and treating them to home-made beer. The guards did not have
to be asked twice. They drank, and insisted that the prisoners should
drink too. ‘Happily,’ Serghéi said, ‘they gave us the beer in such
large wooden bowls, which were passed round, that I could put my mouth
to the rim of the bowl as if I were drinking, but no one could see how
much beer I had imbibed.’ The guards were all drunk toward night, and
preferred not to appear in this state before the police officer, so
they decided to stay in the village till morning. Serghéi kept talking
to them, and all listened to him, regretting that such a good man had
been caught. As they were going to sleep, a young peasant whispered to
Serghéi, ‘When I go to shut the gate I will leave it unbolted.’ Serghéi
and his comrade understood the hint, and as soon as all fell asleep
they went out into the street. They started at a fast pace, and at
five o’clock in the morning were twenty miles away from the village,
at a small railway station, where they took the first train, and went
to Moscow. Serghéi remained there, and later, when all of us at St.
Petersburg had been arrested, the Moscow circle, under his inspiration,
became the main centre of the agitation.
* * * * *
Here and there, small groups of propagandists had settled in towns and
villages in various capacities. Blacksmiths’ shops and small farms
had been started, and young men of the wealthier classes worked in
the shops or on the farms, to be in daily contact with the toiling
masses. At Moscow, a number of young girls, of rich families, who
had studied at the Zürich university and had started a separate
organization, went even so far as to enter cotton factories, where they
worked from fourteen to sixteen hours a day, and lived in the factory
barracks the miserable life of the Russian factory girls. It was a
grand movement, in which, at the lowest estimate, from two to three
thousand persons took an active part, while twice or thrice as many
sympathizers and supporters helped the active vanguard in various ways.
With a good half of that army our St. Petersburg circle was in regular
correspondence--always, of course, in cipher.
The literature which could be published in Russia under a rigorous
censorship--the faintest hint of socialism being prohibited--was
soon found insufficient, and we started a printing office of our own
abroad. Pamphlets for the workers and the peasants had to be written,
and our small ‘literary committee,’ of which I was a member, had its
hands full of work. Serghéi wrote a couple of such pamphlets--one
in the Lamennais style, and another containing an exposition of
socialism in a fairy tale--and both had a wide circulation. The books
and pamphlets which were printed abroad were smuggled into Russia by
thousands, stored at certain spots, and sent out to the local circles,
which distributed them amongst the peasants and the workers. All this
required a vast organization as well as much travelling about, and a
colossal correspondence, particularly for protecting our helpers and
our bookstores from the police. We had special ciphers for different
provincial circles, and often, after six or seven hours had been passed
in discussing all details, the women, who did not trust to our accuracy
in the cipher correspondence, spent all the night in covering sheets of
paper with cabalistic figures and fractions.
The utmost cordiality always prevailed at our meetings. Chairmen and
all sorts of formalism are so utterly repugnant to the Russian mind
that we had none; and although our debates were sometimes extremely
hot, especially when ‘programme questions’ were under discussion, we
always managed very well without resorting to Western formalities. An
absolute sincerity, a general desire to settle the difficulties for the
best, and a frankly expressed contempt for all that in the least degree
approached theatrical affectation were quite sufficient. If anyone of
us had ventured to attempt oratorical effects by a speech, friendly
jokes would have shown him at once that speech-making was out of
place. Often we had to take our meals during these meetings, and they
invariably consisted of rye bread, with cucumbers, a bit of cheese, and
plenty of weak tea to quench the thirst. Not that money was lacking;
there was always enough, and yet there was never too much to cover
the steadily growing expenses for printing, transportation of books,
concealing friends wanted by the police, and starting new enterprises.
At St. Petersburg it was not long before we had wide acquaintance
amongst the workers. Serdukóff, a young man of splendid education, had
made a number of friends amongst the engineers, most of them employed
in a state factory of the artillery department, and he had organized
a circle of about thirty members, who used to meet for reading and
discussion. The engineers are pretty well paid at St. Petersburg, and
those who were not married were fairly well off. They soon became quite
familiar with the current radical and socialist literature--Buckle,
Lassalle, Mill, Draper, Spielhagen, were familiar names to them; and
in their aspect these engineers differed little from students. When
Kelnitz, Serghéi, and I joined the circle, we frequently visited their
group, and gave them informal lectures upon all sorts of things.
Our hopes, however, that these young men would grow into ardent
propagandists amidst less privileged classes of workers were not fully
realised. In a free country they would have been the habitual speakers
at public meetings; but, like the privileged workers of the watch trade
in Geneva, they treated the mass of the factory hands with a sort of
contempt, and were in no haste to become martyrs to the socialist
cause. It was only after they had been arrested and kept three or four
years in prison for having dared to _think_ as socialists, and had
sounded the full depth of Russian absolutism, that several of them
developed into ardent propagandists, chiefly of a political revolution.
* * * * *
My sympathies went especially toward the weavers and the workers in the
cotton factories. There are many thousands of them at St. Petersburg,
who work there during the winter, and return for the three summer
months to their native villages to cultivate the land. Half peasants
and half town workers, they had generally retained the social spirit of
the Russian villager. The movement spread like wildfire among them. We
had to restrain the zeal of our new friends; otherwise they would have
brought to our lodgings hundreds at a time, young and old. Most of them
lived in small associations, or _artéls_, ten or twelve persons hiring
a common apartment and taking their meals together, each one paying
every month his share of the general expenses. It was to these lodgings
that we used to go, and the weavers soon brought us in contact with
other _artéls_ of stonemasons, carpenters, and the like. In some of
these _artéls_ Serghéi, Kelnitz, and a couple more of our friends were
quite at home, and spent whole nights talking about socialism. Besides,
we had in different parts of St. Petersburg special apartments, kept
by some of our people, to which ten or twelve workers would come every
night to learn reading and writing, and after that to have a talk. From
time to time one of us went to the native villages of our town friends,
and spent a couple of weeks in almost open propaganda amongst the
peasants.
Of course, all of us who had to deal with this class of workers had
to dress like the workers themselves--that is, to wear the peasant
garb. The gap between the peasants and the educated people is so great
in Russia, and contact between them is so rare, that not only does
the appearance in a village of a man who wears the town dress awaken
general attention, but even in town, if one whose talk and dress reveal
that he is not a worker is seen to go about with workers, the suspicion
of the police is aroused at once. ‘Why should he go about with “low
people,” if he has not a bad intention?’ Often, after a dinner in a
rich mansion, or even in the Winter Palace, where I went frequently to
see a friend, I took a cab, hurried to a poor student’s lodging in a
remote suburb, exchanged my fine clothes for a cotton shirt, peasant’s
top-boots, and a sheepskin, and, joking with peasants on the way, went
to meet my worker friends in some slum. I told them what I had seen of
the labour movement abroad. They listened with an eager attention; they
lost not a word of what was said; and then came the question, ‘What
can we do in Russia?’ ‘Agitate, organize,’ was our reply; ‘there is no
royal road;’ and we read them a popular story of the French Revolution,
an adaptation of Erckmann-Chatrian’s admirable ‘Histoire d’un Paysan.’
Every one admired M. Chovel, who went as a propagandist through the
villages colporting prohibited books, and burned to follow in his
footsteps. ‘Speak to others,’ we said; ‘bring men together; and when
we become more numerous, we shall see what we can attain.’ They fully
understood, and we had only to moderate their zeal.
Amongst them I passed my happiest hours. New Year’s day of 1874, the
last I spent in Russia at liberty, is especially memorable to me. The
previous evening I had been in a choice company. Inspiring, noble words
were spoken that night about the citizen’s duties, the well-being of
the country, and the like. But underneath all the thrilling speeches,
one note resounded: How could each of the speakers preserve his own
personal well-being? Yet no one had the courage to say, frankly and
openly, that he was ready to do only that which would not endanger
his own dovecote. Sophisms--no end of sophisms--about the slowness
of evolution, the inertia of the lower classes, the uselessness of
sacrifice, were uttered to justify the unspoken words, all intermingled
with assurances of each one’s willingness to make sacrifices. I
returned home, seized suddenly with profound sadness amid all this talk.
Next morning I went to one of our weavers’ meetings. It took place in
an underground dark room. I was dressed as a peasant, and was lost
in the crowd of other sheepskins. My comrade, who was known to the
workers, simply introduced me: ‘Borodín, a friend.’ ‘Tell us, Borodín,’
he said, ‘what you have seen abroad.’ And I spoke of the labour
movement in Western Europe, its struggles, its difficulties, and its
hopes.
The audience consisted mostly of middle-aged people. They were
intensely interested. They asked me questions, all to the point,
about the minute details of the working-men’s unions, the aims of the
International Association and its chances of success, and then came
questions about what could be done in Russia, and the prospects of our
propaganda. I never minimized the dangers of our agitation, and frankly
said what I thought. ‘_We_ shall probably be sent to Siberia, one of
these days; and you--part of you--will be kept long months in prison
for having listened to us.’ This gloomy prospect did not frighten them.
‘After all, there are men in Siberia, too--not bears only.’ ‘Where men
are living others can live.’ ‘The devil is not so terrible as they
paint him.’ ‘If you are afraid of wolves, never go into the wood,’ they
said as we parted. And when, afterward, several of them were arrested,
they nearly all behaved bravely, sheltering us and betraying no one.
XVI
During the two years of which I am now speaking many arrests were made,
both at St. Petersburg and in the provinces. Not a month passed without
our losing someone, or learning that members of this or that provincial
group had disappeared. Toward the end of 1873 the arrests became more
and more frequent. In November one of our main settlements in a suburb
of St. Petersburg was raided by the police. We lost Peróvskaya and
three other friends, and all our relations with the workers in this
suburb had to be suspended. We founded a new settlement, further away
from the town, but it had soon to be abandoned. The police became very
vigilant, and the appearance of a student in the workmen’s quarters was
noticed at once; spies circulated among the workers, who were watched
closely. Dmítri Kelnitz, Serghéi, and myself, in our sheepskins and
with our pleasant looks, passed unnoticed, and continued to visit the
haunted ground. But Dmítri and Serghéi, whose names had acquired a wide
notoriety in the workmen’s quarters, were eagerly wanted by the police;
and if they had been found accidentally during a nocturnal raid at a
friend’s lodgings they would have been arrested at once. There were
periods when Dmítri had every day to hunt for a place where he could
spend the night in relative safety. ‘Can I stay the night with you?’ he
would ask, entering some comrade’s room at ten o’clock. ‘Impossible!
my lodgings have been closely watched lately. Better go to N----.’ ‘I
have just come from him, and he says spies swarm in his neighbourhood.’
‘Then, go to M----; he is a great friend of mine, and above suspicion.
But it is far from here, and you must take a cab. Here is money.’ But,
on principle, Dmítri would not take a cab, and would walk to the other
end of the town to find a refuge, or at last go to a friend whose rooms
might be searched at any given moment.
Early in January 1874, another settlement, our main stronghold
for propaganda amongst the weavers, was lost. Some of our best
propagandists disappeared behind the gates of the mysterious Third
Section. Our circle became narrower, general meetings were increasingly
difficult, and we made strenuous efforts to form new circles of young
men who might continue our work when we should all be arrested.
Tchaykóvsky was in the south, and we forced Dmítri and Serghéi to leave
St. Petersburg--actually forced them, imperiously ordering them to
leave. Only five or six of us remained to transact all the business of
our circle. I intended, as soon as I should have delivered my report to
the Geographical Society, to go to the south-west of Russia, and there
to start a sort of land league, similar to the league which became so
powerful in Ireland at the end of the seventies.
After two months of relative quiet, we learned in the middle of March
that nearly all the circle of the engineers had been arrested, and
with them a young man named Nízovkin, an ex-student, who unfortunately
had their confidence, and, we were sure, would soon try to clear
himself by telling all he knew about us. Besides Dmítri and Serghéi he
knew Serdukóff, the founder of the circle, and myself, and he would
certainly name us as soon as he was pressed with questions. A few days
later, two weavers--most unreliable fellows, who had even embezzled
some money from their comrades, and who knew me under the name of
Borodín--were arrested. These two would surely set the police at once
upon the track of Borodín, the man, dressed as a peasant, who spoke
at the weavers’ meetings. Within a week’s time all the members of our
circle, excepting Serdukóff and myself, were arrested.
There was nothing left to us but to fly from St. Petersburg: this was
exactly what we did not want to do. All our immense organization for
printing pamphlets abroad and for smuggling them into Russia; all the
network of circles, farms, and country settlements with which we were
in correspondence in nearly forty (out of fifty) provinces of European
Russia and which had been slowly built up during the last two years;
finally, our workers’ groups at St. Petersburg and our four different
centres for propaganda amongst workers of the capital--how could we
abandon all these without having found men to maintain our relations
and correspondence? Serdukóff and I decided to admit to our circle two
new members, and to transfer the business to them. We met every evening
in different parts of the town, and as we never kept any addresses or
names in writing--the smuggling addresses alone had been deposited in
a secure place, in cipher--we had to teach our new members hundreds of
names and addresses and a dozen ciphers, repeating them over and over,
until our friends had learned them by heart. Every evening we went over
the whole map of Russia in this way, dwelling especially on its western
frontier, which was studded with men and women engaged in receiving
books from the smugglers, and the eastern provinces, where we had our
main settlements. Then, always in disguise, we had to take the new
members to our sympathizers in the town, and introduce them to those
who had not yet been arrested.
The thing to be done in such a case was to disappear from one’s
apartments, and to re-appear somewhere else under an assumed name.
Serdukóff had abandoned his lodging, but, having no passport, he
concealed himself in the houses of friends. I ought to have done the
same, but a strange circumstance prevented me. I had just finished my
report upon the glacial formations in Finland and Russia, and this
report had to be read at a meeting of the Geographical Society. The
invitations were already issued, but it happened that on the appointed
day the two geological societies of St. Petersburg had a joint meeting,
and they asked the Geographical Society to postpone the reading of my
report for a week. It was known that I was going to present certain
ideas about the extension of the ice cap as far as Middle Russia, and
our geologists, with the exception of my friend and teacher, Friedrich
Schmidt, considered this speculation of far too reaching a character,
and wanted to have it thoroughly discussed. For one week more,
consequently, I could not go away.
Strangers prowled about my house and called upon me under all sorts of
fantastical pretexts: one of them wanted to buy a forest on my Tambóv
estate, which was situated in absolutely treeless prairies. I noticed
in my street--the fashionable Morskáya--one of the two arrested weavers
whom I have mentioned, and thus learned that my house was watched. Yet
I had to act as if nothing extraordinary had happened, because I was to
appear at the meeting of the Geographical Society the following Friday
night.
The meeting came. The discussions were very animated, and one point,
at least, was won. It was recognized that all old theories concerning
the diluvial period in Russia were totally baseless, and that a new
departure must be made in the investigation of the whole question. I
had the satisfaction of hearing our leading geologist, Barbot-de-Marny,
say, ‘Ice cap or not, we must acknowledge, gentlemen, that all we
have hitherto said about the action of floating ice had no foundation
whatever in actual exploration.’ And I was proposed at that meeting to
be nominated president of the Physical Geography section, while I was
asking myself whether I should not spend that very night in the prison
of the Third Section.
It would have been best not to return at all to my apartment, but I
was broken down with fatigue after the exertions of the last few days,
and went home. There was no police raid during that night. I looked
through the heaps of my papers, destroyed everything that might be
compromising for anyone, packed all my things, and prepared to leave. I
knew that my apartment was watched, but I hoped that the police would
not pay me a visit before late in the night, and that at dusk I could
slip out of the house without being noticed. Dusk came, and, as I was
starting, one of the servant girls said to me, ‘You had better go by
the service staircase.’ I understood what she meant, and went quickly
down the staircase and out of the house. One cab only stood at the
gate; I jumped into it. The driver took me to the great Perspective of
Névsky. There was no pursuit at first, and I thought myself safe; but
presently I noticed another cab running full speed after us; our horse
was delayed somehow, and the other cab passed ours.
To my astonishment, I saw in it one of the two arrested weavers,
accompanied by someone else. He waved his hand as if he had something
to tell me. I told my cabman to stop. ‘Perhaps,’ I thought, ‘he has
been released from arrest, and has an important communication to make
to me.’ But as soon as we stopped, the man who was with the weaver--he
was a detective--shouted loudly, ‘Mr. Borodín, Prince Kropótkin, I
arrest you!’ He made a signal to the policeman, of whom there are
hosts along the main thoroughfare of St. Petersburg, and at the same
time jumped into my cab and showed me a paper which bore the stamp
of the St. Petersburg police. ‘I have an order to take you before
the Governor-General for an explanation,’ he said. Resistance was
impossible--a couple of policemen were already close by--and I told my
cabman to turn round and drive to the Governor-General’s house. The
weaver remained in his cab and followed us.
It was now evident that the police had hesitated for ten days to arrest
me, because they were not sure that Borodín and I were the same person.
My response to the weaver’s call had settled their doubts.
It so happened that just as I was leaving my house a young man came
from Moscow, bringing me a letter from a friend, Voinarálsky, and
another from Dmítri, addressed to our friend Polakóff. The former
announced the establishment of a secret printing office at Moscow,
and was full of cheerful news concerning the activity in that city. I
read it and destroyed it. As the second letter contained nothing but
innocent friendly chat, I took it with me. Now that I was arrested I
thought it would be better to destroy it, and, asking the detective
to show me his paper again, I took advantage of the time that he was
fumbling in his pocket to drop the letter on the pavement without his
noticing it. However, as we reached the Governor-General’s house the
weaver handed it to the detective, saying, ‘I saw the gentleman drop
this letter on the pavement, so I picked it up.’
Now came tedious hours of waiting for the representative of the
judicial authorities, the procureur or public prosecutor. This
functionary plays the part of a straw man, who is paraded by the State
police during their searches: he gives an aspect of legality to their
proceedings. It was many hours before that gentleman was found and
brought to perform his functions as a sham representative of justice. I
was taken back to my house, and a most thorough search of all my papers
was made: this lasted till three in the morning, but did not reveal a
scrap of paper that could tell against me or anyone else.
From my house I was taken to the Third Section, that omnipotent
institution which has ruled in Russia from the beginning of the reign
of Nicholas I. down to the present time--a true ‘state in the state.’
It began under Peter I. in the Secret Department, where the adversaries
of the founder of the Russian military empire were subjected to the
most abominable tortures, under which they expired; it was continued
in the Secret Chancelry during the reigns of the Empresses, when the
Torture Chamber of the powerful Minich inspired all Russia with terror;
and it received its present organization from the iron despot, Nicholas
I., who attached to it the corps of gendarmes--the chief of the
gendarmes becoming a person far more dreaded in the Russian Empire than
the Emperor himself.
In every province of Russia, in every populous town, nay, at every
railway station, there are gendarmes who report directly to their own
generals or colonels, who in turn correspond with the chief of the
gendarmes; and the latter, seeing the Emperor every day, reports to him
what he finds necessary to report. All functionaries of the empire are
under gendarme supervision; it is the duty of the generals and colonels
to keep an eye upon the public and private life of every subject of
the Tsar--even upon the governors of the provinces, the ministers, and
the grand dukes. The Emperor himself is under their close watch, and
as they are well informed of the petty chronicle of the palace, and
know every step that the Emperor takes outside his palace, the chief of
the gendarmes becomes, so to speak, a confidant of the most intimate
affairs of the rulers of Russia.
At this period of the reign of Alexander II. the Third Section was
absolutely all-powerful. The gendarme colonels made searches by the
thousand without troubling themselves in the least about the existence
of laws and law courts in Russia. They arrested whom they liked, kept
people imprisoned as long as they pleased, and transported hundreds
to North-east Russia or Siberia according to the fancy of general or
colonel; the signature of the Minister of the Interior was a mere
formality, because he had no control over them and no knowledge of
their doings.
It was four o’clock in the morning when my examination began. ‘You
are accused,’ I was solemnly told, ‘of having belonged to a secret
society which has for its object the overthrow of the existing form of
government, and of conspiracy against the sacred person of his Imperial
Majesty. Are you guilty of this crime?’
‘Till I am brought before a court where I can speak publicly, I will
give you no replies whatever.’
‘Write,’ the procureur dictated to a scribe: ‘“Does not acknowledge
himself guilty.” Still’ he continued, after a pause, ‘I must ask
you certain questions. Do you know a person of the name of Nikolái
Tchaykóvsky?’
‘If you persist in your questions, then write “No” to any question
whatsoever that you are pleased to ask me.’
‘But if we ask you whether you know, for instance, Mr. Polakóff, whom
you spoke about a while ago?’
‘The moment _you_ ask me such a question, don’t hesitate: write “No.”
And if you ask me whether I know my brother, or my sister, or my
stepmother, write “No.” You will not receive from me another reply:
because if I answered “Yes” with regard to any person, you would at
once plan some evil against him, making a raid or something worse, and
saying next that I named him.’
A long list of questions was read, to which I patiently replied each
time, ‘Write “No.”’ That lasted for an hour, during which I learned
that all who had been arrested, with the exception of the two weavers,
had behaved very well. The weavers knew only that I had twice met a
dozen workers, and the gendarmes knew nothing about our circle.
‘What are you doing, prince?’ a gendarme officer said, as he took me
to my cell. ‘Your refusal to answer questions will be made a terrible
weapon against you.’
‘It is my right, is it not?’
‘Yes, but--you know.... I hope you will find this room comfortable. It
has been kept warm since your arrest.’
I found it quite comfortable, and fell sound asleep. I was waked the
next morning by a gendarme, who brought me the morning tea. He was soon
followed by somebody else, who whispered to me in the most unconcerned
way, ‘Here’s a scrap of paper and a pencil: write your letter.’ It
was a sympathizer, whom I knew by name; he used to transmit our
correspondence with the prisoners of the Third Section.
From all sides I heard knocks on the walls, following in rapid
succession. It was the prisoners communicating with one another by
means of light taps; but, being a new-comer, I could make nothing out
of the noise, which seemed to come from all parts of the building at
once.
* * * * *
One thing worried me. During the search in my house, I overheard the
procureur whispering to the gendarme officer about going to make a
search at the apartment of my friend Polakóff, to whom the letter of
Dmítri was addressed. Polakóff was a young student, a very gifted
zoologist and botanist, with whom I had made my Vitím expedition in
Siberia. He was born of a poor Cossack family on the frontier of
Mongolia, and, after having surmounted all sorts of difficulties, he
had come to St. Petersburg, entered the university, where he had won
the reputation of a most promising zoologist, and was then passing his
final examinations. We had been great friends since our long journey,
and had even lived together for a time at St. Petersburg, but he took
no interest in my political activity.
I spoke of him to the procureur. ‘I give you my word of honour,’ I
said, ‘that Polakóff has never taken part in any political affair.
To-morrow he has to pass an examination, and you will spoil forever the
scientific career of a young man who has gone through great hardships,
and has struggled for years against all sorts of obstacles, to attain
his present position. I know that you do not much care for it, but
he is looked upon at the university as one of the future glories of
Russian science.’
The search was made, nevertheless, but a respite of three days was
given for the examinations. A little later I was called before the
procureur, who triumphantly showed me an envelope addressed in my
handwriting, and in it a note, also in my handwriting, which said,
‘Please take this packet to V. E., and ask that it be kept until demand
in due form is made.’ The person to whom the note was addressed was not
mentioned in the note. ‘This letter,’ the procureur said, ‘was found at
Mr. Polakóff’s; and now, prince, his fate is in your hands. If you tell
me who V. E. is, Mr. Polakóff will be released; but if you refuse to do
so, he will be kept as long as he does not make up his mind to give us
the name of that person.’
Looking at the envelope, which was addressed in black chalk, and
the letter, which was written in common lead pencil, I immediately
remembered the circumstances under which the two had been written. ‘I
am positive,’ I exclaimed at once, ‘that the note and the envelope
were not found together! It is _you_ who have put the letter in the
envelope.’
The procureur blushed. ‘Would you have me believe,’ I continued, ‘that
you, a practical man, did not notice that the two are written in quite
different pencils? And now you are trying to make people think that the
two belong to each other! Well, sir, then I tell you that the letter
was not to Polakóff.’
He hesitated for some time, but then, regaining his audacity, he said,
‘Polakóff has admitted that this letter of yours was written to him.’
Now I knew he was lying. Polakóff would have admitted everything
concerning himself; but he would have preferred to be marched to
Siberia rather than to involve another person. So, looking straight in
the face of the procureur, I replied, ‘No, sir, he has _never_ said
that, and you know perfectly well that your words are not true.’
He became furious, or pretended to be so. ‘Well, then,’ he said, ‘if
you wait here a moment, I will bring you Polakóff’s written statement
to that effect. He is in the next room under examination.’
‘Ready to wait as long as you like.’
I sat on a sofa, smoking countless cigarettes. The statement did not
come, and never came.
Of course there was no such statement. I met Polakóff in 1878 at
Geneva, whence we made a delightful excursion to the Aletsch glacier.
I need not say that his answers were what I expected them to be: he
denied having any knowledge of the letter, or of the person the letters
V. E. represented. Scores of books used to be taken from me to him,
and back to me, and the letter was found in a book, while the envelope
was discovered in the pocket of an old coat. He was kept several weeks
under arrest, and then released, owing to the intervention of his
scientific friends. V. E. was not molested, and delivered my papers in
due time.
Later on, each time I saw the procureur, I teased him with the
question: ‘And what about Polakóff’s statement?’
I was not taken back to my cell, but an hour later the procureur came
in, accompanied by a gendarme officer. ‘Our examination,’ he announced
to me, ‘is now terminated; you will be removed to another place.’
A four-wheeled cab stood at the gate. I was asked to enter it, and a
stout gendarme officer, of Caucasian origin, sat by my side. I spoke
to him, but he only snored. The cab crossed the Chain Bridge, then
passed the parade grounds and ran along the canals, as if avoiding the
more frequented thoroughfares. ‘Are we going to the Litóvsky prison?’
I asked the officer, as I knew that many of my comrades were already
there. He made no reply. The system of absolute silence which was
maintained toward me for the next two years began in this four-wheeled
cab; but when we went rolling over the Palace Bridge I understood that
I was taken to the fortress of St. Peter and St. Paul.
I admired the beautiful river, knowing that I should not soon see it
again. The sun was going down. Thick grey clouds were hanging in the
west above the Gulf of Finland, while light clouds floated over my
head, showing here and there patches of blue sky. Then the carriage
turned to the left and entered a dark arched passage, the gate of the
fortress.
‘Now I shall have to remain here for a couple of years,’ I remarked to
the officer.
‘No, why so long?’ replied the Circassian who, now that we were within
the fortress, had regained the power of speech. ‘Your affair is almost
terminated, and may be brought into court in a fortnight.’
‘My affair,’ I replied, ‘is very simple; but before bringing me to a
court you will try to arrest all the socialists in Russia, and they are
many, very many; in two years you will not have done.’ I did not then
realize how prophetic my remark was.
The carriage stopped at the door of the military commander of the
fortress, and we entered his reception hall. General Korsákoff, a thin
old man, came in, with a peevish expression on his face. The officer
spoke to him in a subdued voice, and the old man answered, ‘All right,’
looking at him with a sort of scorn, and then turned his eyes toward
me. It was evident that he was not at all pleased to receive a new
inmate, and that he felt slightly ashamed of his rôle; but he seemed
to add, ‘I am a soldier, and only do my duty.’ Presently we got into
the carriage again, but soon stopped before another gate, where we were
kept a long time until a detachment of soldiers opened it from the
inside. Proceeding on foot through narrow passages, we came to a third
iron gate, opening into a dark arched passage, from which we entered a
small room where darkness and dampness prevailed.
Several non-commissioned officers of the fortress troops moved
noiselessly about in their soft felt boots, without speaking a word,
while the governor signed the Circassian’s book acknowledging the
reception of a new prisoner. I was required to take off all my clothes,
and to put on the prison dress--a green flannel dressing-gown, immense
woollen stockings of an incredible thickness, and boat-shaped yellow
slippers, so big that I could hardly keep them on my feet when I tried
to walk. I always hated dressing-gowns and slippers, and the thick
stockings inspired me with disgust. I had to take off even a silk
undergarment, which in the damp fortress it would have been especially
desirable to retain, but that could not be allowed. I naturally began
to protest and to make a noise about this, and after an hour or so it
was restored to me by order of General Korsákoff.
Then I was taken through a dark passage, where I saw armed sentries
walking about, and was put into a cell. A heavy oak door was shut
behind me, a key turned in the lock, and I was alone in a half-dark
room.
PART FIFTH
THE FORTRESS--THE ESCAPE
I
This was, then, the terrible fortress where so much of the true
strength of Russia had perished during the last two centuries, and the
very name of which is uttered in St. Petersburg in a hushed voice.
Here Peter I. tortured his son Alexis and killed him with his own hand;
here the Princess Tarakánova was kept in a cell which filled with water
during an inundation--the rats climbing upon her to save themselves
from drowning; here the terrible Minich tortured his enemies, and
Catherine II. buried alive those who objected to her having murdered
her husband. And from the times of Peter I., for a hundred and seventy
years, the annals of this mass of stone which rises from the Nevá in
front of the Winter Palace were annals of murder and torture, of men
buried alive, condemned to a slow death, or driven to insanity in the
loneliness of the dark and damp dungeons.
Here the Decembrists, who were the first to unfurl in Russia the banner
of republican rule and the abolition of serfdom, underwent their
first experiences of martyrdom, and traces of them may still be found
in the Russian Bastille. Here were imprisoned the poets Ryléeff and
Shevchénko, Dostoévsky, Bakúnin, Chernyshévsky, Písareff, and so many
others of our best contemporary writers. Here Karakózoff was tortured
and hanged.
Here, somewhere in the Alexis ravelin, was still kept Necháieff, who
was given up to Russia by Switzerland as a common-law criminal, but was
treated as a dangerous political prisoner, and would never again see
the light. In the same ravelin were also two or three men whom, rumour
said, Alexander II., because of what they knew, and what others must
not know, about some palace mystery, ordered to be imprisoned for life.
One of them, adorned with a long grey beard, was lately seen by an
acquaintance of mine in the mysterious fortress.
All these shadows rose before my imagination. But my thoughts fixed
especially on Bakúnin, who, though he had been shut up in an Austrian
fortress, after 1848, for two years chained to the wall, and then
was handed over to Nicholas I. who kept him in this fortress for six
years longer, came out, when the Iron Tsar’s death released him after
an eight years’ imprisonment, fresher and fuller of vigour than his
comrades who had remained at liberty. ‘He has lived it through,’ I said
to myself, ‘and I must, too; I will _not_ succumb here!’
My first movement was to approach the window, which was placed so
high that I could hardly reach it with my lifted hand. It was a long,
low opening, cut in a wall five feet thick, and protected by an iron
grating and a double iron window-frame. At a distance of a dozen yards
from this window I saw the outer wall of the fortress, of immense
thickness, on the top of which I could make out a grey sentry-box. Only
by looking upward could I perceive a bit of the sky.
I made a minute inspection of the room where I had now to spend no one
could say how many years. From the position of the high chimney of the
Mint I guessed that I was in the south-western corner of the fortress,
in a bastion overlooking the Nevá. The building in which I was
incarcerated, however, was not the bastion itself, but what is called
in a fortification a _reduit_; that is, an inner two-storied pentagonal
piece of masonry which rises a little higher than the walls of the
bastion, and is meant to contain two tiers of guns. This room of mine
was a casemate destined for a big gun, and the window was an embrasure.
The rays of the sun could never penetrate it; even in summer they are
lost in the thickness of the wall. The room held an iron bed, a small
oak table, and an oak stool. The floor was covered with painted felt,
and the walls with yellow paper. However, in order to deaden sounds,
the paper was not put on the wall itself; it was pasted upon canvas,
and behind the canvas I discovered a wire grating, back of which was a
layer of felt; only beyond the felt could I reach the stone wall. At
the inner side of the room there was a washstand, and a thick oak door
in which I made out a locked opening, for passing food through, and
a little slit protected by glass and by a shutter from the outside:
this was the ‘Judas,’ through which the prisoner could be spied upon
at every moment. The sentry who stood in the passage frequently lifted
the shutter and looked inside--his boots squeaking as he crept toward
the door. I tried to speak to him; then the eye which I could see
through the slit assumed an expression of terror, and the shutter was
immediately let down, only to be furtively opened a minute or two
later; but I could not get a word of response from the sentry.
Absolute silence reigned all round. I dragged my stool to the window
and looked upon the little bit of sky that I could see; I tried to
catch some sound from the Nevá, or from the town on the opposite side
of the river; but I could not. This dead silence began to oppress me,
and I tried to sing, slowly at first, and louder and louder afterwards.
‘Have I then to say farewell to love for ever’--I caught myself singing
from my favourite opera of Glinka, ‘Ruslán and Ludmíla.’
‘Sir, do not sing, please,’ a bass voice resounded through the
food-window in my door.
‘I _will_ sing, and I shall.’
‘You may not.’
‘I will sing nevertheless.’
Then came the governor, who tried to persuade me that I must not sing,
as it would have to be reported to the commander of the fortress, and
so on.
‘But my throat will become blocked and my lungs become useless if I do
not speak and cannot sing,’ I tried to argue.
‘You had better try to sing in a lower tone, more or less to yourself,’
said the old governor in a supplicatory manner.
But all this was useless. A few days later I had lost all desire to
sing. I tried to do it on principle, but it was of no avail.
‘The main thing,’ I said to myself, ‘is to preserve my physical vigour.
I _will_ not fall ill. Let me imagine myself compelled to spend a
couple of years in a hut in the far north, during an arctic expedition.
I will take plenty of exercise, practise gymnastics, and not let
myself be broken down by my surroundings. Ten steps from one corner
to the other is already something. If I repeat them one hundred and
fifty times, I shall have walked one verst’ (two-thirds of a mile). I
determined to walk every day seven versts--about five miles: two versts
in the morning, two before dinner, two after dinner, and one before
going to sleep. ‘If I put on the table ten cigarettes, and move one of
them each time that I pass the table, I shall easily count the three
hundred times that I must walk up and down. I must walk rapidly, but
turn slowly in the corner to avoid becoming giddy, and turn each time
a different way. Then twice a day I shall practise gymnastics with my
heavy stool.’ I lifted it by one leg, holding it at arm’s length. I
turned it like a wheel, and soon learned to throw it from one hand to
the other, over my head, behind my back, and across my legs.
A few hours after I had been brought into the prison the governor came
to offer me some books, and among them was an old acquaintance and
friend of mine, the first volume of George Lewes’s ‘Physiology,’ in a
Russian translation; but the second volume, which I especially wanted
to read again, was missing. I asked, of course, to have paper, pen,
and ink, but was absolutely refused. Pen and ink are never allowed in
the fortress, unless special permission is obtained from the Emperor
himself. I suffered very much from this forced inactivity, and began
to compose in my imagination a series of novels for popular reading,
taken from Russian history--something like Eugène Sue’s ‘Mystères du
Peuple.’ I made up the plot, the descriptions, the dialogues, and tried
to commit the whole to memory from the beginning to the end. One can
easily imagine how exhausting such a work would have been if I had had
to continue it for more than two or three months.
But my brother Alexander obtained pen and ink for me. One day I was
asked to enter a four-wheeled cab, in company with the same speechless
Georgian gendarme officer of whom I have spoken before. I was taken to
the Third Section, where I was allowed an interview with my brother, in
the presence of two gendarme officers.
Alexander was at Zürich when I was arrested. From early youth he had
longed to go abroad, where men think as they like, read what they
like, and openly express their thoughts. Russian life was hateful to
him. Veracity--absolute veracity--and the most open-hearted frankness
were the dominating features of his character; he could not bear
deceit or even conceit in any form. The absence of free speech in
Russia, the Russian readiness to submit to oppression, the veiled
words to which our writers resort, were utterly repulsive to his
frank and open nature. Soon after my return from Western Europe he
removed to Switzerland, and decided to settle there. After he had lost
his two children--one from cholera in a few hours, and another from
consumption--St. Petersburg became doubly repugnant to him.
My brother did not take part in our work of agitation. He did not
believe in the possibility of a popular uprising, and he conceived
a revolution only as the action of a representative body, like the
National Assembly of France in 1789. As for the socialist agitation, he
understood it when it is conducted by means of public meetings--not as
the secret, minute work of personal propaganda which we were carrying
on. In England he would have sided with John Bright or with the
Chartists. If he had been in Paris during the uprising of June 1848, he
would surely have fought with the last handful of workers behind the
last barricade; but in the preparatory period he would have followed
Louis Blanc or Ledru Rollin.
In Switzerland he settled at Zürich, and his sympathies went with the
moderate wing of the International. Socialist on principle, he carried
out his principles in his most frugal and laborious mode of living,
toiling on passionately at his great scientific work--the main purpose
of his life--a work which was to be a nineteenth-century counter-part
to the famous _Tableau de la Nature_ of the Encyclopædists. He
soon became a close personal friend of the old refugee, Colonel P.
L. Lavróff, with whom he had very much in common in his Kantian
philosophical views.
When he learned about my arrest, Alexander immediately left
everything--the work of his life, the life itself of freedom which was
as necessary for him as free air is necessary for a bird--and returned
to St. Petersburg, which he disliked, only to help me through my
imprisonment.
We were both very much affected at this interview. My brother was
extremely excited. He hated the very sight of the blue uniforms of the
gendarmes--those executioners of all independent thought in Russia--and
expressed his feeling frankly in their presence. As for me, the sight
of him at St. Petersburg filled me with the most dismal apprehensions.
I was happy to see his honest face, his eyes full of love, and to hear
that I should see them once a month; and yet I wished him hundreds of
miles away from that place to which he came free that day, but to which
he would inevitably be brought some night under an escort of gendarmes.
‘Why did you come into the lion’s den? Go back at once!’ my whole inner
self cried; and yet I knew that he would remain as long as I was in
prison.
He understood better than any one else that inactivity would kill me,
and had already made application to obtain for me the permission of
resuming work. The Geographical Society wanted me to finish my book on
the glacial period, and my brother turned the whole scientific world
in St. Petersburg upside down to move it to support his application.
The Academy of Sciences was interested in the matter; and finally, two
or three months after my imprisonment, the governor entered my cell
and announced to me that I was permitted by the Emperor to complete
my report to the Geographical Society, and that I should be allowed
pen and ink for that purpose. ‘Till sunset only,’ he added. Sunset, at
St. Petersburg, is at three in the afternoon, in winter time; but that
could not be helped. ‘Till sunset’ were the words used by Alexander II.
when he granted the permission.
II
So I could work!
I could hardly express now the immensity of relief I then felt at being
enabled to resume writing. I would have consented to live on nothing
but bread and water, in the dampest of cellars, if only permitted to
work.
I was, however, the sole prisoner to whom writing materials were
allowed. Several of my comrades spent three years and more in
confinement before the famous trial of ‘the hundred and ninety-three’
took place, and all they had was a slate. Of course, even the
slate was welcome in that dreary loneliness, and they used it to
write exercises in the languages they were learning, or to work out
mathematical problems; but what was jotted down on the slate could last
only a few hours.
My prison life now took a more regular character. There was something
immediate to live for. At nine in the morning I had already made
the first three hundred pacings across my cell, and was waiting for
my pencils and pens to be delivered to me. The work which I had
prepared for the Geographical Society contained, beside a report of
my explorations in Finland, a discussion of the bases upon which the
glacial hypothesis ought to rest. Now, knowing that I had plenty of
time before me, I decided to rewrite and enlarge that part of my work.
The Academy of Sciences put its admirable library at my service, and
a corner of my cell soon filled up with books and maps, including the
whole of the excellent Swedish Geological Survey publications, a nearly
full collection of reports of all Arctic travels, and whole sets of
the _Quarterly Journal of the London Geological Society_. My book grew
in the fortress to the size of two large volumes. The first of them
was printed by my brother and Polakóff (in the Geographical Society’s
Memoirs); while the second, not quite finished, remained in the hands
of the Third Section when I ran away. The manuscript was only found in
1895, and given to the Russian Geographical Society, by whom it was
forwarded to me in London.
At five in the afternoon--at three in the winter--as soon as the
tiny lamp was brought in, my pencils and pens were taken away, and
I had to stop work. Then I used to read, mostly books of history.
Quite a library had been formed in the fortress by the generations of
political prisoners who had been confined there. I was allowed to add
to the library a number of staple works on Russian history, and with
the books which were brought to me by my relatives I was enabled to
read almost every work and collection of acts and documents bearing
on the Moscow period of the history of Russia. I relished in reading,
not only the Russian annals, especially the admirable annals of the
democratic mediæval republic of Pskov--the best, perhaps, in Europe
for the history of that type of mediæval cities--but all sorts of dry
documents, and even the Lives of the Saints, which occasionally contain
facts of the real life of the masses which cannot be found elsewhere. I
also read during this time a great number of novels, and even arranged
for myself a treat on Christmas Eve. My relatives managed to send
me then the Christmas stories of Dickens, and I spent the festival
laughing and crying over those beautiful creations of the great
novelist.
III
The worst was the silence, as of the grave, which reigned about me.
In vain I knocked on the walls and struck the floor with my foot,
listening for the faintest sound in reply. None was to be heard.
One month passed, then two, three, fifteen months, but there was no
reply to my knocks. We were only six, scattered among thirty-six
casemates--all my arrested comrades being kept in the Litóvskiy Zámok
prison. When the non-commissioned officer entered my cell to take me
out for a walk, and I asked him, ‘What kind of weather have we? Does
it rain?’ he cast a furtive side glance at me, and without saying a
word promptly retired behind the door, where a sentry and another
non-commissioned officer kept watch upon him. The only living being
from whom I could hear even a few words was the governor, who came to
my cell every morning to say ‘good-morning’ and ask whether I wanted to
buy tobacco or paper. I tried to engage him in conversation; but he
also cast furtive glances at the non-commissioned officers who stood
in the half-opened door, as if to say, ‘You see, I am watched, too.’
Pigeons only were not afraid to keep intercourse with me. Every morning
and every afternoon they came to my window to receive through the
gratings their food.
There were no sounds whatever except the squeak of the sentry’s boots,
the hardly perceptible noise of the shutter of the Judas, and the
ringing of the bells on the fortress cathedral. They rang a ‘Lord save
me’ (‘Góspodi pomílui’) every quarter of an hour--one, two, three,
four times. Then, each hour, the big bell struck slowly, with long
intervals between successive strokes. A lugubrious canticle followed,
chimed by the bells, which at every sudden change of temperature went
out of tune, making at such times a horrible cacophony which sounded
like the ringing of bells at a burial. At the gloomy hour of midnight,
the canticle, moreover, was followed by the discordant notes of a ‘God
save the Tsar.’ The ringing lasted a full quarter of an hour; and no
sooner had it come to an end than a new ‘Lord save me’ announced to the
sleepless prisoner that a quarter of an hour of his uselessly spent
life had gone in the meantime, and that many quarters of an hour, and
hours, and days, and months of the same vegetative life would pass,
before his keepers, or, maybe, death, would release him.
Every morning I was taken out for a half-hour’s walk in the prison
yard. This yard was a small pentagon with a narrow pavement round it,
and a little building--the bath house--in the middle. But I liked those
walks.
The need of new impressions is so great in prison that, when I
walked in our narrow yard, I always kept my eyes fixed upon the
high gilt spire of the fortress cathedral. This was the only thing
in my surroundings which changed its aspect, and I liked to see it
glittering like pure gold when the sun shone from a clear blue sky, or
assuming a fairy aspect when a light bluish haze lay upon the town, or
becoming steel gray when dark clouds began to gather.
During these walks, I saw occasionally the daughter of our governor,
a girl of eighteen, as she came out from her father’s apartment and
had to walk a few steps in our yard in order to reach the entrance
gate--the only issue from the building. She always hurried to pass
away, with her eyes cast down, as if she felt ashamed of being the
daughter of a jailor. Her younger brother, on the contrary, a cadet
whom I also saw once or twice in the yard, always looked straight in my
face with such a frank expression of sympathy that I was struck by it,
and even mentioned it to some one after my release. Four or five years
later, when he was already an officer, he was exiled to Siberia. He had
joined the revolutionary party, and must have helped, I suppose, to
carry on correspondence with prisoners in the fortress.
Winter is gloomy at St. Petersburg for those who cannot be out in
the brightly lighted streets. It was still gloomier, of course, in a
casemate. But dampness was even worse than darkness. In order to drive
away moisture the casemate was overheated, and I could not breathe; but
when, at last, I obtained by request, that the temperature should be
kept lower than before, the outer wall became dripping with moisture,
and the paper was as if a pail of water had been poured upon it every
day--the consequence being that I suffered a great deal from rheumatism.
* * * * *
With all that I was cheerful, continuing to write and to draw maps in
the darkness, sharpening my lead pencils with a broken piece of glass
which I had managed to get hold of in the yard; I faithfully walked my
five miles a day in the cell, and performed gymnastic feats with my oak
stool. Time went on. But then sorrow crept into my cell and nearly
broke me down. My brother Alexander was arrested.
Toward the end of December 1874, I was allowed an interview with him
and our sister Hélène, in the fortress, in the presence of a gendarme
officer. Interviews, granted at long intervals, always bring both the
prisoner and his relatives into a state of excitement. One sees beloved
faces and hears beloved voices, knowing that the vision will last but
a few moments; one feels so near to the other, and yet so far off, as
there can be no intimate conversation before a stranger, an enemy and
a spy. Besides, my brother and sister felt anxious for my health, upon
which the dark, gloomy winter days and the dampness had already marked
their first effects. We parted with heavy hearts.
A week after that interview, I received, instead of an expected letter
from my brother concerning the printing of my book, a short note from
Polakóff. He informed me that henceforward he would read the proofs,
and that I should have to address to him everything relative to the
printing. From the very tone of the note I understood at once that
something must be wrong with my brother. If it were only illness,
Polakóff would have mentioned it. Days of fearful anxiety came upon
me. Alexander must have been arrested, and I must have been the cause
of it! Life suddenly ceased to have any meaning for me. My walks, my
gymnastics, my work, lost interest. All the day long I went ceaselessly
up and down my cell, thinking of nothing but Alexander’s arrest. For
me, an unmarried man, imprisonment was only personal inconvenience; but
he was married, he passionately loved his wife, and they now had a boy,
upon whom they had concentrated all the love that they had felt for
their first two children.
Worst of all was the incertitude. What could he have done? For what
reason had he been arrested? What were they going to do with him? Weeks
passed; my anxiety became deeper and deeper; but there was no news,
till at last I heard in a roundabout way that he had been arrested for
a letter written to P. L. Lavróff.
I learned the details much later. After his last interview with me
he wrote to his old friend, who at that time was editing a Russian
socialist review, _Forward_, in London. He mentioned in this letter his
fears about my health; he spoke of the many arrests which were made
then in Russia; and he freely expressed his hatred of the despotic
rule. The letter was intercepted at the post office by the Third
Section, and they came on Christmas Eve to search his apartments. They
carried out their search in an even more brutal manner than usual.
After midnight half a dozen men made an irruption into his flat, and
turned everything upside down. The very walls were examined; the sick
child was taken out of its bed, that the bedding and the mattresses
might be inspected. They found nothing--there was nothing to find.
My brother very much resented this search. With his customary
frankness, he said to the gendarme officer who conducted it: ‘Against
you, captain, I have no grievance. You have received little education,
and you hardly understand what you are doing. But you, sir,’ he
continued, turning toward the procureur, ‘you know what part you are
playing in these proceedings. You have received a university education.
You know the law, and you know that you are trampling all law, such as
it is, under your feet, and covering the lawlessness of these men by
your presence; you are simply--a scoundrel!’
They swore hatred against him. They kept him imprisoned in the Third
Section till May. My brother’s child--a charming boy, whom illness
had rendered still more affectionate and intelligent--was dying from
consumption. The doctors said he had only a few days more to live.
Alexander, who had never asked any favour of his enemies, asked them
this time to permit him to see his child for the last time. He begged
to be allowed to go home for one hour, upon his word of honour to
return, or to be taken there under escort. They refused. They could not
deny themselves that vengeance.
The child died, and its mother was thrown once more into a state
bordering on insanity when my brother was told that he was to be
transported to East Siberia, to a small town, Minusínsk. He would
travel in a cart between two gendarmes, and his wife might follow
later, but could not travel with him.
‘Tell me, at least, what is my crime,’ he demanded; but there was
no accusation of any sort against him beyond the letter. This
transportation appeared so arbitrary, so much an act of mere revenge
on the part of the Third Section, that none of our relatives could
believe that the exile would last more than a few months. My brother
lodged a complaint with the Minister of the Interior. The reply was
that the minister could not interfere with the will of the chief of the
gendarmes. Another complaint was lodged with the Senate. It was of no
avail.
A couple of years later, our sister Hélène, acting on her own
initiative, wrote a petition to the Tsar. Our cousin Dmítri,
Governor-general of Khárkoff, aide-de-camp of the Emperor and a
favourite at the court, also deeply incensed at this treatment by the
Third Section, handed the petition personally to the Tsar, and in so
doing added a few words in support of it. But the vindictiveness of
the Románoffs was a family trait strongly developed in Alexander II.
He wrote upon the petition, ‘Pust posidít’ (Let him remain some time
more). My brother stayed in Siberia twelve years, and never returned to
Russia.
IV
The countless arrests which were made in the summer of 1874, and the
serious turn which was given by the police to the prosecution of our
circle, produced a deep change in the opinions of Russian youth. Up to
that time the prevailing idea had been to pick out among the workers,
and eventually the peasants, a number of men who should be prepared to
become socialistic agitators. But the factories were now flooded with
spies, and it was evident that, do what they might, both propagandists
and workers would very soon be arrested and hidden for ever in Siberia.
Then began a great movement ‘to the people’ in a new form, when several
hundred young men and women, disregarding all precautions hitherto
taken, rushed to the country, and, travelling through the towns and
villages, incited the masses to revolution, almost openly distributing
pamphlets, songs, and proclamations. In our circles this summer
received the name of ‘the mad summer.’
The gendarmes lost their heads. They had not hands enough to make the
arrests nor eyes enough to trace the steps of every propagandist. Yet
not less than fifteen hundred persons were arrested during this hunt,
and half of them were kept in prison for years.
One day in the summer of 1875, in the cell that was next to mine I
distinctly heard the light steps of heeled boots, and a few minutes
later I caught fragments of a conversation. A feminine voice spoke from
the cell, and a deep bass voice--evidently that of the sentry--grunted
something in reply. Then I recognized the sound of the colonel’s spurs,
his rapid steps, his swearing at the sentry, and the click of the key
in the lock. He said something, and a feminine voice loudly replied:
‘We did not talk. I only asked him to call the non-commissioned
officer.’ Then the door was locked, and I heard the colonel swearing in
whispers at the sentry.
So I was alone no more. I had a lady neighbour, who at once broke down
the severe discipline which had hitherto reigned amongst the soldiers.
From that day the walls of the fortress, which had been mute during the
last fifteen months, became animated. From all sides I heard knocks
with the foot on the floor: one, two, three, four, ... eleven knocks;
twenty-four knocks, fifteen knocks; then an interruption, followed by
three knocks and a long succession of thirty-three knocks. Over and
over again these knocks were repeated in the same succession, until
the neighbour would guess at last that they were meant for ‘Kto vy?’
(Who are you?), the letter _v_ being the third letter in our alphabet.
Thereupon conversation was soon established, and usually was conducted
in the abridged alphabet; that is, the alphabet being divided into six
rows of five letters, each letter is marked by its row and its place in
the row.
I discovered with great pleasure that I had at my left my friend
Serdukóff, with whom I could soon talk about everything, especially
when we used our cipher. But intercourse with men brought its
sufferings as well as its joys. Underneath me was lodged a peasant,
whom Serdukóff knew. He talked to him by means of knocks; and even
against my will, often unconsciously during my work, I followed their
conversations. I also spoke to him. Now, if solitary confinement
without any sort of work is hard for educated men, it is infinitely
harder for a peasant who is accustomed to physical work, and not at
all wont to spend years in reading. Our peasant friend felt quite
miserable, and having been kept for nearly two years in another
prison before he was brought to the fortress--his crime was that he
had listened to socialists--he was already broken down. Soon I began
to notice, to my terror, that from time to time his mind wandered.
Gradually his thoughts grew more and more confused, and we two
perceived, step by step, day by day, evidences that his reason was
failing, until his talk became at last that of a lunatic. Frightful
noises and wild cries came next from the lower story; our neighbour was
mad, but was still kept for several months in the casemate before he
was removed to an asylum, from which he never emerged. To witness the
destruction of a man’s mind, under such conditions, was terrible. I
am sure it must have contributed to increase the nervous irritability
of my good and true friend Serdukóff. When, after four years’
imprisonment, he was acquitted by the court and released, he shot
himself.
* * * * *
One day I received a quite unexpected visit. The Grand Duke Nicholas,
brother of Alexander II., who was inspecting the fortress, entered
my cell, followed only by his aide-de-camp. The door was shut behind
him. He rapidly approached me, saying, ‘Good-day, Kropótkin.’ He knew
me personally, and spoke in a familiar, good-natured tone, as to an
old acquaintance. ‘How is it possible, Kropótkin, that you, a page de
chambre, a sergeant of the corps of pages, should be mixed up in this
business, and now be here in this horrible casemate?’
‘Every one has his own opinions,’ was my reply.
‘Opinions! So your opinions were that you must stir up a revolution?’
What was I to reply? Yes? Then the construction which would be put
upon my answer would be that I, who had refused to give any answers to
the gendarmes, ‘avowed everything’ before the brother of the Tsar. His
tone was that of a commander of a military school when trying to obtain
‘avowals’ from a cadet. Yet I could not say ‘No’: it would have been a
lie. I did not know what to say, and stood without saying anything.
‘You see! You feel ashamed of it now’--
This remark angered me, and I at once said in a rather sharp way, ‘I
have given my replies to the examining magistrate, and have nothing
more to add.’
‘But understand, Kropótkin, please,’ he said then in the most familiar
tone, ‘that I don’t speak to you as an examining magistrate. I speak
quite as a private person--quite as a private man,’ he repeated,
lowering his voice.
Thoughts went whirling in my head. To play the part of Marquis Posa?
To tell the emperor through the grand duke of the desolation of
Russia, the ruin of the peasantry, the arbitrariness of the officials,
the terrible famines in prospect? To say that we wanted to help the
peasants out of their desperate condition, to make them raise their
heads--and by all this try to influence Alexander II.? These thoughts
followed one another in rapid succession, till at last I said to
myself: ‘Never! Nonsense! They know all that. They are enemies of the
nation, and such talk would not change them.’
I replied that he always remained an official person, and that I could
not look upon him as a private man.
He then began to ask me indifferent questions. ‘Was it not in Siberia,
with the Decembrists, that you began to entertain such ideas?’
‘No; I knew only one Decembrist, and with him I had no conversation
worth speaking of.’
‘Was it then at St. Petersburg that you got them?’
‘I was always the same.’
‘Why! Were you such in the corps of pages?’ he asked me with terror.
‘In the corps I was a boy, and what is indefinite in boyhood grows
definite in manhood.’
He asked me some other similar questions, and as he spoke I distinctly
saw what he was driving at. He was trying to obtain avowals, and my
imagination vividly pictured him saying to his brother: ‘All these
examining magistrates are imbeciles. He gave them no replies, but I
talked to him ten minutes, and he told me everything.’ That began to
annoy me; and when he said to me something to this effect, ‘How could
you have anything to do with all these people--peasants and people
with no names?’--I sharply turned upon him and said, ‘I have told you
already that I have given my replies to the examining magistrate.’ Then
he abruptly left the cell.
Later, the soldiers of the guard made quite a legend of that visit.
The person who came in a carriage to carry me away at the time of my
escape wore a military cap, and, having sandy whiskers, bore a faint
resemblance to the Grand Duke Nicholas. So a tradition grew up amongst
the soldiers of the St. Petersburg garrison that it was the grand
duke himself who came to rescue me and kidnapped me. Thus are legends
created even in times of newspapers and biographical dictionaries.
V
Two years had passed. Several of my comrades had died, several had
become insane, but nothing was heard yet of our case coming before a
court.
My health gave way before the end of the second year. The oak stool now
seemed heavy in my hand, and the five miles became an endless distance.
As there were about sixty of us in the fortress, and the winter days
were short, we were taken out for a walk in the yard for twenty minutes
only every third day. I did my best to maintain my energy, but the
‘arctic wintering’ without an interruption in the summer got the better
of me. I had brought back from my Siberian journeys slight symptoms
of scurvy; now, in the darkness and dampness of the casemate, they
developed more distinctly; that scourge of the prisons had got hold of
me.
In March or April 1876, we were at last told that the Third Section had
completed the preliminary inquest. The ‘case’ had been transmitted to
the judicial authorities, and consequently we were removed to a prison
attached to the court of justice--the House of Detention.
It was an immense show prison, recently built on the model of the
French and Belgian prisons, consisting of four stories of small cells,
each of which had a window overlooking an inner yard and a door opening
on an iron balcony; the balconies of the several stories were connected
by iron staircases.
For most of my comrades the transfer to this prison was a great relief.
There was much more life in it than in the fortress; more opportunity
for correspondence, for seeing one’s relatives, and for mutual
intercourse. Tapping on the walls continued all day long undisturbed,
and I was able in this way to relate to a young neighbour the history
of the Paris Commune from the beginning to the end. It took, however, a
whole week’s tapping.
As to my health, it grew even worse than it had lately been in the
fortress. I could not bear the close atmosphere of the tiny cell, which
measured only four steps from one corner to another, and where, as soon
as the steam-pipes were set to work, the temperature changed from a
glacial cold to an unbearable heat. Having to turn so often, I became
giddy after a few minutes’ walk, and ten minutes of outdoor exercise,
in the corner of a yard inclosed between high brick walls, did not
refresh me in the least. As to the prison doctor, who did not want to
hear the word ‘scurvy’ pronounced ‘in his prison,’ the less said of him
the better.
I was allowed to receive food from home, it so happening that one of my
relatives, married to a lawyer, lived a few doors from the court. But
my digestion had become so bad that I was soon able to eat nothing but
a small piece of bread and one or two eggs a day. My strength rapidly
failed, and the general opinion was that I should not live more than
a few months. When climbing the staircase which led to my cell in the
second story, I had to stop two or three times to rest, and I remember
an elderly soldier from the escort once commiserating me and saying,
‘Poor man, you won’t live till the end of the summer.’
My relatives now became very much alarmed. My sister Hélène tried to
obtain my release on bail, but the procureur, Shúbin, replied to her,
with a sardonic smile, ‘If you bring me a doctor’s certificate that he
will die in ten days, I will release him.’ He had the satisfaction of
seeing my sister fall into a chair and sob aloud in his presence. She
succeeded, however, in gaining her request that I should be visited by
a good physician--the chief doctor of the military hospital of the St.
Petersburg garrison. He was a bright, intelligent, aged general, who
examined me in the most scrupulous manner, and concluded that I had no
organic disease, but was suffering simply from a want of oxidation of
the blood. ‘Air is all that you want,’ he said. Then he stood a few
minutes in hesitation, and added in a decided manner, ‘No use talking,
you cannot remain here; you must be transferred.’
Some ten days later I was transferred to the military hospital, which
is situated on the outskirts of St. Petersburg, and has a special small
prison for the officers and soldiers who fall ill when they are under
trial. Two of my comrades had already been removed to this hospital
prison, when it was certain that they would soon die of consumption.
* * * * *
In the hospital I began at once to recover. I was given a spacious
room on the ground floor, close by the room of the military guard. It
had an immense grated window looking south, which opened on a small
boulevard with two rows of trees; and beyond the boulevard there was a
wide space where two hundred carpenters were engaged in building wooden
shanties for typhoid patients. Every evening they gave an hour or so to
singing in chorus--such a chorus as is formed only in large carpenters’
_artéls_. A sentry marched up and down the boulevard, his box standing
opposite my room.
My window was kept open all the day, and I basked in the rays of the
sun, which I had missed for such a long time. I breathed the balmy
air of May with a full chest, and my health improved rapidly--too
rapidly, I began to think. I was soon able to digest light food, gained
strength, and resumed my work with renewed energy. Seeing no way how I
could finish the second volume of my work, I wrote a _résumé_ of it,
which was printed in the first volume.
In the fortress I had heard from a comrade who had been in the hospital
prison that it would not be hard for me to escape from it, and I made
my presence there known to my friends. However, escape proved far more
difficult than I had been led to believe. A stricter supervision than
had ever before been heard of was exercised over me. The sentry in the
passage was placed at my door, and I was never let out of my room.
The hospital soldiers and the officers of the guard who occasionally
entered it seemed to be afraid to stay more than a minute or two.
Various plans were made by my friends to liberate me--some of them
very amusing. I was, for instance, to file through the iron bars of
my window. Then, on a rainy night, when the sentry on the boulevard
was dozing in his box, two friends were to creep up from behind and
overturn the box, so that it would fall upon the sentry and catch him
like a mouse in a trap, without hurting him. In the meantime, I was to
jump out of the window. But a better solution came in an unexpected way.
‘Ask to be let out for a walk,’ one of the soldiers whispered to me one
day. I did so. The doctor supported my demand, and every afternoon, at
four, I was allowed to take an hour’s walk in the prison yard. I had to
keep on the green flannel dressing-gown which is worn by the hospital
patients, but my boots, my vest, and my trousers were delivered to me
every day.
I shall never forget my first walk. When I was taken out, I saw before
me a yard fully three hundred paces long and more than two hundred
paces wide, all covered with grass. The gate was open, and through it
I could see the street, the immense hospital opposite, and the people
who passed by. I stopped on the doorsteps of the prison, unable for a
moment to move when I saw that yard and that gate.
At one end of the yard stood the prison--a narrow building, about one
hundred and fifty paces long--at each end of which was a sentry-box.
The two sentries paced up and down in front of the building, and had
tramped out a footpath in the green. Along this footpath I was told to
walk, and the two sentries continued to walk up and down--so that I was
never more than ten or fifteen paces from the one or the other. Three
hospital soldiers took their seats on the doorsteps.
At the opposite end of this spacious yard wood for fuel was being
unloaded from a dozen carts, and piled up along the wall by a dozen
peasants. The whole yard was inclosed by a high fence made of thick
boards. Its gate was open to let the carts in and out.
This open gate fascinated me. ‘I must not stare at it,’ I said to
myself; and yet I looked at it all the time. As soon as I was taken
back to my cell I wrote to my friends to communicate to them the
welcome news. ‘I feel well-nigh unable to use the cipher,’ I wrote with
a tremulous hand, tracing almost illegible signs instead of figures.
‘This nearness of liberty makes me tremble as if I were in a fever.
They took me out to-day in the yard; its gate was open, and no sentry
near it. Through this unguarded gate I will run out; my sentries will
not catch me’--and I gave the plan of the escape. ‘A lady is to come in
an open carriage to the hospital. She is to alight, and the carriage
to wait for her in the street, some fifty paces from the gate. When I
am taken out at four, I shall walk for a while with my hat in my hand,
and somebody who passes by the gate will take it as a signal that all
is right within the prison. Then you must return a signal: “The street
is clear.” Without it I shall not start: once beyond the gate I must
not be recaptured. Light or sound only can be used for your signal. The
coachman may send a flash of light--the sun’s rays reflected from his
lacquered hat upon the main hospital building; or, still better, the
sound of a song that goes on as long as the street is clear; unless
you can occupy the little gray bungalow which I see from the yard, and
signal to me from its window. The sentry will run after me like a dog
after a hare, describing a curve, while I run in a straight line, and
I _will_ keep five or ten paces in advance of him. In the street, I
shall spring into the carriage and we shall gallop away. If the sentry
shoots--well, that cannot be helped; it lies beyond our foresight; and
then, against a certain death in prison, the thing is well worth the
risk.’
Counter proposals were made, but that plan was ultimately adopted. The
matter was taken in hand by our circle; people who never had known me
entered into it, as if it were the release of the dearest of their
brothers. However, the attempt was beset with difficulties, and time
went with terrible rapidity. I worked hard, writing late at night; but
my health improved, nevertheless, at a speed which I found appalling.
When I was let out into the yard for the first time, I could only creep
like a tortoise along the footpath; now I felt strong enough to run.
True, I continued to go at the same tortoise pace, lest my walks should
be stopped; but my natural vivacity might betray me at any moment. And
my comrades, in the meantime, had to enlist more than a score of people
in the affair, to find a reliable horse and an experienced coachman,
and to arrange hundreds of unforeseen details which always spring up
around such conspiracies. The preparations took a month or so, and any
day I might be moved back to the House of Detention.
At last the day of the escape was settled. June 29, old style, is
the day of St. Peter and St. Paul. My friends, throwing a touch of
sentimentalism into their enterprise, wanted to set me free on that
day. They had let me know that in reply to my signal ‘All right within’
they would signal ‘All right outside’ by sending up a red toy balloon.
Then the carriage would come, and a song would be sung to let me know
when the street was open.
I went out on the 29th, took off my hat, and waited for the balloon.
But nothing of the kind was to be seen. Half an hour passed. I heard
the rumble of a carriage in the street; I heard a man’s voice singing a
song unknown to me; but there was no balloon.
The hour was over, and with a broken heart I returned to my room.
‘Something must have gone wrong,’ I said to myself.
The impossible had happened that day. Hundreds of children’s balloons
are always on sale in St. Petersburg, near the Gostínoi Dvor. That
morning there were none; not a single balloon was to be found. One was
discovered at last, in the possession of a child, but it was old and
would not fly. My friends rushed then to an optician’s shop, bought
an apparatus for making hydrogen, and filled the balloon with it; but
it would not fly any better: the hydrogen had not been dried. Time
pressed. Then a lady attached the balloon to her umbrella, and, holding
the latter high above her head, walked up and down in the street
alongside the high wall of our yard; but I saw nothing of it; the wall
being too high, and the lady too short.
As it turned out, nothing could have been better than that accident
with the balloon. When the hour of my walk had passed, the carriage
was driven along the streets which it was intended to follow after the
escape; and there, in a narrow street, it was stopped by a dozen or
more carts which were carrying wood to the hospital. The horses of the
carts got into disorder--some of them on the right side of the street,
and some on the left--and the carriage had to make its way at a slow
pace amongst them; at a turning it was actually blocked. If I had been
in it, we should have been caught.
Now a whole system of signals was established along the streets through
which we should have to go after the escape, in order to give notice
if the streets were not clear. For a couple of miles from the hospital
my comrades took the position of sentries. One was to walk up and down
with a handkerchief in his hand, which at the approach of the carts
he was to put into his pocket; another was to sit on a stone and eat
cherries, stopping when the carts came near; and so on. All these
signals, transmitted along the streets, were finally to reach the
carriage. My friends had also hired the gray bungalow that I could see
from the yard, and at an open window of that little house a violinist
stood with his violin, ready to play when the signal, ‘Street clear,’
reached him.
The attempt had been settled for the next day. Further postponement
would have been dangerous. In fact, the carriage had been taken notice
of by the hospital people, and something suspicious must have reached
the ears of the authorities, as on the night before my escape I heard
the patrol officer ask the sentry who stood opposite my window, ‘Where
are your ball cartridges?’ The soldier began to take them in a clumsy
way out of his cartridge pouch, spending a couple of minutes before
he got them. The patrol officer swore at him. ‘Have you not been told
to-night to keep four ball cartridges in the pocket of your coat?’ And
he stood by the sentry till the latter put four cartridges into his
pocket. ‘Look sharp!’ he said as he turned away.
The new arrangements concerning the signals had to be communicated
to me at once; and at two on the next day a lady--a dear relative of
mine--came to the prison, asking that a watch might be transmitted to
me. Everything had to go through the hands of the procureur; but as
this was simply a watch, without a box, it was passed along. In it was
a tiny cipher note which contained the whole plan. When I saw it I was
seized with terror, so daring was the feat. The lady, herself under
pursuit by the police for political reasons, would have been arrested
on the spot, if anyone had chanced to open the lid of the watch. But I
saw her calmly leave the prison and move slowly along the boulevard.
I came out at four, as usual, and gave my signal. I heard next the
rumble of the carriage, and a few minutes later the tones of the violin
in the gray house sounded through our yard. But I was then at the other
end of the building. When I got back to the end of my path which was
nearest the gate--about a hundred paces from it--the sentry was close
upon my heels. ‘One turn more,’ I thought--but before I reached the
farther end of the path the violin suddenly ceased playing.
More than a quarter of an hour passed, full of anxiety, before I
understood the cause of the interruption. Then a dozen heavily loaded
carts entered the gate and moved to the other end of the yard.
Immediately the violinist--a good one, I must say--began a wildly
exciting mazurka from Kontsky, as if to say, ‘Straight on now--this is
your time!’ I moved slowly to the nearer end of the footpath, trembling
at the thought that the mazurka might stop before I reached it.
When I was there I turned round. The sentry had stopped five or six
paces behind me; he was looking the other way. ‘Now or never!’ I
remember that thought flashing through my head. I flung off my green
flannel dressing-gown and began to run.
For many days in succession I had practised how to get rid of that
immeasurably long and cumbrous garment. It was so long that I carried
the lower part on my left arm, as ladies carry the trains of their
riding habits. Do what I might, it would not come off in one movement.
I cut the seams under the armpits, but that did not help. Then I
decided to learn to throw it off in two movements: one, casting the
end from my arm, the other dropping the gown on the floor. I practised
patiently in my room until I could do it as neatly as soldiers handle
their rifles. ‘One, two,’ and it was on the ground.
I did not trust much to my vigour, and began to run rather slowly, to
economize my strength. But no sooner had I taken a few steps than the
peasants who were piling the wood at the other end shouted, ‘He runs!
Stop him! Catch him!’ and they hastened to intercept me at the gate.
Then I flew for my life. I thought of nothing but running--not even of
the pit which the carts had dug out at the gate. Run! run! full speed!
The sentry, I was told later by the friends who witnessed the scene
from the gray house, ran after me, followed by three soldiers who had
been sitting on the doorsteps. The sentry was so near to me that he
felt sure of catching me. Several times he flung his rifle forward,
trying to give me a blow in the back with the bayonet. One moment my
friends in the window thought he had me. He was so convinced that he
could stop me in this way that he did not fire. But I kept my distance,
and he had to give up at the gate.
Safe out of the gate, I perceived, to my terror, that the carriage was
occupied by a civilian who wore a military cap. He sat without turning
his head to me. ‘Sold!’ was my first thought. The comrades had written
in their last letter, ‘Once in the street, don’t give yourself up:
there will be friends to defend you in case of need,’ and I did not
want to jump into the carriage if it was occupied by an enemy. However,
as I got nearer to the carriage I noticed that the man in it had sandy
whiskers which seemed to be those of a warm friend of mine. He did
not belong to our circle, but we were personal friends, and on more
than one occasion I had learned to know his admirable, daring courage,
and how his strength suddenly became herculean when there was danger
at hand. ‘Why should he be there? Is it possible?’ I reflected, and
was going to shout out his name, when I caught myself in good time,
and instead clapped my hands, while still running, to attract his
attention. He turned his face to me--and I knew who it was.
‘Jump in, quick, quick!’ he shouted in a terrible voice, calling me
and the coachman all sorts of names, a revolver in his hand and ready
to shoot. ‘Gallop! gallop! I will kill you!’ he cried to the coachman.
The horse--a beautiful racing trotter, which had been bought on
purpose--started at full gallop. Scores of voices yelling, ‘Hold them!
Get them!’ resounded behind us, my friend meanwhile helping me to put
on an elegant overcoat and an opera hat. But the real danger was not so
much in the pursuers as in a soldier who was posted at the gate of the
hospital, about opposite to the spot where the carriage had to wait.
He could have prevented my jumping into the carriage or could have
stopped the horse by simply rushing a few steps forward. A friend was
consequently commissioned to divert this soldier by talking. He did
this most successfully. The soldier having been employed at one time
in the laboratory of the hospital, my friend gave a scientific turn to
their chat, speaking about the microscope and the wonderful things one
sees through it. Referring to a certain parasite of the human body, he
asked, ‘Did you ever see what a formidable tail it has?’ ‘What, man, a
tail?’ ‘Yes it has; under the microscope it is as big as that.’ ‘Don’t
tell me any of your tales!’ retorted the soldier. ‘I know better. It
was the first thing I looked at under the microscope.’ This animated
discussion took place just as I ran past them and sprang into the
carriage. It sounds like fable, but it is fact.
The carriage turned sharply into a narrow lane, past the same wall of
the yard where the peasants had been piling wood, and which all of them
had now deserted in their run after me. The turn was so sharp that the
carriage was nearly upset, when I flung myself inward, dragging toward
me my friend; this sudden movement righted the carriage.
We trotted through the narrow lane and then turned to the left. Two
gendarmes were standing there, at the door of a public-house, and gave
to the military cap of my companion the military salute. ‘Hush! hush!’
I said to him, for he was still terribly excited. ‘All goes well; the
gendarmes salute us!’ The coachman thereupon turned his face toward me,
and I recognized in him another friend, who smiled with happiness.
Everywhere we saw friends, who winked to us or gave us a Godspeed as
we passed at the full trot of our beautiful horse. Then we entered the
large Nevsky Perspective, turned into a side street, and alighted at a
door, sending away the coachman. I ran up the staircase, and at its top
fell into the arms of my sister-in-law, who had been waiting in painful
anxiety. She laughed and cried at the same time, bidding me hurry to
put on another dress and to crop my conspicuous beard. Ten minutes
later my friend and I left the house and took a cab.
In the meantime the officer of the guard at the prison and the hospital
soldiers had rushed out into the street, doubtful as to what measures
they should take. There was not a cab for a mile round, every one
having been hired by my friends. An old peasant woman from the crowd
was wiser than all the lot. ‘Poor people,’ she said, as if talking to
herself, ‘they are sure to come out on the Perspective, and there they
will be caught if somebody runs along that lane, which leads straight
to the Perspective.’ She was quite right, and the officer ran to the
tramway car which stood close by, and asked the men to let him have
their horses to send somebody on horseback to the Perspective. But the
men obstinately refused to give up their horses, and the officer did
not use force.
As to the violinist and the lady who had taken the gray house, they too
rushed out and joined the crowd with the old woman, whom they heard
giving advice, and when the crowd dispersed they quietly went away.
It was a fine afternoon. We drove to the islands where the St.
Petersburg aristocracy go on bright spring days to see the sunset, and
called on the way, in a remote street, at a barber’s shop to shave off
my beard, which operation changed me, of course, but not very much. We
drove aimlessly up and down the islands, but, having been told not to
reach our night quarters till late in the evening, did not know where
to go. ‘What shall we do in the meantime?’ I asked my friend. He also
pondered over that question. ‘To Donon’s!’ he suddenly called out to
the cabman, naming one of the best St. Petersburg restaurants. ‘No one
will ever think of looking for you at Donon’s,’ he calmly remarked.
‘They will hunt for you everywhere else, but not there; and we shall
have a dinner, and a drink, too, in honour of your successful escape.’
What could I reply to so reasonable a suggestion? So we went to
Donon’s, passed the halls flooded with light and crowded with visitors
at the dinner hour, and took a separate room, where we spent the
evening till the time came when we were expected. The house where we
had first alighted was searched less than two hours after we left, as
were also the apartments of nearly all our friends. Nobody thought of
making a search at Donon’s.
A couple of days later I was to take possession of an apartment which
had been engaged for me, and which I could occupy under a false
passport. But the lady who was to take me in a carriage to that house
took the precaution of visiting it first by herself. It was densely
surrounded by spies. So many of my friends had come to inquire whether
I was safe there that the suspicions of the police had been aroused.
Moreover, my portrait had been printed by the Third Section, and
hundreds of copies had been distributed to policemen and watchmen. All
the detectives who knew me by sight were looking for me in the streets;
while those who did not were accompanied by soldiers and warders who
had seen me during my imprisonment. The Tsar was furious that such an
escape should have taken place in his capital in full daylight, and had
given the order, ‘He _must_ be found.’
It was impossible to remain at St. Petersburg, and I concealed myself
in country houses in its neighbourhood. In company with half-a-dozen
friends, I stayed at a village frequented at this time of the year by
St. Petersburg people bent on picnicking. Then it was decided that I
should go abroad. But from a foreign paper we had learned that all the
frontier stations and the railway termini in the Baltic provinces and
Finland were closely watched by detectives who knew me by sight. So I
determined to travel in a direction where I should be least expected.
Armed with the passport of a friend, and accompanied by another friend,
I crossed Finland, and went northward to a remote port on the Gulf of
Bothnia, whence I crossed to Sweden.
After I had gone on board the steamer, and it was about to sail,
the friend who was to accompany me to the frontier told me the St.
Petersburg news, which he had promised our friends not to tell me
before. My sister Hélène had been arrested, as well as the sister of
my brother’s wife, who had visited me in prison once a month after my
brother and his wife went to Siberia.
My sister knew absolutely nothing of the preparations for my escape.
Only after I had escaped a friend had hurried to her, to tell her
the welcome news. She protested her ignorance in vain: she was taken
from her children, and was kept imprisoned for a fortnight. As to the
sister of my brother’s wife, she had known vaguely that something
was to be attempted, but she had had no part in the preparations.
Common sense ought to have shown the authorities that a person who
had officially visited me in prison would not be involved in such an
affair. Nevertheless, she was kept in prison for over two months. Her
husband, a well-known lawyer, vainly endeavoured to obtain her release.
‘We are aware now,’ he was told by the gendarme officers, ‘that she has
had nothing to do with the escape; but, you see, we reported to the
emperor, on the day we arrested her, that the person who had organized
the escape was discovered and arrested. It will now take some time
to prepare the emperor to accept the idea that she is not the real
culprit.’
I crossed Sweden without stopping anywhere, and went to Christiania,
where I waited a few days for a steamer to sail for Hull, gathering
information in the meantime about the peasant party of the Norwegian
Storthing. As I went to the steamer I asked myself with anxiety, ‘Under
which flag does she sail--Norwegian, German, English?’ Then I saw
floating above the stern the Union Jack--the flag under which so many
refugees, Russian, Italian, French, Hungarian, and of all nations, have
found an asylum. I greeted that flag from the depth of my heart.
PART SIXTH
WESTERN EUROPE
I
A storm raged in the North Sea, as we approached the coasts of England.
But I met the storm with delight. I enjoyed the struggle of our steamer
against the furiously rolling waves, and sat for hours on the stem,
the foam of the waves dashing into my face. After the two years I had
spent in a gloomy casemate, every fibre of my inner self seemed to be
throbbing with life, and eager to enjoy the full intensity of life.
My intention was not to stay abroad more than a few weeks or months;
just enough time to allow the hue and cry caused by my escape to
subside, and also to restore my health a little. I landed under the
name of Lavashóff, the name under which I had left Russia; and,
avoiding London, where the spies of the Russian embassy would soon have
been at my heels, I went first to Edinburgh.
It has, however, so happened that I have never returned to Russia. I
was soon taken up by the wave of the anarchist movement, which was
just then rising in Western Europe; and I felt that I should be more
useful in helping that movement to find its proper expression than I
could possibly be in Russia. In my mother country I was too well known
to carry on an open propaganda, especially among the workers and the
peasants; and later on, when the Russian movement became a conspiracy
and an armed struggle against the representative of autocracy, all
thought of a popular movement was necessarily abandoned; while my
own inclinations drew me more and more intensely toward casting in
my lot with the labouring and toiling masses. To bring to them such
conceptions as would aid them to direct their efforts to the best
advantage of all the workers; to deepen and to widen the ideals and
principles which will underlie the coming social revolution; to
develop these ideals and principles before the workers, not as an
order coming from their leaders, but as a result of their own reason;
and so to awaken their own initiative, now that they were called upon
to appear in the historical arena as the builders of a new, equitable
mode of organization of society--this seemed to me as necessary for
the development of mankind as anything I could accomplish in Russia
at that time. Accordingly, I joined the few men who were working in
that direction in Western Europe, relieving those of them who had been
broken down by years of hard struggle.
* * * * *
When I landed at Hull and went to Edinburgh I informed but a few
friends in Russia and in the Jura Federation of my safe arrival in
England. A socialist must always rely upon his own work for his living,
and consequently, as soon as I was settled in the Scotch capital in a
small room in the suburbs, I tried to find some work.
Among the passengers on board our steamer there was a Norwegian
professor, with whom I talked, trying to remember the little that I
formerly had known of the Swedish language. He spoke German. ‘But as
you speak some Norwegian,’ he said to me, ‘and are trying to learn it,
let us both speak it.’
‘You mean Swedish?’ I ventured to ask, ‘I speak Swedish, don’t I?’
‘Well, I should rather say Norwegian; certainly not Swedish,’ was his
reply.
Thus happened to me what happened to one of Jules Verne’s heroes, who
had learned by mistake Portuguese instead of Spanish. At any rate,
I talked a good deal with the professor--let it be Norwegian--and
he gave me a Christiania paper, which contained the reports of the
Norwegian North Atlantic deep-sea expedition, just returned home. As
soon as I reached Edinburgh I wrote a note in English about these
explorations, and sent it to ‘Nature,’ which my brother and I used
regularly to read at St. Petersburg from its first appearance. The
sub-editor acknowledged the note with thanks, remarking with an
extreme leniency which I have often met with since in England, that
my English was ‘all right’ and only required to be ‘a little more
idiomatic.’ I may say that I had learned English in Russia, and, with
my brother, had translated Page’s ‘Philosophy of Geology’ and Herbert
Spencer’s ‘Principles of Biology.’ But I had learned it from books,
and pronounced it very badly, so that I had the greatest difficulty in
making myself understood by my Scotch landlady; her daughter and I used
to write on scraps of paper what we had to say to each other; and as
I had no idea of idiomatic English, I must have made the most amusing
mistakes. I remember, at any rate, protesting once to her, in writing,
that it was not a ‘cup of tea’ that I expected at tea time, but many
cups. I am afraid my landlady took me for a glutton, but I must say,
by way of apology, that neither in the geological books I had read in
English nor in Spencer’s ‘Biology’ was there any allusion to such an
important matter as tea-drinking.
I got from Russia the Journal of the Russian Geographical Society,
and soon began to supply the ‘Times’ also with occasional paragraphs
about Russian geographical explorations. Prjeválsky was at that time in
Central Asia, and his progress was followed in England with interest.
However, the money I had brought with me was rapidly disappearing, and
all my letters to Russia being intercepted, I could not succeed in
making my address known to my relatives. So I moved in a few weeks to
London, thinking I could find more regular work there. The old refugee,
P. L. Lavróff, continued to edit at London his newspaper _Forward_; but
as I hoped soon to return to Russia, and the editorial office of the
Russian paper must have been closely watched by spies, I did not go
there.
I went, very naturally, to the office of ‘Nature,’ where I was most
cordially received by the sub-editor, Mr. J. Scott Keltie. The editor
wanted to increase the column of Notes, and found that I wrote them
exactly as they were required. A table was consequently assigned me
in the office, and scientific reviews in all possible languages were
piled upon it. ‘Come every Monday, Mr. Levashóff,’ I was told, ‘look
over these reviews, and if there is any article that strikes you as
worthy of notice, write a note, or mark the article: we will send it
to a specialist.’ Mr. Keltie did not know, of course, that I used to
rewrite each note three or four times before I dared to submit my
English to him; but taking the scientific reviews home, I soon managed
very nicely, with my ‘Nature’ notes and my ‘Times’ paragraphs, to get a
living. I found that the weekly payment, on Thursday, of the paragraph
contributors to the ‘Times’ was an excellent institution. To be sure,
there were weeks when there was no interesting news from Prjeválsky,
and news from other parts of Russia was not found interesting; in such
cases my fare was bread and tea only.
One day, however, Mr. Keltie took from the shelves several Russian
books, asking me to review them for ‘Nature.’ I looked at the books,
and, to my embarrassment, saw that they were my own works on the
Glacial Period and the Orography of Asia. My brother had not failed to
send them to our favourite ‘Nature.’ I was in great perplexity, and,
putting the books into my bag, took them home, to reflect upon the
matter. ‘What shall I do with them?’ I asked myself. ‘I cannot praise
them, because they are mine; and I cannot be too sharp on the author,
as I hold the views expressed in them.’ I decided to take them back
next day, and explain to Mr. Keltie that, although I had introduced
myself under the name of Levashóff, I was the author of these books,
and could not review them.
Mr. Keltie knew from the papers about Kropótkin’s escape, and was
very much pleased to discover the refugee safe in England. As to my
scruples, he remarked wisely that I need neither scold nor praise the
author, but could simply tell the readers what the books were about.
From that day a friendship, which still continues, grew up between us.
* * * * *
In November or December 1876, seeing in the letter box of P. L.
Lavróff’s paper an invitation for ‘K.’ to call at the editorial office
to receive a letter from Russia, and thinking that the invitation was
for me, I called at the office, and soon established friendship with
the editor and the younger people who printed the paper.
When I called for the first time at the office--my beard shaved and my
top hat on--and asked the lady who opened the door, in my very best
English: ‘Is Mr. Lavróff in?’ I imagined that no one would ever know
who I was as long as I had not mentioned my name. It appeared, however,
that the lady--who did not know me at all, but well knew my brother
while he stayed at Zürich--at once recognized me and ran upstairs to
say who the visitor was. ‘I knew you immediately,’ she said afterwards,
‘by your eyes, which reminded me of those of your brother.’
That time, I did not stay long in England. I was in lively
correspondence with my friend James Guillaume, of the Jura Federation,
and as soon as I found some permanent geographical work, which I could
do in Switzerland as well as in London, I removed to Switzerland. The
letters that I got at last from home told me that I might as well stay
abroad, as there was nothing particular to be done in Russia. A wave of
enthusiasm was rolling over the country at that time in favour of the
Slavonians who had revolted against the age-long Turkish oppression,
and my best friends, Serghéi (Stepniák), Kelnitz, and several others
had gone to the Balkán peninsula to join the insurgents. ‘We read,’
my friends wrote, ‘the “Daily News” correspondence about the horrors
in Bulgaria; we weep at the reading, and go next to enlist either as
volunteers in the Balkán insurgents’ band or as nurses.’
I went to Switzerland, joined the Jura Federation of the International
Workingmen’s Association, and, following the advice of my Swiss
friends, settled in La Chaux-de-Fonds.
II
The Jura Federation has played an important part in the modern
development of socialism.
It always happens that after a political party has set before itself
a purpose, and has proclaimed that nothing short of the complete
attainment of that aim will satisfy it, it divides into two fractions.
One of them remains what it was, while the other, although it professes
not to have changed a word of its previous intentions, accepts some
sort of compromise, and gradually, from compromise to compromise, is
driven farther from its primitive programme, and becomes a party of
modest makeshift reform.
Such a division had occurred within the International Workingmen’s
Association. Nothing less than an expropriation of the present owners
of land and capital, and a transmission of all that is necessary for
the production of wealth to the producers themselves, was the avowed
aim of the Association at the outset. The workers of all nations were
called upon to form their own organizations for a direct struggle
against capitalism; to work out the means of socializing the production
of wealth and its consumption; and, when they should be ready to do so,
to take possession of the necessaries for production, and to control
production with no regard to the present political organization, which
must undergo a complete reconstruction. The Association had thus to be
the means for preparing an immense revolution in men’s minds, and later
on in the very forms of life--a revolution which would open to mankind
a new era of progress based upon the solidarity of all. That was the
ideal which aroused from their slumber millions of European workers,
and attracted to the Association its best intellectual forces.
However, two fractions soon developed. When the war of 1870 had ended
in a complete defeat of France, and the uprising of the Paris Commune
had been crushed, and the Draconian laws which were passed against
the Association excluded the French workers from participation in it;
and when, on the other hand, parliamentary rule had been introduced
in ‘united Germany’--the goal of the Radicals since 1848--an effort
was made by the Germans to modify the aims and the methods of the
whole socialist movement. The ‘conquest of power _within the existing
states_’ became the watchword of that section, which took the name of
‘Social Democracy.’ The first electoral successes of this party at
the elections to the German Reichstag aroused great hopes. The number
of the social democratic deputies having grown from two to seven, and
next to nine, it was confidently calculated by otherwise reasonable
men that before the end of the century the social democrats would
have a majority in the German Parliament, and would then introduce
the socialist ‘popular state’ by means of suitable legislation.
The socialist ideal of this party gradually lost the character of
something that had to be worked out by the labour organizations
themselves, and became state management of the industries--in fact,
state socialism; that is, state capitalism. To-day, in Switzerland,
the efforts of the social democrats are directed in politics toward
centralization as against federalism, and in the economic field to
promoting the state management of railways and the state monopoly of
banking and of the sale of spirits. The state management of the land
and of the leading industries, and even of the consumption of riches,
would be the next step in a more or less distant future.
Gradually, all the life and activity of the German social democratic
party was subordinated to electoral considerations. Trade unions were
treated with contempt and strikes were met with disapproval, because
both diverted the attention of the workers from electoral struggles.
Every popular outbreak, every revolutionary agitation in any country of
Europe, was received by the social democratic leaders with even more
animosity than by the capitalist press.
In the Latin countries, however, this new direction found but few
adherents. The sections and federations of the International remained
true to the principles which had prevailed at the foundation of the
Association. Federalist by their history, hostile to the idea of a
centralized state, and possessed of revolutionary traditions, the Latin
workers could not follow the evolution of the Germans.
The division between the two branches of the socialist movement became
apparent immediately after the Franco-German war. The International, as
I have already mentioned, had created a governing body in the shape of
a general council which resided at London; and the leading spirits of
that council being two Germans, Engels and Marx, the council became the
stronghold of the new social democratic direction; while the inspirers
and intellectual leaders of the Latin federations were Bakúnin and his
friends.
The conflict between the Marxists and the Bakúnists was not a personal
affair. It was the necessary conflict between the principles of
federalism and those of centralization, the free Commune and the
State’s paternal rule, the free action of the masses of the people and
the betterment of existing capitalist conditions through legislation--a
conflict between the Latin spirit and the German _Geist_, which,
after the defeat of France on the battlefield, claimed supremacy in
science, politics, philosophy, and in socialism too, representing
its own conception of socialism as ‘scientific,’ while all other
interpretations it described as ‘utopian.’
At the Hague Congress of the International Association, which was
held in 1872, the London general council, by means of a fictitious
majority, excluded Bakúnin, his friend Guillaume, and even the Jura
Federation from the International. But as it was certain that most
of what remained then of the International--that is, the Spanish,
the Italian, and the Belgian Federations--would side with the
Jurassians, the congress tried to dissolve the Association. A new
general council, composed of a few social democrats, was nominated in
New York, where there were no workmen’s organizations belonging to
the Association to control it, and where it has never been heard of
since. In the meantime, the Spanish, the Italian, the Belgian, and
the Jura Federations of the International continued to exist and to
meet as usual, for the next five or six years, in annual international
congresses.
* * * * *
The Jura Federation, at the time when I came to Switzerland, was the
centre and the leading voice of the international federations. Bakúnin
had just died (July 1, 1876), but the federation retained the position
it had taken under his impulse.
The conditions in France, Spain, and Italy were such that only the
maintenance of the revolutionary spirit that had developed amongst the
Internationalist workers previous to the Franco-German war prevented
the governments from taking decisive steps toward crushing the whole
labour movement and inaugurating the reign of White Terror. It is
well known that the re-establishment of a Bourbon monarchy in France
was very near becoming an accomplished fact. Marshal MacMahon was
maintained as president of the republic only in order to prepare for a
monarchist restoration; the very day of the solemn entry of Henry V.
into Paris was settled, and even the harnesses of the horses, adorned
with the pretender’s crown and initials, were ready. And it is also
known that it was only the fact that Gambetta and Clémenceau--the
opportunist and the radical--had covered wide portions of France with
committees, armed and ready to rise as soon as the _coup d’état_
should be made, which prevented the proposed restoration. But the real
strength of those committees was in the workers, many of whom had
formerly belonged to the International and had retained the old spirit.
Speaking from personal knowledge, I may venture to say that the radical
middle-class leaders would have hesitated in case of an emergency,
while the workers would have seized the first opportunity for an
uprising which, beginning with the defence of the republic, might have
gone further on in the socialist direction.
The same was true in Spain. As soon as the clerical and aristocratic
surroundings of the king drove him to turn the screws of reaction,
the republicans menaced him with a movement in which, they knew,
the real fighting element would be the workers. In Catalonia alone
there were over one hundred thousand men in strongly organized trade
unions, and more than eighty thousand Spaniards belonged to the
International, regularly holding congresses, and punctually paying
their contributions to the association with a truly Spanish sense
of duty. I can speak of these organizations from personal knowledge,
gained on the spot, and I know that they were ready to proclaim the
United States of Spain, abandon ruling the colonies, and in some of
the most advanced regions make serious attempts in the direction of
collectivism. It was this permanent menace which prevented the Spanish
monarchy from suppressing all the workers’ and peasants’ organizations,
and from inaugurating a frank clerical reaction.
Similar conditions prevailed also in Italy. The trade unions in North
Italy had not reached the strength they have now; but parts of Italy
were honeycombed with International sections and republican groups.
The monarchy was kept under continual menace of being upset should the
middle-class republicans appeal to the revolutionary elements among the
workers.
In short, looking back upon these years, from which we are separated
now by a quarter of a century, I am firmly persuaded that if Europe
did not pass through a period of stern reaction after 1871, this was
mainly due to the spirit which was aroused in Western Europe before
the Franco-German war, and has been maintained since by the Anarchist
Internationalists, the Blanquists, the Mazzinians, and the Spanish
‘cantonalist’ republicans.
Of course, the Marxists, absorbed by their local electoral
struggles, knew little of these conditions. Anxious not to draw the
thunderbolts of Bismarck upon their heads, and fearing above all that
a revolutionary spirit might make its appearance in Germany and lead
to repressions which they were not strong enough to face, they not
only repudiated, for tactical purposes, all sympathy with the Western
revolutionists, but gradually became inspired with hatred toward the
revolutionary spirit, and denounced it with virulence wheresoever it
made its appearance, even when they saw its first signs in Russia.
No revolutionary papers could be printed in France at that time,
under Marshal MacMahon. Even the singing of the ‘Marseillaise’ was
considered a crime; and I was once very much amazed at the terror
which seized several of my co-passengers in a train when they heard
a few recruits singing the revolutionary song (in May 1878). ‘Is it
permitted again to sing the “Marseillaise”?’ they asked one another
with anxiety. The French Press had consequently no socialist papers.
The Spanish papers were very well edited, and some of the manifestoes
of their congresses were admirable expositions of anarchist socialism;
but who knows anything of Spanish ideas outside of Spain? As to the
Italian papers, they were all short-lived, appearing, disappearing, and
re-appearing elsewhere under different names; and admirable as some of
them were, they did not spread beyond Italy. Consequently, the Jura
Federation, with its papers printed in French, became the centre for
the maintenance and expression in the Latin countries of the spirit
which--I repeat it--saved Europe from a very dark period of reaction.
And it was also the ground upon which the theoretical conceptions of
anarchism were worked out by Bakúnin and his followers in a language
that was understood all over continental Europe.
III
Quite a number of remarkable men of different nationalities, nearly all
of whom had been personal friends of Bakúnin, belonged at that time
to the Jura Federation. The editor of our chief paper, the ‘Bulletin’
of the federation, was James Guillaume, a teacher by profession, who
belonged to one of the aristocratic families of Neuchâtel. Small, thin,
with the stiff appearance and resoluteness of Robespierre, and with a
truly golden heart which opened only in the intimacy of friendship,
he was a born leader by his phenomenal powers of work and his stern
activity. For eight years he fought against all sorts of obstacles to
maintain the paper in existence, taking the most active part in every
detail of the federation, till he had to leave Switzerland, where he
could find no work whatever, and settled in France, where his name will
be quoted some day with the utmost respect in the history of education.
Adhémar Schwitzguébel, also a Swiss, was the type of the jovial,
lively, clear-sighted French-speaking watchmakers of the Bernese
Jura hills. A watch engraver by trade, he never attempted to abandon
his position of manual worker, and, always merry and active, he
supported his large family through the severest periods of slack trade
and curtailed earnings. His gift of taking a difficult economic or
political question, and, after much thought about it, considering it
from the working-man’s point of view, without divesting it of its
deepest meaning, was wonderful. He was known far and wide in the
‘mountains,’ and with the workers of all countries he was a general
favourite.
His direct counterpart was another Swiss, also a watchmaker, Spichiger.
He was a philosopher, slow in both movement and thought, English in
his physical aspect; always trying to get at the full meaning of every
fact, and impressing all of us by the justness of the conclusions he
reached while he was pondering over all sorts of subjects during his
work of scooping out watch lids.
Round these three gathered a number of solid, staunch, middle-aged or
elderly workmen, passionate lovers of liberty, happy to take part in
such a promising movement, and a hundred or so bright young men, also
mostly watchmakers--all very independent and affectionate, very lively,
and ready to go to any length in self-sacrifice.
Several refugees of the Paris Commune had joined the federation. Elisée
Reclus, the great geographer, was of their number--a type of the
true Puritan in his manner of life, and of the French encyclopædist
philosopher of the last century in his mind; the man who inspires
others, but never has governed anyone, and never will do so; the
anarchist whose anarchism is the epitome of his broad, intimate
knowledge of the forms of life of mankind under all climates and in
all stages of civilization; whose books rank among the very best of
the century; whose style, of a striking beauty, moves the mind and the
conscience; and who, as he enters the office of an anarchist paper,
says to the editor--maybe a boy in comparison with himself: ‘Tell me
what I have to do,’ and will sit down, like a newspaper subordinate,
to fill up a gap of so many lines in the current number of the paper.
In the Paris Commune he simply took a rifle and stood in the ranks;
and if he invites a contributor to work with him upon a volume of his
world-famed Geography, and the contributor timidly asks, ‘What have I
to do?’ he replies: ‘Here are the books, here is a table. Do as you
like.’
At his side was Lefrançais, an elderly man, formerly a teacher, who had
been thrice in his life an exile: after June 1848, after Napoleon’s
_coup d’état_, and after 1871. An ex-member of the Commune, and
consequently one of those who were said to have left Paris carrying
away millions in their pockets, he worked as a freight handler at the
railway at Lausanne, and was nearly killed in that work, which required
younger shoulders than his. His book on the Paris Commune is the one
in which the real historical meaning of that movement was put in its
proper light. ‘A Communalist, not an Anarchist, please,’ he would say.
‘I cannot work with such fools as you are;’ and he worked with none but
us, ‘because,’ as he said, ‘you fools are still the men whom I love
best. With you one can work, and remain one’s self.’
Another ex-member of the Paris Commune who was with us was Pindy,
a carpenter from the north of France, an adopted child of Paris.
He became widely known at Paris, during a strike, supported by the
International, for his vigour and bright intelligence, and was elected
a member of the Commune, which nominated him commander of the Tuileries
Palace. When the Versailles troops entered Paris, shooting their
prisoners by the hundred, three men at least were shot in different
parts of the town, having been mistaken for Pindy. After the fight,
however, he was concealed by a brave girl, a seamstress, who saved him
by her calmness when the house was searched by the troops, and who
afterwards became his wife. Only twelve months later they succeeded in
leaving Paris unnoticed, and came to Switzerland. Here Pindy learned
assaying, at which he became skilful; spending his days by the side
of his red-hot stove, and at night devoting himself passionately to
propaganda work, in which he admirably combined the passion of a
revolutionist with the good sense and organizing powers characteristic
of the Parisian worker.
Paul Brousse was then a young doctor, full of mental activity,
uproarious, sharp, lively, ready to develop any idea with a geometrical
logic to its utmost consequences; powerful in his criticisms of the
State and State organization; finding enough time to edit two papers,
in French and in German, to write scores of voluminous letters, to be
the soul of a workmen’s evening party; constantly active in organizing
men, with the subtle mind of a true ‘southerner.’
Among the Italians who collaborated with us in Switzerland, two men
whose names stood always associated, and will be remembered in Italy
by more than one generation, two close personal friends of Bakúnin,
were Cafiero and Malatesta. Cafiero was an idealist of the highest and
the purest type, who gave a considerable fortune to the cause, and
who never since has asked himself what he shall live upon to-morrow;
a thinker plunged in philosophical speculation; a man who never would
harm anyone, and yet took the rifle and marched in the mountains of
Benevento, when he and his friends thought that an uprising of a
socialist character might be attempted, were it only to show the people
that their uprisings ought to have a deeper meaning than that of a mere
revolt against tax collectors. Malatesta was a student of medicine,
who had left the medical profession and also his fortune for the sake
of the revolution; full of fire and intelligence, a pure idealist, who
all his life--and he is now approaching the age of fifty--has never
thought whether he would have a piece of bread for his supper and a
bed for the night. Without even so much as a room that he could call
his own, he would sell sherbet in the streets of London to get his
living, and in the evening write brilliant articles for the Italian
papers. Imprisoned in France, released, expelled, recondemned in Italy,
confined to an island, escaped, and again in Italy in disguise; always
in the hottest of the struggle, whether it be in Italy or elsewhere--he
has persevered in this life for thirty years in succession. And when we
meet him again, released from a prison or escaped from an island, we
find him just as we saw him last; always renewing the struggle, with
the same love of men, the same absence of hatred toward his adversaries
and jailers, the same hearty smile for a friend, the same caress for a
child.
The Russians were few among us, most of them following the German
social democrats. We had, however, Joukóvsky, a friend of Hérzen, who
had left Russia in 1863--a brilliant, elegant, highly intelligent
nobleman, a favourite with the workers--who better than any of the
rest of us had what the French call _l’oreille du peuple_ (the ear of
the workers), because he knew how to fire them by showing them the
great part they had to play in rebuilding society, to lift them by
holding before them high historical views, to throw a flash of light
on the most intricate economic problem, and to electrify them with his
earnestness and sincerity. Sokolóff, formerly an officer of the Russian
general staff, an admirer of Paul Louis Courier for his boldness and of
Proudhon for his philosophical ideas, who had made many a socialist in
Russia by his review articles, was also with us temporarily.
* * * * *
I mention only those who became widely known as writers, or as
delegates to congresses, or in some other way. And yet I ask myself if
I ought not rather to speak of those who never committed their names
to print, but were as important in the life of the federation as any
one of the writers; who fought in the ranks, and were always ready
to join in any enterprise, never asking whether the work would be
grand or small, distinguished or modest--whether it would have great
consequences, or simply result in infinite worry to themselves and
their families.
I ought also to mention the Germans Werner and Rinke, the Spaniard
Albarracin, and many others; but I am afraid that these faint sketches
of mine may not convey to the reader the same feelings of respect and
love with which every one of this little family inspired those who knew
him or her personally.
IV
Of all the towns of Switzerland that I know, La Chaux-de-Fonds is
perhaps the least attractive. It lies on a high plateau entirely
devoid of any vegetation, open to bitterly cold winds in the winter,
when the snow lies as deep as at Moscow, and melts and falls again
as often as at St. Petersburg. But it was important to spread our
ideas in that centre, and to give more life to the local propaganda.
Pindy, Spichiger, Albarracin, the two Blanquists, Ferré and Jeallot,
were there, and from time to time I could pay visits to Guillaume at
Neuchâtel, and to Schwitzguébel in the valley of St. Imier.
A life full of work that I liked began now for me. We held many
meetings, distributing ourselves our announcements in the cafés and the
workshops. Once a week we held our section meetings, at which the most
animated discussions took place, and we went also to preach anarchism
at the gatherings convoked by the political parties. I travelled a good
deal, visiting other sections and helping them.
During that winter we won the sympathy of many, but our regular work
was very much hampered by a crisis in the watch trade. Half the
workers were out of work or only partially employed, so that the
municipality had to open dining rooms to provide cheap meals at cost
price. The co-operative workshop established by the anarchists at La
Chaux-de-Fonds, in which the earnings were divided equally among all
the members, had great difficulty in getting work, in spite of its high
reputation, and Spichiger had to resort several times to wool-combing
for an upholsterer in order to get his living.
We all took part, that year, in a manifestation with the red flag at
Bern. The wave of reaction spread to Switzerland, and the carrying
of the workers’ banner was prohibited by the Bern police in defiance
of the constitution. It was necessary, therefore, to show that at
least here and there the workers would not have their rights trampled
underfoot, and would offer resistance. We all went to Bern on the
anniversary of the Paris Commune, to carry the red flag in the streets,
notwithstanding the prohibition. Of course there was a collision with
the police in which two comrades received sword cuts and two police
officers were rather seriously wounded. But the red flag was carried
safe to the hall, where a most animated meeting was held. I hardly
need say that the so-called leaders were in the ranks, and fought
like all the rest. The trial involved nearly thirty Swiss citizens,
all themselves demanding to be prosecuted, and those who had wounded
the two police officers coming forward spontaneously to say that they
had done it. A great deal of sympathy was won to the cause during
the trial; it was understood that all liberties have to be defended
jealously, in order not to be lost. The sentences were consequently
very light, not exceeding three months’ imprisonment.
However, the Bern Government prohibited the carrying of the red flag
anywhere in the canton; and the Jura Federation thereupon decided to
carry it, in defiance of the prohibition, in St. Imier, where we held
our congress that year. This time most of us were armed, and ready to
defend our banner to the last extremity. A body of police had been
placed in a square to stop our column; a detachment of the militia was
kept in readiness in an adjoining field, under the pretext of target
practice--we distinctly heard their shots as we marched through the
town. But when our column appeared in the square, and it was judged
from its aspect that aggression would result in serious bloodshed,
the mayor let us continue our march undisturbed to the hall where the
meeting was to be held. None of us desired a fight; but the strain of
that march in fighting order, to the sound of a military band, was such
that I do not know what feeling prevailed in most of us during the
first moments after we reached the hall--relief at having been spared
an undesired fight, or regret that the fight did not take place. Man is
a very complex being.
* * * * *
Our main activity, however, was in working out the practical and
theoretical aspects of anarchist socialism, and in this direction the
federation has undoubtedly accomplished something that will last.
We saw that a new form of society is germinating in the civilized
nations, and must take the place of the old one: a society of equals,
who will not be compelled to sell their hands and brains to those who
choose to employ them in a haphazard way, but who will be able to
apply their knowledge and capacities to production, in an organism so
constructed as to combine all the efforts for procuring the greatest
sum possible of well-being for all, while full, free scope will be
left for every individual initiative. This society will be composed
of a multitude of associations, federated for all the purposes
which require federation: trade federations for production of all
sorts--agricultural, industrial, intellectual, artistic; communes
for consumption, making provision for dwellings, gas works, supplies
of food, sanitary arrangements, etc.; federations of communes among
themselves, and federations of communes with trade organizations; and
finally, wider groups covering the country, or several countries,
composed of men who collaborate for the satisfaction of such economic,
intellectual, artistic, and moral needs as are not limited to a given
territory. All these will combine directly, by means of free agreements
between them, just as the railway companies or the postal departments
of different countries co-operate now, without having a central railway
or postal government, even though the former are actuated by merely
egoistic aims and the latter belong to different and often hostile
States; or as the meteorologists, the Alpine clubs, the lifeboat
stations in Great Britain, the cyclists, the teachers, and so on,
combine for all sorts of work in common, for intellectual pursuits, or
simply for pleasure. There will be full freedom for the development
of new forms of production, invention, and organization; individual
initiative will be encouraged, and the tendency toward uniformity and
centralization will be discouraged.
Moreover, this society will not be crystallized into certain
unchangeable forms, but will continually modify its aspect, because it
will be a living, evolving organism; no need of government will be
felt, because free agreement and federation can take its place in all
those functions which governments consider as theirs at the present
time, and because, the causes of conflict being reduced in number,
those conflicts which may still arise can be submitted to arbitration.
None of us minimized the importance and depth of the change which we
looked for. We understood that the current opinions upon the necessity
of private ownership in land, factories, mines, dwelling houses, and so
on, as a means of securing industrial progress, and of the wage-system
as a means of compelling men to work, would not soon give way to higher
conceptions of socialized ownership and production. We knew that a
tedious propaganda and a long succession of struggles, individual and
collective revolts against the now prevailing forms of property, of
individual self-sacrifice, of partial attempts at reconstruction and
partial revolutions would have to be lived through, before the current
ideas upon private ownership would be modified. And we understood also
that the now current ideas concerning the necessity of authority--in
which all of us have been bred--would not and could not be abandoned
by civilized mankind all at once. Long years of propaganda and a long
succession of partial acts of revolt against authority, as well as a
complete revision of the teachings now derived from history, would
be required before men could perceive that they had been mistaken in
attributing to their rulers and their laws what was derived in reality
from their own sociable feelings and habits. We knew all that. But we
also knew that in preaching change in both these directions we should
be working with the tide of human progress.
When I made a closer acquaintance with the working population and their
sympathizers from the better educated classes, I soon realized that
they valued their personal freedom even more than they valued their
personal well-being. Fifty years ago the workers were ready to sell
their personal liberty to all sorts of rulers, and even to a Cæsar,
in exchange for a promise of material well-being, but now this was no
longer the case. I saw that the blind faith in elected rulers, even if
they were taken from amongst the best leaders of the labour movement,
was dying away amongst the Latin workers. ‘We must know first what we
want, and then we can do it best ourselves,’ was an idea which I found
widely spread among them--far more widely than is generally believed.
The sentence which was put in the statutes of the International
Association: ‘The emancipation of the workers must be accomplished by
the workers themselves,’ had met with general sympathy and had taken
root in minds. The sad experience of the Paris Commune only confirmed
it.
When the insurrection broke out, considerable numbers of men belonging
to the middle classes themselves were prepared to make, or at least
to accept, a new start in the social direction. ‘When my brother and
myself, coming out of our little room, went out in the streets,’
Elisée Reclus said to me once, ‘we were asked on all sides by people
belonging to the wealthier classes: “Tell us what is to be done? We are
ready to try a new start;” but _we_ were not prepared yet to make the
suggestions.’
Never before had a government been as fairly representative of all the
advanced parties as the Council of the Commune, elected on March 25,
1871. All shades of revolutionary opinion--Blanquists, Jacobinists,
Internationalists--were represented in it in a true proportion. And yet
the workers themselves, having no distinct ideas of social reform to
impress upon their representatives, the Commune Government did nothing
in that direction. The very fact of having been isolated from the
masses and shut up in the Hôtel de Ville paralysed them. For the very
success of socialism, the ideas of no-government, of self-reliance, of
free initiative of the individual--of anarchism, in a word--had thus
to be preached side by side with those of socialized ownership and
production.
We certainly foresaw that if full freedom is left to the individual
for the expression of his ideas and for action, we should have to face
a certain amount of extravagant exaggerations of our principles. I
had seen it in the Nihilist movement in Russia. But we trusted--and
experience has proved that we were right--that social life itself,
supported by a frank, open-minded criticism of opinions and actions,
would be the most effective means for threshing out opinions and for
divesting them of the unavoidable exaggerations. We acted, in fact, in
accordance with the old saying that freedom remains still the wisest
cure for freedom’s temporary inconveniences. There is, in mankind, a
nucleus of social habits, an inheritance from the past, not yet duly
appreciated, which is _not_ maintained by coercion and is superior to
coercion. Upon it all the progress of mankind is based, and so long as
mankind does not begin to deteriorate physically and mentally, it will
not be destroyed by any amount of criticism or of occasional revolt
against it. These were the opinions in which I grew confirmed more and
more in proportion as my experience of men and things increased.
We understood, at the same time, that such a change cannot be produced
by the conjectures of one man of genius, that it will not be one man’s
discovery, but that it must result from the constructive work of the
masses, just as the forms of judicial procedure which were elaborated
in the early mediæval ages, the village community, the guild, the
mediæval city, or the foundations of international law, were worked out
by the people.
Many of our predecessors had undertaken to picture ideal commonwealths,
basing them upon the principle of authority, or, on some rare
occasions, upon the principle of freedom. Robert Owen and Fourier had
given the world their ideals of a free, organically developing society,
in opposition to the pyramidal ideals which had been copied from the
Roman Empire or from the Roman Church. Proudhon had continued their
work, and Bakúnin, applying his wide and clear understanding of the
philosophy of history to the criticism of present institutions, ‘built
up while he was demolishing.’ But all that was only preparatory work.
The International Workingmen’s Association inaugurated a new method of
solving the problems of practical sociology by appealing to the workers
themselves. The educated men who had joined the association undertook
only to enlighten the workers as to what was going on in different
countries of the world to analyse the obtained results, and, later on,
to aid the workers in formulating their conclusions. We did not pretend
to evolve an ideal commonwealth out of our theoretical views as to what
a society _ought to be_, but we invited the workers to investigate the
causes of the present evils, and in their discussions and congresses
to consider the practical aspects of a better social organization than
the one we live in. A question raised at an international congress was
recommended as a subject of study to all labour unions. In the course
of the year it was discussed all over Europe, in the small meetings of
the sections, with a full knowledge of the local needs of each trade
and each locality; then the work of the sections was brought before the
next congress of each federation, and finally it was submitted in a
more elaborate form to the next international congress. The structure
of the society which we longed for was thus worked out, in theory and
practice, from beneath, and the Jura Federation took a large part in
that elaboration of the anarchist ideal.
For myself, placed as I was in such favourable conditions, I gradually
came to realize that anarchism represents more than a mere mode of
action and a mere conception of a free society; that it is part of a
philosophy, natural and social, which must be developed in a quite
different way from the metaphysical or dialectic methods which have
been employed in sciences dealing with man. I saw that it must be
treated by the same methods as natural sciences; not, however, on the
slippery ground of mere analogies, such as Herbert Spencer accepts, but
on the solid basis of induction applied to human institutions. And I
did my best to accomplish what I could in that direction.
V
Two congresses were held in the autumn of 1877 in Belgium: one of the
International Workingmen’s Association at Verviers, and the other an
International Socialist congress at Ghent. The latter was especially
important, as it was known that an attempt would be made by the
German social democrats to bring all the labour movement of Europe
under one organization, subject to a central committee, which would
be the old general council of the International under a new name.
It was therefore necessary to preserve the autonomy of the labour
organizations in the Latin countries, and we did our best to be well
represented at this congress. I went under the name of Levashóff; two
Germans, the compositor Werner and the engineer Rinke, walked nearly
all the distance from Basel to Belgium; and although we were only nine
anarchists at Ghent, we succeeded in checking the centralization scheme.
Twenty-two years have passed since; a number of International Socialist
congresses have been held, and at every one of them the same struggle
has been renewed--the social democrats trying to enlist all the
labour movement of Europe under their banner and to bring it under
their control, and the anarchists opposing and preventing it. What an
amount of wasted force, of bitter words exchanged and efforts divided,
simply because those who have adopted the formula of ‘conquest of
power within the existing states’ do not understand that activity in
this direction cannot embody all the socialist movement! From the
outset socialism took three independent lines of development, which
found their expression in Saint-Simon, Fourier, and Robert Owen.
Saint-Simonism has developed into social democracy, and Fourierism into
anarchism; while Owenism is developing, in England and America, into
trade-unionism, co-operation, and the so-called municipal socialism,
and remains hostile to social democratic state socialism, while it
has many points of contact with anarchism. But because of failure to
recognize that the three march toward a common goal in three different
ways, and that the two latter bring their own precious contribution to
human progress, a quarter of a century has been given to endeavours
to realize the unrealizable Utopia of a unique labour movement of the
social democratic pattern.
* * * * *
The Ghent congress ended for me in an unexpected way. Three or four
days after it had begun, the Belgian police learned who Levashóff was,
and received the order to arrest me for a breach of police regulations
which I had committed in giving at the hotel an assumed name. My
Belgian friends warned me. They maintained that the clerical ministry
which was in power was capable of giving me up to Russia, and insisted
upon my leaving the congress at once. They would not let me return to
the hotel; Guillaume barred the way, telling me that I should have to
use force against him if I insisted upon returning thither. I had to go
with some Ghent comrades, and as soon as I joined them, muffled calls
and whistling came from all corners of a dark square over which groups
of workers were scattered. It all looked awfully mysterious. At last,
after much whispering and subdued whistling, a group of comrades took
me under escort to a social democrat worker, with whom I had to spend
the night, and who received me, anarchist though I was, in the most
touching way as a brother. Next morning I left once more for England,
on board a steamer, provoking a number of good-natured smiles from the
British custom-house officers, who wanted me to show them my luggage,
while I had nothing to show but a small hand-bag.
I did not stay long in London. In the admirable collections of the
British Museum I studied the beginnings of the French Revolution--how
revolutions come to break out; but I wanted more activity, and soon
went to Paris. A revival of the labour movement was beginning there,
after the rigid suppression of the Commune. With the Italian Costa and
the few anarchist friends we had among the Paris workers, and with
Jules Guesde and his colleagues who were not strict social democrats at
that time, we started the first socialist groups.
Our beginnings were ridiculously small. Half a dozen of us used to
meet in cafés, and when we had an audience of a hundred persons at a
meeting we felt happy. No one would have guessed then that two years
later the movement would be in full swing. But France has its own ways
of development. When a reaction has gained the upper hand, all visible
traces of a movement disappear. Those who fight against the current are
few. But in some mysterious way, by a sort of invisible infiltration
of ideas, the reaction is undermined; a new current sets in, and then
it appears, all of a sudden, that the idea which was thought to be
dead was there alive, spreading and growing all the time; and as soon
as public agitation becomes possible, thousands of adherents, whose
existence nobody suspected, come to the front. ‘There are at Paris,’
old Blanqui used to say, ‘fifty thousand men who never come to a
meeting or to a demonstration; but the moment they feel that the people
can appear in the streets to manifest their opinion, they are there to
storm the position.’ So it was then. There were not twenty of us to
carry on the movement, not two hundred openly to support it. At the
first commemoration of the Commune, in March 1878, we surely were not
two hundred. But two years later the amnesty for the Commune was voted,
and the working population of Paris was in the streets to greet the
returning Communards; it flocked by the thousand to cheer them at the
meetings, and the socialist movement took a sudden expansion, carrying
with it the Radicals.
The time had not yet come for that revival, however, and one
night, in April 1878, Costa and a French comrade were arrested. A
police-court condemned them to imprisonment for eighteen months as
Internationalists. I escaped arrest only by mistake. The police wanted
Levashóff, and went to arrest a Russian student whose name sounded
very much like that. I had given my real name, and continued to stay
at Paris under that name for another month. Then I was called to
Switzerland.
VI
During this stay at Paris I made my first acquaintance with Turguéneff.
He had expressed to our common friend, P. L. Lavróff, the desire to see
me, and, as a true Russian, to celebrate my escape by a small friendly
dinner. It was with almost a feeling of worship that I crossed the
threshold of his room. If by his ‘Sportsman’s Notebook’ he rendered
to Russia the immense service of throwing odium upon serfdom (I did
not know at that time that he took a leading part in Hérzen’s powerful
‘Bell’), he has rendered no less service through his later novels. He
has shown what the Russian woman is, what treasuries of mind and heart
she possesses, what she may be as an inspirer of men; and he has taught
us how men who have a real claim to superiority look upon women, how
they love. Upon me, and upon thousands of my contemporaries, this part
of his teaching made an indelible impression, far more powerful than
the best articles upon women’s rights.
His appearance is well known. Tall, strongly built, the head covered
with soft and thick grey hair, he was certainly beautiful; his eyes
gleamed with intelligence, not devoid of a touch of humour, and his
whole manner testified to that simplicity and absence of affectation
which are characteristic of the best Russian writers. His fine head
revealed a vast development of brain power, and when he died, and Paul
Bert, with Paul Reclus (the surgeon), weighed his brain, it so much
surpassed the heaviest brain then known--that of Cuvier--reaching
something over two thousand grammes, that they would not trust to their
scales, but got new ones, to repeat the weighing.
His talk was especially remarkable. He spoke, as he wrote, in images.
When he wanted to develop an idea, he did not resort to arguments,
although he was a master in philosophical discussions; he illustrated
his idea by a scene presented in a form as beautiful as if it had been
taken out of one of his novels.
‘You must have had a great deal of experience in your life amongst
Frenchmen, Germans, and other peoples,’ he said to me once. ‘Have you
not remarked that there is a deep, unfathomable chasm between many of
their conceptions and the views which we Russians hold on the same
subjects--points upon which we can never agree?’
I replied that I had not noticed such points.
‘Yes, there are some. Here is one of them. One night, we were at the
first representation of a new play. I was in a box with Flaubert,
Daudet, Zola.... (I am not quite sure whether he named both Daudet and
Zola, but he certainly named one of the two.) All were men of advanced
opinions. The subject of the play was this: A woman had separated from
her husband. She had had a new love and had settled with another man.
This man was represented in the play as an excellent person. For years
they had been quite happy. Her two children--a girl and a boy--were
babies at the moment of the separation; now, they had grown, and
throughout all these years they had considered the man as their real
father. The girl was about eighteen and the boy about seventeen. The
man treated them quite as a father, they loved him, and he loved them.
The scene represented the family meeting at breakfast. The girl comes
in, approaches her supposed father, and he is going to kiss her--when
the boy, who has learned in some way that they are not his children,
rushes forward towards him, and shouts out: “Don’t dare!” _N’osez pas!_
‘The hall was brought down by this exclamation. There was an outburst
of frantic applause. Flaubert and the others joined in it. I was
disgusted. “Why,” I said, “this family was happy; the man was a better
father to these children than their real father, ... their mother loved
him and was happy with him.... This mischievous, perverted boy ought
simply to be flogged for what he has said....” It was of no use. I
discussed for hours with them afterwards: none of them could understand
me!’
I was, of course, fully in accord with Turguéneff’s point of view. I
remarked, however, that his acquaintances were chiefly amongst the
middle classes. There the difference from nation to nation is immense
indeed. But my acquaintances were exclusively amongst the workers, and
there is an immense resemblance between the workers, and especially
amongst the peasants, of all nations.
In so saying, I was, however, quite wrong. After I had had the
opportunity of making a closer acquaintance with French workers, I
often thought of the rightness of Turguéneff’s remark. There is a real
chasm indeed between the conceptions which prevail in Russia upon
marriage relations and those which prevail in France: amongst the
workers as well as in the middle classes; and upon many other points
there is almost the same chasm between the Russian point of view and
that of other nations.
It was said somewhere, after Turguéneff’s death, that he intended to
write a novel upon this subject. If it was begun, the above mentioned
scene must be in his manuscript. What a pity that he did not write that
novel! He, a thorough ‘Occidental’ in his ways of thinking, could have
said very deep things upon a subject which must have so deeply affected
him personally throughout his life.
Of all novel-writers of our century, Turguéneff has certainly attained
the greatest perfection as an artist, and his prose sounds to the
Russian ear like music--music as deep as that of Beethoven. His
principal novels--the series of ‘Dmítri Rúdin,’ ‘A Nobleman’s Retreat,’
‘On the Eve,’ ‘Fathers and Sons,’ ‘Smoke,’ and ‘Virgin Soil’--represent
the leading ‘history-making’ types of the educated classes of Russia,
which evolved in rapid succession after 1848; all sketched with a
fulness of philosophical conception and humanitarian understanding and
an artistic beauty which have no parallel in any other literature. Yet
‘Fathers and Sons’--a novel which he rightly considered his profoundest
work--was received by the young people of Russia with a loud protest.
Our youth declared that the Nihilist Bazároff was by no means a true
representation of his class; many described him even as a caricature
of Nihilism. This misunderstanding deeply affected Turguéneff, and,
although a reconciliation between him and the young generation took
place later on at St. Petersburg, after he had written ‘Virgin Soil,’
the wound inflicted upon him by these attacks was never healed.
He knew from Lavróff that I was an enthusiastic admirer of his
writings; and one day, as we were returning in a carriage from a visit
to Antokólsky’s studio, he asked me what I thought of Bazároff. I
frankly replied, ‘Bazároff is an admirable painting of the Nihilist,
but one feels that you did not love him as much as you did your other
heroes.’ ‘On the contrary, I loved him, intensely loved him,’ Turguéneff
replied, with unexpected vigour. ‘When we get home I will show you my
diary, in which I have noted how I wept when I had ended the novel with
Bazároff’s death.’
Turguéneff certainly loved the intellectual aspect of Bazároff. He so
identified himself with the Nihilist philosophy of his hero that he
even kept a diary in his name, appreciating the current events from
Bazároff’s point of view. But I think that he admired him more than he
loved him. In a brilliant lecture on Hamlet and Don Quixote, he divided
the history-makers of mankind into two classes, represented by one or
the other of these characters. ‘Analysis first of all, and then egoism,
and therefore no faith--an egoist cannot even believe in himself:’ so
he characterized Hamlet. ‘Therefore he is a sceptic, and never will
achieve anything; while Don Quixote, who fights against windmills, and
takes a barber’s plate for the magic helmet of Mambrin (who of us has
never made the same mistake?), is a leader of the masses, because the
masses always follow those who, taking no heed of the sarcasms of the
majority, or even of persecutions, march straight forward, keeping
their eyes fixed upon a goal which they may be alone to see. They
search, they fall, but they rise again, and find it--and by right, too.
Yet, although Hamlet is a sceptic, and disbelieves in Good, he does
not disbelieve in Evil. He hates it; Evil and Deceit are his enemies;
and his scepticism is not indifferentism, but only negation and doubt,
which finally consume his will.’
These thoughts of Turguéneff give, I think, the true key for
understanding his relations to his heroes. He himself and several of
his best friends belonged more or less to the Hamlets. He loved Hamlet,
and admired Don Quixote. So he admired also Bazároff. He represented
his superiority admirably well: he understood the tragic character of
his isolated position; but he could not surround him with that tender,
poetical love which he bestowed, as on a sick friend, when his heroes
approached the Hamlet type. It would have been out of place.
‘Did you know Mýshkin?’ he once asked me, in 1878. At the trial of our
circle Mýshkin revealed himself as the most powerful personality. ‘I
should like to know all about him,’ he continued. ‘That _is_ a man; not
the slightest trace of Hamletism.’ And in so saying he was obviously
meditating on this new type in the Russian movement, which did not
exist in the phase that Turguéneff described in ‘Virgin Soil,’ but was
to appear two years later.
I saw him for the last time in the autumn of 1881. He was very ill,
and worried by the thought that it was his duty to write to Alexander
III.--who had just come to the throne, and hesitated as to the policy
he should follow--asking him to give Russia a constitution, and
proving to him by solid arguments the necessity of that step. With
evident grief he said to me: ‘I feel that I must do it, but I feel I
shall not be able to do it.’ In fact, he was already suffering awful
pains occasioned by a cancer in the spinal cord, and had the greatest
difficulty even in sitting up and talking for a few moments. He did not
write then, and a few weeks later it would have been useless. Alexander
III. had announced in a manifesto his intention to remain the absolute
ruler of Russia.
VII
In the meantime affairs in Russia took quite a new turn. The war
which Russia began against Turkey in 1877 had ended in general
disappointment. There was in the country, before the war broke out, a
great deal of enthusiasm in favour of the Slavonians. Many believed,
also, that the war of liberation in the Balkans would result in a move
in the progressive direction in Russia itself. But the liberation
of the Slavonian populations was only partly accomplished. The
tremendous sacrifices which had been made by the Russians were rendered
ineffectual by the blunders of the higher military authorities.
Hundreds of thousands of men had been slaughtered in battles which
were only half victories, and the concessions wrested from Turkey were
brought to naught at the Berlin Congress. It was also widely known that
the embezzlement of State money went on during this war on almost as
large a scale as during the Crimean war.
It was amidst the general dissatisfaction which prevailed in Russia
at the end of 1877, that one hundred and ninety-three persons,
arrested since 1873, in connection with our agitation, were brought
before a high court. The accused, supported by a number of lawyers
of talent, won at once the sympathies of the public. They produced
a very favourable impression upon St. Petersburg society; and when
it became known that most of them had spent three or four years in
prison, waiting for this trial, and that no less than twenty-one of
them had either put an end to their lives by suicide or become insane,
the feeling grew still stronger in their favour, even among the judges
themselves. The court pronounced very heavy sentences upon a few, and
relatively lenient ones upon the remainder; saying that the preliminary
detention had lasted so long, and was so hard a punishment in itself,
that nothing could justly be added to it. It was confidently expected
that the Emperor would still further mitigate the sentences. It
happened, however, to the astonishment of all, that he revised the
sentences only to increase them. Those whom the court had acquitted
were sent into exile in remote parts of Russia and Siberia, and from
five to twelve years of hard labour were inflicted upon those whom the
court had condemned to short terms of imprisonment. This was the work
of the chief of the Third Section, General Mézentsoff.
At the same time, the chief of the St. Petersburg police, General
Trépoff, noticing, during a visit to the house of detention, that one
of the political prisoners, Bogolúboff, did not take off his hat to
greet the omnipotent satrap, rushed upon him, gave him a blow, and,
when the prisoner resisted, ordered him to be flogged. The other
prisoners, learning the fact in their cells, loudly expressed their
indignation, and were in consequence fearfully beaten by the warders
and the police. The Russian political prisoners bore without murmuring
all hardships inflicted upon them in Siberia, or through hard labour,
but they were firmly decided not to tolerate corporal punishment. A
young girl, Véra Zasúlich, who did not even personally know Bogolúboff,
took a revolver, went to the chief of police, and shot at him. Trépoff
was only wounded. Alexander II. came to look at the heroic girl, who
must have impressed him by her extremely sweet face and her modesty.
Trépoff had so many enemies at St. Petersburg that they managed to
bring the affair before a common-law jury, and Véra Zasúlich declared
in court that she had resorted to arms only when all means for bringing
the affair to public knowledge and obtaining some sort of redress had
been exhausted. Even the St. Petersburg correspondent of the London
‘Times,’ who had been asked to mention the affair in his paper, had not
done so, perhaps thinking it improbable. Then, without telling anyone
about her intentions, she went to shoot Trépoff. Now that the affair
had become public, she was quite happy to know that he was but slightly
wounded. The jury acquitted her unanimously; and when the police tried
to rearrest her, as she was leaving the court-house, the young men of
St. Petersburg, who stood in crowds at the gates, saved her from their
clutches. She went abroad, and soon was among us in Switzerland.
This affair produced quite a sensation throughout Europe. I was at
Paris when the news of the acquittal came, and had to call that day
on business at the offices of several newspapers. I found the editors
glowing with enthusiasm, and writing forcible articles in honour of
this Russian girl. Even the ‘Revue des Deux Mondes,’ in its review of
the year 1878, declared that the two persons who had most impressed
public opinion in Europe during the year were Prince Gortchakóff at
the Berlin Congress and Véra Zasúlich. Their portraits were given side
by side in several almanacs. Upon the workers of Western Europe the
devotion of Véra Zasúlich produced a profound impression.
During the same year, 1878, without any plot having been formed, four
attempts were made against crowned heads in close succession. The
workman Hoedel, and after him Dr. Nobiling, shot at the German Emperor;
a few weeks later, a Spanish workman, Oliva Moncási, followed with an
attempt to shoot the King of Spain, and the cook Passanante rushed
with his knife upon the King of Italy. The governments of Europe could
not believe that such attempts upon the lives of three kings should
have occurred without there being at the bottom some international
conspiracy, and they jumped to the conclusion that the anarchist Jura
Federation was the centre of that conspiracy.
More than twenty years have passed since then, and I can say most
positively that there was absolutely no ground whatever for such
a supposition. However, all the European governments fell upon
Switzerland, reproaching her with harbouring revolutionists who
organized such plots. Paul Brousse, the editor of our Jura newspaper,
the ‘Avant-Garde,’ was arrested and prosecuted. The Swiss judges,
seeing there was not the slightest foundation for connecting Brousse
or the Jura Federation with the recent attempts, condemned Brousse to
only a couple of months’ imprisonment for his articles; but the paper
was suppressed, and all the printing offices of Switzerland were asked
by the federal government not to publish this or any similar paper. The
Jura Federation was thus silenced.
Besides, the politicians of Switzerland, who looked with an
unfavourable eye on the anarchist agitation in their country, acted
privately in such a way as to compel the leading Swiss members of
the Jura Federation either to retire from public life or to starve.
Brousse was expelled from Switzerland. James Guillaume, who for eight
years had maintained against all obstacles the ‘Bulletin’ of the
federation, and made his living chiefly by teaching, could obtain
no employment, and was compelled to leave Switzerland and remove
to France. Adhémar Schwitzguébel, boycotted in the watch trade and
burdened by a large family, had finally to retire from the movement.
Spichiger was in the same condition, and emigrated. It thus happened
that I, a foreigner, had to undertake the editing of a paper for the
federation. I hesitated, of course, but there was nothing else to
be done, and with two friends, Dumartheray and Herzig, I started a
new fortnightly at Geneva, in February 1879, under the title of ‘Le
Révolté.’ I had to write most of it myself. We had only twenty-three
francs to start the paper, but we all set to work to get subscriptions,
and succeeded in issuing our first number. It was moderate in tone, but
revolutionary in substance, and I did my best to write it in such a
style that complicated historical and economical questions should be
comprehensible to every intelligent worker. Six hundred was the utmost
limit which the edition of our previous papers had ever attained. We
printed two thousand copies of ‘Le Révolté,’ and in a few days not one
was left. It was a success, and it still continues, at Paris, under the
title of ‘Temps Nouveaux.’
Socialist newspapers have often a tendency to become mere annals of
complaints about existing conditions. The oppression of the workers
in the mine, the factory, and the field is related; the misery and
sufferings of the workers during strikes are told in vivid pictures;
their helplessness in the struggle against their employers is
insisted upon; and this succession of hopeless efforts, described
every week, exercises a most depressing influence upon the reader. To
counterbalance that effect, the editor has to rely chiefly upon burning
words, by means of which he tries to inspire his readers with energy
and faith. I thought, on the contrary, that a revolutionary paper must
be, above all, a record of those symptoms which everywhere announce
the coming of a new era, the germination of new forms of social life,
the growing revolt against antiquated institutions. These symptoms
should be watched, brought together in their intimate connection, and
so grouped as to show to the hesitating minds of the greater number
the invisible and often unconscious support which advanced ideas find
everywhere, when a revival of thought takes place in society. To make
one feel in sympathy with the throbbing of the human heart all over the
world, with its revolt against age-long injustice, with its attempts
at working out new forms of life--this should be the chief duty of a
revolutionary paper. It is hope, not despair, which makes successful
revolutions.
Historians often tell us how this or that system of philosophy has
accomplished a certain change in human thought, and subsequently in
institutions. But this is not history. The greatest social philosophers
have only caught the indications of coming changes, have understood
their inner relations, and, aided by induction and intuition, have
foretold what was to occur. Sociologists have also drawn plans of
social organizations, by starting from a few principles and developing
them to their necessary consequences, like a geometrical conclusion
from a few axioms; but this is not sociology. A correct social forecast
cannot be made unless one keeps an eye on the thousands of signs of
the new life, separating the occasional facts from those which are
organically essential, and building the generalization upon that basis.
This was the method of thought with which I endeavoured to familiarize
our readers--using plain comprehensible words, so as to accustom the
most modest of them to judge for himself whereunto society is moving,
and himself to correct the thinker if the latter comes to wrong
conclusions. As to the criticism of what exists, I went into it only to
disentangle the roots of the evils, and to show that a deep-seated and
carefully-nurtured fetishism with regard to the antiquated survivals of
past phases of human development, and a widespread cowardice of mind
and will, are the main sources of all evils.
Dumartheray and Herzig gave me full support in that direction.
Dumartheray was born in one of the poorest peasant families in Savoy.
His schooling had not gone beyond the first rudiments of a primary
school. Yet he was one of the most intelligent men I ever met. His
appreciations of current events and men were so remarkable for their
uncommon good sense that they were often prophetic. He was also one of
the finest critics of the current socialist literature, and was never
taken in by the mere display of fine words, or would-be science. Herzig
was a young clerk, born at Geneva; a man of suppressed emotions, shy,
who would blush like a girl when he expressed an original thought,
and who, after I was arrested, when he became responsible for the
continuance of the journal, by sheer force of will learned to write
very well. Boycotted by all Geneva employers, and fallen with his
family into sheer misery, he nevertheless supported the paper till it
became possible to transfer it to Paris.
To the judgment of these two friends I could trust implicitly. If
Herzig frowned, muttering, ‘Yes--well--it may go,’ I knew that it would
not do. And when Dumartheray, who always complained of the bad state
of his spectacles when he had to read a not quite legibly written
manuscript, and therefore generally read proofs only, interrupted his
reading by exclaiming, ‘Non, ça ne va pas!’ I felt at once that it was
not the proper thing, and tried to guess what thought or expression
provoked his disapproval. I knew there was no use asking him, ‘Why will
it not do?’ He would have answered: ‘Ah, that it not my affair; that’s
yours. It won’t do; that is all I can say.’ But I felt he was right,
and I simply sat down to rewrite the passage, or, taking the composing
stick, set up in type a new passage instead.
* * * * *
I must own that we had also hard times with our paper. No sooner had
we issued five numbers than the printer asked us to find another
printing office. For the workers and their publications the liberty
of the Press inscribed in the Constitutions has many limitations
beside the paragraphs of the law. The printer had no objection to our
paper--he liked it; but in Switzerland all printing offices depend
upon the government, which employs them more or less in issuing
statistical reports and the like; and our printer was plainly told
that if he continued to harbour our paper he need not expect to have
any more orders from the Geneva government. I made the tour of all
the French-speaking part of Switzerland and saw the heads of all the
printing offices, but everywhere, even from those who did not dislike
the tendency of the paper, I received the same reply: ‘We could not
live without orders from the government, and we should have none if we
undertook to print “Le Révolté.”’
I returned to Geneva in very low spirits, but Dumartheray was only
the more ardent and hopeful. ‘It’s all very simple,’ he said. ‘We buy
our own printing plant on a three months’ credit, and in three months
we shall have paid it.’ ‘But we have no money, only a few hundred
francs,’ I objected. ‘Money? nonsense! We _shall_ have it! Let us
only order the type at once and immediately issue our next number and
money will come!’ Once more he had judged quite right. When our next
number came out from our own _Imprimerie Jurassienne_, and we had told
our difficulties and issued a couple of small pamphlets besides--all
of us helping in the printing--the money came in, mostly in coppers
and silver, but it came. Over and over again in my life I have heard
complaints among the advanced parties about the want of money, but
the longer I live the more I am persuaded that our chief difficulty
does not lie so much in money as in _men_ who would march firmly and
steadily towards a given aim in the right direction and inspire others.
For twenty-one years our paper has now continued to live from hand to
mouth, appeals for funds appearing on the front page almost in every
number; but as long as there is a man who sticks to it and puts all
his energy into it, as Herzig and Dumartheray did at Geneva, and Grave
has done for the last sixteen years at Paris, the money comes in and
the printing expenses are more or less covered, mainly by the pennies
of the workers. For a paper, as for everything else, men are of an
infinitely greater value than money.
We started our printing office in a tiny room, and our compositor was
a Little Russian, who undertook to put our paper in type for the very
modest sum of sixty francs a month. So long as he had his plain dinner
every day, and the possibility of going occasionally to the opera, he
cared for nothing more. ‘Going to the Turkish bath, John?’ I asked him
once as I met him at Geneva in the street, with a brown paper parcel
under his arm. ‘No, removing to a new lodging,’ he replied in his
melodious voice, with his usual smile.
Unfortunately, he knew no French. I used to write my manuscript to the
best of my caligraphic ability--often thinking with regret of the time
I had wasted in the writing classes of our good Ebert at school--but
John would read a French manuscript in the most fantastical way, and
would set up in type the most extraordinary words of his own invention;
but as he ‘kept the space,’ and the length of his lines had not to be
altered for making the corrections, there were only a dozen letters in
each line to be changed, and we managed to do it pretty well. We were
on excellent terms with him, and I soon learned some ‘comping’ under
his direction. The paper was always ready in time to take the proofs
to a Swiss comrade who was the responsible editor, and to whom we
pedantically submitted them before going to print, and then one of us
carted the formes to a printing office. Our _Imprimerie Jurassienne_
soon became widely known for its publications, especially for its
pamphlets, which Dumartheray insisted upon never selling at more than
one penny. Quite a new style had to be worked out for such pamphlets.
I must say that I often had the wickedness of envying those writers
who could use any amount of pages for developing their ideas, and were
allowed to make the well-known excuse of Talleyrand: ‘I have not had
the time to be short.’ When I had to condense the results of several
months’ work--upon, let me say, the origins of law--into a penny
pamphlet, I had to give extra time in order to be short. But we wrote
for the workers, and twopence for a pamphlet is often too much for
them. The result was that our penny and halfpenny pamphlets sold by
the scores of thousands, and were reproduced in every other country in
translations. My leaders from that period were edited later on, while
I was in prison, by Elisée Reclus, under the title of ‘The Words of a
Rebel,’ ‘Paroles d’un Révolté.’
France was always the chief object of our aims, but ‘Le Révolté’ was
severely prohibited in France, and the smugglers have so many good
things to import into France from Switzerland that they did not care to
endanger their trade by meddling with papers. I went once with them,
crossing in their company the French frontier, and found that they were
very brave and reliable men, but I could not induce them to undertake
the smuggling in of our paper. All we could do was to send it in sealed
envelopes to about a hundred persons in France. We charged nothing for
postage, leaving it to the voluntary contributions of our subscribers
to cover our extra expenses--which they always did--but we often
thought that the French police were missing a splendid opportunity for
ruining ‘Le Révolté,’ by subscribing to a hundred copies and sending no
voluntary contributions.
For the first year we had to rely entirely upon ourselves; but
gradually Elisée Reclus took a greater interest in the work, and
finally joined us, giving after my arrest more life than ever to the
paper. Reclus had invited me to aid him in the preparation of the
volume of his monumental geography, which dealt with the Russian
dominions in Asia. He knew Russian himself, but he thought that, as I
was well acquainted with Siberia, I might aid him in a special way;
and as the health of my wife was poor, and the doctor had ordered her
to leave Geneva with its cold winds at once, we removed early in the
spring of 1880 to Clarens, where Elisée Reclus lived at that time. We
settled above Clarens, in a small cottage overlooking the blue waters
of the lake, with the pure snow of the Dent du Midi in the background.
A streamlet that thundered like a mighty torrent after rains, carrying
away immense rocks in its narrow bed, ran under our windows, and on
the slope of the hill opposite rose the old castle of Châtelard,
of which the owners, up to the revolution of the _burla papei_ (the
burners of the papers) in 1799, levied upon the neighbouring serfs
feudal taxes on the occasion of their births, marriages, and deaths.
Here, aided by my wife, with whom I used to discuss every event and
every proposed paper, and who was a severe literary critic of my
writings, I produced the best things that I wrote for ‘Le Révolté,’
among them the address ‘To the Young,’ which was spread in hundreds of
thousands of copies in all languages. In fact, I worked out here the
foundation of nearly all that I have written later on. Contact with
educated men of similar ways of thinking is what we anarchist writers,
scattered by proscription all over the world, miss, perhaps, more than
anything else. At Clarens I had that contact with Elisée Reclus and
Lefrançais, in addition to permanent contact with the workers, which I
continued to maintain; and although I worked much for the geography, I
was able to produce even more than usually for the anarchist propaganda.
VIII
In Russia, the struggle for freedom was taking a more and more acute
character. Several political trials had been brought before high
courts--the trial of ‘the hundred and ninety-three,’ of ‘the fifty,’
of ‘the Dolgúshin circle,’ and so on--and in all of them the same
thing was apparent. The youth had gone to the peasants and the factory
workers, preaching socialism to them; socialist pamphlets, printed
abroad, had been distributed; appeals had been made to revolt--in some
vague, indeterminate way--against the oppressive economical conditions.
In short, nothing was done that is not done in the socialist agitation
in every other country of the world. No traces of conspiracy against
the Tsar, nor even of preparations for revolutionary action, were
found; in fact, there were none. The great majority of our youth
were at that time hostile to such action. Nay, looking now over that
movement of the years 1870-78, I can confidently say that most of them
would have felt satisfied if they had been simply allowed to live by
the side of the peasants and the factory-workers, to teach them, to
collaborate with them, either individually or as members of the local
self-government, in any of the thousand capacities in which an educated
and earnest man or woman can be useful to the masses of the people. I
knew the men and say so with full knowledge of them.
Yet the sentences were ferocious--stupidly ferocious, because the
movement, which had grown out of the previous state of Russia, was too
deeply rooted to be crushed down by mere brutality. Hard labour for
six, ten, twelve years in the mines, with subsequent exile to Siberia
for life, was a common sentence. There were such cases as that of a
girl who got nine years’ hard labour and life exile to Siberia, for
giving one socialist pamphlet to a worker: that was all her crime.
Another girl of fourteen, Miss Gukóvskaya, was transported for life to
a remote village of Siberia, for having tried, like Goethe’s Klärchen,
to excite an indifferent crowd to deliver Koválsky and his friends when
they were going to be hanged--an act the more natural in Russia, even
from the authorities’ standpoint, as there is no capital punishment
in our country for common-law crimes, and the application of the
death penalty to ‘politicals’ was then a novelty, a return to almost
forgotten traditions. Thrown into the wilderness, this young girl soon
drowned herself in the Yeniséi. Even those who were acquitted by the
courts were banished by the gendarmes to little hamlets in Siberia and
North-east Russia, where they had to starve on the government allowance
of six shillings per month. There are no industries in such hamlets,
and the exiles were strictly prohibited from teaching.
As if to exasperate the youth still more, their condemned friends were
not sent direct to Siberia. They were locked up first for a number of
years, in central prisons, which made them envy the convict’s life in
a Siberian mine. These prisons were awful indeed. In one of them--‘a
den of typhoid fever,’ as the priest of that particular gaol said in
a sermon--the mortality reached twenty per cent. in twelve months.
In the central prisons, in the hard labour prisons of Siberia, in
the fortress, the prisoners had to resort to the strike of death,
the famine strike, to protect themselves from the brutality of the
warders, or to obtain conditions--some sort of work, or reading, in
their cells--that would save them from being driven into insanity in
a few months. The horror of such strikes, during which men and women
refused to take any food for seven or eight days in succession, and
then lay motionless, their minds wandering, seemed not to appeal to
the gendarmes. At Khárkoff, the prostrated prisoners were tied up with
ropes and fed artificially, by force.
Information of these horrors leaked out from the prisons, crossed the
boundless distances of Siberia, and spread far and wide among the
youth. There was a time when not a week passed without disclosing some
new infamy of that sort, or even worse.
Sheer exasperation took hold of our young people. ‘In other countries,’
they began to say, ‘men have the courage to resist. An Englishman, a
Frenchman, would not tolerate such outrages. How can we tolerate them?
Let us resist, arms in hand, the nocturnal raids of the gendarmes; let
them know, at least, that since arrest means a slow and infamous death
at their hands, they will have to take us in a mortal struggle.’ At
Odessa, Koválsky and his friends met with revolver shots the gendarmes
who came one night to arrest them.
The reply of Alexander II. to this new move was the proclamation of a
state of siege. Russia was divided into a number of districts, each of
them under a governor-general, who received the order to hang offenders
pitilessly. Koválsky and his friends--who, by the way, had killed no
one by their shots--were executed. Hanging became the order of the
day. Twenty-three persons perished in two years, including a boy of
nineteen, who was caught posting a revolutionary proclamation at a
railway station: this act was the only charge against him. He was a
boy, but he died like a man.
Then the watchword of the revolutionists became ‘self-defence:’
self-defence against the spies who introduced themselves into the
circles under the mask of friendship, and denounced members right and
left, simply because they would not be paid if they did not denounce
large numbers of persons; self-defence against those who ill-treated
prisoners; self-defence against the omnipotent chiefs of the state
police.
Three functionaries of mark and two or three small spies fell in
that new phase of the struggle. General Mézentsoff, who had induced
the Tsar to double the sentences after the trial of the hundred
and ninety-three, was killed in broad daylight at St. Petersburg;
a gendarme colonel, guilty of something worse than that, had the
same fate at Kíeff; and the Governor-General of Khárkoff--my cousin,
Dmítri Kropótkin--was shot as he was returning home from a theatre.
The central prison, in which the first famine strike and artificial
feeding took place, was under his orders. In reality, he was not a
bad man--I know that his personal feelings were somewhat favourable
to the political prisoners; but he was a weak man and a courtier,
and he hesitated to interfere. One word from him would have stopped
the ill-treatment of the prisoners. Alexander II. liked him so much,
and his position at the court was so strong, that his interference
very probably would have been approved. ‘Thank you; you have acted
according to my own wishes,’ the Tsar said to him, a couple of years
before that date, when he came to St. Petersburg to report that he
had taken a peaceful attitude in a riot of the poorer population of
Khárkoff, and had treated the rioters very leniently. But this time he
gave his approval to the gaolers, and the young men of Khárkoff were so
exasperated at the treatment of their friends that one of them shot him.
* * * * *
However, the personality of the Emperor was kept out of the struggle,
and down to the year 1879 no attempt was made on his life. The person
of the Liberator of the serfs was surrounded by an aureole which
protected him infinitely better than the swarms of police officials. If
Alexander II. had shown at this juncture the least desire to improve
the state of affairs in Russia; if he had only called in one or two of
those men with whom he had collaborated during the reform period, and
had ordered them to make an inquiry into the conditions of the country,
or merely of the peasantry; if he had shown any intention of limiting
the powers of the secret police, his steps would have been hailed with
enthusiasm. A word would have made him ‘the Liberator’ again, and
once more the youth would have repeated Hérzen’s words: ‘Thou hast
conquered, Galilean.’ But just as during the Polish insurrection the
despot awoke in him, and, inspired by Katkóff, he resorted to hanging,
so now again, following the advice of the same evil genius, Katkóff,
he found nothing to do but to nominate special military governors--for
hanging.
Then, and then only, a handful of revolutionists--the Executive
Committee--supported, I must say, by the growing discontent in the
educated classes, and even in the Tsar’s immediate surroundings,
declared that war against absolutism which, after several attempts,
ended in 1881 in the death of Alexander II.
Two men, I have said already, lived in Alexander II., and now the
conflict between the two, which had grown during all his life, assumed
a really tragic aspect. When he met Solovióff, who shot at him and
missed the first shot, he had the presence of mind to run to the
nearest door, not in a straight line, but in zigzags, while Solovióff
continued to fire; and he thus escaped with but a slight tearing of
his overcoat. On the day of his death, too, he gave a proof of his
undoubted courage. In the face of real danger he was courageous; but
he continually trembled before the phantasms of his own imagination.
Once he shot at an aide-de-camp, when the latter had made an abrupt
movement, and Alexander thought he was going to attempt his life.
Merely to save his life, he surrendered entirely all his imperial
powers into the hands of those who cared nothing for him, but only for
their lucrative positions.
He undoubtedly retained an attachment to the mother of his children,
even though he was then with the Princess Dolgorúki, whom he married
immediately after the death of the Empress. ‘Don’t speak to me of the
Empress; it makes me suffer too much,’he more than once said to Lóris
Mélikoff. And yet he entirely abandoned the Empress Marie, who had
stood faithfully by his side while he was the Liberator; he let her die
in the palace in complete neglect, having by her side only two ladies
entirely devoted to her, while he stayed himself in another palace, and
paid her only short official visits. A well-known Russian doctor, now
dead, told his friends that he, a stranger, felt shocked at the neglect
with which the Empress was treated during her last illness--deserted,
of course, by the ladies of the court, who reserved their courtesies
for the Princess Dolgorúki.
When the Executive Committee made the daring attempt to blow up the
Winter Palace itself, Alexander II. took a step which had no precedent.
He created a sort of dictatorship, vesting unlimited powers in Lóris
Mélikoff. This General was an Armenian, to whom Alexander II. had
once before given similar dictatorial powers, when the bubonic plague
broke out on the Lower Vólga, and Germany threatened to mobilize her
troops and put Russia under quarantine if the plague were not stopped.
Now, when he saw that he could not have confidence in the vigilance
even of the Palace police, Alexander II. gave dictatorial powers to
Lóris Mélikoff, and as Mélikoff had the reputation of being a Liberal,
this new move was interpreted in the sense that the convocation of a
National Assembly would soon follow. However, no new attempts against
his life having been made immediately after that explosion, he regained
confidence, and a few months later, before Mélikoff had been allowed to
do anything, the dictator became simply a Minister of the Interior.
The sudden attacks of sadness of which I have already spoken, during
which Alexander II. reproached himself with the reactionary character
his reign had assumed, now took the shape of violent paroxysms of
tears. He would sit weeping by the hour, filling Mélikoff with despair.
Then he would ask his minister, ‘When will your constitutional scheme
be ready?’ But if, two days later, Mélikoff said that it was ready, the
Emperor seemed to have forgotten all about it. ‘Did I mention it?’ he
would ask. ‘What for? We had better leave it to my successor. That will
be his gift to Russia.’
When rumours of a new plot reached him, he was ready to undertake
something, in order to give satisfaction to the Executive Committee;
but when everything seemed to be quiet among the revolutionists, he
turned his ear again to his reactionary advisers, and let things go. At
any moment Mélikoff expected dismissal.
In February 1881 Mélikoff reported that a new plot had been laid by
the Executive Committee, but its plan could not be discovered by any
amount of searching. Thereupon Alexander II. decided that a sort of
consultative assembly of delegates from the provinces should be called.
Always under the idea that he would share the fate of Louis XVI., he
described this gathering as an _Assemblée des Notables_, like the
one convoked by Louis XVI. before the National Assembly in 1789. The
scheme had to be laid before the council of state, but then again he
hesitated. It was only on the morning of March 1 (13), 1881, after a
new warning by Lóris Mélikoff, that he ordered it to be brought before
the council on the following Thursday. This was on Sunday, and he was
asked by Mélikoff not to go out to the parade that day, there being
immediate danger of an attempt on his life. Nevertheless, he went. He
wanted to see the Grand Duchess Catherine (daughter of his aunt, Hélène
Pávlovna, who had been one of the leaders of the reform party in 1861),
and to carry her the welcome news, perhaps as an expiatory offering to
the memory of the Empress Marie. He is said to have told her, ‘_Je me
suis décidé à convoquer une Assemblée des Notables_.’ However, this
belated and half-hearted concession had not been announced, and on his
way back to the Winter Palace he was killed.
It is known how it happened. A bomb was thrown under his iron-clad
carriage, to stop it. Several Circassians of the escort were wounded.
Rysakóff, who flung the bomb, was arrested on the spot. Then, although
the coachman of the Tsar earnestly advised him not to get out, saying
that he could drive him still in the slightly damaged carriage, he
insisted upon alighting. He felt that his military dignity required him
to see the wounded Circassians, to condole with them as he had done
with the wounded during the Turkish war, when a mad storming of Plevna,
doomed to end in a terrible disaster, was made on the day of his fête.
He approached Rysakóff and asked him something; and as he passed close
by another young man, Grinevétsky, who stood there with a bomb,
Grinevétsky threw the bomb between himself and the Tsar, so that both
of them should be killed. Both were fearfully wounded, and lived but a
few hours.
There Alexander II. lay upon the snow, abandoned by every one of his
followers! All had disappeared. It was some cadets, returning from the
parade, who lifted the dying Tsar and put him in a sledge, covering his
shivering body with a cadet mantle. And it was one of the terrorists,
Emeliánoff, with a bomb wrapped in a paper under his arm, who, at the
risk of being arrested on the spot and hanged, rushed with the cadets
to the help of the wounded man. Human nature is full of these contrasts.
Thus ended the tragedy of Alexander the Second’s life. People could
not understand how it was possible that a Tsar who had done so much
for Russia should have met his death at the hands of revolutionists.
To me, who had the chance of witnessing the first reactionary steps of
Alexander II. and his gradual deterioration, who had caught a glimpse
of his complex personality, and seen in him a born autocrat, whose
violence was but partially mitigated by education, a man possessed of
military gallantry, but devoid of the courage of the statesman, a man
of strong passions and weak will--it seemed that the tragedy developed
with the unavoidable fatality of one of Shakespeare’s dramas. Its last
act was already written for me on the day when I heard him address
us, the promoted officers, on June 13, 1862, immediately after he had
ordered the first executions in Poland.
IX
A wild panic seized the court circles at St. Petersburg. Alexander
III., who, notwithstanding his colossal stature and force, was not
a very courageous man, refused to move to the Winter Palace, and
retired to the palace of his grandfather, Paul I., at Gatchina. I
know that old building, planned as a Vauban fortress, surrounded by
moats and protected by watch towers, from the tops of which secret
staircases lead to the Emperor’s study. I have seen the trap-doors in
the study for suddenly throwing an enemy on the sharp rocks in the
water underneath, and the secret staircase leading to underground
prisons and to an underground passage which opens on a lake. All the
palaces of Paul I. had been built on a similar plan. In the meantime,
an underground gallery, supplied with automatic electric appliances
to protect it from being undermined by the revolutionists, was dug
round the Aníchkoff palace in which Alexander III. resided when he was
heir-apparent.
A secret league for the protection of the Tsar was started. Officers of
all grades were induced by triple salaries to join it, and to undertake
voluntary spying in all classes of society. Amusing scenes followed, of
course. Two officers, without knowing that they both belonged to the
league, would entice each other into a disloyal conversation, during
a railway journey, and then proceed to arrest each other, only to
discover at the last moment that their pains had been labour lost. This
league still exists in a more official shape, under the name of Okhrána
(Protection), and from time to time frightens the present Tsar with all
sorts of concocted dangers, in order to maintain its existence.
A still more secret organization, the Holy League, was formed at the
same time, under the leadership of the brother of the Tsar, Vladímir,
for the purpose of opposing the revolutionists in different ways,
one of which was to kill those of the refugees who were supposed to
have been the leaders of the late conspiracies. I was of this number.
The grand duke violently reproached the officers of the league for
their cowardice, regretting that there were none among them who would
undertake to kill such refugees; and an officer, who had been a page
de chambre at the time I was in the corps of pages, was appointed by
the league to carry out this particular work.
The fact is that the refugees abroad did not interfere with the work
of the Executive Committee at St. Petersburg. To pretend to direct
conspiracies from Switzerland, while those who were at St. Petersburg
acted under a permanent menace of death, would have been sheer
nonsense; and as Stepniák and I wrote several times, none of us would
have accepted the dubious task of forming plans of action without being
on the spot. But, of course, it suited the plans of the St. Petersburg
police to maintain that they were powerless to protect the Tsar because
all plots were devised abroad, and their spies--I know it well--amply
supplied them with the desired reports.
Skóbeleff, the hero of the Turkish war, was also asked to join this
league, but he blankly refused. It appears from Lóris Mélikoff’s
posthumous papers, part of which were published by a friend of his at
London, that when Alexander III. came to the throne, and hesitated to
convoke the Assembly of Notables, Skóbeleff even made an offer to Lóris
Mélikoff and Count Ignátieff (‘the lying Pasha,’ as the Constantinople
diplomatists used to nickname him) to arrest Alexander III., and compel
him to sign a constitutional manifesto; whereupon Ignátieff is said to
have denounced the scheme to the Tsar, and thus to have obtained his
nomination as prime minister, in which capacity he resorted, with the
advice of M. Andrieux, the ex-prefect of police at Paris, to various
stratagems in order to paralyze the revolutionists.
If the Russian Liberals had shown even moderate courage and some power
of organized action at that time, a National Assembly would have
been convoked. From the same posthumous papers of Lóris Mélikoff,
it appears that Alexander III. was willing for a time to convoke a
National Assembly. He had made up his mind to do so, and had announced
it to his brother. Old Wilhelm I. supported him in this intention. It
was only when he saw that the Liberals undertook nothing, while the
Katkóff party was busy at work in the opposite direction--M. Andrieux
advising him to crush the nihilists and indicating how it ought to be
done (the ex-prefect’s letter to this effect was published in the said
papers)--that Alexander III. finally resolved on declaring that he
would continue to be an absolute ruler of the Empire.
* * * * *
A few months after the death of Alexander II. I was expelled from
Switzerland by order of the federal council. I did not take umbrage
at this. Assailed by the monarchical powers on account of the asylum
which Switzerland offered to refugees, and menaced by the Russian
official press with a wholesale expulsion of all Swiss governesses and
ladies’ maids, who are numerous in Russia, the rulers of Switzerland,
by banishing me, gave some sort of satisfaction to the Russian police.
But I very much regret, for the sake of Switzerland itself, that that
step was taken. It was a sanction given to the theory of ‘conspiracies
concocted in Switzerland,’ and it was an acknowledgment of weakness, of
which other powers took advantage at once. Two years later, when Jules
Ferry proposed to Italy and Germany the partition of Switzerland, his
argument must have been that the Swiss Government itself had admitted
that Switzerland was ‘a hotbed of international conspiracies.’ This
first concession led to more arrogant demands, and has certainly placed
Switzerland in a far less independent position than it might otherwise
have occupied.
The decree of expulsion was delivered to me immediately after I had
returned from London, where I was present at an anarchist congress in
July 1881. After that congress I had stayed for a few weeks in England,
writing the first articles on Russian affairs from our standpoint, for
the ‘Newcastle Chronicle.’ The English press, at that time, was an
echo of the opinions of Madame Novikóff--that is, of Katkóff and the
Russian state police--and I was most happy when Mr. Joseph Cowen agreed
to give me the hospitality of his paper in order to state our point of
view.
I had just joined my wife in the high mountains where she was staying,
near the abode of Elisée Reclus, when I was asked to leave Switzerland.
We sent the little luggage we had to the next railway station and went
on foot to Aigle, enjoying for the last time the sight of the mountains
that we loved so much. We crossed the hills by taking short cuts over
them, and laughed when we discovered that the short cuts led to long
windings; and when we reached the bottom of the valley, we tramped
along the dusty road. The comical incident which always comes in such
cases was supplied by an English lady. A richly dressed dame, reclining
by the side of a gentleman in a hired carriage, threw several tracts
to the two poorly dressed tramps, as she passed them. I lifted the
tracts from the dust. She was evidently one of those ladies who believe
themselves to be Christians, and consider it their duty to distribute
religious tracts among ‘dissolute foreigners.’ Thinking we were sure
to overtake the lady at the railway station, I wrote on one of the
pamphlets the well-known verse relative to the rich and the Kingdom of
God, and similarly appropriate quotations about the Pharisees being
the worst enemies of Christianity. When we came to Aigle, the lady
was taking refreshments in her carriage. She evidently preferred to
continue the journey in this vehicle along the lovely valley, rather
than to be shut up in a stuffy railway train. I returned her the
pamphlets with politeness, saying that I had added to them something
that she might find useful for her own instruction. The lady did not
know whether to fly at me or to accept the lesson with Christian
patience. Her eyes expressed both impulses in rapid succession.
My wife was about to pass her examination for the degree of Bachelor
of Science at the Geneva University, and we settled, therefore, in a
tiny town of France, Thonon, situated on the Savoy coast of the Lake of
Geneva, and stayed there a couple of months.
As to the death sentence of the Holy League, a warning reached me
from one of the highest quarters of Russia. Even the name of the lady
who was sent from St. Petersburg to Geneva to be the head centre of
the conspiracy became known to me. So I simply communicated the fact
to the Geneva correspondent of the ‘Times,’ asking him to publish
the information if anything should happen, and I put a note to that
effect in ‘Le Révolté.’ After that I did not trouble myself more about
it. My wife did not take it so lightly, and the good peasant woman,
Madame Sansaux, who gave us board and lodgings at Thonon, and who had
learned of the plot in a different way (through her sister, who was a
nurse in the family of a Russian agent), bestowed the most touching
care upon me. Her cottage was out of town, and whenever I went to
town at night--sometimes to meet my wife at the railway station--she
always found a pretext to have me accompanied by her husband with a
lantern. ‘Wait only a moment, Monsieur Kropótkin,’ she would say;
‘my husband is going that way for purchases, and you know he always
carries a lantern!’ Or else she would send her brother to follow me at
a distance, without my noticing it.
X
In October or November 1881, as soon as my wife had passed her
examination, we removed from Thonon to London, where we stayed nearly
twelve months. Few years separate us from that time, and yet I can say
that the intellectual life of London and of all England was quite
different then from what it became a little later. Everyone knows
that in the forties England stood almost at the head of the socialist
movement in Europe; but during the years of reaction that followed,
this great movement, which had deeply affected the working classes,
and in which all that is now put forward as scientific or anarchist
socialism had already been said, came to a standstill. It was forgotten
in England as well as on the Continent, and what the French writers
describe as ‘the third awakening of the proletarians’ had not yet begun
in Britain. The labours of the agricultural commission of 1871, the
propaganda amongst the agricultural labourers, and the previous efforts
of the Christian socialists had certainly done something to prepare the
way; but the outburst of socialist feeling in England which followed
the publication of Henry George’s ‘Progress and Poverty’ had not yet
taken place.
The year that I then passed in London was a year of real exile. For
one who held advanced socialist opinions, there was no atmosphere to
breathe in. There was no sign of that animated socialist movement which
I found so largely developed on my return in 1886. Burns, Champion,
Hardie, and the other labour leaders were not yet heard of; the Fabians
did not exist; Morris had not declared himself a socialist; and the
trade unions, limited in London to a few privileged trades only, were
hostile to socialism. The only active and outspoken representatives
of the socialist movement were Mr. and Mrs. Hyndman, with a very few
workers grouped round them. They had held in the autumn of 1881 a
small congress, and we used to say jokingly--but it was very nearly
true--that Mrs. Hyndman had received all the congress in her house.
Moreover, the more or less socialist radical movement which was
certainly going on in the minds of men did not assert itself frankly
and openly. That considerable number of educated men and women who
appeared in public life four years later, and, without committing
themselves to socialism, took part in various movements connected with
the well-being or the education of the masses, and who have now created
in almost every city of England and Scotland a quite new atmosphere of
reform and a new society of reformers, had not then made themselves
felt. They were there, of course; they thought and spoke; all the
elements for a widespread movement were in existence; but, finding none
of those centres of attraction which the socialist groups subsequently
became, they were lost in the crowd; they did not know one another, or
remained unconscious of their own selves.
Tchaykóvsky was then in London, and, as in years past, we began a
socialist propaganda amongst the workers. Aided by a few English
workers whose acquaintance we had made at the congress of 1881, or whom
the prosecutions against John Most had attracted to the socialists,
we went to the Radical clubs, speaking about Russian affairs, the
movement of our youth toward the people, and socialism in general. We
had ridiculously small audiences, seldom consisting of more than a
dozen men. Occasionally some grey-bearded Chartist would rise from the
audience and tell us that all we were saying had been said forty years
before, and was greeted then with enthusiasm by crowds of workers, but
that now all was dead, and there was no hope of reviving it.
Mr. Hyndman had just published his excellent exposition of Marxist
socialism under the title of ‘England for All’; and I remember, one
day in the summer of 1882, earnestly advising him to start a socialist
paper. I told him with what small means we began editing ‘Le Révolté,’
and predicted a certain success if he would make the attempt. But
so unpromising was the general outlook, that even he thought the
undertaking would be a certain failure, unless he had the means to
defray all its expenses. Perhaps he was right; but when, less than
three years later, he started ‘Justice,’ it found a hearty support
among the workers, and early in 1886 there were three socialist papers,
and the Social Democratic Federation was an influential body.
In the summer of 1882 I spoke, in broken English, before the Durham
miners at their annual gathering; I delivered lectures at Newcastle,
Glasgow, and Edinburgh about the Russian movement, and was received
with enthusiasm, a crowd of workers giving hearty cheers for the
Nihilists, after the meeting, in the street. But my wife and I felt so
lonely at London, and our efforts to awaken a socialist movement in
England seemed so hopeless, that in the autumn of 1882 we decided to
remove again to France. We were sure that in France I should soon be
arrested; but we often said to each other, ‘Better a French prison than
this grave.’
Those who are prone to speak of the slowness of evolution ought to
study the development of socialism in England. Evolution _is_ slow; but
its rate is not uniform. It has its periods of slumber and its periods
of sudden progress.
XI
We settled once more in Thonon, taking lodgings with our former
hostess, Madame Sansaux. A brother of my wife, who was dying of
consumption, and had come to Switzerland, joined us.
I never saw such numbers of Russian spies as during the two months
that I remained at Thonon. To begin with, as soon as we had engaged
lodgings, a suspicious character, who gave himself out for an
Englishman, took the other part of the house. Flocks, literally flocks
of Russian spies besieged the house, seeking admission under all
possible pretexts, or simply tramping in pairs, trios, and quartettes
in front of the house. I can imagine what wonderful reports they wrote.
A spy must report. If he should merely say that he has stood for a week
in the street without noticing anything mysterious, he would soon be
put on the half-pay list or dismissed.
It was then the golden age of the Russian secret police. Ignátieff’s
policy had borne fruit. There were two or three bodies of police
competing with one another, each having any amount of money at their
disposal, and carrying on the boldest intrigues. Colonel Sudéikin,
for instance, chief of one of the branches--plotting with a certain
Degáeff, who after all killed him--denounced Ignátieff’s agents to
the revolutionists, and offered to the terrorists all facilities for
killing the minister of the interior, Count Tolstóy, and the Grand Duke
Vladímir; adding that he himself would then be nominated minister of
the interior, with dictatorial powers, and the Tsar would be entirely
in his hands. This activity of the Russian police culminated, later on,
in the kidnapping of the Prince of Battenberg from Bulgaria.
The French police, also, were on the alert. The question, ‘What is he
doing at Thonon?’ worried them. I continued to edit ‘Le Révolté,’ and
wrote articles for the ‘Encyclopædia Britannica’ and the ‘Newcastle
Chronicle.’ But what reports could be made out of that? One day the
local gendarme paid a visit to my landlady. He had heard from the
street the rattling of some machine, and wished to report that I had
in the house a secret printing press. So he came in my absence and
asked the landlady to show him the press. She replied that there was
none, and suggested that perhaps the gendarme had overheard the noise
of her sewing-machine. But he would not be convinced by so prosaic an
explanation, and actually compelled the landlady to use the machine,
while he listened inside the house and outside, to make sure that the
rattling he had heard was the same.
‘What is he doing all day?’ he asked the landlady.
‘He writes.’
‘He cannot write all day long.’
‘He saws wood in the garden at midday, and he takes walks every
afternoon between four and five.’ It was in November.
‘Ah, that’s it! When the dusk is coming on?’ (_A la tombée de la
nuit?_) And he wrote in his note-book, ‘Never goes out except at dusk.’
I could not well explain at that time this special attention of the
Russian spies; but it must have had some connection with the following.
When Ignátieff was nominated prime minister, advised by the ex-prefect
of Paris, Andrieux, he hit on a new plan. He sent a swarm of his agents
into Switzerland, and one of them undertook the publication of a paper
which slightly advocated the extension of provincial self-government in
Russia, but whose chief purpose was to combat the revolutionists, and
to rally to its standard those of the refugees who did not sympathize
with terrorism. This was certainly a means of sowing division. Then,
when nearly all the members of the Executive Committee had been
arrested in Russia, and a couple of them had taken refuge at Paris,
Ignátieff sent an agent to Paris to offer an armistice. He promised
that there should be no further executions on account of the plots
during the reign of Alexander II., even if those who had escaped arrest
fell into the hands of the government; that Chernyshévsky should be
released from Siberia; and that a commission should be nominated to
revise the cases of all those who had been exiled to Siberia without
trial. On the other side, he asked the Executive Committee to promise
to make no attempts against the Tsar’s life until his coronation was
over. Perhaps the reforms in favour of the peasants, which Alexander
III. intended to make, were also mentioned. The agreement was made
at Paris, and was kept on both sides. The terrorists suspended
hostilities. Nobody was executed for complicity in the former
conspiracies; those who were arrested later on under this indictment
were immured in the Russian Bastille at Schlüsselburg, where nothing
was heard of them for fifteen years, and where most of them still
are. Chernyshévsky was brought back from Siberia, and ordered to
stay at Astrakhan, where he was severed from all connection with the
intellectual world of Russia, and soon died. A commission went through
Siberia, releasing some of the exiles, and specifying terms of exile
for the remainder. My brother Alexander received from it an additional
five years.
While I was at London, in 1882, I was also told one day that a man who
pretended to be a _bonâ fide_ agent of the Russian government, and
could prove it, wanted to enter into negotiations with me. ‘Tell him
that if he comes to my house I will throw him down the staircase,’ was
my reply. The consequence of it was, I suppose, that while Ignátieff
considered the Tsar guaranteed from the attacks of the Executive
Committee, he thought that the anarchists might make some attempt and
wanted therefore to have me out of the way.
XII
The anarchist movement had taken a considerable development in France
during the years 1881 and 1882. It was generally believed that the
French mind was hostile to communism, and within the International
Workingmen’s Association ‘collectivism’ was preached instead.
Collectivism meant then the possession of the instruments of production
in common, each separate group having, however, to settle for itself
whether the consumption of produce should be on individualistic or
communistic lines. In reality, the French mind was hostile only to
the monastic communism, to the _phalanstère_ of the old schools. When
the Jura Federation, at its congress of 1880, boldly declared itself
anarchist-communist--that is, in favour of free communism--anarchism
won wide sympathy in France. Our paper began to spread in that country,
letters were exchanged in great numbers with French workers, and an
anarchist movement of importance rapidly developed at Paris and in some
of the provinces, especially in the Lyons region. When I crossed France
in 1881, on my way from Thonon to London, I visited Lyons, St. Etienne,
and Vienne, lecturing there, and I found in these cities a considerable
number of workers ready to accept our ideas.
By the end of 1882 a terrible crisis prevailed in the Lyons region. The
silk industry was paralysed, and the misery among the weavers was so
great that crowds of children stood every morning at the gates of the
barracks, where the soldiers gave away what they could spare of their
bread and soup. This was the beginning of the popularity of General
Boulanger, who had permitted this distribution of food. The miners of
the region were also in a very precarious state.
I knew that there was a great deal of fermentation, but during the
eleven months I had stayed at London I had lost close contact with
the French movement. A few weeks after I returned to Thonon I learned
from the papers that the miners of Monceau-les-Mines, incensed at the
vexations of the ultra-Catholic owners of the mines, had begun a sort
of movement; they were holding secret meetings, talking of a general
strike; the stone crosses erected on all the roads round the mines
were thrown down or blown up by dynamite cartridges, which are largely
used by the miners in underground work, and often remain in their
possession. The agitation at Lyons also took a more violent character.
The anarchists, who were rather numerous in the city, allowed no
meeting of the opportunist politicians to be held without obtaining
a hearing for themselves--storming the platform, as a last resource.
They brought forward resolutions to the effect that the mines and all
necessaries for production, as well as the dwelling-houses, ought
to be owned by the nation; and these resolutions were carried with
enthusiasm, to the horror of the middle classes.
The feeling among the workers was growing every day against the
opportunist town councillors and political leaders as also against
the Press, who made light of a very acute crisis, and undertook
nothing to relieve the widespread misery. As is usual at such times,
the fury of the poorer people turned especially against the places
of amusement and debauch, which become only the more conspicuous in
times of desolation and misery, as they impersonate for the worker
the egotism and dissoluteness of the wealthier classes. A place
particularly hated by the workers was the underground café at the
Théatre Bellecour, which remained open all night, and where, in the
small hours of the morning, one could see newspaper men and politicians
feasting and drinking in company with gay women. Not a meeting was
held but some menacing allusion was made to that café, and one night a
dynamite cartridge was exploded in it by an unknown hand. A socialist
working-man, who was occasionally there, jumped to blow out the lighted
fuse of the cartridge, and was killed, while a few of the feasting
politicians were slightly wounded. Next day a dynamite cartridge was
exploded at the doors of a recruiting bureau, and it was said that the
anarchists intended to blow up the huge statue of the Virgin which
stands on one of the hills of Lyons. One must have lived at Lyons or
in its neighbourhood to realize the extent to which the population
and the schools are still in the hands of the Catholic clergy, and to
understand the hatred that the male portion of the population feel
toward the clergy.
A panic now seized the wealthier classes of Lyons. Some sixty
anarchists--all workers, and only one middle-class man, Emile Gautier,
who was on a lecturing tour in the region--were arrested. The Lyons
papers undertook at the same time to incite the government to arrest
me, representing me as the leader of the agitation, who had come from
England in order to direct the movement. Russian spies began to parade
again in conspicuous numbers in our small town. Almost every day I
received letters, evidently written by spies of the international
police, mentioning some dynamite plot, or mysteriously announcing
that consignments of dynamite had been shipped to me. I made quite
a collection of these letters, writing on each of them ‘Police
Internationale,’ and they were taken away by the police when they made
a search in my house. But they did not dare to produce these letters
in court, nor did they ever restore them to me. In December, the house
where I stayed was searched in Russian fashion, and my wife, who was
going to Geneva, was arrested at the station in Thonon, and also
searched. But of course nothing was found to compromise me or anyone
else.
Ten days passed, during which I was quite free to go away, if I
had wished to do so. I received several letters advising me to
disappear--one of them from an unknown Russian friend, perhaps a
member of the diplomatic staff, who seemed to have known me, and who
wrote that I must leave at once, because otherwise I should be the
first victim of an extradition treaty which was about to be concluded
between France and Russia. I remained where I was; and when the ‘Times’
inserted a telegram saying that I had disappeared from Thonon, I wrote
a letter to the paper giving my address, and declaring that since so
many of my friends were arrested I had no intention of leaving.
In the night of December 21, my brother-in-law died in my arms. We knew
that his illness was incurable, but to see a young life extinguished
in your presence, after a brave struggle against death, is terrible.
We both were quite broken down. Three or four hours later, as the dull
winter morning was dawning, gendarmes came to the house to arrest me.
Seeing in what a state my wife was, I asked to remain with her till the
burial was over, promising upon my word of honour to be at the prison
door at a given hour; but this was refused, and the same night I was
taken to Lyons. Elisée Reclus, notified by telegraph, came at once,
bestowing on my wife all the gentleness of his great heart; friends
came from Geneva; and although the funeral was an absolutely civil one,
which was a novelty in that little town, half of the population was at
the burial, to show my wife that the hearts of the poorer classes and
the simple Savoy peasants were with us, and not with their rulers. When
my trial was going on, the peasants followed it with sympathy, and used
to come every day from the mountain villages to town to get the papers.
Another incident which profoundly touched me was the arrival at Lyons
of an English friend. He came on behalf of a gentleman well known and
esteemed in the English political world, in whose family I had spent
many happy hours at London in 1882. He was the bearer of a considerable
sum of money for the purpose of obtaining my release on bail, and he
transmitted me at the same time the message of my London friend that
I need not care in the least about the bail, but must leave France
immediately. In some mysterious way he managed to see me freely--not in
the double-grated iron cage in which I was allowed interviews with my
wife--and he was as much affected by my refusal to accept the offer he
came to make as I was by this touching token of friendship on the part
of one who, with his wonderfully excellent wife, I had already learnt
to esteem so highly.
The French government wanted to have one of those great trials which
produce an impression upon the population, but there was no possibility
of prosecuting the arrested anarchists for the explosions. It would
have required bringing us before a jury, which in all probability
would have acquitted us. Consequently, the government adopted the
Machiavellian course of prosecuting us for having belonged to the
International Workingmen’s Association. There is in France a law,
passed immediately after the fall of the Commune, under which men can
be brought before a simple police court for having belonged to that
association. The maximum penalty is five years’ imprisonment; and a
police court is always sure to pronounce the sentences which are wanted
by the government.
The trial began at Lyons in the first days of January 1883, and lasted
about a fortnight. The accusation was ridiculous, as everyone knew that
none of the Lyons workers had ever joined the International, and it
entirely fell through, as may be seen from the following episode. The
only witness for the prosecution was the chief of the secret police at
Lyons, an elderly man, who was treated at the court with the utmost
respect. His report, I must say, was quite correct as concerns the
facts. The anarchists, he said, had taken hold of the population, they
had rendered opportunist meetings impossible because they spoke at each
such meeting, preaching communism and anarchism, and carrying with them
the audiences. Seeing that so far he had been fair in his testimony,
I ventured to ask him a question: ‘Did you ever hear the name of the
International Workingmen’s Association spoken of at Lyons?’
‘Never,’ he replied sulkily.
‘When I returned from the London congress of 1881, and did all I could
to have the International reconstituted in France, did I succeed?’
‘No. They did not find it revolutionary enough.’
‘Thank you,’ I said, and turning toward the procureur I added, ‘There
you have all your case overthrown by your own witness!’
Nevertheless, we were all condemned for having belonged to the
International. Four of us got the maximum sentence, five years’
imprisonment and a hundred pounds’ fine; the remainder got from four
years to one year. In fact, our accusers never tried to prove anything
concerning the International. It was quite forgotten. We were simply
asked to speak about anarchism, and so we did. Not a word was said
about the explosions; and when one or two of the Lyons comrades
wanted to have this point cleared up, they were bluntly told that
they were not prosecuted for that, but for having belonged to the
International--to which I alone belonged.
There is always some comical incident in such trials, and this time
it was supplied by a letter of mine. There was nothing upon which
to base the whole accusation. Scores of searches had been made at
the French anarchists’, but only two letters of mine had been found.
The prosecution tried to make the best of them. One was written to a
French worker, who felt despondent and disheartened. I spoke to him in
my letter about the great times we were living in, the great changes
coming, the birth and spreading of new ideas, and so on. The letter
was not long, and little capital was made out of it by the procureur.
As to the other letter, it was twelve pages long. I had written it
to another French friend, a young shoemaker. He earned his living by
making shoes in his own room for a shop. On his left side he used to
have a small iron stove, upon which he himself cooked his daily meal,
and upon his right a small stool upon which he wrote long letters to
the comrades, without leaving his shoemaker’s low bench. After he had
made just as many pairs of shoes as were required for covering the
expenses of his extremely modest living, and for sending a few francs
to his old mother in the country, he would spend long hours in writing
letters in which he developed the theoretical principles of anarchism
with admirable good sense and intelligence. He is now a writer, well
known in France and generally respected for the integrity of his
character. Unfortunately, at that time he would cover eight or twelve
pages of notepaper without having put one single full-stop, or even a
comma. I once sat down and wrote a long letter in which I explained to
him how our thoughts subdivide into groups of sentences, which must be
marked by full-stops; into separate sentences which must be separated
by stops, and finally into secondary ones which deserve the charity of
being marked at least with commas. I told him how much it would improve
his writings if he took this simple precaution.
This letter was read by the prosecutor before the court, and elicited
from him most pathetic comments: ‘You have heard, gentlemen, this
letter’--he went on, addressing the court. ‘You have listened to it.
There is nothing particular in it at first sight. He gives a lesson
of grammar to a worker.... But’--and here his voice vibrated with
accents of deep emotion--‘it was not in order to help a poor worker in
instruction which he, owing probably to his laziness, failed to get
at school. It was not to help him in earning an honest living.... No,
gentlemen--it was written in order to inspire him with hatred for our
grand and beautiful institutions, in order only the better to infuse
him with the venom of anarchism, in order to make of him only a more
terrible enemy of society.... Cursed be the day that Kropótkin put his
foot on the soil of France!’ he exclaimed with a wonderful pathos.
We could not help laughing like boys all the time he delivered that
speech; the judges stared at him as if to tell him that he was
overdoing his rôle, but he seemed not to notice anything, and, carried
on by his eloquence, he went on speaking with more and more theatrical
gestures and intonations. He really did his best to obtain his reward
from the Russian government.
Very soon after the condemnation the presiding magistrate was promoted
to the magistracy of an assize court. As to the procureur and another
magistrate--one would hardly believe it--the Russian government offered
them the Russian cross of Sainte-Anne, and they were allowed by the
republic to accept it! The famous Russian alliance had thus its origin
in the Lyons trial.
This trial, which lasted a fortnight, during which most brilliant
anarchist speeches, reported by all the papers, were made by such
first-rate speakers as the worker Bernard and Emile Gautier, and during
which all the accused took a very firm attitude, preaching all the time
our doctrines, had a powerful influence in spreading anarchist ideas
in France, and assuredly contributed to some extent to the revival of
socialism in other countries. As to the condemnation, it was so little
justified by the proceedings that the French Press--with the exception
of the papers devoted to the government--openly blamed the magistrates.
Even the moderate ‘Journal des Economistes’ blamed the condemnation,
which ‘nothing in the proceedings of the court could have made one
foresee.’ The contest between the accusers and ourselves was won by us,
in the public opinion. Immediately a proposition of amnesty was brought
before the Chamber, and received about a hundred votes in support of
it. It came up regularly every year, each time securing more and more
votes, until we were released.
XIII
The trial was over, but I remained for another couple of months at
the Lyons prison. Most of my comrades had lodged an appeal against
the decision of the police court and we had to wait for its results.
With four more comrades I refused to take any part in that appeal to a
higher court, and continued to work in my _pistole_. A great friend
of mine, Martin--a clothier from Vienne--took another _pistole_ by the
side of the one which I occupied, and as we were already condemned, we
were allowed to take our walks together; and when we had something to
say to each other between the walks, we used to correspond by means of
taps on the wall, just as in Russia.
Already during my sojourn at Lyons I began to realize the awfully
demoralising influence of the prisons upon the prisoners, which brought
me later to condemn unconditionally the whole institution.
The Lyons prison is a ‘modern’ prison, built in the shape of a star,
on the cellular system. The spaces between the rays of the star-like
building are occupied by small asphalte-paved yards, and, weather
permitting, the inmates are taken to these yards to work outdoors.
They mostly beat out the unwound silk cocoons to obtain floss silk.
Flocks of children are also taken at certain hours to these yards.
Thin, emasculated, underfed--the shadows of children--I often watched
them from my window. Anæmia was plainly written on all the little faces
and manifest in their thin, shivering bodies; and not only in the
dormitories but also in the yards, in the full light of the sun, they
themselves increased their anæmia. What will become of these children
after they have passed through that schooling and come out with their
health ruined, their will annihilated, their energy weakened? Anæmia,
with its weakened energy and unwillingness to work, its enfeebled
will, weakened intellect, and perverted imagination, is responsible
for crime to an infinitely greater extent than plethora, and it is
precisely this enemy of the human race which is bred in prison. And
then, the teachings which the children receive in these surroundings!
Mere isolation, even if it were rigorously carried out--and it cannot
be--would be of little avail; the whole atmosphere of every prison is
an atmosphere of glorification of that sort of gambling in ‘clever
strokes’ which constitutes the very essence of theft, swindling,
and all sorts of similar anti-social deeds. Whole generations of
future prisoners are bred in these nurseries which the state supports
and society tolerates, simply because it does not want to hear its
own diseases spoken of and dissected. ‘Imprisoned in childhood:
prison-bird for life,’ was what I heard afterwards from all those who
were interested in criminal matters. And when I saw these children
and realized what they had to expect in the future, I could not but
continually ask myself: ‘Which of them is the worst criminal--this
child or the judge who condemns every year hundreds of children to this
fate?’ I gladly admit that the crime of these judges is unconscious.
But are, then, all the ‘crimes’ for which people are sent to prison as
conscious as they are supposed to be?
There was another point which I vividly realized since the very first
weeks of my imprisonment, but which, in some inconceivable way,
escapes the attention of both the judges and the writers on criminal
law--namely, that imprisonment in an immense number of cases is a
punishment which strikes quite innocent people far more severely than
the condemned prisoners themselves.
Nearly every one of my comrades, who represented a fair average of the
working-men population, had either their wife and children to support,
or a sister or an old mother who depended for their living upon his
earnings. Now, being left without support, these women did their best
to get work, and some of them got it, but none of them succeeded in
earning regularly even as much as fifteen pence a day. Nine francs
(less than eight shillings), and often six shillings a week, to support
themselves and their children was all they could earn. And that meant
evidently underfeeding, privations of all sorts, and the deterioration
of the health of the wife and the children: weakened intellect,
weakened energy and will. I thus realized that what was going on in
our law courts was in reality a condemnation of quite innocent people
to all sorts of hardships, in most cases even worse than those to
which the condemned man himself is submitted. The fiction is that the
law punishes the man by inflicting upon him a variety of physical and
degrading hardships. But man is such a creature that whatever hardships
be imposed upon him, he gradually grows accustomed to them. As he
cannot modify them he accepts them, and after a certain time he puts
up with them, just as he puts up with a chronic disease, and grows
insensible to it. But what, during his imprisonment, becomes of his
wife and children, that is, of the innocent people who depend upon him
for support? They are punished even more cruelly than he himself is.
And in our routine habits of thought no one ever thinks of the immense
injustice which is thus committed. I realized it only from actual
experience.
* * * * *
In the middle of March 1883, twenty-two of us who had been condemned
to more than one year of imprisonment, were removed in great secrecy
to the central prison of Clairvaux. It was formerly an abbey of St.
Bernard, of which the great Revolution had made a house for the poor.
Subsequently it became a house of detention and correction, which
went among the prisoners and the officials themselves under the
well-deserved nickname of ‘house of detention and corruption.’
So long as we were kept at Lyons we were treated as the prisoners
under preliminary arrest are treated in France; that is, we had our
own clothes, we could get our own food from a restaurant, and one
could hire for a few francs per month a larger cell, a _pistole_.
I took advantage of this for working hard upon my articles for the
‘Encyclopædia Britannica’ and the ‘Nineteenth Century.’ Now, the
treatment we should have at Clairvaux was an open question. However, in
France it is generally understood that, for political prisoners, the
loss of liberty and forced inactivity are in themselves so hard that
there is no need to inflict additional hardships. Consequently, we were
told that we should remain under the _régime_ of preliminary detention.
We should have separate quarters, retain our own clothes, be free from
compulsory work, and be allowed to smoke. ‘Those of you,’ the governor
said, ‘who wish to earn something by manual work, will be enabled to
do so by sewing stays or engraving small things in mother-of-pearl.
This work is poorly paid; but you could not be employed in the prison
workshops for the fabrication of iron beds, picture frames, and so on,
because that would require your lodging with the common-law prisoners.’
Like the other prisoners we were allowed to buy from the prison canteen
some additional food and a pint of claret every day, both being
supplied at a very low price and of good quality.
The first impression which Clairvaux produced upon me was most
favourable. We had been locked up and had been travelling all the day,
from two or three o’clock in the morning, in those tiny cupboards
into which the cellular railway carriages are usually divided. When
we reached the central prison we were taken temporarily to the
cellular, or punishment quarters, and were introduced into the usual
but extremely clean cells. Hot food, plain but of excellent quality,
had been served to us notwithstanding the late hour of the night, and
we had been offered the opportunity of having the half-pint of very
good _vin du pays_ (local wine) which was sold to the prisoners by the
prison canteen, at the extremely low price of 24 centimes (less than
2½_d._) per quart. The governor and the warders were most polite to us.
Next day the governor of the prison took me to see the rooms which he
intended to give us, and when I remarked that they were all right but
only a little too small for such a number--we were twenty-two--and
that overcrowding might result in illness, he gave us another set of
rooms in what was in olden times the house of the superintendent of
the abbey, and now was the hospital. Our windows looked out upon a
little garden, and beyond it we had beautiful views of the surrounding
country. In another room on the same landing old Blanqui had been kept
the last three or four years before his release. Before that he had
been imprisoned in the cellular house.
Besides the three spacious rooms which were given to us, a smaller
room was spared for Gautier and myself, so that we could pursue our
literary work. We probably owed this last favour to the intervention
of a considerable number of English men of science who, as soon as I
was condemned, had addressed a petition to the President asking for my
release. Many contributors to the ‘Encyclopædia Britannica,’ as well
as Herbert Spencer and Swinburne, had signed, while Victor Hugo had
added to his signature a few warm words. Altogether, public opinion in
France received our condemnation very unfavourably; and when my wife
had mentioned at Paris that I required books, the Academy of Sciences
offered the use of its library, and Ernest Renan, in a charming letter,
put his private library at her service.
We had a small garden, where we could play nine-pins or _jeu de
boules_. We managed, moreover, to cultivate a narrow bed running
along the wall, and, on a surface of some eighty square yards, we
grew almost incredible quantities of lettuces and radishes, as well
as some flowers. I need not say that we at once organized classes,
and during the three years that we remained at Clairvaux I gave my
comrades lessons in cosmography, geometry, or physics, also aiding
them in the study of languages. Nearly every one learned at least one
language--English, German, Italian, or Spanish--while a few learned
two. We also managed to do some book-binding, having learned how from
one of those excellent Encyclopédie Roret booklets.
At the end of the first year, however, my health again gave way.
Clairvaux is built on marshy ground, upon which malaria is endemic,
and malaria, with scurvy, laid hold of me. Then my wife, who was
studying at Paris, working in Würtz’s laboratory and preparing to
take an examination for the degree of Doctor of Science, abandoned
everything, and came to stay in the hamlet of Clairvaux, which consists
of less than a dozen houses grouped at the foot of an immense high wall
which encircles the prison. Of course, her life in that hamlet, with
the prison wall opposite, was anything but gay; yet she stayed there
till I was released. During the first year she was allowed to see me
only once in two months, and all interviews were held in the presence
of a warder, who sat between us. But when she settled at Clairvaux,
declaring her firm intention to remain there, she was soon permitted
to see me every day, in one of the small guard-houses of the warders,
within the prison walls, and food was brought me from the inn where she
stayed. Later, we were even allowed to take a walk in the governor’s
garden, closely watched all the time, and usually one of my comrades
joined us in the walk.
I was quite astonished to discover that the central prison of Clairvaux
had all the aspects of a small manufacturing town, surrounded by
orchards and cornfields, all encircled by an outer wall. The fact
is that if in a French central prison the inmates are perhaps more
dependent upon the fancies and caprices of the governor and the
warders than they seem to be in English prisons, the treatment of the
prisoners is far more humane than it is in the corresponding lock-ups
on this side of the Channel. The mediæval spirit of revenge which still
prevails in English prisons has long since been given up in France.
The imprisoned man is not compelled to sleep on planks, or to have a
mattress on alternate days only; the day he comes to the prison he gets
a decent bed and retains it. He is not compelled either to do degrading
work, such as to climb a wheel, or to pick oakum; he is employed, on
the contrary, in useful work, and this is why the Clairvaux prison
has the aspect of a manufacturing town in which iron furniture,
picture-frames, looking-glasses, metric measures, velvet, linen,
ladies’ stays, small things in mother-of-pearl, wooden shoes, and so
on, are fabricated by the nearly 1,600 men who are kept there.
Moreover, if the punishment for insubordination is very cruel, there
is none of the flogging which still goes on in English prisons: such a
punishment would be absolutely impossible in France. Altogether, the
central prison at Clairvaux may be described as one of the best prisons
in Europe. And yet, the results obtained at Clairvaux are as bad as in
any one of the lock-ups of the old type. ‘The watchword nowadays is to
say that prisoners are reformed in our prisons,’ one of the members of
the prison administration once said to me. ‘This is all nonsense, and I
shall never be induced to tell such a lie.’
* * * * *
The pharmacy at Clairvaux was underneath the rooms which we occupied,
and we occasionally had some contact with the prisoners who were
employed in it. One of them was a grey-haired man in his fifties,
who ended his term while we were there. It was touching to learn how
he parted with the prison. He knew that in a few months or weeks he
would be back, and begged the doctor to keep the place at the pharmacy
open for him. This was not his first visit to Clairvaux, and he knew
it would not be the last. When he was set free he had not a soul in
the world to whom he might go to spend his old age. ‘Who will care
to employ me?’ he said. ‘And what trade have I? None! When I am out
I must go to my old comrades; they, at least, will surely receive me
as an old friend.’ Then would come a glass too much of drink in their
company, excited talk about some capital fun--some capital ‘new stroke’
to be made in the way of theft--and, partly from weakness of will,
partly to oblige his only friends, he would join in it, and would be
locked up once more. So it had been several times before in his life.
Two months passed, however, after his release, and he was not yet
back to Clairvaux. Then the prisoners, and the warders too, began to
feel uneasy about him. ‘Has he had time to move to another judicial
district, that he is not yet back? One can only hope that he has not
been involved in some bad affair,’ they would say, meaning something
worse than theft. ‘That would be a pity: he was such a nice, quiet
man.’ But it soon appeared that the first supposition was the right
one. Word came from another prison that the old man was locked up
there, and was now endeavouring to be transferred to Clairvaux.
The old prisoners were the most pitiful sight. Many of them had begun
their prison experience in childhood or early youth, others at a riper
age. But ‘once in prison, always in prison,’ such is the saying derived
from experience. And now, having reached or passed over the age of
sixty, they knew that they must end their lives in a gaol. To quicken
their departure from life the prison administration used to send them
to the workshops where felt socks were made out of all sorts of woollen
refuse. The dust in the workshop soon gave these old men consumption,
which finally released them. Then four fellow prisoners would carry the
old comrade to the common grave, the graveyard warder and his black dog
being the only two beings to follow him; and while the prison priest
would march in front of the procession, mechanically reciting his
prayer and looking round at the chestnut or fir-trees along the road,
and the four comrades carrying the coffin would enjoy their momentary
escape out of prison, the black dog would be the only being affected by
the solemnity of the ceremony.
When the reformed central prisons were introduced in France, it was
believed that the principle of absolute silence could be maintained in
them. But it is so contrary to human nature that its strict enforcement
had to be abandoned. In fact, even solitary confinement is no obstacle
to intercourse between the prisoners.
To the outward observer the prison seems to be quite mute; but in
reality life goes on in it as busily as in a small town. In suppressed
voices, by means of whispers, hurriedly dropped words, and scraps of
notes, every news of any interest spreads immediately all over the
prison. Nothing can happen either among the prisoners themselves, or
in the _cour d’honneur_, where the lodgings of the administration are
situated, or in the village of Clairvaux, where the employers of the
factories live, or in the wide world of Paris politics, but that it
is communicated at once throughout all the dormitories, workshops,
and cells. Frenchmen are of too communicative a nature for their
underground telegraph ever to be stopped. We had no intercourse with
the common-law prisoners, and yet we knew all the news of the day.
‘John, the gardener, is back for two years.’ ‘Such an inspector’s wife
has had a fearful scrimmage with So-and-So’s wife.’ ‘James, in the
cells, has been caught transmitting a note of friendship to John from
the framers’ workshop.’ ‘That old beast So-and-So is no more minister
of justice: the ministry has been upset.’ And so on; and when the news
goes that ‘Jack has got two five-penny packets of tobacco in exchange
for two flannel spencers,’ it flies round the prison in no time.
Demands for tobacco were continually pouring in upon us; and when a
small lawyer detained in the prison wanted to transmit to me a note, in
order to ask my wife, who was staying in the village, to see from time
to time his wife, who was also there, quite a number of men took the
liveliest interest in the transmission of that message, which had to
pass I do not know how many hands before it reached its goal. And when
there was something that might specially interest us in a paper, this
paper, in some unaccountable way, would reach us, with a little stone
wrapped into it, to help its being thrown over a high wall.
Cellular imprisonment is no obstacle to communication. When we came
to Clairvaux and were first lodged in the cellular quarter, it was
bitterly cold in the cells; so cold, indeed, that when I wrote to
my wife, who was then at Paris, and she got my letter, she did not
recognize the writing, my hand being so stiff with the cold. The order
came to heat the cells as much as possible; but do what they might,
the cells remained as cold as ever. It appeared afterwards that all
the hot-air tubes in the cells were choked with scraps of paper, bits
of notes, penknives, and all sorts of small things which several
generations of prisoners had concealed in the pipes.
Martin, the same friend of mine whom I have already mentioned, obtained
permission to serve part of his time in cellular confinement. He
preferred isolation to life in a room with a dozen comrades, and went
to a cell in the cellular building. To his great astonishment he found
that he was not at all alone in his cell. The walls and the keyholes
spoke round him. In a day or two all the inmates of the cells knew who
he was, and he had acquaintances all over the building. Quite a life
goes on, as in a beehive, between the seemingly isolated cells; only
that life often takes such a character as to make it belong entirely
to the domain of psychopathy. Kraft-Ebbing himself had no idea of the
aspects it takes with certain prisoners in solitary confinement.
I will not repeat here what I have said in a book, ‘In Russian and
French Prisons,’ which I published in England in 1886, soon after my
release from Clairvaux, upon the moral influence of prisoners upon
prisoners. But there is one thing which must be said. The prison
population consists of heterogeneous elements; but, taking only those
who are usually described as ‘the criminals’ proper, and of whom we
have heard so much lately from Lombroso and his followers, what struck
me most as regards them was that the prisons, which are considered
as a preventive measure against anti-social deeds, are exactly the
institutions for breeding them and for rendering these offences
worse and worse after a man has received prison education. Everyone
knows that the absence of education, the dislike of regular work
acquired since childhood, the physical unpreparedness for sustained
effort, the love of adventure when it receives a wrong direction,
the gambling propensities, the absence of energy and an untrained
will, and carelessness about the happiness of others, are the causes
which bring this category of men before the courts. Now I was deeply
impressed during my imprisonment by the fact that it is exactly these
defects of human nature--each one of them--which the prison breeds in
its inmates; and it is bound to breed them because it is a prison,
and will breed them so long as there are prisons. Incarceration in a
prison necessarily, fatally, destroys the energy of a man, and still
more kills his will. In prison life there is no room for exercising
one’s will. To possess one’s own will in prison means surely to get
into trouble. The will of the prisoner _must_ be killed, and it
is killed. Still less is there room for exercising one’s natural
sympathies, everything being done to destroy free contact with those
outside the prison and within it with whom the prisoner may have
feelings of sympathy. Physically and mentally he is rendered less
and less prepared for sustained effort; and if he has had formerly
a dislike for regular work, this dislike is only the more increased
during his prison years. If, before he first came to the prison, he
soon felt tired by monotonous work, which he could not do properly,
or had a grudge against underpaid overwork, his dislike now becomes
hatred. If he doubted about the social utility of current rules of
morality, now, after having cast a critical glance upon the official
defenders of these rules, and learned his comrades’ opinions of them,
he openly casts the rules overboard. And if he has got into trouble in
consequence of a morbid development of the passionate sensual side of
his nature, now, after having spent a number of years in prison, this
morbid character is still more developed--in many cases to an appalling
extent. In this last direction--the most dangerous of all--prison
education is most effective.
In Siberia I had seen what sinks of filth, and what workshops of
physical and moral deterioration the dirty, overcrowded, ‘unreformed’
Russian prisons were, and at the age of nineteen I imagined that if
there were less overcrowding in the rooms, and a certain classification
of the prisoners, and healthy occupations were provided for them,
the institution might be substantially improved. Now, I had to part
with these illusions. I could convince myself that as regards their
effects upon the prisoners, and their results for society at large,
the best ‘reformed’ prisons--whether cellular or not--are as bad as,
or even worse, than the dirty lock-ups of old. They do not ‘reform’
the prisoners. On the contrary, in the immense, overwhelming majority
of cases, they exercise upon them the most deteriorating effect. The
thief, the swindler, the rough man, and so on, who has spent some
years in a prison, comes out of it more ready than ever to resume his
former career; he is better prepared for it; he has learned how to do
it better; he is more embittered against society, and he finds a more
solid justification for being in revolt against its laws and customs;
necessarily, unavoidably, he is bound to go farther and farther along
the anti-social path which first brought him before a law court. The
offences he will commit after his release will be graver than those
which first got him into trouble; and he is doomed to finish his life
in a prison or in a hard-labour colony. In the above-mentioned book
I wrote that prisons are ‘universities of crime, maintained by the
state.’ And now, thinking of it at fifteen years’ distance, in the
light of my subsequent experience, I can only confirm that statement of
mine.
Personally I have no reason whatever to complain of the years I have
spent in a French prison. For an active and independent man the
restraint of liberty and activity is in itself so great a privation
that all the remainder, all the petty miseries of prison life, are not
worth speaking of. Of course, when we heard of the active political
life which was going on in France, we resented very much our forced
inactivity. The end of the first year, especially during a gloomy
winter, is always hard for the prisoner. And when spring comes, one
feels more strongly than ever the want of liberty. When I saw from our
windows the meadows assuming their green garb, and the hills covered
with a spring haze, or when I saw a train flying into a dale between
the hills, I certainly felt a strong desire to follow it, to breathe
the air of the woods, to be carried along with the stream of human life
into a busy town. But one who casts his lot with an advanced party
must be prepared to spend a number of years in prison, and he need not
grudge it. He feels that even during his imprisonment he remains not
quite an inactive part of the stream of human progress which spreads
and strengthens the ideas which are dear to him.
At Lyons my comrades, my wife, and myself certainly found the warders
a very rough set of men. But after a couple of encounters all was
set right. Moreover, the prison administration knew that we had the
Paris press with us, and they did not want to draw upon themselves
the thunders of Rochefort or the cutting criticisms of Clémenceau.
And at Clairvaux there was no need of such a restraint. All the
administration had been renewed a few months before we came thither.
A prisoner had been killed by warders in his cell, and his corpse had
been hanged to simulate suicide; but this time the affair leaked out
through the doctor; the governor was dismissed, and altogether a better
tone prevailed in the prison. I took back from Clairvaux the best
recollections of its governor; and altogether, while I was there, I
more than once thought that, after all, men are often better than the
institutions to which they belong. But having no personal griefs, I can
all the more freely, and most unconditionally condemn the institution
itself, as a survival from the dark past, wrong in its principles, and
a source of unfathomable evil to society.
One thing more I must mention as it struck me, perhaps, even more
than the demoralising effects of prisons upon their inmates. What
a nest of infection is every prison, and even a law court for its
neighbourhood--for the people who live about them. Lombroso has made
very much of the ‘criminal type’ which he believes to have discovered
amongst the inmates of the prisons. If he had made the same efforts
to observe people who hang about the law courts--detectives, spies,
small solicitors, informers, people preying upon simpletons, and the
like--he would have probably concluded that his ‘criminal type’ has a
far greater geographical extension than the prison walls. I never saw
such a collection of faces of the lowest human type, sunk far below
the average type of mankind, as I saw by the score round and within
the Palais de Justice at Lyons. Certainly not within the prison walls
of Clairvaux. Dickens and Cruikshank have immortalized a few of these
types; but they represent quite a world which gravitates round the law
courts, and infuses its infection far and wide around them. And the
same is true of each central prison like Clairvaux. Quite an atmosphere
of petty thefts, petty swindlings, spying and corruption of all sorts
spreads like a blot of oil round every prison.
I saw all this; and if before my condemnation I already knew that
society is wrong in its present system of punishments, after I left
Clairvaux I knew that it is not only wrong and unjust in this system,
but that it is simply foolish when, in its partly unconscious and
partly wilful ignorance of realities, it maintains at its own expense
these universities of crime and these sinks of corruption, acting
under the illusion that they are necessary as a bridle to the criminal
instincts of man.
XIV
Every revolutionist meets a number of spies and _agents provocateurs_
in his path, and I have had my fair share of them. All governments
spend considerable sums of money in maintaining this kind of reptile.
However, they are mainly dangerous to young people. One who has had
some experience of life and men soon discovers that there is about
these creatures something which puts him on his guard. They are
recruited from the scum of society, amongst men of the lowest moral
standard, and if one is watchful of the moral character of the men he
meets with, he soon notices something in the manners of these ‘pillars
of society’ which shocks him, and then he asks himself the question:
‘What has brought this person to me? What in the world can he have in
common with us?’ In most cases this simple question is sufficient to
put a man upon his guard.
When I first came to Geneva, the agent of the Russian government who
had been commissioned to spy the refugees was well known to all of us.
He went under the name of Count Something; but as he had no footman and
no carriage on which to emblazon his coronet and arms, he had had them
embroidered on a sort of mantle which covered his tiny dog. We saw him
occasionally in the cafés, without speaking to him; he was, in fact, an
‘innocent’ who simply bought in the kiosques all the publications of
the exiles, very probably adding to them such comments as he thought
would please his chiefs.
Different men began to pour in when Geneva was peopled with more and
more refugees of the young generation; and yet, in one way or another,
they also became known to us.
When a stranger appeared on our horizon, he was asked with usual
nihilist frankness about his past and his present prospects, and it
soon appeared what sort of person he or she was. Frankness in mutual
intercourse is altogether the best way for bringing about proper
relations between men. In this case it was invaluable. Numbers of
persons whom none of us had known or heard of in Russia--absolute
strangers to the circles--came to Geneva, and many of them, a few days
or even hours after their arrival, stood on the most friendly terms
with the colony of refugees; but in some way or another the spies
never succeeded in crossing the threshold of familiarity. A spy might
make common acquaintances; he might give the best accounts, sometimes
correct, of his past in Russia; he might possess in perfection
the nihilist slang and manners, but he never could assimilate the
particular kind of nihilist ethics which had grown up amongst the
Russian youth--and this alone kept him at a distance from our colony.
Spies can imitate anything else but those ethics.
When I was working with Reclus there was at Clarens one such
individual, from whom we all kept aloof. We knew nothing bad about him,
but we felt that he was not ‘ours,’ and as he tried only the more to
penetrate into our society, we became suspicious of him. I had never
said a word to him, and consequently he was especially after me. Seeing
that he could not approach me through the usual channels, he began to
write me letters, giving me mysterious appointments for mysterious
purposes in the woods and in similar places. For fun, I once accepted
his invitation and went to the spot, with a good friend following me
at a distance; but the man, who probably had a confederate, must have
noticed that I was not alone, and did not appear. So I was spared the
pleasure of ever saying to him a single word. Besides, I worked at that
time so hard that every minute of my time was taken up either with
the Geography or ‘Le Révolté,’ and I entered into no conspiracies.
However, we learned later on that this man used to send to the Third
Section detailed reports about the supposed conversations which he had
had with me, my supposed confidences, and the terrible plots which I
was concocting at St. Petersburg against the Tsar’s life! All that
was taken for ready money at St. Petersburg. And in Italy, too. When
Cafiero was arrested one day in Switzerland, he was shown formidable
reports of Italian spies, who warned their government that Cafiero and
I, loaded with bombs, were going to enter Italy. The fact was that I
never was in Italy, and never had had any intention of visiting the
country.
* * * * *
In point of fact, however, the spies do not always fabricate reports
wholesale. They often tell things that are true, but all depends upon
the way a story is told. We passed some merry moments about a report
which was addressed to the French government by a French spy who
followed my wife and myself as we were travelling in 1881 from Paris
to London. The spy, probably playing a double part--as they often
do--had sold that report to Rochefort, who published it in his paper.
Everything that the spy had told in this report was correct--but the
way he had told it!
He wrote for instance: ‘I took the next compartment to the one that
Kropótkin had taken with his wife.’ Quite true; he was there. We
noticed him, for he had managed at once to attract our attention by his
sullen, unpleasant face. ‘They spoke Russian all the time, in order
not to be understood by the other passengers.’ Very true again: we
spoke Russian as we always do. ‘When they came to Calais, they both
took a _bouillon_.’ Most correct again: we took a _bouillon_. But here
the mysterious part of the journey begins. ‘After that, they both
suddenly disappeared, and I looked for them in vain, on the platform
and elsewhere; and when they reappeared, he was in disguise, and was
followed by a Russian priest, who never left him until they reached
London, where I lost sight of the priest.’ All that was true again. My
wife had a slight toothache, and I asked the keeper of the restaurant
to let us go into his private room, where the tooth could be stopped.
So we had disappeared indeed; and as we had to cross the Channel, I
put my soft felt hat into my pocket and put on a fur cap: so I was ‘in
disguise.’ As to the mysterious priest, he was also there. He was not a
Russian, but this is irrelevant: he wore at any rate the dress of the
Greek priests. I saw him standing at the counter and asking something
which no one understood. ‘Agua, agua,’ he repeated in a woful tone.
‘Give the gentleman a glass of water,’ I said to the waiter. Whereupon
the priest began to thank me for my intervention with a truly Eastern
effusion. My wife took pity on him and spoke to him in different
languages, but he understood none but modern Greek. It appeared at last
that he knew a few words in one of the South Slavonian languages, and
we could make out: ‘I am a Greek; Turkish embassy, London.’ We told
him, mostly by signs, that we too were going to London, and that he
might travel with us.
The most amusing part of the story was that I really found for him the
address of the Turkish embassy, even before we had reached Charing
Cross. The train stopped at some station on the way, and two elegant
ladies entered our already full third-class compartment. Both had
newspapers in their hands. One was English, and the other--a tall,
nice-looking person, who spoke good French--pretended to be English.
After having exchanged a few words, she asked me _à brûle-pourpoint_:
‘What do you think of Count Ignátieff?’ And immediately after that:
‘Are you soon going to kill the new Tsar?’ I was clear as to her
profession from these two questions; but, thinking of my priest, I said
to her: ‘Do you happen to know the address of the Turkish embassy?’
‘Street So-and so, number So-and-so,’ she replied without hesitation,
like a schoolgirl in a class. ‘You could, I suppose, also give the
address of the Russian embassy?’ I asked her, and the address having
been given with the same readiness, I communicated both to the priest.
When we reached Charing Cross, the lady was so obsequiously anxious
to attend to my luggage, and even to carry a heavy package herself
with her gloved hands, that I finally told her, much to her surprise:
‘Enough of that; ladies do not carry gentlemen’s luggage. Go away!’
But to return to my trustworthy French spy. ‘He alighted at Charing
Cross’--he wrote in his report--‘but for more than half an hour after
the arrival of the train he did not leave the station, until he had
ascertained that everyone else had left it. I kept aloof in the
meantime, concealing myself behind a pillar. Having ascertained that
all passengers had left the platform, they both suddenly jumped into a
cab. I followed them nevertheless, and overheard the address which the
cabman gave at the gate to the policeman--12, street So-and-so--and ran
after the cab. There were no cabs in the neighbourhood; so I ran up
to Trafalgar Square, where I got one. I then drove after him, and he
alighted at the above address.’
All facts in this narrative are true again--the address and the rest;
but how mysterious it all reads. I had warned a Russian friend of
my arrival, but there was a dense fog that morning, and my friend
overslept himself. We waited for him half an hour, and then, leaving
our luggage in the cloak-room, drove to his house.
‘There they sat till two o’clock with drawn curtains, and then a tall
man came out of the house, and returned one hour later with their
luggage.’ Even the remark about the curtains was correct: we had to
light the gas on account of the fog, and drew down the curtains to get
rid of the ugly sight of a small Islington street wrapped in a dense
fog.
* * * * *
When I was working with Elisée Reclus at Clarens I used to go every
fortnight to Geneva to see to the bringing out of ‘Le Révolté.’
One day as I came to our printing office, I was told that a Russian
gentleman wanted to see me. He had already seen my friends and had
told them that he came to induce me to start a paper like ‘Le Révolté’
in Russian. He offered for that purpose all the money that might be
required. I went to meet him in a café, where he gave me a German
name--Tohnlehm, let us say--and told me that he was a native of the
Baltic provinces. He boasted of possessing a large fortune in certain
estates and manufactures, and he was extremely angry with the Russian
Government, for their Russianizing schemes. On the whole he produced
a somewhat indefinite impression, so that my friends insisted upon my
accepting his offer; but I did not much like the man from first sight.
From the café he took me to his rooms in an hotel, and there began to
show less reserve and to appear more like himself and in a still more
unpleasant light. ‘Don’t doubt my fortune,’ he said to me; ‘I have
made a capital invention. There’s a lot of money in it. I shall patent
it, and get a considerable sum for it, and give it all for the cause
of the revolution in Russia.’ And he showed me, to my astonishment, a
miserable candlestick, the originality of which was that it was awfully
ugly and had three bits of wire to put the candle in. The poorest
housewife would not have cared for such a candlestick, and even if it
could have been patented, no ironmonger would have paid the patentee
more than a couple of sovereigns. ‘A rich man placing his hopes on such
a candlestick! This man,’ I thought to myself, ‘can never have seen
better ones,’ and my opinion about him was made up: ‘He was no rich man
at all, and the money he offered was not his own.’ So I bluntly told
him: ‘Very well, if you are so anxious to have a Russian revolutionary
paper, and hold the flattering opinion about myself which you have
expressed, you will have to put your money in my name at a bank, and
at my entire disposal. But I warn you that you will have absolutely
nothing to do with the paper.’ ‘Of course, of course,’ he said, ‘but
just see to it, and sometimes advise you, and aid you in smuggling it
into Russia.’ ‘No, nothing of the sort! You need not see me at all.’ My
friends thought that I was too hard upon the man, but some time after
that a letter was received from St. Petersburg warning us that we would
have the visit of a spy of the Third Section--Tohnlehm by name. The
candlestick had thus rendered us a good service.
* * * * *
Candlesticks, or anything else, these people almost always betray
themselves in one way or another. When we were at London in 1881 we
received, on a foggy morning, the visit of two Russians. I knew one
of them by name; the other, a young man whom he recommended as his
friend, was a stranger. He had volunteered to accompany his friend on
a few days’ visit to England. As he was introduced by a friend, I had
no suspicions whatever about him; but I was very busy that day with
some work, and asked another friend who stayed close by to find them
rooms and to take them about to see London. My wife had not yet seen
London either, and she went with them. In the afternoon she returned
saying to me: ‘Do you know, I dislike that man very much. Beware of
him.’ ‘But why? What’s the matter?’ I asked. ‘Nothing, absolutely
nothing; but he is surely not “ours.” By the way he treated the waiter
in a café, and the way he handles money, I saw at once that he is not
“ours,” and if he is not--why should he come to us?’ She was so certain
of her suspicions that, while she performed her duties of hospitality,
she nevertheless managed never to leave that young man alone in my
study, even for one minute. We had a chat, and the visitor began to
exhibit himself more and more under such a low moral aspect that even
his friend blushed for him, and when I asked more details about him,
the explanations he gave were even still less satisfactory. We were
both on our guard. In short, they both left London in a couple of
days, and a fortnight later I got a letter from my Russian friend,
full of excuses for having introduced to me the young man who, they
had found out, at Paris, was a spy in the service of the Russian
embassy. I looked then into a list of Russian secret service agents
in France and Switzerland which we, the refugees, had received lately
from the Executive Committee--they had their men everywhere at St.
Petersburg--and I found the name of that young man on the list, with
one letter only altered in it.
* * * * *
To start a paper, subsidized by the police, with a police agent at its
head, is an old plan, and the prefect of the Paris police, Andrieux,
resorted to it in 1881. I was with Elisée Reclus in the mountains
when we received a letter from a Frenchman, or rather a Belgian, who
announced to us that he was going to start an anarchist paper at
Paris and asked our collaboration. The letter, full of flatteries,
produced upon us an unpleasant impression, and Reclus had moreover
some vague reminiscence of having heard the name of the writer in some
unfavourable connection. We decided to refuse collaboration, and I
wrote to a Paris friend that we must first of all ascertain from whence
the money came with which the paper was going to be started. ‘It may
come from the Orleanists--an old trick of the family--and we must know
its origin.’ My Paris friend, with a workman’s straightforwardness,
read that letter at a meeting at which the would-be editor of the paper
was present. He simulated offence, and I had to answer several letters
on this subject; but I stuck to my words: ‘If the man is in earnest, he
must show us the origin of the money.’
And so he did at last. Pressed by questions he said that the money
came from his aunt--a rich lady of antiquated opinions who yielded,
however, to his fancy of having a paper and had parted with the money.
The lady was not in France; she was staying at London. We insisted
nevertheless upon having her name and address, and our friend Malatesta
volunteered to see her. He went with an Italian friend who was
connected with the second-hand trade in furniture. They found the lady
occupying a small flat, and while Malatesta spoke to her and was more
and more convinced that she was simply playing the aunt’s part in the
comedy, the furniture-friend, looking round at the chairs and tables,
discovered that all of them had been taken the day before--probably
hired--from a second-hand furniture dealer, his neighbour. The labels
of the dealer were still fastened to the chairs and the tables.
This did not prove much, but naturally reinforced our suspicions. I
absolutely refused to have anything to do with the paper.
The paper was of an unheard-of violence. Burning, assassination,
dynamite bombs--there was nothing but that in it. I met the man,
the editor of the paper, as I went to the London congress, and the
moment I saw his sullen face, and heard a bit of his talk, and caught
a glance of the sort of women with whom he always went about, my
opinions concerning him were settled. At the congress, during which he
introduced all sorts of terrible resolutions, the delegates kept aloof
from him; and when he insisted upon having the addresses of anarchists
all over the world, the refusal was made in anything but a flattering
manner.
To make a long story short, he was unmasked a couple of months later,
and the paper was stopped for ever on the very next day. Then, a couple
of years after that, the prefect of police, Andrieux, published his
‘Memoirs,’ and in this book he told all about the paper which he had
started and the explosions which his agents had organized at Paris,
by putting sardine boxes filled with ‘something’ under the statue of
Thiers.
One can imagine the quantities of money all these things cost the
French and every other nation.
* * * * *
I might write several chapters on this subject, but I will mention only
one more story of two adventurers at Clairvaux.
My wife stayed in the only inn of the little village which has grown
up under the shadow of the prison wall. One day the landlady entered
her room with a message from two gentlemen, who came to the hotel and
wanted to see my wife. The landlady interceded with all her eloquence
in their favour. ‘Oh, I know the world,’ she said, ‘and I may assure
you, madame, that they are the most correct gentlemen. Nothing could be
more _comme-il-faut_. One of them gave the name of a German officer.
He is surely a baron or a “milord,” and the other is his interpreter.
They know you perfectly well. The baron is going now to Africa, perhaps
never to return, and he wants to see you before he leaves.’
My wife looked at the address of the message, which was: ‘A Madame
la Principesse Kropotkine,’ and needed no further proof of the
_comme-el-faut_ of the two gentlemen. As to the contents of the
message, they were even worse than the address. Against all rules
of grammar and common-sense the ‘baron’ wrote about a mysterious
communication which he had to make. She refused point-blank to receive
the baron and his interpreter.
Thereupon the baron wrote to my wife letter upon letter, which she
returned unopened. All the village soon became divided into two
parties--one siding with the baron and led by the landlady, and the
other against him, and headed, as a matter of fact, by the landlady’s
husband. Quite a romance was circulated. ‘The baron had known my wife
before her marriage. He had danced with her many times at the Russian
embassy in Vienna. He was still in love with her, but she, the cruel
one, refused even to allow him to cast a glance at her before he went
upon his perilous expedition....’
Then came the mysterious story of a boy whom we were said to conceal.
‘Where is their boy?’ the baron wanted to know. ‘They have a son, six
years old by this time--where is he?’ ‘She never would part with a boy
if she had one,’ the one party said. ‘Yes, they have one, but they
conceal him,’ the other party maintained.
For us two, this contest was a very interesting revelation. It proved
that our letters were not only read by the prison authorities, but that
their contents were made known to the Russian embassy as well. When I
was at Lyons, and my wife went to see Elisée Reclus in Switzerland,
she wrote to me once that ‘our boy’ was going on well; his health was
excellent, and they all spent a very nice evening at the anniversary
of his fifth birthday. I knew that she meant ‘Le Révolté,’ which we
often used to name in conversation ‘our _gamin_’--our naughty boy. But
now that these gentlemen were inquiring about ‘our _gamin_,’ and even
designated so correctly his age, it was evident that the letter had
passed through other hands than those of the governor. It was well to
know such a thing.
Nothing escapes the attention of village folk in the country, and the
baron soon awakened suspicions. He wrote a new letter to my wife, even
more loquacious than the former ones. Now, he asked her pardon for
having tried to introduce himself as an acquaintance. He owned that she
did not know him; but nevertheless he was a well-wisher. He had to make
to her a most important communication. My life was in danger and he
wanted to warn her. The baron and his secretary took an outing in the
fields to read together that letter and to consult about its tenor--the
forest-guard following them at a distance--but they quarrelled about
it, and the letter was torn to pieces and thrown in the fields. The
forester waited till they were out of sight, gathered the pieces,
connected them, and read the letter. In one hour’s time the village
knew that the baron had never really been acquainted with my wife;
the romance which was so sentimentally repeated by the baron’s party
crumbled to pieces.
‘Ah, then, they are not what they pretended to be,’ the _brigadier
de gendarmerie_ concluded in his turn; ‘then they must be German
spies’--and he arrested them.
It must be said in his excuse that a German spy had really been at
Clairvaux shortly before. In time of war the vast buildings of the
prison might serve as depôts for provisions or barracks for the army,
and the German General Staff was surely interested to know the inner
capacity of the prison buildings. A jovial travelling photographer came
accordingly to our village, made friends with everyone by photographing
them for nothing, and was admitted to photograph, not only the inside
of the prison yards, but also the dormitories. Having done this, he
travelled to some other town on the eastern frontier, and was there
arrested by the French authorities as a man found in possession
of compromising military documents. The brigadier, fresh from the
impression of the photographer’s visit, jumped to the conclusion that
the baron and his secretary were also German spies, and took them in
custody to the little town of Bar-sur-Aube. There they were released
next morning, the local paper stating that they were not German spies
but ‘persons commissioned by another more friendly power.’
Now public opinion turned entirely against the baron and his secretary,
who had to live through more adventures. After their release they
entered a small village café, and there ventilated their griefs in
German in a friendly conversation over a bottle of wine. ‘You were
stupid, you were a coward,’ the would-be interpreter said to the
would-be baron. ‘If _I_ had been in your place, I would have shot that
examining magistrate with this revolver. Let him only repeat that with
_me_--he will have these bullets in his head!’ And so on.
A commercial traveller who quietly sat in the corner of the room,
rushed at once to the brigadier to report the conversation which he
had overheard. The brigadier made at once an official report, and once
more arrested the secretary--a pharmacist from Strasburg. He was taken
before a police court at the same town of Bar-sur-Aube, and got a full
month’s imprisonment for ‘menaces uttered against a magistrate in a
public place.’ At last the two adventurers left Clairvaux.
* * * * *
These spy adventures ended in a comical way. But how many
tragedies--terrible tragedies--we owe to these villains! Precious
lives lost, and whole families wrecked, simply to get an easy living
for such swindlers. When one thinks of the thousands of spies going
about the world in the pay of all governments; of the traps they lay
for all sorts of artless people; of the lives they sometimes bring
to a tragical end, and the sorrows they sow broadcast; of the vast
sums of money thrown away in the maintenance of that army recruited
from the scum of society; of the corruption of all sorts which they
pour into society at large, nay, even into families, one cannot but
be appalled at the immensity of the evil which is thus done. And this
army of villains is not only limited to those who play the spy on
revolutionists or to the military espionage system. In this country
there are papers, especially in the watering towns, whose columns
are covered with advertisements of private detective agencies which
undertake to collect all sorts of information for divorce suits, to spy
upon husbands for their wives and upon wives for their husbands, to
penetrate into families and entrap simpletons, and who will undertake
anything which may be asked of them, for a corresponding sum of money.
And while people feel scandalized at the espionage villainies lately
revealed in the highest military spheres of France, they do not notice
that amongst themselves, perhaps under their own roofs, the same and
even worse things are being committed by both the official and private
detective agencies.
XV
Demands for our release were continually raised, both in the Press and
in the Chamber of Deputies--the more so as about the same time that we
were condemned Louise Michel was condemned, too--for robbery. Louise
Michel, who always gives literally her last shawl or cloak to the woman
who is in need of it, and who never could be compelled, during her
imprisonment, to have better food, because she always gave her fellow
prisoners what was sent to her, was condemned, together with another
comrade, Pouget, to nine years’ imprisonment for highway robbery! That
sounded too bad even for the middle-class opportunists. She marched
one day at the head of a procession of the unemployed, and, entering
a baker’s shop, took a few loaves from it and distributed them to the
hungry column: this was her robbery. The release of the anarchists
thus became a war-cry against the government, and in the autumn of
1885 all my comrades save three were set at liberty by a decree of
President Grévy. Then the outcry on behalf of Louise Michel and myself
became still louder. However, Alexander III. objected to it; and one
day the prime minister, M. Freycinet, answering an interpellation in
the Chamber, said that ‘diplomatic difficulties stood in the way of
Kropótkin’s release.’ Strange words in the mouth of the prime minister
of an independent country; but still stranger words have been heard
since in connection with that ill-omened alliance of France with
imperial Russia.
At last, in the middle of January 1886, both Louise Michel and Pouget,
as well as the four of us who were still at Clairvaux, were set free.
We went to Paris and stayed there for a few weeks with our friend, Elie
Reclus--a writer of great power in anthropology, who is often mistaken
outside France for his younger brother, the geographer, Elisée. A close
friendship has united the two brothers from early youth. When the time
came for them to enter a university, they went from a small country
place in the valley of the Gironde to Strasburg, making the journey
on foot--accompanied, as true wandering students, by their dog; and
when they stayed at some village it was the dog which got his bowl of
soup, while the two brothers’ supper very often consisted of bread
only, with a few apples. From Strasburg the younger brother went to
Berlin, whereto he was attracted by the lectures of the great Ritter.
Later on, in the forties, they were both at Paris. Elie Reclus became a
convinced Fourierist, and both saw in the republic of 1848 the coming
of a new era of social evolution. Consequently, after Napoleon III.’s
_coup d’état_, they both had to leave France, and emigrated to England.
When the amnesty was voted, and they returned to Paris, Elie edited
there a Fourierist co-operative paper which was widely spread among the
workers. It is not generally known, but may be interesting to note,
that Napoleon III.--who played the part of a Cæsar, interested, as
behoves a Cæsar, in the conditions of the working classes--used to send
one of his aides-de-camp to the printing office of the paper, each time
it was printed, to take to the Tuileries the first sheet issued from
the press. He was, later on, even ready to patronize the International
Workingmen’s Association, on the condition that it should put in one of
its reports a few words of confidence in the great socialist plans of
the Cæsar; and he ordered its prosecution when the Internationalists
refused point-blank to do anything of the sort.
When the Commune was proclaimed, both brothers heartily joined it and
Elie accepted the post of keeper of the National Library and the Louvre
museum under Vaillant. It was, to a great extent, to his foresight
and to his hard work that we owe the preservation of the invaluable
treasures of human knowledge and art accumulated in these two
institutions; otherwise they would have perished during the bombardment
of Paris by the armies of Thiers, and the subsequent conflagration. A
passionate lover of Greek art, and profoundly acquainted with it, he
had had all the most precious statues and vases of the Louvre packed
and stored in the caves, while the greatest precautions were taken to
protect the building of the National Library from the conflagration
which raged round it. His wife, a courageous, worthy companion of
the philosopher, followed in the streets by her two little boys,
organized in the meantime in her own quarter of the town the feeding
of the population which had been reduced to sheer destitution by a
second siege. During the final few weeks of its existence, the Commune
at last realized that a supply of food to the population, which was
deprived of the means of earning it for itself, ought to have been the
Commune’s first duty, and volunteers organized the relief. It was by
mere accident that Elie Reclus, who had kept to his post till the last
moment, escaped being shot by the Versailles troops; and a sentence
of deportation having been pronounced upon him--for having dared to
accept so necessary a service under the Commune--he went with his
family into exile. Now, on his return to Paris, he had resumed the
work of his life--ethnology. What this work is may be judged from a
few, very few, chapters of it published in book form under the title
of ‘Primitive Folk’ and ‘The Australians,’ as well as from the history
of the origin of religions, which he now lectures upon at the _École
des Hautes Études_, at Brussels--a foundation of his brother. In the
whole of the ethnological literature there are not many works imbued
to the same extent with a thorough and sympathetic understanding of the
true nature of primitive man. As to his ‘Origin of Religions’ (which is
being published in the review, ‘Société Nouvelle,’ and its continuation
‘Humanité Nouvelle’), it is, I venture to say, the best work on the
subject that has been published--undoubtedly superior to Herbert
Spencer’s attempt in the same direction, because Herbert Spencer, with
all his immense intellect, does not possess that understanding of
the artless and simple nature of the primitive man which Elie Reclus
possesses to a rare perfection, and to which he has added an extremely
wide knowledge of a rather underrated branch of folk-psychology--the
evolution and transformation of beliefs. It is needless to speak of
Elie Reclus’s infinite good nature and modesty, or of his superior
intelligence and vast knowledge of all subjects relating to humanity;
it is all comprehended in his style. With his unbounded modesty, his
calm manner and his deep philosophical insight, he is the type of the
Greek philosopher of antiquity. In a society less fond of patented
tuition and of piecemeal instruction, and more appreciative of the
development of wide humanitarian conceptions, he would be surrounded by
flocks of pupils, like one of his Greek prototypes.
A very animated socialist and anarchist movement was going on at Paris
while we stayed there. Louise Michel lectured every night, and aroused
the enthusiasm of her audiences, whether they consisted of working men
or were made up of middle-class people. Her already great popularity
became still greater and spread even amongst the university students,
who might hate advanced ideas but worshipped in her the ideal woman;
so much so that a riot, caused by someone speaking disrespectfully of
Louise Michel in the presence of students, took place one day in a
café. The young people took up her defence and made a fearful uproar,
smashing all the tables and glasses in the café. I also lectured once
on anarchism, before an audience of several thousand people, and left
Paris immediately after that lecture, before the government could obey
the injunctions of the reactionary and the pro-Russian press, which
insisted upon my being expelled from France.
From Paris we went to London, where I found once more my two old
friends, Stepniák and Tchaykóvsky. The socialist movement was in full
swing, and life in London was no more the dull, vegetating existence
that it had been for me four years before.
We settled in a small cottage at Harrow. We cared little about the
furniture of our cottage, a good part of which I made myself with the
aid of Tchaykóvsky--he had been in the meantime in the United States
and had learned some carpentering--but we rejoiced immensely at having
a small plot of heavy Middlesex clay in our garden. My wife and myself
went with much enthusiasm into small culture, the admirable results
of which I began to realize after having made acquaintance with the
writings of Toubeau, and some Paris _maraîchers_ (gardeners), and
after our own experiment in the prison garden at Clairvaux. As for my
wife, who had typhoid fever soon after we settled at Harrow, the work
in the garden during the period of convalescence was more completely
restorative for her than a stay at the very best sanatorium.
* * * * *
By the end of the summer a heavy stroke fell upon us. We learned that
my brother Alexander was no longer alive.
During the years that I had been abroad before my imprisonment in
France, we had never corresponded with each other. In the eyes of
the Russian government, to love a brother who is persecuted for his
political opinions is in itself a sin. To maintain relations with
him after he has become a refugee is a crime. A subject of the Tsar
must hate all the rebels against the supreme ruler’s authority--and
Alexander was in the clutches of the Russian police. I persistently
refused therefore to write to him or to any of my relatives. After the
Tsar had written on the petition of our sister Hélène, ‘Let him remain
there,’ there was no hope of a speedy release for my brother. Two years
after that, a committee was nominated to settle terms for those who
had been exiled to Siberia without judgment for an undetermined time,
and my brother got five years. That made seven with the two years he
had already been kept there. Then a new committee was nominated under
Lóris Mélikoff, and added another five years. My brother was thus to be
liberated in October 1886. That made twelve years of exile, first in
a tiny town of East Siberia, and afterwards at Tomsk--that is in the
lowlands of West Siberia, where he had not even the dry and healthy
climate of the high prairies farther East.
When I was imprisoned at Clairvaux, he wrote to me, and we exchanged a
few letters. He wrote that as our letters would be read by the Russian
police in Siberia and by the French prison authorities in France, we
might as well write to each other under this double supervision. He
spoke of his family life, of his three children whom he characterized
admirably well, and of his work. He earnestly advised me to keep a
watchful eye upon the development of science in Italy, where excellent
and original researches are made, but remain unknown in the scientific
world until they have been re-manufactured in Germany; and he gave me
his opinions about the probable march of political life in Russia.
He did not believe in the possibility with us in a near future, of
constitutional rule on the pattern of the West European parliaments;
but he looked forward--and found it quite sufficient for the moment--to
the convocation of a sort of deliberative National Assembly (_Zémskiy
Sobór_ or _Etats Généraux_). It would not vote new laws, but would
only work out the schemes of laws to which the imperial power and
the Council of State would give their definitive form and the final
sanction.
Above all he wrote to me about his scientific work. He always had a
decided leaning towards astronomy, and when we were at St. Petersburg
he had published in Russia an excellent summary of all our knowledge of
the shooting stars. With his fine critical mind he soon saw the strong
or the weak points of different hypotheses; and without sufficient
knowledge of mathematics, but endowed with a powerful imagination, he
succeeded in grasping the results of the most intricate mathematical
researches. Living with his imagination amongst the moving celestial
bodies, he realized their complex movements often better than some
mathematicians--especially the pure algebraists--realize them, because
they often lose sight of the realities of the physical world to see
only the formulæ and their logical connections. Our St. Petersburg
astronomers spoke to me with great appreciation of that work of my
brother. Now he undertook to study the structure of the universe:
to analyze the data and the hypotheses about the worlds of suns,
star-clusters, and nebulæ in the infinite space, and to disentangle
their probable grouping, their life, and the laws of their evolution
and decay. The Púlkova astronomer, Gyldén, spoke highly of this new
work of Alexander, and introduced him by correspondence to Mr. Holden
in the United States, from whom I had lately the pleasure of hearing,
at Washington, an appreciative estimate of my brother’s researches.
Science is greatly in need, from time to time, of such scientific
speculations of a higher standard, made by a scrupulously laborious,
critical, and at the same time, imaginative mind.
But in a small town of Siberia, far away from all the libraries, unable
to follow the progress of science, he had only succeeded in embodying
in his work the researches which had been done up to the date of his
exile. Some capital work had been done since--he knew it--but how could
he get access to the necessary books so long as he remained in Siberia?
The approach of the term of his liberation did not inspire him with
hope either. He knew that he would not be allowed to stay in any of the
university towns of Russia or of Western Europe, but that his exile to
Siberia would be followed by a second exile, perhaps even worse than
the first, to some hamlet of Eastern Russia.
Despair took possession of him. ‘A despair like Faust’s takes hold
of me at times,’ he wrote to me. When the time of his liberation was
coming, he sent his wife and children to Russia, taking advantage of
one of the last steamers before the close of the navigation, and, on a
gloomy night, the despair of Faust put an end to his life....
* * * * *
A dark cloud hung upon our cottage for many months--until a flash of
light pierced it. It came next Spring, when a tiny being, a girl who
bears my brother’s name, came into the world, and at whose helpless cry
I overheard in my heart quite new chords vibrating.
XVI
In 1886 the socialist movement in England was in full swing. Large
bodies of workers had openly joined it in all the principal towns, as
well as a number of middle-class people, chiefly young, who helped it
in different ways. An acute industrial crisis prevailed that year in
most trades, and every morning, and often all the day long, I heard
groups of workers going about in the streets singing ‘We’ve got no work
to do,’ or some hymn, and begging for bread. People flocked at night
into Trafalgar Square to sleep there in the open air, under the wind
and rain, between two newspapers; and one day in February a crowd,
after having listened to the speeches of Burns, Hyndman, and Champion,
rushed into Piccadilly and broke a few windows in the great shops.
Far more important, however, than this outbreak of discontent, was
the spirit which prevailed amongst the poorer portion of the working
population in the outskirts of London. It was such that if the leaders
of the movement, who were prosecuted for the riots, had received severe
sentences, a spirit of hatred and revenge, hitherto unknown in the
recent history of the labour movement in England, but the symptoms of
which were very well marked in 1886, would have been developed, and
would have impressed its stamp upon the subsequent movement for a long
time to come. However, the middle classes seemed to have realized the
danger. Considerable sums of money were immediately subscribed in the
West End for the relief of misery in the East End--certainly quite
inadequate to relieve a widely spread destitution, but sufficient to
show, at least, good intentions. As to the sentences which were passed
upon the prosecuted leaders, they were limited to two and three months’
imprisonment.
The amount of interest in socialism and all sorts of schemes of reform
and reconstruction of society was very great in all layers of society.
Beginning with the autumn and throughout the winter, I was asked to
lecture over the country, partly on prisons, but mainly on anarchist
socialism, and I visited in this way nearly every large town of England
and Scotland. As I had, as a rule, accepted the first invitation I
received to stay the night after the lecture, it consequently happened
that I stayed one night in a rich man’s mansion, and the next night in
the narrow abode of a working family. Every night I saw considerable
numbers of people of all classes; and whether it was in the worker’s
small parlour, or in the reception-rooms of the wealthy, the most
animated discussions went on about socialism and anarchism till a late
hour of the night--with hope in the workman’s home, with apprehension
in the mansion, but everywhere with the same earnestness.
In the mansions, the main question was to know, ‘What do the socialists
want? What do they intend to do?’ and next, ‘What are the concessions
which it is absolutely necessary to make at some given moment in order
to avoid serious conflicts?’ In these conversations I seldom heard the
justice of the socialist contention merely denied, or described as
sheer nonsense. But I found also a firm conviction that a revolution
was impossible in England; that the claims of the mass of the workers
had not yet reached the precision nor the extent of the claims of the
socialists, and that the workers would be satisfied with much less;
so that secondary concessions, amounting to a prospect of a slight
increase of well-being or of leisure, would be accepted by the working
classes of England as a pledge in the meantime of still more in the
future. ‘We are a left-centre country, we live by compromises,’ I was
once told by an old member of Parliament, who had had a wide experience
of the life of his mother country.
In workmen’s dwellings too, I noticed a difference in the questions
which were addressed to me in England to those which I was asked on
the Continent. General principles, of which the partial applications
will be determined by the principles themselves, deeply interest
the Latin workers. If this or that municipal council votes funds in
support of a strike, or organizes the feeding of the children at the
schools, no importance is attached to such steps. They are taken as
a matter of fact. ‘Of course, a hungry child cannot learn,’ a French
worker says. ‘It must be fed.’ ‘Of course, the employer was wrong
in forcing the workers to strike.’ This is all that is said, and no
praise is given on account of such minor concessions by the present
individualist society to communist principles. The thought of the
worker goes beyond the period of such concessions, and he asks whether
it is the Commune, or the unions of workers, or the State which ought
to undertake the organization of production; whether free agreement
alone will be sufficient to maintain Society in working order, and
what would be the moral restraint if Society parted with its present
repressive agencies; whether an elected democratic government would be
capable of accomplishing serious changes in the socialist direction,
and whether accomplished facts ought not to precede legislation? and
so on. In England, it was upon a series of palliative concessions,
gradually growing in importance, that the chief weight was laid.
But, on the other hand, the impossibility of state administration of
industries seemed to have been settled long ago in the workers’ minds,
and what chiefly interested most of them were matters of constructive
realization, as well as how to attain the conditions which would make
such a realization possible. ‘Well, Kropótkin, suppose that to-morrow
we were to take possession of the docks of our town. What’s your idea
about how to manage them?’ I would, for instance, be asked as soon as
we had sat down in a small workman’s parlour. Or, ‘We don’t like the
idea of state management of railways, and the present management by
private companies is organized robbery. But suppose the workers owned
all the railways. How could the working of them be organized?’ The lack
of general ideas was thus supplemented by a desire of going deeper into
the details of the realities.
Another feature of the movement in England was the considerable number
of middle-class people who gave it their support in different ways,
some of them frankly joining it, while others helped it from the
outside. In France or in Switzerland, the two parties--the workers and
the middle classes--not only stood arrayed against each other, but were
sharply separated. So it was, at least, in the years 1876-85. When I
was in Switzerland I could say that during my three or four years’ stay
in the country I was acquainted with none but workers--I hardly knew
more than a couple of middle-class men. In England this would have been
impossible. We found quite a number of middle-class men and women who
did not hesitate to appear openly, both in London and in the provinces,
as helpers in organizing socialist meetings, or in going about during
a strike with boxes to collect coppers in the parks. Besides, we saw a
movement, similar to what we had had in Russia in the early seventies,
when our youth rushed ‘to the people,’ though by no means so intense,
so full of self-sacrifice, and so utterly devoid of the idea of
‘charity.’ Here also, in England, a number of people went in all sorts
of capacities to live near to the workers: in the slums, in people’s
palaces, in Toynbee Hall, and the like. It must be said that there was
a great deal of enthusiasm at that time. Many probably thought that
a social revolution had commenced, like the hero of Morris’s comical
play, ‘Tables Turned,’ who says that the revolution is not simply
coming, but has already begun. As always happens however with such
enthusiasts, when they saw that in England, as everywhere, there was a
long, tedious, preparatory, uphill work that had to be done, very many
of them retired from active propaganda, and now stand outside of it as
mere sympathetic onlookers.
XVII
I took a lively part in this movement, and with a few English comrades
we started, in addition to the three socialist papers already in
existence, an anarchist-communist monthly, ‘Freedom,’ which continues
to live up to the present day. At the same time I resumed my work on
anarchism where I had had to interrupt it at the moment of my arrest.
The critical part of it was published during my Clairvaux imprisonment
by Elisée Reclus, under the title of ‘Paroles d’un Révolté.’ Now I
began to work out the constructive part of an anarchist-communist
society--so far as it can now be forecast--in a series of articles
published at Paris in ‘La Révolté.’ Our ‘boy,’ ‘Le Révolté,’ prosecuted
for anti-militarist propaganda, was compelled to change its title-page
and now appeared under a feminine name. Later on these articles were
published in a more elaborate form in a book, ‘La Conquête du Pain.’
These researches caused me to study more thoroughly certain points of
the economic life of our present civilized nations. Most socialists
had hitherto said that in our present civilized societies we actually
produce much more than is necessary for guaranteeing full well-being
to all. It is only the distribution which is defective; and if a
social revolution took place, nothing more would be required than
for everyone to return to his factory or workshop, Society taking
possession for itself of the ‘surplus value’ or benefits which now
go to the capitalist. I thought, on the contrary, that under the
present conditions of private ownership production itself had taken
a wrong turn, so as to neglect, and often to prevent, the production
of the very necessaries for life on a sufficient scale. None of these
are produced in greater quantities than would be required to secure
well-being for all; and the over-production, so often spoken of, means
nothing but that the masses are too poor to buy even what is now
considered as necessary for a decent existence. But in all civilized
countries the production, both agricultural and industrial, ought
to and easily might be immensely increased so as to secure a reign
of plenty for all. This brought me to consider the possibilities of
modern agriculture, as well as those of an education which would give
to everyone the possibility of carrying on at the same time both
enjoyable manual work and brain work. I developed these ideas in a
series of articles in the ‘Nineteenth Century,’ which are now published
as a book under the title of ‘Fields, Factories, and Workshops.’
Another great question also engrossed my attention. It is known to what
conclusions Darwin’s formula, ‘The Struggle for Existence,’ had been
developed by most of his followers, even the most intelligent of them,
such as Huxley. There is no infamy in civilized society, or in the
relations of the whites towards the so-called lower races, or of the
‘strong’ towards the ‘weak,’ which would not have found its excuse in
this formula.
Already during my stay at Clairvaux I saw the necessity of completely
revising the formula itself of ‘struggle for existence’ in the animal
world, and its applications to human affairs. The attempts which had
been made by a few socialists in this direction had not satisfied
me, when I found in a lecture of a Russian zoologist, Prof. Kessler,
a true expression of the law of struggle for life. ‘Mutual aid,’ he
said in that lecture, ‘is as much a law of nature as mutual struggle;
but for the _progressive_ evolution of the species the former is
far more important than the latter.’ These few words--confirmed
unfortunately by only a couple of illustrations (to which Syévertsoff,
the zoologist of whom I have spoken in an earlier chapter, added one or
two more)--contained for me the key of the whole problem. When Huxley
published in 1888 his atrocious article, ‘The Struggle for Existence:
a Program,’ I decided to put in a readable form my objections to his
way of understanding the struggle for life, among animals as well as
among men, the materials for which I had accumulated during a couple
of years. I spoke of it to my friends. However, I found that the
comprehension of ‘struggle for life’ in the sense of a war-cry of
‘Woe to the weak,’ raised to the height of a commandment of nature
revealed by science, was so deeply inrooted in this country that it
had become almost a matter of religion. Two persons only supported me
in my revolt against this misinterpretation of the facts of nature.
The editor of the ‘Nineteenth Century,’ Mr. James Knowles, with his
admirable perspicacity, at once seized the gist of the matter, and with
a truly youthful energy encouraged me to take it in hand. The other
was H. W. Bates, whom Darwin has truly described in his autobiography
as one of the most intelligent men whom he ever met. He was secretary
of the Geographical Society, and I knew him. When I spoke to him of my
intention he was delighted with it. ‘Yes, most assuredly write it,’ he
said. ‘That is true Darwinism. It is a shame to think of what “they”
have made of Darwin’s ideas. Write it, and when you have published
it, I will write you a letter in that sense which you may publish.’ I
could not have had better encouragement, and began the work which was
published in the ‘Nineteenth Century’ under the titles of ‘Mutual Aid
among Animals,’ ‘among Savages,’ ‘among Barbarians,’ ‘in the Mediæval
City,’ and ‘among Ourselves.’ Unfortunately I neglected to submit to
Bates the first two articles of this series, dealing with animals,
which were published during his lifetime; I hoped to be soon ready with
the second part of the work, ‘Mutual Aid among Men,’ but it took me
several years before I completed it, and in the meantime Bates was no
more among us.
The researches which I had to make during these studies in order to
acquaint myself with the institutions of the barbarian period and
with those of the mediæval free cities, led me to another important
research--the part played in history by the state, since its last
incarnation in Europe, during the last three centuries. And on the
other side, the study of the mutual-support institutions at different
stages of civilization, led me to examine the evolutionist bases of the
sense of justice and of morality in man.
Within the last ten years the growth of socialism in England has taken
a new aspect. Those who judge only by the numbers of socialist and
anarchist meetings held in the country, and the audiences attracted by
these meetings, are prone to conclude that socialist propaganda is now
on the decline. And those who judge the progress of it by the numbers
of votes that are given to those who claim to represent socialism
in Parliament, jump to the conclusion that there is now hardly any
socialist propaganda in England. But the depth and the penetration
of the socialist ideas can nowhere be judged by the numbers of votes
given in favour of those who bring more or less socialism into their
electoral programmes. Still less so in England. The fact is, that out
of the three directions of socialism which were formulated by Fourier,
Saint Simon, and Robert Owen, it is the latter which prevails in
England and Scotland. Consequently it is not so much by the numbers of
meetings or socialist votes that the intensity of the movement must be
judged, but by the infiltration of the socialist point of view into the
trade unionist, the co-operative, and the so-called municipal socialist
movements, as well as the general infiltration of socialist ideas all
over the country. Under this aspect, the extent to which the socialist
views have penetrated is vast in comparison to what it was in 1886; and
I do not hesitate to say that it is simply immense in comparison to
what it was in the years 1876-82. I may also add that the persevering
endeavours of the tiny anarchist groups have contributed, to an extent
which makes us feel that we have not wasted our time, to spread the
ideas of No-Government, of the rights of the individual, of local
action, and free agreement--as against those of State all-mightiness,
centralization, and discipline, which were dominant twenty years ago.
Europe altogether is traversing now a very bad phase of the development
of the military spirit. This was an unavoidable consequence of the
victory obtained by the German military empire, with its universal
military service system, over France in 1871, and it was already then
foreseen and foretold by many--in an especially impressive form by
Bakúnin. But the counter-current already begins to make itself felt in
modern life.
As to the way communist ideas, divested of their monastic form, have
penetrated in Europe and America, the extent of that penetration has
been immense during the twenty-seven years that I have taken an active
part in the socialist movement and could observe their growth. When
I think of the vague, confused, timid ideas which were expressed by
the workers at the first congresses of the International Workingmen’s
Association, or which were current at Paris during the Commune
insurrection, even amongst the most thoughtful of the leaders, and
compare them with those which have been arrived at to-day by an immense
number of working-men, I must say they seem to me as two entirely
different worlds.
There is no period in history--with the exception, perhaps, of the
period of the insurrections in the twelfth and the thirteenth centuries
(which led to the birth of the mediæval Communes), during which a
similarly deep change has taken place in the current conceptions of
Society. And now, in my fifty-seventh year, I am even more deeply
convinced than I was twenty-five years ago, that a chance combination
of accidental circumstances may bring about in Europe a revolution far
more important and as widely spread as that of 1848; not in the sense
of mere fighting between different parties, but in the sense of a deep
and rapid social reconstruction; and I am convinced that whatever
character such movements may take in different countries, there will
be displayed in all of them a far deeper comprehension of the required
changes than has ever been displayed within the last six centuries;
while the resistance which such movements will meet in the privileged
classes will hardly have the character of obtuse obstinacy which made
revolutions assume the violent character which they took in times past.
To obtain this immense result was well worth the efforts which so many
thousands of men and women of all nations and all classes have made
within the last thirty years.
THE ABERDEEN UNIVERSITY PRESS LIMITED
Transcriber’s Notes
Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.
Small capitals are changed to all capitals.
New original cover art included with this eBook is granted to the
public domain.
Obvious typographical errors and punctuation errors have been corrected
after careful comparison with other occurrences within the text and
consultation of external sources. Except for those changes noted below,
all misspellings in the text, and inconsistent or archaic usage, have
been retained.
The following corrections have been applied to the text (before/after):
(p. 10)
... on the battle-field, with a deep ...
... on the battlefield, with a deep ...
(p. 19)
... in Gogol’s _Revisór_ and ...
... in Gógol’s _Revisór_ and ...
(p. 21)
... and Madame Mazímoff thought ...
... and Madame Nazímoff thought ...
(p. 59)
... of the habour of Sebastopol, ...
... of the harbour of Sebastopol, ...
(p. 66)
... into his textbook; ‘and ...
... into his text-book; ‘and ...
(p. 95)
... than many similiar estimates ...
... than many similar estimates ...
(p. 139)
... the small trades-people and the ...
... the small tradespeople and the ...
(p. 150)
... however, was looked, and a ...
... however, was locked, and a ...
(p. 193)
... out the eagle ‘That pass ...
... out the eagle. ‘That pass ...
(p. 202)
... those which Tolstoy expresses ...
... those which Tolstóy expresses ...
(p. 222)
... which our step-mother has taken ...
... which our stepmother has taken ...
(p. 233)
... in the heart-rending novels ...
... in the heartrending novels ...
(p. 249)
And the constrast climate! ...
And the contrast of climate! ...
(p. 280)
... Their watch-word was, ...
... Their watchword was, ...
(p. 281)
... Moscow, and Kieff, eager ...
... Moscow, and Kíeff, eager ...
(p. 315)
... being a newcomer, I could ...
... being a new-comer, I could ...
(p. 357)
... ‘Is Mr. Lávroff in?’ ...
... ‘Is Mr. Lavróff in?’ ...
(p. 399)
... same fate at Kieff; and the ...
... same fate at Kíeff; and the ...
(p. 408)
... duty to destribute religious ...
... duty to distribute religious ...
(p. 414)
... them had taked refuge at ...
... them had taken refuge at ...
(p. 424)
... intellect, and preverted imagination, ...
... intellect, and perverted imagination, ...
(p. 449)
... there ventilated there griefs ...
... there ventilated their griefs ...
(p. 453)
... the armies of Theirs, and the ...
... the armies of Thiers, and the ...
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