DUKE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY COLLECTION 3^,405 ( iflb , 4 /r/ «/^f r ygv -H57 .--f. Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2017 with funding from Duke University Libraries https://archive.org/details/memoirsofrevolut02krop MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST BY P. KROPOTKIN BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY ditoergibe ptedjg CambriDge COPYRIGHT, 1899, BY HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED NOTE This book probably would not have been written for Borne time to come, but for the kind invitation and most friendly encouragement of the editor and the publishers of “ The Atlantic Monthly ” to write it for serial publication in their magazine. I feel it a most pleasant duty to express here my very best thanks for the hospitality that was offered to me, and for the friendly pressure that was exercised to induce me to undertake this work. It was published in “ The Atlantic Monthly ” (September, 1898, to September, 1899), under the title, “ The Autobiography of a Revolu- tionist.” Preparing it now for publication in book form, I have added considerably to the original text in the parts dealing with my youth and my stay in Siberia, and es- pecially in the Sixth Part, in which I have told the story of my life in Western Europe. P. Keop veloped in the corps of pages. n 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 favorite themes of discus- sion in educated circles, in the press, and even in the draw- ing-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, hut have proved to be re- markable practical pedagogists : their writings would occupy a place of honor 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 edu- cational 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 endeav- ored 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 84 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST a born teacher, Captain Sukhdnin, 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 (Kikolai Alex* androvich, 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 Sukhdnin. Empress Marie Alexandrovna, who was an educated woman, thought that perhaps the contact with studious boys would stimulate her son to learning. He sat amongst 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 neigh- bors. He was good-natured and very gentle in his behavior, 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 Klasdvsky, 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 Klasdvsky, 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 Kamchatka (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 favor of the professors. STUDYING GERMAN 85 “ The sausage-maker ” won our respect at once. A tall man, with an immense forehead and very kind, intelligent eyes, not devoid of a touch of humor, came into our class, and told us in quite good Eussian 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 estab- lished programmes ; and the third section, he concluded with a charming smile, would be the Kamchatka. “ 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 Eussians ? And who joins the Kamchatka ? ” 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 con- jugations, 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 illus* 86 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST trated 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 Turgudneffs 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 aesthetic delight than to read poetry in a language which one does not yet 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 Klasdvsky’s first lesson was a revelation to us. He was a small man, about fifty years of age, very rapid in PROFESSOR KLASOVSKY 87 his movements, with bright, intelligent eyes and 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 folk-lore 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 under- stand, 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, unsuspected horizons, not yet understood, which entice us to proceed further and fur- ther 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 Klasdvsky, our eyes glittering, 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 Dauroff, a restless spirit, stared at Klasdvsky as if to say, “ That is the sort of man you are ? ” Even von Kleinau, a hope- lessly obtuse Circassian with a German name, sat motion- less. In most of the others something good and elevated 88 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST simmered at the bottom of their hearts, as if a vision of an unsuspected world was opening before them. Upon me Klasdvsky 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 generally known, but in Rus- sia 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 liter- ature. 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 the 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 aesthetical, political, and philosophical currents it has reflected, he is bound to in- troduce that generalized conception of the development of 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 OUR WRITING MASTER 89 the pupils and the students, -whatsoever may be the ex- tension 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 : 11 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 90 MEMOIKS OP A REVOLUTIONIST wiped his face, “ Gentlemen, one frolic, — no more to* day ! ” “ The shirt is spoiled,” he added, in a subdued voice, and continued to correct some one’s book. We looked stupefied and ashamed. Why, instead of reporting, he had thought at once of the agreement ! The feeling of the class turned in his favor. “ 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, 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 wTote 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 re- ported those who played in his class. This, in our opin- ion, 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 those 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, and had but poor marks in these subjects, should improve their total of marks by ordering from a OUR TEACHER OF DRAWING 91 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 un- troubled 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. 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 demon- stration, 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. 92 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST The difficulties were overcome with a truly Machiavel- lian 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’s staring at them. But the signal ? Whistling, as in robbers’ tales, shouting, or even sneezing would not do : Ganz would be capable of naming any one 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. Nesadoff 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 at once. Scolding began. “ The elder under arrest at once ! ” the inspector com- manded ; and I, who was the first in the form, and conse- quently 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. A BENEFIT NIGHT 93 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 any one ; hut drawing was totally lost for us. No one wanted to learn drawing from that mercenary man. m My brother Alexander was at that time at Moscow, in a corps of cadets, and we maintained a lively correspond- ence. 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 such fine characters 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 note-paper, 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 he 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 bis intellectual development, and he urged me forward, rais- ing 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. CORRESPONDENCE WITH MY BROTHER 95 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 Turgueneff has depicted in Bazraoff (“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 favorite poet was none of those whom his poetical gift, his musical ear, and his philosophical turn of mind made him like best. His favorite Russian poet was Venevitinoff, while mine was Nekrdsoff, whose verses were very often unmusical, but appealed most to my heart by their sympathy for “ the downtrodden 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 rubles 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 appreci- ate this remark, and cannot think now without amazement of the number of books, often of a quite special character, 96 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST 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 Ger- mans say — were, of course, the dominant subjects in our correspondence. In our childhood we had never been reli- gious. 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, rela- tive 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. Push- kin 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 ; hut 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 tbs 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 reli- gion on the lines of that great fighter. He studied with enthusiasm the Augsburg declaration, which he copied out RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY 97 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 Helbne, 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 phi- losophers of the last century and the modern French histori- ans 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 encyclopaedists, 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 favorite 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,” “ percep- tions 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 philoso- phy, could my brother convert me to become a disciple of the Konigsberg 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 pro- 98 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST fessor of zoology at the Moscow University, Roulier, pul> lished 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 ques- tions 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 every one in Russia talked of political economy ; lectures on free trade and protective duties attracted crowds of people, and my brother, who was not yet absorbed by the variabil- ity 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 tfne least ; but Alexander took up these matters so passion- ately 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 oui A GREAT DISAPPOINTMENT 99 rtepmother’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 trades- man, 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 dis- pensed from joining the camp, and I spent the first two summers at Nikdlskoye. 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 occa- sion a great disappointment awaited me at Moscow. Alex- ander 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 Sulima, 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 toachmen’s house,” the old major-domo Frol whispered to me. “ Alexander Alexdievich is here.” I dashed across the yard, up the flight of steps leading to 100 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST the coachmen’s house, and into a wide, half-dark room, where, at the immense dining-table of the servants, I saw Alexander. “ Sasha, 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, Praskdvia, 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, Petya, not a word to any one ; to no one,” he said, while Praskdvia 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 rap- idly 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 Smolensky 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 STOLEN INTERVIEWS 101 there till midnight, talking about nebulae and Laplace’s hypothesis, the structure of matter, the struggles of the papacy under Boniface YIII. with the imperial power, and so on. From time to time one of the servants would hurriedly run in, saying, “ Petinka, go and show thyself in the hall ; they are moving about and may ask for thee.” I implored Sasha 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 re- sponded 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 any one 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 start as an investigator of popular life. This work brought me one step nearer to our peasants, making me see them under a new light ; later, it also helped me a great deal in Siberia. Every year, in July, on the day of “ The Holy Virgin of Kazan,” which was the fete of our church, a pretty large fair was held in Nikdlskoye. Tradesmen came from all the neighboring 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 de- scription of the village fairs of South Russia had been pub- lished that year by the Slavophile Aksakoff, and my bro- ther, 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 returns of goods brought in and sold, I followed his advice, and to my great amaze- ment 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 fete the great open space given to the fair 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 restau- rant, 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, and freshly cut brooms, planted on high poles, rose high in the air, to attract the peasants from a distance. Rows and rows of FAIR AT NIKOLSKOYE 103 smaller stalls, for the sale of crockery, boots, stoneware, gin- gerbread, and all sorts of small things, rose as if by a magic wand, while in a special corner of the fair ground holes were dug to receive immense cauldrons, in which bushels of millet and sarrazin and whole sheep were boiled, for sup- plying the thousands of visitors with hot schi and kasha (soup and porridge). In the afternoon, the four roads lead- ing to the fair were blocked by hundreds of peasant carts, and heaps of pottery, casks filled with tar, corn, and cattle were exhibited along the roadsides. The night service on the eve of the fete was performed in our church with great solemnity. Half a dozen priests and deacons, from the neighboring villages, took part in it, and their chanters, reinforced by young tradespeople, sang in the choirs such ritornellos as could usually be heard only at the bishop’s in Kaluga. The church was crowded ; all prayed fervently. The tradespeople vied with one another 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 great 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 handed from the back of the church through the crowd, with whispers : “ To the Holy Virgin of Kazan, our Protector ; ” “ To Nicholas the Fa- vorite ; ” “To Frol and Laur” (the horse saints, — that was from those who had horses to sell) ; or simply to “ The Saints,” without 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 I got on admirably. Of course, I was myself asked ques- tions : “ Why do you do this ? ” “ Is it not for the old prince, who intends increasing the market dues ? ” But 104 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST the assurance that the “ old prince ” knew and would know nothing of it (he would have thought it a disgraceful occu- pation) 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 trades- people (oh, horror, if my father had learned that !), all went on very well. Vasily Ivanoff, the elder of Nikblskoye, 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.” In short, the imports were determined very nicely. But next day the sales offered certain difficulties, chiefly with the drygoods merchants, who did not themselves yet know how much they had sold. On the day of the fete the young peasant women simply stormed the shops ; each of them, having sold some linen of her own make, was now buy- ing some cotton print and a bright kerchief for herself, a colored handkerchief for her husband, perhaps some lace, a ribbon or two, and a number of small gifts for grand- mother, grandfather, and the children who had remained at home. As to the peasants who sold crockery, or ginger cakes, or cattle, or hemp, they at once determined their sales, especially the old women. “ Good sale, grand- mother ? ” I would ask. “No need to complain, my son. Why should I anger God ! Nearly all is sold.” And out of their small items tens of thousands of rubles grew in my notebook. 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 hand- woven linen, sometimes exquisitely fine, which she had brought for sale. Scores of buyers, with gypsy faces and shark-like looks, moved about in the crowd, buying. Only rough estimates of these sales could be made. THE EDUCATED AND THE UNEDUCATED 105 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, when we were spreading socialist doctrines amongst 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 a pro- fusion of so-called “ popular phrases,” but they only rendered themselves the more incomprehensible. Nothing of the sort is needed, either in talking to peas- ants or in writing for them. The Great Russian peasant perfectly well understands the educated man’s talk, provided 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 my experience is that when you speak to the Russian peas- ant plainly, and start from concrete facts, — and the same is true with regard to village folk of all nationalities, — there is no generalization from the whole world of science, social or natural, which cannot be conveyed to a man of average intelligence, if you yourself understand it concretely. The chief difference between the educated and the uneducated man is, I should say, that the latter is not able to follow a chain of conclusions. He grasps the first of them, and may be 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 the same difficulty in educated people. One more impression I gathered from that work of my boyhood, an impression which I did not formulate till after- ward, and which will probably astonish many a reader. It is the spirit of equality which is highly developed in tha 106 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST Russian peasant, and in fact in the rural population every- where. The Russian peasant is capable of much servile obedience to the landlord and 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 reply to him 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 func- tionary talks to one of high rank, or a valet to his master. The peasant too easily submits to force, but he does not worship it. I returned that summer from Nikdlskoye to Moscow in a new fashion. There being then no railway between Kaluga and Moscow, there was a man, Buck by name, who kept some sort of carriages running between the two towns. Our people never thought of traveling in these carriages : they had their own horses and conveyances ; but when my father, in order to save my stepmother a double journey, proposed to me, half in joke, that I should travel alone in that way, I accepted his offer with delight. A tradesman’s wife, old and very stout, and myself on the back seats, and a 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 was traveling 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. The surroundings during that journey were delightful. One evening especially is still vivid in my memory. We came to one of the great villages and stopped at an inn. The old lady ordered a samovar for herself, while I went out into the street, walking about anywhere. A small “ white inn,” at which AT A WHITE INN 107 only food is served, but no drinks, attracted my attention, and I went in. Numbers of peasants sat round the small tables, which were covered with white napkins, and enjoyed their tea. I followed their example. Everything there was new to me. 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 the tables, and after the usual introductory ques- tions, I soon found myself engaged in a conversation with a dozen peasants about the crops in our neighborhood, and answering all sorts of inquiries. They wanted to know all about St. Petersburg, and especially about the rumors con- cerning the coming abolition of serfdom. A feeling of sim- plicity and of natural relations of equality, as well as of hearty goodwill, which I always felt afterwards when among peasants or in their houses, pervaded me at that inn. Nothing extraordinary happened that night, so that I even ask myself whether 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 inter- est they took in hundreds of things lying far beyond their habitual surroundings, have made a poor “ white inn ” more attractive to me ever since than the best restaurant in the r^rld. 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 it 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 towards himself. He began by quarreling over all sorts of petty things with the upper form, and — what was still worse in our opinion — he at- tempted to destroy our “ liberties,” the origin of which was lost in “ the darkness of time,” and which, insignificant in themselves, were perhaps on that very account only the dearer to us. The result of it was that for several days the school was in an open revolt, which ended in wholesale punishment, and in the exclusion from the corps of two of our favorite pages de chambre. Then the same captain began to intrude into 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 officers. We resented that intrusion very much, and one day I loudly ex- pressed our discontent by telling the captain that this was the place of the inspector of the classes, not his. T spent weeks under arrest for that frankness, and perhaps would have been excluded from the school, had it not been that the inspector of the classes, his aid, and even our old director judged that, after all, I had only expressed aloud what they all used to say to themselves. THE BURIAL OF AN EMPRESS 10$ No sooner were these troubles 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. The body of the Empress was brought from Tsarkoye Seld, 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 thou- sands 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 the 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 watch round it, night and day. Three pages de chambre and three maids of honor always stood close by the coffin, which was 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 for- 110 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST tress 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 some day.” 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 of gilded cardboard and wood, the mantle 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 tails of black squirrels had been sewn ; the escutcheons, which represented the arms of Russia, veiled with black crepe, were simple card- board. 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 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 wax 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 AN ACCIDENT 111 terror upon the tongue of fire, which went higher and higher toward the cardboard crown and the woodwork that sup- ported the whole structure. Bits of burning stuff began to fall, 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 it ; 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 parts of the structure, gradually died out in its folds. I cannot say what I looked at most : 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, Mademoiselle Gamaleya, tears glittered like pearls. She was a daughter of South Russia, and was the only really handsome lady amongst the maids of honor at the court. At the corps everything was upside down. The classes were interrupted ; those of us who returned from the for- tress 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 a human skull, which was in the 112 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST collection, we made a ghostly figure wherewith to frighten other comrades and the officers at night. As to the animals, we placed them in the most ludicrous 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 Frederic), visited our school, and was shown all that con- cerned our education. Our director did not fail to boast of the excellent educational appliances which we had, and brought his guest to that unfortunate cupboard. When the German prince caught a glimpse of our zoological classifica- tion, he drew a long face and quickly turned away. The director looked horrified ; he had lost the power of speech, and only pointed repeatedly with his hand at some sea stars, which were placed in glass boxes on the walls beside the cupboard. The suite of the prince tried to look as if they had noticed nothing, and only threw rapid glances 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 different from the corresponding period in west European schools,] that I must dwell further on my school life. Russian hoys, as a rule, while they are yet at a lyceum or in a military school, 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 place for such a development ; but in those years of general revival, broader ideas penetrated even there, 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 became interested in history, and with the aid of notes made during the lessons, and helping myself with reading, I wrote quite a course of early mediaeval 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 be admitted to the Imperial Library as a reader, to study that great struggle. That 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 at last to enter the sanctuary, and to take a seat at one of the readers’ small tables, on one of the red velvet sofas which then formed a part of the furniture of the reading-room. From various textbooks 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 114 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST aesthetic enjoyment in the quaint structure and expres- siveness of the Old French 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 highly the original sources of history than the works of modernized generalizations in which the prejudices of modern politics, or even mere current for- mulae, are often substituted for the real life of the period. Nothing gives more impetus to one’s intellectual develop- ment than some sort of independent research, and these studies of mine afterwards helped me very much. 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 a vast 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 learn- ing 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 engraved themselves forever in my memory. Our textbook of physics was not had (most textbooks 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-memoire. How- ever, after a few weeks it so happened that the task of STUDYING THE NATURAL SCIENCES 115 writing this summary fell upon me, and our teacher, acting as a true pedagogist, trusted it entirely to me, only read- ing the proofs. When we came to the chapters on heat, electricity, and magnetism, they had to be written entirely anew, with more developments, and this I did, thus pre- paring a nearly complete textbook of physics, which was printed for the use of the school. In the second form we also began to study chemistry, and in this, too, we 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 for the exact sciences. Grove, Clausius, Joule, and Sbguin showed that heat and all physical forces are but divers modes of motion ; Helmholtz began about that time his epoch-making researches in sound ; Tyndall, in his popular lectures, made one touch, so to say, the very atoms and molecules. Gerhardt and Avogadro intro- duced the theory of substitutions, and Mendeleeff, Lothar Meyer, and Newlands discovered the periodical law of elements ; Darwin, with his “ Origin of Species,” revolu- tionized all biological sciences ; while Karl Vogt and Moleschott, following Claude Bernard, laid the foundation? of true psychology in physiology. It was a time of scientific revival, and the current which carried minds toward natural science was irresistible. Numbers of ex- cellent 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 Stock- hardt’s excellent textbook, we started our laboratory in a small bedroom of two of our comrades, the brothers Zasetsky. Their father, an old admiral in retirement, was 116 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST 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 Stockhardt’s book as a guide, we systematic- ally 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 duets, trios, and choruses from the operas. Or we would take the score of some Italian or Russian opera and go through it from the beginning to the end, — the mother and her daughter act- ing as the prima donnas, while we managed more or less successfully to maintain all the other parts. Chemistry and music thus went hand in hand. Higher mathematics also absorbed a great deal of my time. Several of us had already decided that we should not enter a regiment of the Guard, 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, differential calculus, and the beginnings of integral calculus, and we took private lessons for that purpose. At the same time, elementary astronomy being taught to us under the name of math- ematical geography, I plunged into astronomical reading, especially during the last year of my stay at school. The A VARIETY OF STUDIES 111 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 had been limited to the subjects I have mentioned, our time would have been 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 science, — tactics, military history (the campaigns of 1812 and 1815 in all their details), artillery and field fortification. Looking back now upon this education, I think that apart from the subjects relating to military warfare, for which more de- tailed studies in the exact sciences might have been advan- tageously substituted, the variety of subjects which we were taught was not beyond the capacity of the average youth. Owing to a pretty good knowledge of elementary mathe- matics and physics, which we gained in the lower forms, most of us managed to do all the work. Some studies were neglected by the majority of us, especially law, as also modem history, for which we had unfortunately an old wreck of a master, who was kept at his post only in order to give him his full old-age pension. Moreover, some latitude was given us in the choice of the subjects we liked best, and while we underwent severe examina- tions in these chosen subjects, we were treated rather leni- ently in the remainder. But the chief cause of the rela- tive 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 relearned it in the field, with poles and the surveyor’s chain, and 118 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST 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 criticised them. In the summer we applied our know- ledge in the field. To these practical exercises I attribute the ease with which most of us mastered such a variety of scientific subjects at the age of seventeen or eighteen. With all that, we had plenty of time for amusement and all sorts of frolics. Our best time was when the exami- nations were over, and we had three or four weeks quite free before going to camp, or when we returned from camp, and had another three weeks free before the beginning of 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 in the library, or visited the picture galleries of the Her- mitage, studying one by one all the best pictures of each school separately ; or I went to the different Crown manu- factories of playing-cards, cottons, iron, china, and glass which are open to the public. Sometimes we went out rowing on the Nev£, 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. After my visits to the manufactories I took a liking to INFLUENCE OF MUSIC 119 ■trong and perfect machinery. Seeing how a gigantic paw, coming out of a shanty, grasps a log floating in the Neva, 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 fac- tories, 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 organi- zation, and has nothing to do with the machine itself. Overwork 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 a 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 ma- chine’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 joy 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 Bosio fell ill, thou- sands 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 seemed so much so when she sang that young men madly in love with her could be counted by the hun- dred ; and when she died, she had a burial such as no one had ever had at St. Petersburg before. All St. Petersburg was then divided into two camps : the admirers of the Italian opera, and those of the French stage, which even then was showing in germ the putrid Offenbachian current 120 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST that a few years later infected all Europe. Our form was also divided, half and half, between these two camps, 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 Satur- day nights, to the passages in the uppermost gallery, and had to stand there in a Turkish bath atmosphere, while to conceal our showy uniforms we used to wear our black overcoats, lined with wadding and with a fur collar, tightly buttoned in spite of the heat. 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 favorite singers, and stood afterwards at the stage door to catch one more glimpse of our favorites, 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, and 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 favorite artists. VII Every summer we went out camping at Peterhof, with the other military schools of the St. Petersburg district. On the whole, our life there was very pleasant, and cer- tainly it was excellent for our health : we slept in spacious tents, bathed in the sea, and spent a great deal of time during 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 dullness of which was occasionally relieved by mak- ing us take part in manoeuvres. One night, as we were going to bed, Alexander II. aroused the whole camp by having the alert sounded. In a few minutes all the camp was alive, — several thousand boys gathering round their colors, and the guns of the artillery school booming in the stillness of the night. All military Peterhof came gallop- ing to the camp, but owing to some misunderstanding the Emperor remained on foot. Orderlies hurried in all direc- tions to get a horse for him, but there was none, and not being a good rider, he would not ride any horse but one of his own. He was very angry, and freely gave vent to his anger. “ Imbecile ( durak ), have I only one horse ? ” I heard him shout to an orderly who reported that his horse was in another camp. With the coming darkness, the booming of the guns, and the rattling of the cavalry, we boys grew very much ex- cited, and when Alexander ordered a charge, our column charged straight upon him. Tightly packed in the ranks, with lowered bayonets, we must have had a menacing as- pect ; and I saw the Emperor, who was still on foot, clearing 122 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST the way for the column in three formidable jumps. I understood then the meaning of a column which marches in serried ranks under the excitement of the music and the march itself. There stood before us the Emperor, our com- mander, whom we all venerated ; but I felt that in this moving mass not one page or cadet would have moved an inch aside or stopped 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 afterward. Boys, rifle in hand, are even more terrible in such cases than old soldiers. Next year, when we took part in the great manoeuvres of the St. Petersburg garrison, I saw some of the sidelights of warfare. Eor two days in succession we did nothing but march up and down in a space of about 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 neighborhood and now far away ; sharp musketry fire was heard somewhere in the hills and the woods ; orderlies galloped up and down, bringing an order to advance and next an order to retreat ; and we marched, marched, and marched, seeing no sense in all these move- ments and counter movements. Masses of cavalry had passed along the same road, making it a deep bed of movable sand, and we had to advance and retreat several times over the same ground, till at last our column broke all discipline and became an incoherent mass of pilgrims rather than a military unit. The color guard alone remained in the road ; the remainder slowly paced along the sides of the road in the wood. The orders and the supplications of the officers were of no avail. Suddenly a shout came from behind : “ The Emperor is coming ! The Emperor ! ” The officers ran about, begging us to form ranks : nobody listened to them. The Emperor came, and ordered a retreat once more. PRACTICAL WORK IN SURVEYING 123 w About ! ” the word of command rang out. “ The Em- peror is behind us ; please turn round,” the officers whis- pered ; but the battalion took hardly any notice of the command, and none whatever of the presence of the Em- peror. Happily, Alexander II. was no fanatic of militarism, and after having said a few words to cheer us, with a pro- mise 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 re- quired 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 in- duce the soldiers to do “ the impossible,” and it is the impossible that continually must be accomplished to secure success. How often I recalled to memory that object les- son later on, in Siberia, when we also had to do “ the impossible ” during our scientific expeditions ! Comparatively little of our time, however, during our stay in the camp was given to military drill and manoeu- vres. A good deal of it was employed in practical work in surveying and fortification. After a few preliminary exer- cises 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 dis- tances by pacing.” Early in the morning, after a hurriedly swallowed breakfast, a boy would fill bis capacious military pockets with slices of rye bread, and would go out for four or five hours in the parks, miles away, mapping with his compass and paces the beautiful shady roads, the rivulets, and the lakes. His work was afterward compared with accurate maps, and prizes in optical and drawing instru- ments, at the boy’s choice, were awarded. For me, these 124 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST surveys were a deep source of enjoyment. The independ- ent work, the isolation under the centuries-old trees, the 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 on my mind ; and when I became an explorer of Siberia, and several of my comrades became explorers of central Asia, these surveys were found to have been an excellent preparation. Finally, in the last form, parties of four boys were taken every second day to some villages at a considerable dis- tance from the camp, and there they had to make a detailed survey of several square miles, with the aid of the survey- or’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 amid the peasants in the villages had the best effect upon the intellectual and moral develop- ment of the boys. At the same time there were exercises in the construc- tion of natural size cross-sections of fortifications. We were taken out by an officer into the open field, and there we had to make the profile of a bastion, or of a complicated bridge head, nailing battens and poles 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 in order to obtain the inclinations of the different planes, and after that geometry 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 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. A HINT TO EDUCATORS 125 “ What are you doing there ? ” our captain exclaimed. u 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 ! ” tc We will show him our fortification and ask him to get us tools and boards for the platforms.” All protests were vain. A dozen workmen were sent next day to cart away our beautiful structure as if it were a mere heap of mud ! I mention this to show how children and youths long for the application of what they learn at school in the abstract, and how stupid are the educators who are unable to see what a powerful aid they could find in this direction for helping their pupils to grasp the real sense of the things they learn. In our school, all was directed towards train- ing us for warfare ; we should have worked with the same enthusiasm, however, at laying out a railway, at building a log house, or at cultivating a garden or a field. But all this longing of children and youths for real work is wasted simply because our idea of the school is still the mediaeval scholasticism, the mediaeval monastery 1 vnt 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 Tur- gueneff, Tolstdy, Hdrzen, Bakunin, Ogarydff, Kavelin, Dos- toevsky, Grigorovich, Ostrdvsky, and Nekrasoff, began now to leak out in the press. Censorship was still very rigor- ous ; 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 every one 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 Mfrski. Prince Mirski 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 disposi- tion, 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 SPREAD OF REVOLUTIONARY IDEAS 127 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 labor lost, I must add ; but their fash- ionable 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 con- nection with revolutionary ideas ; and yet it was in that house that I made my first acquaintance with the revolution- ary literature of the times. The great refugee, Herzen, 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 repre- sented the noble heads of the five “ Decembrists ” whom Nicholas I. had hanged after the rebellion of December 14, 1825, — Bestuzheff, Kahdvskiy, Pestel, Ryleeff, and Mu- ravidv-Apdstol. The beauty of the style of Herzen, — of whom Turgue- neff 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 revo- lutionary paper. At that age, what could I be but a con- stitutionalist ? — and my paper advocated the necessity of a constitution for Russia. I wrote about the foolish 128 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST 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 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 sym- pathized with my paper, and only advised me not to risk too much. I wrote my second number, still more vigor- ously 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 mat- ters, 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. FIRST STEPS TOWARD EMANCIPATION 129 The revolution of 1848 had had its distant echo in the hearts of the Russian peasant folk, and from the year 1850 the insurrections of revolted serfs began to take serious pro- portions. 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 Helene Pdvlovna, took the first steps in that direc- tion. 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 Hdrzen : “ 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, — Grodno, Wilno, and Kovno, — where Napoleon I. had abolished serfdom (on paper) in 1812, that recourse was had. The governor-general of those provinces, Nazimoff, managed to obtain the desired address from the Polish nobility. In November, 1857, the famous “ rescript ” to the governor* 130 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST general of the Lithuanian provinces, announcing the inten. tion of the Emperor to abolish serfdom, was launched, and we read, with tears in our eyes, the beautiful article of Herzen, “ Thou hast conquered, Galilean,” in which the refugees at 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 rumor 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 rumor ; and on the very eve of the emancipa- tion they seemed to doubt that it would be done without pressure from abroad. “ Nothing will be done unless Gari- baldi 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 in- certitude and disquiet followed. Specially appointed com- mittees 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 rumors 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 ser- vitude j but the serfdom party drew closer and closer round EMANCIPATION WIDELY DISCUSSED 131 the Emperor, and got power over his mind. They whis pered into his ears that the day serfdom was abolished tin peasants would begin to kill the landlords wholesale, and Russia would witness a new Pugachoff uprising, far more terrible than that of 1773. Alexander, who was a man of weak character, only too readily lent his ear to such predic- tions. But the huge machine for working out the emanci- pation 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 at London. Herzen, seconded by Turgueneff, 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 Chernyshdvsky in the 11 Contemporary ” ( Sovremennik ). The Slavophiles, espe- cially Aksdkoff and Belyaeff, 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 Herzen, and particularly with Chernyshdvsky, 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 (Dmitri Nikolaevich Kropotkin, who was aide- de-camp of that regiment and aide-de-camp of the Emperor), used to side with Chernyshevsky, 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 impor- tant 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 discour- aged. They centred their efforts on obtaining a postpone* 132 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST ment of the reform, on reducing the size of the allotments, and on imposing upon the emancipated serfs so high a re- demption tax for the land that it would render their econom- ical freedom illusory ; and in this they fully succeeded. Alexander II. dismissed the real soul of the whole business, Nicholas Milutin (brother of the minister of wfer), 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 com- mittees, 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 muz- zled 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 Sun- day, 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 Valueff 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 rumors began to circu- late, and it was generally hoped that something would be heard of the emancipation on the day of the Emperor’s accession to the throne, the 19th of February. The 19th came, but it brought nothing with it. I was on that day at the palace. There was no grand levee, only a small one ; and pages of the second form were sent to such levees 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, THE EMANCIPATION MANIFESTO 135 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 the 19th of February, 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 terrible instruc- tions had been issued to the army as to the ways of repress- ing 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 rid* ing-school. I was still in bed, when my soldier servant, Iv&noff, dashed in with the tea tray, exclaiming, “ Prince, freedom ! The manifesto is posted on the Gostinoi 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 com • rade was coming in. “ Kropdtkin, 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 ? * n 134 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST 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, Phila- rete, but with a useless mixture of Russian and Old Sla- vonian which obscured the sense. It was liberty ; but it was not liberty yet, the peasants having to remain serfs for two years more, till the 19th of February, 1863. Not- withstanding 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 horse- back, loudly called out, “The officers to me! ” They gath- ered 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. Enthusi- astic 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 an- other, whether acquainted or not. We planned at once to V ENTHUSIASM OF THE PEOPLE 185 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 all parts of the hall. I saw Baveri, the conductor of the band, waving his stick, but not a sound could be heard from the powerful band. Then Baveri stopped, hut the hurrahs continued. I saw the stick waved again in the air; I saw the fiddle-bows moving, and musicians blowing the brass instruments, hut again the sound of voices overwhelmed the band. Baveri 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 clamor 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. Herzen was right when, two years later, as Alex- ander was drowning the Polish insurrection in blood, and “ Muravioff the Hanger ” was strangling it on the scaffold, he wrote, “ Alexander Nikolaevich, 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 Polozh^nie (the emancipation law) could not have been invented. If any- thing 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 di» 136 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST turbances 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 “ free- dom had come,” and they accepted the conditions imposed upon them, although these conditions were very heavy. I was in Nikdlskoye in August, 1861, and again in the summer of 1862, and I was struck with the quiet, intelli- gent 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 Nikolskoye 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 Polozhe'nie was a large and difficult book, which it took me a good deal of time to understand ; but when Vasili Ivanoff, the elder of Nikolskoye, 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 para- graphs of the law. The “ household people ” — that is, the servants — came EFFECTS OF EMANCIPATION 137 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 neighborhood 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 employ- ment 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 Kaluga, 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 reintroduce 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 peace- ful 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 rubles the Russian acre, was now estimated at 138 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST forty rubles in the peasants’ allotments, — that is, three and a half times above its market value, — and this -was the rule in all our neighborhood ; ■while in my father’s Tambdv estate, on the prairies, the mir — that is, the village com- munity — 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 labor. Eleven years after that memorable time I went to the Tambov 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 inde- pendent 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 — Antdn Sav^- lieff — 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. “ Four- teen years ago the old prince came here. It was in the winter. I had just returned home, almost frozen. A snow- storm 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 thunderstruck. ‘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 THE OLD AND THE NEW 139 tight. 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, Savelich ? * 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, Savelich ? ’ he asks me. ‘ Take a chair. Petr Grigdrieff,’ — he says that to the old one, — ‘ give us one more chair.’ And Petr Grigbrieff — 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 there- fore to run the distance full speed, which was severely pro- hibited ; 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 favorite runs ; as to my relations with all the others, it depended upon myself to put them on a new comrade-like footing, and this I did. COURT LIFE 141 The pages de chambre had to be at the palace frequently, in attendance at the great and small levees, 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. More- over, 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 levee 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 cham- berlains in gold-embroidered uniforms, the hostess followed by brilliantly dressed pages and a suite of ladies, and every- thing conducted with striking solemnity. To be an actor in the court ceremonies, in attendance upon the chief per- sonages, 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 re- actionary 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 waa 142 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST 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 im- portance. 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 coro- nation day, and on other similar occasions, a great levee 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 Em- press, 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 im- mense 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, w T ho 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 LEVEES AND BALLS AT THE PALACE 14? 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 neighbors, full of pride, in the expectation of their congratulations. From the church the procession returned in the same way, and then every one hurried back to his own affairs. Apart from a few devotees and some young ladies, not one in ten present at these levees 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 im- mense 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 them- selves. My duties at these balls were rather difficult. Alex- ander II. did not dance, nor did he sit down, but he moved all the time amongst his guests, his page de chambre hav- ing 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 144 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST 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, hut 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, 3ven 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 ex- pressed 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 hits 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 Prin- cess X., whom Turgueneff has so admirably depicted in “ Smoke ” under the name of Irene, were even more freely 6poken 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 POLICE ESPIONAGE 145 dismissal, — a complete one this time.” Half an hour later, we saw the lady in question coming to assist at mass, with 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 some- thing 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 gentle- man. The latter had forbidden the grand duke his house, hut, 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 Trepoff, 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 con- versation, but the reply was very characteristic : “ The 146 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST ■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 every one 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 Shuvaloff and General Trepoff understood to perfec- tion ; also Count Ignatieff, 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 ALEXANDER II 147 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, hut 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 running away from a danger. His excitement communicated itself to me, and every mo- ment 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 copper 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 Alex- ander 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 frame of my mind. However, various 148 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST Email 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 Neva 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 Neva 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 un- happy 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 ALEXANDER II 149 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 worshiped at St. Petersburg ; but it is most remark- able 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 Alex- ander II., nor his brother Constantine, the leader of the reform party, nor his third brother, Mikhael, 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 truly reliable man, either in his policy or in his personal sympathies, and he was vindictive. I doubt whether he was sincerely attached to any one. Some of the men in his nearest sur- roundings were of the worst description, — Count Adler- berg, 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 150 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST 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 organ- ization and in the army ; that the terrible corporal punish- ments 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 re- pressed under his orders with a stern severity : he took each movement as a personal offense, 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 Kazan, in October, 1861, were repressed with an ever increasing strictness. The Univer- sity of St. Petersburg was closed, and although free courses were opened by most of the professors at the Town Hall, they were also soon closed, and some of 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 cor- porations, — 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 teach- ing 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 patri- otic 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 favorite punishment of Nicholas L — was THE EMPRESS MARIE ALEXANDROVNA 151 applied. The despot that Alexander II. became in the years 1870-81 was foreshadowed in 1862. Of all the imperial family, undoubtedly the most sym- pathetic was the Empress Marie Alexandrovna. 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 im- pressed me : it was not the way of a lady spoiled by cour- tesies, 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 under- stand why she should take so much to heart the etourderies 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 Constan- tine and the Grand Duchess Helene Pavlovna, who was the main support of Nicholas Milutin 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 Ushfnsky, 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 Alexandrovna 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 Kavelin, although she knew well his friendly relations with Hdrzen. When he mentioned to her that friendship, she replied that she had no grudge against Hdrzen, except for his violent language about the Empress dowager. 152 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST The heir apparent was extremely handsome, — perhaps, even too femininely handsome. He was not proud in the least, and during the levees he used to chatter in the most comrade-like 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-colored uniforms of the other ambassadors.) However, those who knew him well de- scribed him as profoundly egoistic, a man absolutely incapa- ble of contracting an attachment to any one. 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 every one 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 con- trast to Nicholas Alexandrovich. 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 Gatchina 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 rumored 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 Alexandrovich must have been averse ALEXANDER III 153 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 h oncle a 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 Alexandrovich, who had been appointed to superintend the re-arming of the army. During this inter- view, the Tsarevich, giving full vent to his violent tem- per, 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 be- longed to that type of self-respecting but very loyal men who are frequently met with amongst the Swedish nobil- ity 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 J apanese duel. Alexander Alexandrovich 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 fol- low the hearse of the officer to the grave. But even this terrible lesson did not cure the young man of his Romdnoff haughtiness and impetuosity. PART THIRD SIBERIA I In the middle of May, 1862, a few weeks before oui 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 Guard, 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 rounds of my com- rades. Every one 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 Pre- obrazhensky,” “ The Horse Guards,” were the replies which I inscribed. “ But you, Kropdtkin ? 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 ago. 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 dif- ferent, 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 CHOOSING MY REGIMENT 155 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, fail- ing 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, besides the military sciences, I could study mathematics and physics. But the wind of reaction was blowing, and the officers in 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 Amur region had recently been annexed by Russia ; I had read all about that Mississippi of the East, the moun- tains it pierces, the subtropical vegetation of its tributary, the Usuri, 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. Be- sides, 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 was 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 Amur region. The Usurf attracted me most ; but, alas ! there was on the Usuri 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 Amur.” This I wrote on the list, to the great consternation of all 156 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST my comrades. “ It is so far,” they said, while my friend Dauroff, 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. “ Kropotkin must always have his joke ! ” he cried. “ Did I not tell you that the list must be sent to the grand duke to-day ? ” Astonishment and pity were depicted on his face when I told him that the list really stated my intention. However, next day, my resolution almost gave way when I saw how Klasovsky 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 for- bade 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 vege- tation of the Amur 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, GREAT FIRE AT ST. PETERSBURG 157 Petersburg — brought about in an indirect way a solution of my difficulties. On the Monday after Trinity — the day of the Holy Ghost, which was that year on May 26, Old Style - — a terrible fire broke out in the so-called Aprdxin Dvor. The Apraxin Dvor was an immense space, more than 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 Apraxin Dvor from a wing of the Corps of Pages, which was occupied by grocery and oil shops in its lower story, and had 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 laby- rinth 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 Gostinoi Dvor (another great block of shops on the Nevsky Prospekt), 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 saw from the windows the first clouds of smoke rising 15ff MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST in our immediate neighborhood. 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 Kdlpino, 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 every one 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 Na- tional Library and half of the Nevsky Prospekt would have gone. 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 Sadovaya street, and lay in great heaps upon the walls of the left wing of the Bank. The articles which cov- ered the street itself continually took fire, but the people, roasting there in an almost unbearable heat, prevented the GREAT FIRE AT ST. PETERSBURG J59 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, where 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 re- quested one of our officers, L. L. Gosse, to come with me to transmit the order. We at last prevailed upon the cap- tain of one fire brigade — who swore at all the world and at his chiefs — to move his men 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 tbe 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 Apraxin 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 160 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST 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 simply heart-rending. I could not stand these cries, and I rushed into the Sadovaya 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 tbe driver. “I shall be court-martialed,” he said, “if I obey you.” On all sides my comrades urged me, “ Go and find some- body, — the chief of the police, the grand duke, any one, — 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 around a general in whom I recognized tbe governor-general of St. Petersburg, Prince Suvdroff. 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 to Prince Suvoroff, 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, GREAT FIRE AT ST. PETERSBURG 161 seizing in the street an empty hatbox, covered his head with it, and ran full speed to the lane. Empty barrels, straw, wooden boxes, and the like covered the lane, be- tween 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 Suvdroff 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 kepis, 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 a terrible scorching heat. About three or four in the morning it was evident that bounds had been put to the fire ; the danger of its spread- ing to the Corps was over, and after having quenched our thirst with half a dozen glasses of tea, in a small “ white inn ” which happened to be open, we fell, half dead from fatigue, on the first bed that we found unoccupied in the hospital of the Corps. Next morning I woke up early and went to see the site of the conflagration. On my return to the Corps I met the Grand Duke Mikhael, 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 162 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST were proud, though, of feeling that they had not been merely “ white hands,” and had worked as hard as any one else. This visit of the grand duke settled my difficulties. He asked me why I conceived that fancy of going to the Amur, — 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 do there ? I had better write about you to the governor-general, to recom- mend you.” After such an offer I was sure that my father’s objec- tions would be removed, — and so it proved. 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 for 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 ; be- sides, the Apriixin 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. Katkoff, the ex- Whig, who was inspired with personal hatred of Herzen, and especially of Bakunin, 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 at Moscow. Poland was preparing then for the revolution which broke tut in the following January, and the se :ret revolutionary THE FIRE NOT AN ACCIDENT 163 government had concluded an alliance with the London refugees ; it had its men in the very heart of the St. Peters- burg administration. Only a short time after the confla- gration occurred, the lord lieutenant of Poland, Count Ltiders, was shot at by a Russian officer ; and when the Grand Duke Constantine was nominated in his place (with the 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 Wielepolsky, the Polish leader of the pro- Russian Union party. Napoleon III. maintained among the Poles the hope of an armed intervention in favor 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 forth- coming 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 reac- tionary camp. To men of forethought it was evident that the liberation of the serfs, under the conditions of redemp- tion 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 in sist upon the necessity of a national convention. Unde such circumstances, to disorganize the machine of the gov- ernment might have entered into the plans of some revolu- tionists. 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 164 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST time such a fermentation has begun, it has resulted in anonymous letters foretelling fires, and eventually in incen- diarism. It was possible that the idea of setting the Apraxin mar- ket on fire might occur to isolated men in the revolutionary tamp, 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 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 correspond- ence 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 Volga, and especially at Saratoff, and when Zhdanoff, 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 Saratoff 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 cam- paign for postponement, and for the revision of the eman- cipation law in its practical applications. It was rumored in well-informed legal circles that Senator Zhdanoff was in fact returning with positive proofs of the culpability of the reactionaries at Sarfitoff; but he died on his way back, his portfolio disappeared, and it has never been found. Be it as it may, the Aprdxin fire had the most deplora- ble 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 espe- cially at Moscow, which carried most weight with the REACTIONARY MOVEMENT 165 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 1 had often seen the Horse Guard officers in sympathy with Chernyshevsky ; 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 atmo- sphere was laden with a reactionary spirit. “ The Contem- porary ” and other similar reviews were suppressed ; the Sunday-schools were prohibited under any form ; whole- sale 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 compa- nies, 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 role 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 166 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST 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-veri-ty of the laws, without the slightest com-mi-se-ra-tion ! ” His voice failed ; his face was peevish, full of that expres- sion of blind rage which I saw in my childhood on the faces of landlords wffien they threatened their serfs “ to skin them under the rods.” He violently spurred his horse, and rode out of our circle. Next morning, the 14th of June, by his orders, three officers were shot at Mddlin 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. Peters- burg. Some days after our promotion, all the newly ap- pointed 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 Amur Cossacks being then the youngest regiment of the Russian army, I stood somewhere near the end of the hun- dreds 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 DEPARTURE FOR SIBERIA 167 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 inarched in the streets, Cossack patrols rode round the pal- ace, 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 bro* ther Alexander. n The five years that I spent in Siberia vrere 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 was animated by the very best intentions. Finally, my extensive jour- neys, during which I traveled 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 civiliza- tion. 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 so much in its physical aspects j and beside half ARRIVAL AT IRKUTSK 169 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. Muravidff, who annexed the Amur region to Russia. He was very intelli- gent, 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 suc- ceeded 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 Bakunin among them (he escaped from Siberia in the autumn of 1861), dis- cussed the chances of creating the United States of Siberia, federated across the Pacific Ocean with the United States of America. When I came to Irkutsk, 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, Kors&koff, who had just succeeded Muravidff, and he told me that he was delighted to have about him men of liberal opinions. As to the commander of the general staff, Kukel, — 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 170 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST reviews, complete collections of the London revolutionary editions of Herzen. We were soon warm friends. General Kukel temporarily occupied at that time the post of governor of Transbaikalia, and a few weeks later we crossed the beautiful Lake Baikal and went further east, to the little town of Chita, 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 organiza- tion 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. Kukel, supported by an intelligent and practical man, Colonel Pedashenko, and 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 devel- opment 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 Transbaika- lia 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 pro- vince. Then the conclusions we arrived at were re-dis- cussed with Kukel and Pedashenko ; and when I had put the results into a preliminary shape, every point was again very thoroughly thrashed out in the committees. One of REFORM ACTIVITIES 171 these committees, for preparing the municipal government scheme, was composed of citizens of Chita, elected by all the population, as freely as they might have been elected in the United States. In short, our work was very seri- ous ; and even now, looking back at it through the per- spective 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 insti- tutions ; 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,” Kukel would sometimes say to me, — and I worked with doubled energy. An 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. Kukel 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 tway, while your chief is your next-door neighbor,” did not 172 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST 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 astonish- ment when, a few months later, we learned that this same man had been nominated to a higher post in Kamchatka ! 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 MuravidfFs time. When, in 1861, the poet Mikhailoff was condemned to hard labor for a revolutionary proclamation which he had issued, and was sent to Siberia, the governor of the first Siberian town on his way, Tobolsk, gave a dinner in his honor, in which all the officials took part. In Transbaikdlia he was not kept at hard labor, 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 Kukel 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 all over Siberia. But one day we learned from Irkutsk that, in consequence of a secret denunciation, the general of the gendarmes (state police) was on his way to Chita, to make a strict inquiry into the affair. An aide-de-camp of the governor-general brought us the news. I was dispatched in great haste to warn Mikhdiloff, and to tell him that h« must THE WAVE OF REACTION 173 return at once to the hospital prison, while the general of the gendarmes was kept at Chita. As that gentleman found himself every night the winner of considerable sums of money at the green table in Kukel’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 Irkutsk, 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. m 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, exas- perated 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 revo- lutionists ; 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 neighbor 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 favored, and necessarily will favor, 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 th( Slavophile Ivan Aksakoff 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 THE POLISH INSURRECTION 175 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 in- surgents 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 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 formid- able army, won sympathy for that heroic nation. But it became known that the Polish revolutionary committee, in its demand for the reestablishment of Poland with its old frontiers, included the Little Russian or Ukrainian pro- vinces, the Greek Orthodox population of which hated its Polish rulers, and more than once in the course of the last three centuries had 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 revolution- ary 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 176 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST position of protector of the peasants against their Polish landlords. When the revolution broke out in Poland, it was gener- ally 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 to their owners came to an end only on the 19th of February, 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 location of the land allotments which were to be given to the liberated serfs. The yearly payments for these allotments (disproportion- ally 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 forego that additional pay- ment, 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 pay- ments extravagant and ruinous for the peasants, but no time was 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 even been entered upon, twenty years after the emancipation. Under such conditions a revolutionary government had I EMANCIPATION OF POLISH SERFS 177 ample opportunity for immensely improving upon the Rus- sian 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 terms of emancipation. But nothing of the sort was done. The purely nationalist party and the aristocratic party having obtained the upper hand in the movement, this fundamentally important matter was left out of sight. This made it easy for the Russian gov- ernment to win the peasants to its side. Full advantage was taken of this mistake when Nicholas Milutin was sent to Poland by Alexander II. with the mission of liberating the peasants in the way he intended doing it in Russia, — whether the landlords were ruined in consequence or not. “ Go to Poland ; apply there your Red programme against the Polish landlords,” said Alexander II. to him ; and Milutin, together with Prince Cherkassky and many others, really did their best to take the land from the land- lords and give good-sized allotments to the peasants. I once met one of the Russian functionaries who went to Poland under Milutin and Prince Cherkassky. “ We had full liberty,” he said to me, “ to turn over the land to the peasants. My usual plan was to go and to 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 ; these fields, too,’ they would say. I would let them go on talking 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 178 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST 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 obli- gations whatever to your late masters: you are simply their neighbors ; all you will have to do is to pay the redemption tax, so much every year, to the government. Your home- steads go with the land : you get them free.’ ” One can imagine the effect which such a policy had upon the peasants. A cousin of mine, Petr Nikolaevich Kro- pdtkin, a brother of the aide-de-camp whom I have men- tioned, 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 from St. Petersburg against it, and it is now known that when Mikhael Muravidff was sent 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 coun- try,” 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 smaller 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 w-hen wo marched back again, we learned that bands had reappeared 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 EFFECTS OF THE REVOLT 179 by the revolutionary bands. So it went on for months, with no chance of improvement, until Milutin and Cher- kassky came and freed the peasants, giving them the land. Then — all was over. The peasants sided with us ; they helped us to capture 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 mistake that had been made. A revolution, from its very outset, must be an act of justice towards “the downtrodden and the op- pressed,” not a promise of such reparation later on ; other- wise 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. For revolutionists not to succeed in proving to the masses that a new era has really begun for them is to insure the certain failure of their cause. The disastrous consequences for Poland of this revo- lution 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 Sibe- ria 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 Muravidff, to whom the Russian government has just erected a monument af Wilno, hanged by his own authority 128 Poles, and trans- ported to Russia and Siberia 9423 men and women. Offi- cial 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 labor or exile in his 180 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST 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 re- form period. True, the law of provincial self-government (Zemstvos) and the reform of the law courts were promul- gated 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 Valueff, as against the scheme that had been prepared by Nicholas Miliitin ; and imme- diately after the promulgation of both reforms, their im- portance 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 Katkoff, 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 Katkoff as “ traitors to Russia.” The wave of reaction soon reached our remote province. One day in March a paper was brought by a special messen- ger from Irkutsk. It intimated to General Kukel that he was at once to leave the post of governor of Transbaikalia and go to Irkutsk, waiting there for further orders, and that he was not to reassume 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 Kukel, had not run the risk of adding a single word to REACTION IN SIBERIA 181 the mysterious order. Did it mean that Kukel 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 have been done but for the energetic intervention of Count Nicholas Muravidff, “ the conqueror of the Amur,” who personally implored the Tsar that Kukel should be spared that fate. Our parting with Kukel 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 part- ing 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 for the reform of the system of exile and municipal self-gov- ernment. 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 cap- itals, 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-five years have passed away, the authorities are intro- ducing the reformed tribunals and a parody of self-govern- ment in Siberia, and committees have been nominated again to inquire into the system of exile. When Kennan came back to London from his journey ta 182 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST Siberia, he managed, on the very next day after his arrival in London, to hunt up Stepniak, Tchaykdvsky, 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 pro- portion 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 Ken- nan 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 Chita ? ” Stepniak looked at me, as if to reproach me for abusing Kennan’s goodwill. 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 Stepniak 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 Chita people wanted to build a watchtower, and collected the money for it ; but their estimates had to be sent to St. Petersburg. So they went to the ministry of the interior ; 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 Chita. New estimates were made and sent to St. END OF REFORM 183 Petersburg, and the story was repeated for full twenty-five years, till at last the Chita people, losing patience, put in their estimates prices nearly double the real ones. These fantastic estimates were solemnly considered at St. Peters- burg, and approved. This is how Chita 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 Chita 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 self- 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 Chitd in the way of reforms, I gladly accepted the offer to visit the Amur that same summer of 1863. The immense domain on the left (northern) hank of the Amur, and along the Pacific coast as far south as the hay of Peter the Great (Vladivostok), had been annexed to Russia by Count Muravioff, 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 open- ing 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 preoccupation of avoiding “ diplomatic complications.” Muravioff 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 Usuri, — full 2500 OCCUPATION OF THE AMUR REGION •185 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, Muravioff was forced to unusual measures. Released convicts who, after having served their time, had become serfs to the imperial mines, were freed and organ- ized as Transbaikalian Cossacks, part of whom were settled along the Amur and the Usurf, forming two new Cossack communities. Then Muravioff obtained the release of a thousand hard-labor convicts (mostly robbers and mur- derers), who were to be settled as free men on the lower Amur. 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, of their own free will, follow their husbands, if the latter happen to be sent to hard labor in Siberia, and many of the would-be colonists had thus their families with them. But those who had none ventured to remark to Muravioff: “What is agriculture without a wife ! We ought to be married.” Whereupon Muravioff ordered the release of all the hard-labor convict women of the place — about a hundred — and offered them their choice of the men. But there was little time to lose ; the high water in the river was rapidly going down, the rafts had to start, and Muravidff, 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 things considered, their settlements were not a failure; and the Muravioff marriages were not less happy 186 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST than marriages are on the average. That excellent, intelligent man, Innocentus, bishop of the Amur, afterward recognized these marriages, as well as the children that were bom, as quite legal, and had them inscribed on the church registers. Muravidff was less successful, however, 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 of the Siberians. But ten or twenty years of barrack life under the horrid discipline of Nicholas I.’s time surely were 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 waiting as care-free as birds for new jobs to turn up. The motley crowd of Transbaikalian Cossacks, of ex- convicts, and “ sons ” — all settled in a hurry, and often in a haphazard way, along the banks of the Amur — certainly did not attain prosperity, especially in the lower parts of the river and on the Usuri, where almost every square yard of land had to be won from a virgin sub-tropical forest, and where deluges of rain brought by the monsoons in July, inundations on a gigantic scale, millions of migrat- ing birds, and the like, continually destroyed the crops, finally reducing whole populations to sheer despair and apathy. Considerable supplies of salt, flour, cured meat, and so on had therefore to be shipped every year, to support both the regular troops and the settlements on the lower Amur, and for that purpose some hundred and fifty barges were yearly built at Chita and floated with the early spring high water down the Ingodd, the Shflka, and the Amvir. FIRST EXPERIENCES AS A NAVIGATOR 187 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 these 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 Mardvsky. My first experiences in my new capacity of navigator were not entirely successful. It so happened that I had to proceed with a few barges as rapidly as possible to a certain point on the Amur, and there to hand over my vessels. For that purpose I had to hire men from among those very “ 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 was 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 it was time to bring our huge, heavily laden barges to the shore and fasten them for the night, one of them, which was far ahead of the one that carried me, was stopped only when it was fast upon a rock, at the foot of a tremendously high, insurmountable 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. I rowed down to the next village to ask assistance from the Cossacks, and at the same time dispatched a messenger to a friend, a Cossack officer 188 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST who was staying some twenty miles away, and who had 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 of connecting 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 the water freely entered, sweeping away the flour and salt which formed the cargo. To my great horror I perceived numbers of small fish enter- ing through the hole and swimming about in the barge, and I stood there helpless, without knowing what to do next. There is a very simple and effective remedy for such emergencies. A sack of flour is forced into the hole, to the shape of which it soon adapts itself, while the outer crust of paste which is formed in the sack prevents water from penetrating through the flour ; but none of us knew this at the time. Happily for me, a few minutes later a barge was sighted coming down the river towards us. The appearance of the swan which 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 Shilka 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 was bringing an empty barge which by chance was at hand, to take away the cargo of my doomed craft. Now the hole was stopped, the water was pumped out, the cargo was transferred to the new barge, and next morn- ing I could continue my journey. This little experience was of great profit to me, and I soon reached my destina- tion on the Amiir without further adventures worth men- tioning. Every night we found some stretch of steep but ON THE AMUR RIVER 189 relatively low shore where to stop with the barges, and our fires were soon lighted on the bank of the swift and clear river, amidst the most beautiful mountain scenery. In day- time, one could hardly imagine a more pleasant journey than on board a barge, which floats leisurely down, without any of the noise of the steamer ; one or two strokes being occasion- ally given with its immense stern sweep to keep it in the main current. For the lover of nature, the lower part of the Shilka and the upper part of the Amur, where one sees a most beautiful, wide, and swift river flowing amidst moun- tains rising in steep, wooded cliffs a couple of thousand feet above the water, offer some of the most delightful scenes in the world. But these same cliffs make communication along the shore on horseback, by way of a narrow trail, ex- tremely difficult. I learned this that very autumn at my own expense. In East Siberia the seven last stations along the Shilka (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 canon of the Fraser River, has cost. After I had delivered my barges, I made about a thou- sand miles down the Amur in one of the post boats which are used on the river. The stern of the boat was covered in, and in the bow was a box filled with earth upon which a fire was 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 middle of the river, and to prevent it from being drawn into some side channel. These watches — the full moon shining above and the dark hills reflected in the river — were beautiful beyond 190 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST description. My rowers were taken from the aforemen- tioned “ sons;” they were three tramps, who had the reputa- tion of being incorrigible thieves and robbers, — and I car- ried with me a heavy sack full of banknotes, 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 Blagoveschensk, they became rest- less. “ Khanshina ” (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 committed some theft and had been locked up. My friend finally obtained his release and shipped him back. Only those who have seen the Amur, or know the Missis- sippi or the Yang-tze-kiang, can imagine what an immense river the Amur becomes after it has joined the Sungari, and can realize what tremendous waves roll over its bed if the weather is stormy. When the rainy season, due to the mon- soons, comes in July, the Sungari, the Usurf, and the Amur are swollen by unimaginable quantities of water ; thousands of low islands usually covered with willow thickets are inundated or washed away, and the width of the river at- tains in places two, three, and even five miles ; water rushes A TYPHOON 191 into the side channels and the lakes which spread in the low lands along the main channel ; and when a fresh wind blows from an easterly quarter, against the current, tremendous waves, even higher than those which one sees in the estuary of the St. Lawrence, roll up both the main river and the side channels. Still worse is it when a typhoon blows from the Chinese Sea and spreads over the Amur region. We experienced such a typhoon. I was then on board a large decked boat, with Major Mardvsky, whom I joined at Blagoveschensk. He had rigged his boat so that she would sail close to the wind, and when the storm began we managed to bring our boat to the sheltered side of the river, and to find refuge in a 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 num- ber of immense trees which the wind was blowing down around me. We began to feel very uneasy for our barges. It was evident that if they had been afloat that 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 destroyed. A disaster was almost certain. We sailed out as soon as the fury of the storm had abated. We knew that we ought soon to overtake two de- tachments of barges ; but we sailed one day, two days, and found no trace of them. My friend Marovsky lost both sleep and appetite, and looked as if he had just had a seri- ous illness. He sat whole days on the deck, motionless, murmuring : “ All is lost, all is lost.” The villages are few and far between on this part of the Amur, and nobody could give us any information. A new storm came on, and finally, reaching a village at daybreak, M'e learned that no barges had passed, but that quantities of wreckage had been 192 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST seen floating down the river during the previous day. It was evident that at least forty barges, which carried a cargo of about two thousand tons, must have been lost. It meant a certain famine next spring on the lower Amur if no sup- plies were brought in time, for it was late in the season, navigation would soon come to a close, and there was then no telegraph along the river. We held a council, and decided that Mardvsky should sail as quickly as possible to the mouth of the Amur. Some purchases of grain might perhaps he made in Japan before the close of 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 up the Amur and the Shilka, — in boats, on horseback, or on board steamer if I met one. The sooner I could warn the ChitA authorities, and dispatch any amount of provisions available, the better it would be. Perhaps part of them would this same autumn reach the upper Amur, whence it would be easier to ship them in the early spring to the low lands. If only a few weeks or even days could be saved, it might make an immense difference in case of a famine. I began my two thousand miles’ journey in a row-boat, changing rowers at each village, every twenty miles or so. 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 places where the barges were wrecked, and see if any of the provisions had been saved. Then, at the mouth of the Usurf (Khabarovsk) I might secure a steamer. The boats which I found at the villages were miserable, and the weather was very stormy. We kept along the shore, of course, but we had to cross some branches of the Amur, of considerable width, and the waves driven by the high wind continually threatened to swamp our little craft. One day we had to cross a branch of the river nearly half a mile wide. Choppy waves rose like mountains as they rolled up UP THE AMUR IN A ROW-BOAT 193 that branch. My rowers, two peasants, were seized with terror ; their faces were white as paper ; their blue lips trembled ; they murmured prayers. But 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 bailed it out with an old ladle, noting at times that it accumulated more rapidly than I could throw it out. There was a moment, when the boat shipped two such big waves, that at a sign from one of the trembling rowers I unfastened the heavy sack, full 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, know- ing 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, they would seize the oars and pull over. I soon reached the place where the main destruction of our barges had taken place. Forty-four of them had been wrecked by the storm. Unloading had been impossible, and very little of the cargo had been saved. Two thousand tons of flour had been destroyed. With this news I con- tinued 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 himself into a delirium and jumped overboard. He was saved, however, and was now lying ill in his cabin. They asked me to take command of the steamer, and I had to consent ; but soon I found to my great astonishment that everything went on by itself in such an excellent routine way that, though I paraded all day on 194 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST 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 word or two now and then to encourage the stokers to start as soon as the dawn permitted us faintly to distinguish the outlines of the shores, matters took care of themselves. A pilot who would have been able to inter- pret the map would have managed as well. Traveling by steamer and a great deal on horseback, I reached at last Transbaikalia. The idea of a famine that might break out next spring on the lower Amur oppressed me all the time. I found that on the Shflka the small steamer did not progress up the swift river rapidly enough ; so I abandoned it and rode with a Cossack a couple of hun- dred miles up the Argun, along one of the wildest moun- tain tracks in Siberia, never stopping to light our camp-fire until midnight had overtaken us in the woods. Even the ten or twenty hours that I might gain by this exertion were not to be despised, for every day brought nearer the close of navigation ; ice was already forming on the river at night. At last I met the Governor of Transbaikalia and my friend Colonel Pedashenko on the Shflka, at the convict settlement of Kara, and the latter took in hand the care of shipping immediately all available provisions. As for me, I left immediately to report all about the matter at Irkutsk. People at Irkutsk wondered that I had managed to make this long journey so rapidly ; but I was quite worn out. However, I recuperated by sleeping, for a week’s time, such a number of hours every day that I should be ashamed to mention it now. “ Have you taken enough 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 HARD JOURNEY 195 another distance of 3200 miles between Irkutsk and Ni'jni Novgorod, 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 frozen roads. 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 low lands of West Siberia and the Urals, the journey really became a torture. There were days when the wheels of the carts would be broken in the frozen ruts at every successive station. The rivers were freezing, and I had to cross the Ob in a boat amidst floating ice, which threatened at every moment to crush our small craft. When I reached the Tom River, on which the floating ice had just frozen together 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, the undersigned, hereby testify that I was drowned by the will of God, and through 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 — headed the pro- cession, testing the strength of the ice with a pole ; I followed him, carrying my dispatch box on my shoulders, and we two were attached to long lines, which five peasants held, following us at a distance, — one of them carrying s bundle of straw, to be thrown on the ice where it did not seem strong enough. Finally I reached Moscow, where my brother met me at the station, and thence we proceeded at once to St. Peters- burg. Youth is a grand thing. After such a journey, which 196 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST lasted twenty-four days and nights, arriving early in th® morning at St. Petersburg, I went the same day to deliver my dispatches, and did not fail also to call upon an aunt, or rather upon a cousin of mine. 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 reached 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 tbe spot ? ” “ Did you see the destruction with your own eyes ? ” “ Are you per- fectly sure that ‘ they ’ have not simply stolen the pro- visions, 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 Neva without any one rushing to save them ? ” “ The Nevd ! ” I exclaimed, “ put three — four Nevds side by side and you will have the lower Amur ! ” “ 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 ‘ Ivan the Terrible ’ a wonderful' picture ? Do you know why they were going to arrest Kukel ? ” and he told me all about a letter that had been addressed to him, asking his support for the Polish insurrection. “ Do you know that Chernyshevsky has been arrested ? He is now in the fortress.” “ What for ? What has he done ? ” I asked. t( Nothing in particular, nothing ! But, mon cher, you INCOMPETENT OFFICIALS 197 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 ! intolerable, mon cher, dans un Etat bien ordonne ! ” Count Ignatieff asked no such questions : he knew the Amur 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 said 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 swin- dling ; they trust in you.” The Minister of War, Dmitri Miliitin, was the only man high in the administration at 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 con- versation went on in short sentences, without huny, but without any waste of words. “The coast settlements to be supplied from the sea, you mean ? The remainder only from Chita ? 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 for- malities.” V I did not stay long at St. Petersburg, but returned to Irkutsk the same winter. My brother was going to join me there in a few months : he was accepted as an officer of the Irkutsk Cossacks. Traveling 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 intense, one can stand it well enough. Lying full length in the sledge, as every one does in Siberia, wrapped in fur blankets, fur inside and fur outside, one does not suffer much from the cold, even when the tem- perature is forty or sixty degrees below zero, Fahrenheit. Traveling 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 Irkutsk nineteen days after leaving St. Petersburg. Two hundred miles a day is the normal speed in such cases, and I remember having covered the last 660 miles of my journey 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 over hill and vale, across rivers frozen as hard as steel, and through forests glistening in their silver attire under the rays of the sun. I was now appointed attache to the Governor-General of East Siberia for Cossack affairs, and had to reside at Irkdtsk ; but there was nothing in particular to do. To let IN IRKUTSK AGAIN 199 everything go on according to the established routine, with no more reference to changes, — such was the watch- word 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 speak- ing, along the fiftieth degree of latitude, suddenly bends in Transbaikalia to the north. It follows for three hun- dred miles the Argun River ; then, on reaching the Amur, it turns southeastward, the town of Blagoveschensk, which was the capital of the Amur land, being situated again in about the same latitude of fifty degrees. Between the southeastern corner of Transbaikalia (New Tsurukhditu) and Blagoveschensk on the Amur, the distance west to east is only five hundred miles ; but along the Argun and the Amur it is over a thousand miles, and moreover communi- ■//'/' FRIENDLY CHINESE 211 nushka,” 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 between ourselves and the Chinese by this little adventure. 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 were received in the most cordial way. One evening especially impressed itself on my memory. We came to a picturesque little village as night was already falling. Some of us landed, and I went alone through the village. A thick crowd of about a hundred Chinese soon surrounded me, and although I knew not a word of their tongue, and they knew as little of mine, we chatted in the most amicable way by mimicry, and we un- derstood one another. To pat one on the shoulders in sign of friendship is decidedly international language. To offer one another tobacco and to be offered a light is again an in- ternational expression of friendship. One thing interested them, — why had I, though young, a heard ? 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 ; every one 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 boshJco (policeman) in that village. In other villages our soldiers and myself always made friends with the Chinese, but as soon as a boshko appeared, all was spoiled. In return, one should have seen what “ faces ” they used to make at the boshkd behind his back 1 They evidently hated this representative of authority. 212 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST This expedition has since been forgotten. The astrono* mer Th. Usdltzeff and I published reports about it in the Memoirs of the Siberian Geographical Society ; but a few years later a terrible conflagration at Irkutsk destroyed all the copies left of the Memoirs, as well as the original map of the Sungari ; and it was only last year, when work upon the Trans-Manchurian Railway was beginning, that Russian geographers unearthed our reports, and found that the great river had been explored five-and-thirty years ago by our expedition. 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 attache to the governor-general for Cossack affairs, I made, for instance, a most thorough investigation of the econom- ical conditions of the Usurf 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 Usurf with my report, I received con- gratulations 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 agri- culturalists. And thus it went on in all directions, be- ginning with the Winter Palace at St. Petersburg, and ending with the Usurf and Kamchatka. 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 country than the ad- ministration of any other province of Russia. But it was an administration, — a branch of the tree which had its root at St. Petersburg, and that was quite sufficient to paralyze all its excellent intentions, and to make it interfere with all 214 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST beginnings of local spontaneous 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 men, — men, as a rule, are better than institu- tions, — but simply because they belonged to a pyramidal, centralized administration. The very fact of its being a government which had its source in a distant capital caused it to look upon everything from the point of view of a functionary of the government who thinks, first of all, about what his superiors will say, and how this or that will appear in the administrative machinery, and not of the interests of the country. Gradually I turned my energy more and more toward scientific exploration. In 1865 I explored the western Sayans, where I got a new glimpse into the structure of the Siberian highlands, and came upon another important volcanic region on the Chinese frontier ; and finally, next year, I undertook a long journey to discover a direct com- munication between the gold mines of the Yakutsk province (on the Vitim and the Oldkma) and Transbaikalia. For several years (1860-64) the members of the Siberian expe- dition had tried to find such a passage, and had endeavored to cross the series of very wild stony parallel ridges which separate these mines from Transbaikalia ; but when they reached that region, coming from the south, and saw before them these dreary mountains spreading for hundreds of miles northward, all of them, save one who was killed by natives, returned southward. It was evident that, in order to be successful, the expedition must move from the north to the south, — from the dreary and unknown wilderness to the warmer and populated regions. It also happened that while I was preparing for the expedition, I was shown a map which a native had traced with his knife on a piece of bark. This little map — a splendid example, by the way, SCIENTIFIC EXPLORATION 215 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, following the indications of the map. In company with a young and promising naturalist, Polakoff, and a topo- grapher, I went first down the Lena to the northern gold mines. There we equipped our expedition, taking pro- visions for three months, and started southward. An old Yakut hunter, who twenty years before had once followed the passage indicated on the Tungus map, undertook to act for us as guide, and to cross the mountain region, — full 250 miles wide, — following the river valleys and gorges indicated by the knife of the Tungus on the birch-bark map. He really accomplished this wonderful feat, although there was no track of any sort to follow, and all the valleys that one sees from the top of a mountain pass, all equally filled with woods, seem, to the unpracticed eye, to be absolutely alike. 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, Chita. 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 after- ward 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 mass of the people by means of the adminis- trative machinery. With this illusion I parted forever. Then I began to understand not only men and human character, but also the inner springs of the life of human 216 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST society. The constructive work of the unknown masses, which so seldom finds any mention in books, and the im- portance of that constructive work in the growth of forms of society, fully appeared before my eyes. To witness, for instance, the ways in which the communities of Dukho- bdrtsy (brothers of those who are now going to settle in Canada, and who find such a hearty support in the United States) migrated to the Amur region, to see the immense advantages which they got from their semi-communistic brotherly organization, and to realize what a wonderful 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 all the complex forms of social organization which they have elaborated far away from the influence of any civ- ilization, 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 impor- tant historical events, and even in war, became evident to me from direct observation, and I came to hold ideas similar to those which Tolstoy 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 LESSONS FROM LIFE IN SIBERIA 217 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 Amur, 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 command- ing 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 attract- ive to me, although my brother Alexander had joined me in 1864 at Irkutsk, 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 Irkutsk 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 conver- sations. 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 Vitim mountains, when the Polish exiles, who were employed in excavating a new road in the cliffs round Lake Baikal, 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 — whom I will call Pdtaloff — was killed by the insurgents. I heard of it on my return to Irkutsk, where some fifty Poles were to be tried by court-martial. The sittings of courts-martial being open in Russia, I fol- lowed 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 trans- ported to East Siberia alone, in consequence of the insur- rection of 1863. They -were chiefly students, artists, ex- officers, nobles, and especially skilled artisans from the intelligent and highly developed workers’ population of Warsaw and other towns. A great number of them were kept at hard labor, 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 at hard labor worked either at Chitd, building the barges for the Amiir, — these were the happiest, — or in iron works of the Crown, or in salt works. I saw some of the latter, on the Lena, standing half-naked in a shanty, around 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. Aftei POLISH EXILES IN SIBERIA 219 two years of such work these martyrs were sure to die from consumption. Afterward, a considerable number of Polish exiles were employed as navvies building a road along the southern coast of Lake Baikal. This narrow Alpine lake, four hundred miles long, surrounded by beautiful mountains rising three to five thousand feet above its level, cuts off Transbaikalia and the Amur from Irkutsk. In winter it may be crossed upon the ice, and in summer there are steamers ; but for six weeks in the spring and another six weeks in the autumn the only way to reach Chitd and Kyakhta (for Pekin) from Irkutsk is to travel on horse- back a long, circuitous route, across mountains 7000 to 8000 feet in altitude. I once traveled 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, Khamar-daban, 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 their riders many times a day into the icy water which flowed under- neath the snow crust. It was decided accordingly to build a permanent road along the southern coast of the lake, blasting out a passage in the steep, almost vertical cliffs which rise along the shore, and spanning with bridges a hun- dred wild torrents that 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 sub- missiveness 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, — to their honor be it said, — were never so submissive as that, and this time they broke 220 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST into open revolt. It was evident that they had no chanct of success, but they revolted nevertheless. They had before them the great lake, and behind them a girdle of absolutely impracticable mountains, beyond which spread the wilder- nesses of North Mongolia ; but they conceived the idea of disarming the soldiers who guarded them, forging those terrible weapons of the Polish insurrections, — scythes fastened 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 Irkutsk that part of those Poles who were at work on the Baikal road had disarmed a dozen soldiers and broken out into revolt. Eighty soldiers were all that could be dispatched against them from Irkutsk; crossing the Baikal 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 Irkutsk. In the Siberian capital there is no such distinction between the different classes as one sees in Russian provincial towns, and Irkutsk “ 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 the- atricals, too, were not successful ; and gambling, which usu- ally flourished on a grand scale at Irkutsk, only dragged along ; a serious want of money was felt among the offi- cials, and even the arrival of several mining officers was not signalized by the heaps of banknotes with which these privileged gentlemen commonly enlivened the knights of the green tables. The season was decidedly dull, — just the season for starting spiritualistic experiences with talk- ing tables and talkative spirits. A gentleman who had been the pet of Irkutsk society the previous winter for the tales from popular life which he recited with great talent, A HOPELESS REVOLT 221 seeing that interest in himself and his tales was failing, took now to spiritualism as a new amusement. He was clever, and in a week’s time all Irkutsk society was mad over talking spirits. A new life was infused into those who did not know how to kill time. Talking tables ap- peared in every drawing-room, and love-making went hand in hand with spirit rapping. Lieutenant Potaloff took it all in deadly earnest, — talking tables and love. Per- haps 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 were slowly advancing 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. The Poles occupied the forest and from time to time fired their guns. The file of soldiers returned the fire. Pdtaloff twice asked the permission of the colonel to dismount and 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 re- sounded in the wood in succession, 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, and Pdtaloff was dead. He had rushed, revolver in hand, into the thicket, where he found several Poles armed with scythes. He fired upon them all his shots, in a haphazard way, wounding one of them, whereupon the others rushed upon him with theil scythes. 222 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST At the other end of the road, on this side of the lake, two Russian officers behaved in the most abominable way towards the Poles who were building the same road, hut took no part in the insurrection. One of the two officers rushed into their tent, swearing and firing his revolver at the peaceful exiles, two of whom he badly wounded. Now, the logic of the Siberian military authorities was that as a Russian officer had been killed, several Poles must be executed. The court-martial condemned five of them to death : Szaramdwicz, a pianist, a fine looking man of thirty, who was the leader of the insurrection ; Celfnski, a man of sixty, who had once been an officer in the Russian army ; and three others whose names I do not remember. The governor-general telegraphed to St. Petersburg ask- ing 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 in secrecy, early in the morning. The reply from St. Petersburg came four weeks later, by post : the governor was left to act “ accord- ing to the best of his understanding.” In the mean time five brave men had been shot. The insurrection, people said, was foolish. And yet this brave handful of insurgents had obtained something. The news of it reached Europe. The executions, the bru- talities of the two officers, which became known through the proceedings of the court, produced a commotion in Austria, and Austria interfered in favor of the Galicians who had taken part in the revolution of 1863 and had been sent to Siberia. Soon after the insurrection, the fate of the Polish exiles in Siberia was sribstantially bet- tered, and they owed it to the insurgents, — to those five brave men who were shot at Irkutsk, and those who had taken arms by their side. For my brother and myself this insurrection was a great LEAVING THE MILITARY SERVICE 223 lesson. We realized what it meant to belong in any way to the army. I was far away, but my brother was at Irkutsk, and his squadron was dispatched against the insur- gents. Happily, the commander of the regiment to which my brother belonged knew him well, and, under some pre- text, 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 Irkutsk, 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 WEST- ERN 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, al- most boys, much younger than myself. What I so longed for five years before was accomplished, — I could study ; and, acting upon the idea that a thorough training in math- ematics is the only solid basis for all subsequent 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 mathe- matical faculty has, of course, very much to do, but my previous studies in higher mathematics permitted me to de- vote 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 what- ever of the structure of the country. The great plateaus MAPS OF NORTHERN ASIA 225 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 por- tion of the Stanovoi, which used to be drawn on the maps as a black worm creeping eastward, had grown up in the topographic bureaus, 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 sur- face 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 for- mation — 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 merid- ians 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 induc- tive way, I collected all the barometrical observations of previous travelers, 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 trav- elers, — 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 tv* 226 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST years ; and then followed months of intense thought, in order to find out what all the bewildering chaos of scattered observations meant, until one day, all of a sudden, the whole became clear and comprehensible, as if it were illu- minated with a flash of light. The main structural lines of Asia are not north and south, or west and east ; they are from the southwest to the northeast, — just as, in the Rocky Mountains and the plateaus of America, the lines are northwest to southeast ; only secondary ridges shoot out northwest. Moreover, the mountains of Asia are not bundles of independent ridges, like the Alps, but are sub- ordinated to an immense plateau, an old continent which once pointed toward 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 pro- blematic takes at once its proper position within an harmo- nious "whole. Out of a 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 general- ization is put to a test, by applying it to hundreds of sepa- rate facts which had 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 MY CHIEF CONTRIBUTION TO SCIENCE 227 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 generaliza- tions. He who has once in his life experienced this joy of scien- tific creation will never forget it ; he will be longing to renew it ; and he cannot hut 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 plateaus 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 bro- ther, 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 carto- graphers. The map of Asia, as it is now understood, ex- plains, 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. n At the same time I worked a great deal for the Russian Geographical Society in my capacity of secretary to its sec* lion of physical geography. Great interest was taken then in the exploration of Tur. kestan and the Pamirs. Syevertsoff had just returned after several years of travel. A great zoologist, a gifted geo- grapher, 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 over 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. The remarks on the orography of Turkestan, on the geographical distribu- tion of plants and animals, on the part played by hybrids in the production of new species of birds, and so on, which I have heard Syevertsoff make, and the observations on the importance of mutual support in the progressive develop- ment of species which I have found just mentioned in a couple of lines in some report of a meeting, — these bore the stamp of more than 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. Mikldkho-Maklay, well known in Australia, which to MIKLUKHO-MAKLA.Y 229 wards the end of his life became the country of his adop- tion, 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 Haeckel, he had worked a great deal upon the marine invertebrates in their natural 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 terrible cannibals. A hut was built for the two Crusoes, and they lived eighteen months or more near a native village on excellent terms with the natives. Always to be straight- forward towards them, and never to deceive them, — not even in the most trifling matters, not even for scientific purposes, — was the point on which he was most scrupulous. When he was traveling some time later in the Malayan archi- pelago, he had with him a native who had entered into his service on the express condition of never being photographed. The natives, as every one knows, consider that something is taken out of them when their likeness is taken by photo- graphy. One day when the native was fast asleep, Makl&y, who was collecting anthropological materials, confessed that he was awfully tempted to photograph his native, the more so as he was a typical representative of his tribe and would never have known that he had been photographed. But he remembered his agreement and refrained. 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 made. 230 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST Fedchenko, who had made extensive zoological observa- tions in Turkestan, — in company with his wife, Olga Fedchenko, 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 Switzer- land. Glowing with youthful ardor after his journeys in the Turkestan highlands, 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 be- lieve she has now a son who continues the work of his father and mother. I also saw a great deal of Prjevalsky, or rather Prze- walski, as his Polish name ought to be spelled, 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 ap- proach. 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 enthusiastically 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 planned a new expedition, and parsi- moniously laying aside all his money, tried to increase it by stock exchange operations for that purpose. He was the type of a traveler in his strong physique, and in his capacity for living for years the rough life of a mountain hunter. He delighted in leading such a life. He made bis first journey with only three comrades, and always kept ®n excellent terms with the natives. However, as his INTEREST IN ARCTIC EXPLORATION 231 subsequent expeditions took on more of a military charac* ter, he began unfortunately to rely more upon the force of his armed escort than upon peaceful intercourse with the natives, and I heard it said in well-informed quarters that even if he had not died at the very start of his Tibet ex- pedition, — so admirably and peacefully conducted after his death by his companions, Pyevtsoff, Robordvsky, andKozldff, — he very probably would not have returned alive. There was considerable activity at that time in the Geo- graphical Society, and many were the geographical ques- tions 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 the Russian settlements, the fish- eries, and the trade in the Russian portion of the Arctic Ocean, which took place in these years. A Siberian mer- chant and gold miner, Sidoroff, 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 White Sea, and so on, the Russian fisheries and Russian navigation could be largely developed. But that little, unfortunately, had to be done entirely through St. Petersburg ; and the ruling powers of that courtly, bureau- cratic, literary, artistic, and cosmopolitan city could not be moved to take an interest in anything provincial. Poor Sidoroff was simply ridiculed for his efforts. Interest in our far north had to be enforced upon the Russian Geo- graphical 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 that sea, which lies between the island of Ndvaya Zemlya 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 num- 232 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST ber of small Norwegian schooners and crossed by them in all directions. Even the wintering place of the famous Dutchman Barentz, which we believed to he concealed forever from the eyes of man by ice fields hundreds of years old, had been visited by these adventurous Norse- men. “ Exceptional seasons and an exceptional state of the ice ” was what our old 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 amidst 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 respon- sibilities 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 Nordenskjbld’s circumnavigation of Asia, in the per- manent establishment of the northeastern passage to Siberia, in Peary’s discovery of North Greenland, and in Nansen’s Eram 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, on botany, geology, and meteorology, were ready in time, and the secretary of the committee — that is, myself — 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. PLANNING AN ARCTIC EXPLORATION 233 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 northeast of N<5- vaya Zemlya. 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 Ndvaya Zemlyd. 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 Lutke’s journey to Ndvaya Zemlya, 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 northwest of Ndvaya Zemlya, and it must reach a higher latitude than Spitsbergen. The steady position of the ice at the west of Ndvaya Zemlya, the mud and stones on it, and various other smaller indications con- firmed 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 234 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST •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 would 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 northeast of Ndvaya Zemlya — I am even more firmly persuaded of it now than I was then — remain un- discovered. Instead of joining an arctic expedition, I was sent out by the Geographical Society for 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 that summer two of its members — the old geologist General Helmer- sen and Frederick Schmidt, the indefatigable explorer of Siberia — to study the structure of those long ridges of drift which are known as asar in Sweden and Finland, and as eskers, kames, and so on, in the British Isles. The Geo- graphical 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 the summer. I traveled a great deal in Finland, and crossed over to Sweden, where I spent many happy hours in the company of A. Nordenskjold. As early as then — 1871 — he men- tioned to me his schemes for reaching the mouths of the Siberian rivers, and even the Behring Strait, by the north- ern route. Returning to Finland I continued my re- searches till late in the autumn, and collected a mass of most interesting observations relative to the glaciation of GEOGRAPHICAL PROJECTS 235 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 failure 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, just as Karl Ritter has 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 help- ful 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 seacoast along the newly built railway, and closely watching the spot Avhere 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 ?36 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST the outgoing secretary strongly urged me to accept the pro* posal. 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.” m It often happens that men pull in a certain political, Bocial, or familiar harness simply because they never havs ! 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 every one 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 had expected to do ; 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 inter- esting 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 labor the Finnish peasant spends in clearing the land and in breaking up the hard boulder-clay, and I said to myself : “ I will write 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 cep- tain methods of manuring would be indicated by science 238 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST . . . 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, hut not now.” And my thoughts wandered from Finland to our Hikols- koye peasants, whom I had lately seen. How they are free, and they value freedom very much. But they have no meadows. In one way or another, the landlords have got all the meadows for themselves. When I was a child, the Savokhins used to send out six horses for night pasture, the Tolkachoffs had seven. How, 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 ? Ho 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 Kostino forest ! “ Your Hilcolskoye peasants are ferocious for work,” — that is the common saying about them in our neighborhood ; 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 JOTS OF SCIENTIFIC LIFE 239 thing goes on throughout all 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 sur- rounded. 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 lias to find out the means to put a check to that desiccation to which Central Asia already has fallen a victim, and which menaces Southeastern 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 distri- 240 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST bution of floras and faunas ; to open new horizons for geology and physical geography. But what right had I to these highest joys, when all around 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 some- body’s mouth it must be taken, because the aggregate pro- duction 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 man- kind 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. ISTot 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 an- other 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 DIFFUSION OF KNOWLEDGE 241 tbout making mankind progress, while at the same time the progress-makers stand aloof from those whom they pre- tend 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 So* ri ciety. IV St. Petersburg had changed greatly from what it was when I left it in 1862. “ Oh, yes, you knew the St. Petersburg of Chernyshevsky,” the poet Maikoff remarked to me once. True, I knew the St. Petersburg of which Chernyshevsky was the favorite. But how shall I de- scribe the city which I found on my return ? Perhaps as the St. Petersburg of the cafes 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 Muravidff and Nicholas Milutin, were treated as suspects. Only Dmitri Milutin, 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 criticised another high func- tionary, and I remarked in the latter’s defense, “ 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 Shuvdloff and Trdpoff!” was the reply, which so correctly described the situation that I could say nothing more. General Shuvaloff, the chief of the state police, and Gen- eral Trepoff, the chief of the St. Petersburg police, were indeed the real rulers of Russia. Alexander II. was their OFFICIAL ST. PETERSBURG 243 executive, their tool. And they ruled by fear. Trdpoff had so frightened AJexander 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 had given an “ entire dismissal ” to Princess X., he conceived a warm friendship for General Eleury, the aide-de-camp of Napoleon III., that sinister man who was the soul of the coup d'etat of December 2, 1852. They were continually seen together, and Fleury once informed the Parisians of the great honor which was bestowed upon him by the Russian Tsar. As the latter was riding along the Nevsky Prospekt, he saw Fleury, and asked him to mount into his carriage, an egoi’ste, 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 new friend, fresh from Compiegne, to suggest what the friendship meant. Shuvaloff 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 one of them, Shuvaloff would speak of the coming revolution and the fate of Louis XVI., and, “for the sal- vation 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 re- actionary character which it was taking. Then Shuvaloff would organize a bear hunt. Hunters, merry courtiers, and carriages full of ballet girls would go to the forests of Ndv- gorod. A couple of bears would be killed by Alexander II., 244 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST ■who was a good shot, and used to let the animals approach within a few yards of his rifle ; and there, in the excite- ment of the hunting festivities, Shuvaloff would obtain his master’s signature to any scheme of repression or robbery in the interest of his clients, 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 behavior, and the next moment dis- play sheer brutality. He was possessed of a calm, reasoned courage in the face of a real danger, but he lived in con- stant 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 out- right 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 him- self) ; 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 kind- ness existed side by side with the terrible cold-blooded cruelty — a seventeenth century cruelty — which he dis- played in crushing the Polish insurrection, and later on in 1880, when similar measures were taken to put down 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. Toward 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 Shuvaloff was nominated ambassador to England, but his friend General Potapoff continued the same policy CORRUPTION EXPOSED 245 till the beginning of the Turkish war in 1877. During all this time, the most scandalous plundering of the state ex- chequer, as also of the crown lands, the estates confiscated in Lithuania after the insurrection, the Bashkir lands in Orenburg, and so on, was proceeding on a grand scale. Several such affairs were subsequently brought to light and judged publicly by the Senate acting as a high court of jus- tice, after Potapoff, who became insane, and Trepoff 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 Potapoff 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 Vera Zasulich had shot at Trdpoff and wounded him (to avenge his having ordered one of the political prisoners to be flogged in prison) that the thefts of Potapoff and his clients became widely known and he was dismissed. Thinking that he was going to die, Trepoff wrote his will, from which it became known that this man, who made the Tsar believe that he died 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 consid- erable fortune. Some courtiers reported it to Alexander II. Trepoff lost his credit, and it was then that a few of the robberies of the Shuvfiloff-Potapoff-and-Trdpoff 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 246 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST 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 func- tionaries 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 min- istry, 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 comp- troller-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, afterward 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 Prospekt 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 Trdpoff menaced me with Siberia! Of course, I obeyed the general ; he is, as you know, omnip- otent now.” Another grand duke became conspicuous for EDUCATION RESTRICTED 241 ways belonging to the domain of psychopathy ; and a third was exiled to Turkestan, after he had stolen the diamondi of his mother. The Empress Marie Alex&ndrovna, 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 priest, a repre- sentative 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 ; al- ready 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 com- munion 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 usu- ally 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 four million dollars in- cluded 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 pre- venting the pupils from reading and thinking. In these gymnasia, only two or three per cent, of the pupils suo 248 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST ceeded in completing an eight years’ course, — all boyi promising to become something and to show some independ- ence of thought being carefully sifted out before they could reach the last form ; and all sorts of measures were taken to reduce the number 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 all insti- tutions — district and county councils, municipalities, and the like — which endeavored to open teachers’ seminaries or technical schools, or even simple primary schools. Tech- nical 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 favor at the capital who managed to beat out the taxes in the most severe way. Such was the official St. Petersburg. Such was the in- fluence it exercised upon Russia. V When we were leaving Siberia, we often talked, my bro ther 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 ac- quaintances, 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, — Eussia is full of excellent men, — but they did not quite correspond to our ideal of political writers. The best writers — Chernyshevsky, Mikhdiloff, Lavrdff — were in exile, or were kept in the fortress of St. Peter and St. Paul, like Pisareff. Others, taking a gloomy view of the situa- tion, had changed their ideas, and were now 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 every one in the advanced literary circles had had some relations either with Herzen or with Turgueneff and his friends, or with the Great Eussian or the Land and Freedom secret socie- ties which had had at that period an ephemeral existence. How, 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 250 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST 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 major- ity 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 occa- sionally 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 ques- tions, 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 Helene ’ ? ” 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, and especially 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 6ay. “ Iron is stronger than straw,” or “ One cannot break a stone wall with his forehead,” and similar proverbs, un- fortunately too numerous in the Russian language, consti- tuted now their code of practical philosophy. “We have EFFECTS OF OPPRESSION 251 done something in our life : ask no more from us ; ” or “ Have patience : this sort of thing will not last,” they told ns, 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 intel- lectual support. Turgu^neff has depicted in “ Smoke ” some of the ex-re- formers from the upper layers of society, and his picture is disheartening. But it is especially in the heart-rending novels and sketches of Madame Kohandvsky, who wrote under the pseudonym of “V. Krestdvskiy ” (she must not be con- founded with another novel-writer, Vsevolod Krestdvskiy), that one can follow the many aspects which the degrada- tion 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 move- ment 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 serf- dom had been abolished, and the crowd rushed with eager- ness into these channels. Railways were feverishly built 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 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 cul- tivated by a hundred serfs, or on the 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 tastes of “ society ” sunk lower and lower. The 252 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST 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 en- thusiasts 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 Horse Guard admirers, or went to see “ La Belle Helene,” 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 ex- cuses, for keeping quiet. After Karakozoff had shot at Alexander II. in April, 1866, the state police had become omnipotent. Every one 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 sym- pathy 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, trans- portation to Siberia, or even torture in the casemates of the fortress. This movement of the circles of Karakdzoff 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 “ toward the people,” which later took on such formidable dimensions ; 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, ATTEMPT ON THE TSAR’S LIFE 253 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 cooperative 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 cre- ate the first centres from which better and higher concep- tions 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, com- pared 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 — Karakdzoff, Ishutin, 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 him- self 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 Karakd- zoff 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 incli- nations of the heir to the throne and his uncle Constantine. I must also say that before 1866 such fears and such con* 254 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST siderations were not ^infrequently expressed in much higher circles than those with which Karakdzoff seems to have been in contact. At any rate, Karakdzoff shot at Alexander II. one day, as he was coming out of the summer garden to take his carriage. The shot missed, and Karakdzoff was arrested on the spot. Katkdff, the leader of the Moscow reactionary party, and a great master for extracting pecuniary profits out of every political disturbance, at once accused of complicity with KarakozofF all radicals and liberals, — which was certainly untrue, — and insinuated in his paper, making all Mos- cow believe it, that Karakdzoff was a mere instrument in the hands of the Grand Duke Constantine, the leader of the reform party in the highest circles. One can imagine to what an extent the two rulers, Shuvaloff and Trepoff, exploited these accusations, and the consequent fears of Alexander II. Mikhael Muravidff, who had won during the Polish in- surrection his nickname “ 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 Karakdzoff 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 his- torians. It still keeps MuravidfFs secrets. However, the following may perhaps throw some light on this matter. In 1866 I was in Siberia. One of our Siberian officers, who traveled from Russia to Irkutsk toward the end of that year, met at a post station two gendarmes. They had ao» TORTURE OF KARAKOZOFF 255 •ompanied to Siberia a functionary exiled for theft, and were now returning home. Our Irkutsk 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 Karakdzoff. “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 leg or not.” “And how long did that last ? ” my friend asked. “ Oh, many days, — more than one week.” The naive character of this description is in itself a proof of veracity : it could not have been invented ; and that Karakdzoff was tortured to this degree may be taken for granted. When Karakdzoff 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 plat- form of the cart which was jolting on the rough glacis of the fortress, my first impression was that they were bring- ing out an india-rubber doll to be hanged ; that Karakdzoff 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. 256 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST However, when two soldiers took him down from the cart, I saw that he moved his legs and made strenuous endeavors 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 Karakozoff had been tortured, the color 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 at the time of the execution. I may add that I am absolutely certain that — at least in one case — drugs were administered to a prisoner in the fortress, namely, Adrian Saburoff, in 1879. Did Muravioff 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. Muravidff had promised to root out all radical elements in St. Petersburg, and all those who had had in any de- gree 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 Turgueneff described it in hi= 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 A TRAGIC STRUGGLE 257 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 in- heritance 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 pro- duce 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 organ- ized 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 transla- tors, 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 elsewhere. Since the government had shown its determined intern tion not to admit women to the existing universities, they had directed all their efforts toward opening universities of THE HIGHER EDUCATION OF WOMEN 259 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 im- pose 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, volun- teered to give lectures. Poor men themselves, they warned the organizers that any mention of remuneration would be taken as a personal offense. Natural science excursions used to be made every summer in the neighborhood 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 an- atomical laboratory of old Dr. Gruber, and by their admir- able work they won this enthusiast of anatomy entirely to their side. If they learned that a professor had no objec- tion to letting them work in his laboratory on Sundays and at night on week days, they took advantage of the opportunity. At last, notwithstanding all the opposition of the minis- try, 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 educa- tion ? But as the methods of teaching botany or mathemat- ics could not be taught in the abstract, botany, mathematics, and the rest were soon introduced into the curriculum of 260 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST 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 wo- men, they knocked at his door and were admitted. They studied law and history at Heidelberg, and mathematics at Berlin ; at Zurich, 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 Zurich in 1872, and became acquainted with some of the students, I was astonished to see quite young girls, who were studying at the polytechnicum, solv- ing 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 Kovalevsky, 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 professor- ship in a university for men. She was so young that in Sweden no one wanted to call her by anything but her diminutive name of Sdnya. In spite of the open hatred of Alexander II. for educated women, — when he met in his walks a girl wearing spec- tacles and a round Garibaldian cap, he began to tremble, thinking that she must be a nihilist bent on shooting at 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 Katkdff directed against the whole of the movement in al- most every number of his venomous gazette, the women eucceeded, in the teeth of the government, in opening a SUCCESS OF THE WOMEN 261 series of educational institutions. When several of them had obtained medical degrees abroad, they forced the gov- ernment, 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 Zurich, 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 practicing as physicians. 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 after- ward 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, wo- men 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 262 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST 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 6isters — did not exist ; or, at least, it was bridged over to a great extent. Those who were the leaders of the move- ment 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 behavior. 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 inclina- tions.” When the women who studied at Zurich were or- dered 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 THE SECRET OF SUCCESS 268 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 move- ment 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 St&sova, 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 these 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 those 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 is 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 he gone. He had continued to live in the old style, in the Staraya Koniishennaya, 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 remortgaged 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 builders, and the like, — while in nearly every one of the old families which remained in the Old Equerries’ Quarter 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 occasion- ally 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 cur- rent 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 sister, Pauline, who had not DEATH OF MY FATHER 265 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 any one. When he entered our father’s sick-room, with the deep, kind look of his large 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 ; the nursing became brighter ; 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 mo- ment 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 bap- tized, and where the last prayers had been said over his mother. As the funeral procession passed along the streets, of which every house was so familiar to me in my child- hood, I noticed that the houses had changed little, but I knew that in all of them a new life had begun. 266 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST In the house which had formerly belonged to my father’s mother and then to Princess Mi'rski, and which now was the property of General N , an old inhabitant of the quar- ter, the only daughter of the family maintained for a couple of years a painful struggle against her good-natured but obstinate parents, who worshiped 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 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 was that the elder girl ended her life by poisoning herself, whereupon her younger sister was allowed to follow her own incli- nations. In the house next door, which had been our family resi- dence for a year, when I entered it with Tchaykdvsky 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 Kara “convict,” whom George Kennan has so touchingly described in his book on Siberia. And in a house within a stone’s throw of that in which my father had died, and only a few months after NEW LIFE IN MOSCOW 267 his death, I received Stepnidk, clothed as a peasant, he having escaped from a country village where he had been arrested for spreading socialist ideas among the peasants. Such were the changes which the Old Equerries’ Quarter had undergone within the last fifteen years. The last stronghold of the old nobility was now invaded by the new tpirit. vm The next year, early in the spring, I made my first journey to Western Europe. In crossing the Russian fron- tier, I experienced what every Russian feels on leaving his mother country. So long as the train runs on Russian ground, through the thinly populated northwestern pro- vinces, 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 im- practicable, muddy, narrow, and winding village road. Then 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 ra-ilway 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 RUSSIAN STUDENTS AT ZURICH 269 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 south- ward, further into Manchuria. At that time Zurich was full of Russian students, both women and men. The famous Oberstrass, near the Poly- technic, was a corner of Russia, where the Russian language prevailed over all others. The students lived as most Rus- sian 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 of the latest news from 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 labor 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 six- teen ? ” Our girls at Zurich 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 Zurich 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 In- ternational Workingmen’s Association. Russian papers mentioned it pretty frequently in their columns, but they were not allowed to speak of its principles or of what it was doing. I felt that it must be a great movement, full ol 270 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST 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 develop- ment. 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 denomi- nations, — Christian socialists, state socialists, Fourierists, Saint-Simonists, Owenites, and so on ; and only now we begin to understand the depth of this movement, as we dis- cover 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 “ re- public ” a quite different thing from the democratic organ- ization 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 those tools used by all members of society for the benefit of all, — “ the iron returned to the laborer,” 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. THE INTERNATIONAL 271 However, one idea had survived, — the idea of an inter- national brotherhood of all workers, which a few French emigrants continued to preach in the United States, and the followers of Kobert Owen in England. The under- standing which was reached by some English workers and a few French workers’ delegates to the London Inter- national Exhibition of 1862 became 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, “ with- out distinction of creed, sex, nationality, race, or color,” to proclaim that “ the emancipation of the workers must b6 their own work,” and to throw the weight of a strong, united, international organization into the evolution of man- kind, — 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 French 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 inter- national support, carried away the most indifferent of the workers. The movement spread like wildfire in France, Italy, and Spain, bringing to the front a great number of intelligent, active, and devoted workers, and attracting to it a few 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 272 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST 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 un- doubtedly accelerating human progress; but the crushing victory of the Germans brought about abnormal conditions; it stopped for a quarter of a century the normal development of France, and threw all Europe into the period of militarism in which we are living at the present time. All sorts of partial solutions of the great social question had currency at that time among the workers : cooperation, productive associations supported by the state, people’s banks, gratuitous credit, and so on. Each of these solu- tions was brought before the “ sections ” of the association, and then before the local, regional, national, and interna- tional 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 re- ports of the different congresses of the International Asso- ciation. 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 indus- trial centres of Switzerland numerous and animated sec- THE INTERNATIONAL 273 tions 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 fac- tories, and the near end of the capitalist system was pro- claimed. Local congresses were held in various parts of the country, and at each of these gatherings the most ardu- ous 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 preju- dices which had hitherto existed in Switzerland between the privileged trades (the watchmakers and the jewelers) and the rougher trades (weavers, and so on), and which had prevented joint action in labor 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 come into the world penniless, and are doomed to re- main producers of wealth for the favored few. Italy, especially middle and northern Italy, was honey- combed 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, Valen- cia, and Andalusia ; they were supported by, and united with, the powerful labor unions of Barcelona, which had already introduced the eight hours’ day in the building trades. The International had no less than eighty thou- sand regularly paying Spanish members; it embodied all 274 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST the active and thinking elements of the population ; and by its distinct refusal to meddle with the political intriguel during 1871-72 it had drawn to itself in a very high de- gree 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 state- ments 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 always conservative trade 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 founda- tions 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), every one 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 Zurich, I joined one of the local sec- tions 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 Zurich, brought me large num- bers of books and collections of newspapers for the last two years. I spent days and nights in reading, and received a SOCIALISTIC LITERATURE 275 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 reli- gious 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 con- tain the theories or the scientific arguments in favor of socialist aspirations, but they give no idea how the workers accept socialist ideals, and how the latter could be put 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 impractica- bility 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 Associa- tion and by meeting the workers in their evory-day life. ] 276 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST decided, accordingly, to spend a couple of months in such a life. My Russian friends encouraged me, and after a few days’ stay at Zurich 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 com- mittee 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 sympa- thetic 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 re- ceived 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, hut I preferred being with the workers themselves. Tak- ing 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 stone-mason 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. AN ELEVATING INFLUENCE 277 The workers had built all their hopes on the interna- tional 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, provided it would bring with it well- being and liberty to the downtrodden masses. One must have lived among the workers at that time to realize the effect which the sudden growth of the associa- tion 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 money, even went hungry, 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, — nay, even to be present at the meetings and the manifestations. 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 smok- ing. “ 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 labor movements alive. No small amount of moral courage was required to join openly a section of the International Association, and to *78 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST 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 circum- stances, 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 had to be disbursed every week. Frequent attend- ance 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 despairingly few were those who volunteered to aid them. I saw how much the toiling masses needed to be helped by men pos- sessed of education and leisure, in their endeavors to spread and to develop the organization ; but few 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. Stepniak 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 edu- cated men who hesitate to put their education, their know- ledge, 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 servi- tude, 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 ? ” POLITICAL WIRE-PULLING 279 Gradually, however, some doubts began to creep into my mind as to the soundness of the agitation which was car- ried 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 labor 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 labor 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 Geneve.” 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 meet- ing. 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 ex- pressed in it against the inoffensive suggestion that the workers were going to strike. “ Why should this sugges- tion be described as a calumny ? ” I asked myself. “ Is it then a crime to strike ? ” Ootin concluded a hurried speech with the words, “ If you agree, citizens, to this resolution, 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 280 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST 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 foi his behavior. “ 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 under- stand 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 Bakunists ; the name “ anarchist ” was not much in use then. Ootin gave me at once a word of introduction to another Russian, Nicholas Joukdvsky, 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. I went first to Neuchatel, and then spent a week or so among the watchmakers in the Jura Mountains. I thus made my first acquaintance with that famous Jura Federa- tion which for the next few years played 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 workingmen’s movement, the workers understanding it as such 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 sec- tion 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 na- tional 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 incon- venience. The general council was not satisfied with play- 282 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST ing 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 mem- bers. 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 di- recting the insurrection from London. It required daily reports about the events, gave orders, favored 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 evident when, at a secret conference held in 1871, the general council, sup- ported by a few delegates, decided to direct the forces of the association toward electoral agitation. It set people thinking about the evils of any government, however demo- cratic its origin. This was the first spark of anarchism. The Jura Federation became the centre of opposition to 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 — one dollar and sixty cents — for sixteen pages ! When I came to Neuchatel, he told me that unfortu- nately he could not give 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 FRIENDS AT NEUCHATEL 283 addition to his usual duties of proof-reader and co-editor, he had to write the addresses of a thousand persons to whom the first three numbers were to be sent, and to put on the wrappers himself. I offered to aid him in writing the addresses, but that was not practicable because they were either kept in mem* ory, or written on scraps of paper in an unreadable hand. “ Well, then,” said I, “ I will come in the afternoon to the office and put on 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 a standing friend- ship. We spent all the afternoon in the office, he writ- ing the addresses, I fastening the wrappers, and a French communard, who was a compositor, chatting with us all the while as he rapidly set up a novel, intermingling his con- versation with the sentences which he was putting 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 Gallifet 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 when Guillaume took off his working blouse, and we went out for a friendly chat for a couple of hours ; then he had to resume his work as editor of the “Bulletin” of the Jura Federation. At Neuchatel 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 bookbinder Varlin and the carpenter Pindy, with whom he was associated in the International, had come to be widely known as one of 284 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST the leaders of the Association when it was prosecuted in 1869 by Napoleon III. All three had quite won the hearts of the Paris workers, and when the Commune insurrection broke out, they were elected members of the Council of the Commune, each receiving a large vote. Malon was also mayor of one of the Paris arrondissements. Now, in Switzerland, he earned his living as a basket-maker. He had rented for a few coppers a month a small open shed, out of town, on the slope of a hill, from which he enjoyed, while at work, an extensive view of the lake of Neuchatel. At night he wrote letters, a book on the Commune, short articles for the labor papers, and thus he became a writer. Every day I went to see him, and to hear what the broad- faced, laborious, slightly poetical, quiet, and most good- hearted communard had to tell me about the insurrec- tion in which he took a prominent part, and which he had just described in a book, “ The Third Defeat of the French Proletariat.” One morning, as I had climbed the hill and reached hia shed, he met me, quite radiant, with the words : “ Do 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 the 25th or 26th of May at the Tuileries, and he was supposed to be dead, while in reality he had remained in concealment in 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 deaths of Varlin — the bookbinder, whom the Paris workers worshiped — and old Delecluze, who did not want to survive that new defeat, and many others ; and he related the horrors which he had witnessed during that carnival of blood with which the wealthy classes REFUGEES OF THE COMMUNE 285 of Paris celebrated their return to the capital, and then the spirit of retaliation -which took hold of a crowd of people, 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 about 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 an impulse of pity, let the boy go, probably hoping that he would never return. But a quarter of an hour later the boy came 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 ” correspond- ents, written from Paris during the last days of May, 1871, relating the horrors committed by the Versailles army, under Gallifet, with a few quotations from the Paris “ Figaro,” im- bued with a bloodthirsty spirit toward the insurgents. I was seized with a profound despair of mankind as I read these pages, and I should have retained that despair, had I not seen afterward, 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 directed toward the future, and that readiness to forget the nightmare of the past, which struck one in Malon, and, in fact, in nearly all the refugees of the Commune whom I met at Geneva, — and which I still see in Louise Michel, Lefran<;ais, Elisde Reclus, and other friends. From Neuchatel I went to Sonvilliers. In a little valley in the Jura hills there is a succession of small towns and 286 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST 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 work- shops. In one of them I found another leader, Adhemar Schwitzguebel, 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, govern- ment 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 neighboring towns and villages, — some of them as far as seven miles distant, — to join 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 the 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 com- plex social questions, which I noticed amongst these work- ers, especially the middle-aged ones, deeply impressed me ; AMONG THE WATCHMAKERS 287 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-govern- ment 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 ab- stractions for a long time. The theoretical aspects of anarchism, as they were then beginning to be expressed in the Jura Federation, especially by Bakunin ; 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 far 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 Yerviers, only strengthened my views. These clothiers were one of the most sympathetic populations that I have ever met with in Western Europe. X Bakunin was at that time at Locarno. I did not st, him, and now regret it very much, because he was dear" when I returned four years later to Switzerland. It wa. he who had helped the Jura friends to clear up their ideas and to formulate their aspirations ; he who had in- spired them with his powerful, burning, irresistible revo- lutionary 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 also to his new friends about the historical necessity of a new move in the direction of anarchy ; he wrote for that paper a series of profound and brilliant articles on the historical progress of mankind to- wards freedom ; he infused enthusiasm into his new friends, and he created that centre of propaganda, from which an- archism spread later on to other parts of Europe. After he had moved to Locarno, — 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 inde- pendently by the Jurassians themselves. The name of “ Michel ” often recurred in their conversations, — not, however, as that of an absent chief whose opinions were law, but as that of a personal friend of whom every one spoke with love, in a spirit of comradeship. What struck me most was that Bakunin’s influence was felt much less as the influence of an intellectual authority than as the influence of a moral personality. In conversations about INFLUENCE OF BAKUNIN 289 anarchism, or about the attitude of the federation, I never heard it said, “ Bakunin says so,” or “Bakunin thinks so,” as if it settled the question. His writings and his sayings were not regarded as laws, — as is unfortunately often the case in political parties. In all such matters, in which intellect is the supreme judge, every one in discussion used his own arguments. Their general drift and tenor might have been suggested by Bakunin, or Bakunin might have borrowed them from his J ura friends ; at any rate, in each individ- ual the arguments retained their own individual character. I only once heard Bakunin’s name invoked as an authority in itself, and that impressed me so deeply that I even now remember the spot where the conversation took place and all the surroundings. Some young men were indulging in talk that was not very respectful toward the other sex, when one of the women who were present put a sudden stop to it by exclaiming : “ Pity that Michel is not here : he would 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 the purest views of life, continued to inspire them. I returned from this journey with distinct sociological ideas 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 tnany hours of my nights. I clearly saw that the immense change which would deliver everything that is necessary for life and production into the hands of society — be it the Folk State of the social democrats or the unions of freely associated groups, which the anarchists advocate — would imply a revolution far more profound than any of the re- volutions which history had on record. Moreover, in such 290 MEMOIRS OF A. REVOLUTIONIST 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 middle classes, which are far more powerful, intellectually and physically, and have at their service all the potent ma- chinery of the modern state. However, I soon noticed that no revolution, whether peaceful or violent, had ever taken place without the new ideals having deeply penetrated into the very class whose economical and political privileges were to be assailed. I had witnessed the abolition of serf- dom in Russia, and I knew that if a consciousness of the injustice of their privileges had not spread widely within the serf-owners’ class itself (as a consequence of the pre- vious evolution and revolutions accomplished in Western Europe), the emancipation of the serfs would never have been accomplished as easily as it was accomplisned in 1861 . And I saw that the idea of emancipating 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 idja of right in defending their present privileges, — ques- tions as to the opportuneness of such a change having al- ready taken its place. They did not deny the desirability of some such change, they 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 capi- talists actuated by mere considerations of self-interest man- age it at the present time. Besides, I began gradually to understand that revolu- tions — that is, periods of accelerated rapid evolution and rapid changes — are as much in the nature of human so- ciety as the slow evolution which incessantly goes on now THE PARIS COMMUNE 291 among the civilized races of mankind. And each time that such a period of accelerated evolution and reconstruction on a grand scale begins, civil war is liable to break out on a small or large scale. The question is, then, not so much how to avoid revolutions, as how to attain the greatest re- sults with the most limited amount of civil war, the smallest 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 that case they will be sure to attach to their cause the best and the freshest in- tellectual forces of the privileged class. The Commune of Paris was a terrible example of an outbreak with insufficiently determined 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 cov- ered the National Bank with their bodies, and notwith- standing the crisis which had paralyzed industry and the consequent absence of earnings 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 communalistic 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 them just the same revenge as if they had made the assault in reality. Nearly thirty thousand of them were slaughtered, as is known, — not in battle, but after they had lost the battle. If they had taken steps towards the socialization of property, the revenge could not have been more terrible. 292 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST If, then, — my conclusion was, — there are periods m human development when a conflict is unavoidable, and civil war breaks out quite independently of the will of par- ticular 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 on larger issues, will purify the social atmosphere itself, and the numbers of victims on both sides will cer- tainly be much smaller than if the fight is over 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 via Vienna and Warsaw. Thousands of Jews live by smuggling on the Polish from tier, 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 the 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 tradi- tional 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 J ew ; and now there were 294 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST 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 gayly dressed dancers, but which now fulfilled the more prosaic function of giving food and shelter to a few occasional travelers. 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, Ger- man, 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 SMUGGLING BOOKS INTO RUSSIA 295 trifle, to oblige the gentleman,” jovially remarked the com. missionnaire, 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. u 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. . . . Five dollars will do for us, and then one dollar 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 revolution- ists and refugees crossed the frontier in entering or leaving Russia, there was not a case in which the smugglers be- trayed any one, or took advantage of 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 high- ness 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. Peters* burg, to show my trophies to my brother. xn A formidable movement was developing in the mean- time 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 daugh- ters, 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 com- mander and subordinate, military chief and soldier, employer and employee, bore the stamp of it. Quite a world of cus- toms and manners of thinking, of prejudices and moral cowardice, of habits bred by a lazy existence, had grown up. 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 vig- orous social movement, which would attack the very roots of the evil, could reform the habits and customs of every- day life ; and in Russia this movement — this revolt of the individual — took a far more powerful character, and be- came far more sweeping in its criticisms, than anywhere in Western Europe or America. “Nihilism” was the name that Turgueneff gave it in his epoch-making novel, “Fathers and Sons.” The movement is misunderstood in Western Europe, la NIHILISM 297 the press, for example, nihilism is continually 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 con- ditions of the political struggle at a given historical mo- ment. 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 nihil- ism, 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 Rus- sians 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 | 298 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST 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 repeat- edly throw aside as useless ballast. The life of civilized people is full of little conventional lies. Persons who hate 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 chil- dren, 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. Contin- ual talk about beauty, the ideal, art for art’s sake, aesthetics, and the like, so willingly indulged in, — while every object of art was bought with money exacted from starving peas- ants or from underpaid workers, and the so-called “ wor- ship of the beautiful ” was but a mask to cover the most commonplace dissoluteness, — inspired him with disgust, and the criticisms of art which Tolstdy, one of the greatest artists of the century, has now so powerfully formulated, the nihilist expressed in the sweeping assertion, “ A pair of hoots is more important than all your Madonnas and all your refined talk about Shakespeare.” Marriage without love, and familiarity without friendship, were equally repudiated. The nihilist girl, compelled by her parents to he a doll in a Doll’s House, and to marry for property’s sake, preferred to abandon her house and hel silk dresses. She put on a black woolen dress of the plainest SINCERITY OF THE NIHILISTS 299 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 those who were legally considered husband and wife, preferred to break a bond which retained none of its essential features. Accordingly she often went with her children to face poverty, preferring loneliness and misery to a life which, under conventional con- ditions, would have given a perpetual lie to her best self. The nihilist carried his love of sincerity even into the minutest details of every-day life. He discarded the con- ventional forms of society talk, and expressed his opinions in a blunt and terse way, even with a certain affectation of outward roughness. In Irkutsk we used to meet once a week in a club and have some dancing. I was for a time a regular visitor at these soirees, but afterwards, having to work, I abandoned them. One night, when I had not made my appearance for several weeks, a young friend of mine was asked by one of the ladies why I did not appear any more at their gath- erings. “ He takes a ride now when he wants exercise,” was the rather rough reply of my friend. “ But he might come and 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 non- sense.” “ But he sees Miss So-and-So occasionally,” 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 its effect, for most of the Irkutsk girls soon began to besiege my brother, my friend, and myself with questions as to what we should advise them to read or to study. 300 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST With the same frankness the nihilist spoke to his ac- quaintances, 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 com- miserated at their ease as they chatted together in richly decorated rooms ; and with the same frankness a nihilist would declare to a high functionary that the latter cared not a straw for the welfare of those whom he ruled, but was simply a thief, and so on. 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 from 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 did not, he would walk every night to the far end of a large city to help her. Two great Russian novelists, Turgu^neff and Goncharoff, have tried to represent this new type in their novels. Gon- charbff, in “ Precipice,” taking a real but unrepresentative individual of this class, made a caricature of nihilism. Tur- gueneff 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, Baza- roff, did not satisfy us. We found him too harsh, especially ENTHUSIASM IN THE WORK 301 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 Turgueneff’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 Cherny shevsky, 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 Nekrasoff 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 labor, whether the laborers 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 KarakozofF and his friends, that these young men, owners of considerable for- tunes, used to live three or four in the same room, never spending more than five dollars apiece a month for all their needs, and giving at the same time their fortunes for start- ing cooperative associations, cooperative 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 nardd ! ” (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 lives according to their own ideals. Young men left the military service the counter, the shop, and flocked to the university town Girls, bred in the most aristocratic families, rushed pen 302 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST less to St. Petersburg, Moscow, and Ki'eff, 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. Peters- burg, small groups were formed for self-improvement and self-education ; the works of the philosophers, the writings of the economists, the historical 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’ helpers, teachers, village scribes, even as agricultural laborers, blacksmiths, woodcutters, and so on, and tried to live there in close contact with the peasants. Girls passed teachers’ examinations, learned mid- wifery or nursing, and went by the hundred into the vil- lages, devoting themselves entirely to the poorest part of the population. These people went without any ideal of social recon- struction in their mind, or any thought of revolution. They simply wanted to teach the mass of the peasants to read, to instruct them in other things, to give them medical help, and in any way to aid in raising them from their darkness and misery, and to learn at the same time what were their popular ideals of a better social life. When I returned from Switzerland, I found this move- ent in full swing. xm I hastened to share with my friends my impression# 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 he 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 admit- tance to the university. Consequently, the majority of m^ 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 Dmitri Kelnitz. 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 ; J. 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 transla 304 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST tion. 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 West- ern 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 amongst the youth as “ the Circle of Tchaykovsky.” 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 mem- bers,” 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 Tchaykovsky, and a few other members of this circle. Tchaykovsky 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 Pe- rovskaya, — who had united for purposes of self-education and self-improvement. Tchaykovsky was of their number. In 1869 Nechaieff had tried to start a secret revolution- ary organization among the youth imbued with the before- mentioned desire of working among the people, and to secure THE CIRCLE OF TCHAYKOVSKY 305 this end he resorted to the ways of old conspirators, with- out 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 Nechaieff. The few friends had judged, quite correctly, that a morally developed individuality must be the founda- tion 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 Tchaykdvsky, gradually widening its programme, spread so extensively in Russia, achieved such important results, and later on, when the ferocious prosecu- tions 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 petri- fied, 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 labor- ing 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 labor movement, the circle became more and more a centre of 306 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST socialistic propaganda among the educated youth, and a natural intermediary between members 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 pro- vinces. 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 descrip- tion 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 sar- castic 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 to make a show of numbers, and had no tendency to concen- trate in its hands all the activity that was going on amongst 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 Tchaykdvsky. I still feel proud of having been received into that family. xrv When I joined the Circle of Tchaykdvsky, I found its members hotly discussing the direction to be given to their activity. Some were in favor of continuing to carry on rad- ical 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 laboring 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 pro- gramme prevailed over the first. If our youth had merely taken to socialism in the abstract, they might have felt satisfied with a simple declaration of socialist principles, including as a distant aim “ the com- munistic possession of the instruments of production,” — and in the meantime they might have carried on some sort of political agitation. Many middle-class socialist poli- ticians in Western Europe and America really take this course. But our youth had been drawn to socialism in quite another way. They were not theorists about social- ism, but had become socialists by living no better 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 Tolstdy urges should be done with regard to war, when he calls upon the people, instead of criticising war and continuing to wear the military uniform, to refuse, each one 308 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST for himself, to be a soldier and to bear arms. In this same way our Russian youth, each one for himself or her- self, refused to take personal advantage of the revenues of their fathers. It was, of course, necessary that they should identify themselves with the people. Thousands and thou- sands of young men and women had already left their houses, and now they tried 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 forced to carry on that propaganda among the masses of the peasants and of the workers in the towns. Various writers have tried to explain this movement “ to the people ” by influences from abroad: “ foreign agitators are everywhere,” was a favorite explanation. It is certainly true that our youth listened to the mighty voice of Bakunin, and that the agitation of the International Workingmen’s Association had a fascinating effect upon us. But the movement had a far deeper origin : it began before “ foreign agitators ” had spoken to the Rus- sian youth, and even before the International Association had been founded. It was beginning in the groups of Karakozoff in 1866 ; Turgueneflf saw it coming, and already in 1859 faintly indicated it. I did my best to promote that movement in the Circle of Tchaykdvsky ; hut 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 unavoid- able and irremediable ruin by foolish taxation, and by still more foolish selling off of their cattle to cover the arrears of taxes. We “ visionaries ” saw coming that complete ruin NEED OF POLITICAL AGITATION 309 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 con- tinually of friends whose houses were raided at night by the police, who disappeared in prisons, and who — we ascer- tained 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 Katkoff 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 sim- plicity and democracy, were denounced as tokens of “ po- litical 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 ence 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 310 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST 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 undeter- mined term,” as they used to say in their bureaucratic slang. Even at the time when the Circle of Tchaykovsky did nothing but distribute books, all of which had been printed with the censor’s approval, Tchaykovsky 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 favorite dream of Alexander IL 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 pro- vincial Zemstvos (district and county councils). They regarded work in this direction as a high mission, and prepared themselves for it by serious studies of the eco- nomical conditions of Central Russia. Many young people therished for a time the same hopes ; but all these hopes vanished at the first contact with the actual government machinery. OFFICIAL REFORMS USELESS 311 Having granted a very limited form of self-government to certain provinces of Russia, the government immediately directed all its efforts to reducing that reform to nothing by depriving 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, with hostility, — and denounced by the “ Moscow Gazette ” as “separatism,” as the creation of “a state within the state,” as rebellion against autocracy. If any one were to tell the true history, for example, of the teachers’ college of Tver, or of any similar undertaking of a Zemstvo 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 espe- cially 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 Zemstvos were de- prived 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 concern- ing such rights as belonged to the Zemstvos by law. “ The elected members of the provincial councils must be simple ministerial functionaries, and obey the minister of the in- terior : ” such was the theory of the St. Petersburg govern- ment. As to the less prominent people, — teachers, doc- tors, 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 312 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST longer ago than last year, a lady whose husband is a rich landowner and occupies a prominent position in one of the Zemstvos, and who is herself interested in education, in- vited eight schoolmasters to her birthday party. “ Poor men,” she said to herself, “ they never have the opportunity of seeing any one but the peasants.” The day after the party, the village policeman called at the mansion and in- sisted 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 dis- missed 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 Tambdv estate, I thought very seriously for a time of settling on that estate, and devoting my energy to work in the local Zemstvo. Some peasants and the poorer priests of the neighborhood 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 experimen- tal farm, a cooperative enterprise, and, at the same time, also took upon myself the defense of that peasant from our PLANS FOR A CONSTITUTION 313 village who has lately been wronged, — would the authori- ties let me do it ? ” “ Never 1 ” was the unanimous reply. An old gray-haired priest, a man who was held in great esteem in our neighborhood, 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 he 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 Dukhobdrs, and such raids upon the peas- ant 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 con- tinually being raised in our discussions, I once proposed to our circle to take it up seriously, and to choose an appro- priate 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 con- stitution,” 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, Tchaykdv- sky, — 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 S14 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST 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 cer- tainly will come a time when all these people, feeling that they are compromised, will in their own interest take a de- cisive 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 discon- tented 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. Kinowing 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 per- sonal 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 some- body else to do the sort of work I had proposed to do in the higher circles at St. Petersburg. With some under- standing 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 PROTECTING THE TSAR 315 made in vain. At any rate, the underground work of the executive committee ought by all means to have been sup- ported 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 perse- cuted youth had not yet been brought to that high pitch which ended, six years later, in the struggle of the terror- ists 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 labor 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 Karakdzoff attempt on the Tsar’s life. “ Prepare in Russia a great socialist mass movement amongst the work- ers and the peasants,” was the watchword in those times. “ Don’t trouble about the Tsar and his counselors. If such a movement begins, if the peasants join in the mass move- ment to claim the land and to abolish the serfdom redemp- tion 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 hope- lessly doomed to sink deeper and deeper in reaction, and entertaining at the same time vague hopes as to the sup- posed “ liberalism ” of the heir apparent, — all young heirs to thrones are supposed to be liberal, — persistently reverted to the idea that the example of Karakdzoff ought to be 316 MEMOIRS OP A REVOLUTIONIST followed. The organized circles, however, strenuously op- posed such an idea, and urged their comrades not to resort to that course of action. I may now divulge the following fact which has never before been made public. 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 Tchaykbvsky circle learned of his plan, they not only applied all the weight of their argu- ments 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 Tchay- kdvsky, before I was arrested, left a deep impression upon all my subsequent life and thought. During these 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 deli- cately 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 con- sidered myself bound to complete the report of niy 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 de- cision. It would not be fair, they said, to do otherwise. Consequently, I worked hard to finish my geographical and geological 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 Perdvskaya, 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 318 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST her home to join a high school, and with the three sisters Kormloff — daughters of a rich manufacturer — she had founded that little circle of self-education which later on be- came 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 Neva, 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 favorite, and every one of us, on entering the house, had a specially friendly smile for her, — even when she, making a point of honor of keeping the house rela- tively clean, quarreled 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 dis- satisfied 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 under- stood all that is human. On one point only she was in- exorable. “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, are engraved forever in my memory. Perovskaya 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 th< 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 SOME NOBLE WOMEN 319 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. Perovskaya’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, Kupreyanofif and I went to ,'arvara B., to whom we had to make an urgent communi- cation. 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 hof resolute she was, and the idea came to us to make one Oi. those stupid jokes which men sometimes think funny. “ B.,” I said, “ we came to fetch you : we are going to try a rather mad attempt to liberate our friends from the for- tress.” She asked not one question. She quietly laid down her pen, rose from the 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 favorite in our circle was Serghei Krav- chinsky, who became so well known, both in England and in the United States, under the name of Stepniak. He was often called “ the Baby,” so unconcerned was he about his own security ; but this 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. 320 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST He soon became well known for his propaganda in the circles of workers, under his real Christian name of Serghdi, 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 sus- picion and have been arrested as a common thief.” But I wish that every one 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 Kormloffs entered with a book in her band, 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. Serghei 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 Serghei’s translation and his capacity of working rapidly had already influenced me in his favor. 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 STEPNIAK 321 truthfulness, and for his courage and tenacity. He had read and thought a great deal, and upon the revolutionary character of the struggle which he had undertaken, it ap- peared 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 humor, how he once worked among the peas- ants in the country. “ One day,” he said, “ I was walking along the road with a comrade, when we were overtaken bp 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 trot 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 Serghei stayed in Kazan, 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 ordi- nary letter about all sorts of things, but in this letter it is only certain words — let us say every fifth word — which has a sense. 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 is worse ; it was late to perform 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. Serghei, from 322 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST 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 Serghei, who had just escaped from Tver. He was strongly built, and he and another ex- officer, Eogachoff, endowed with equal physical force, went traveling 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 Serghei, who knew the Hew 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 1 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 soon come ; you Herods will not rule long now.” But the fame of the sawyers reached the ears FRIENDLINESS OF THE PEASANTS 323 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 honor 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. “ Hap- pily,” Serghei said, “ they passed round the beer in such large wooden bowls 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 be- fore the police officer, so they decided to stay in the village till morning. Serghei 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 Serghei, “ When I go to shut the gate, I will leave it unbolted.” Serghei 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 morn- ing were twenty miles away from the village, at a small railway station, where they took the first train, and went to Moscow. Serghffi remained there, and later, when all of us at St. Petersburg had been arrested, the Moscow circle, under his and Voinaralsky’s inspiration, became the main centre of the agitation. Here and there, small groups of propagandists had set- tled in towns and villages in various capacities. Black- smiths’ shops and small farms had been started, and young 324 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST 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 Zurich 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 sympa- thizers 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. Serghei wrote two such pamphlets, one in the Lamennais style and another containing an ex- position 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 dis- tributed them amongst the peasants and the workers. All this required a vast organization as well as much traveling about, and a colossal correspondence, particularly for pro- tecting 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 discuss- ing all details, the women, who did not trust to our accuracy in the cipher correspondence, spent all the night in coven ing sheets of paper with cabalistic figures and fractions. FRUITFUL LABORS 325 The utmost cordiality always prevailed at our meetings. Chairmen and all sorts of formalism are so utterly repug- nant 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 formali- ties. 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 affecta- tion were quite sufficient. If any one 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. Serdukoff, 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, which 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 stu- dents. When Kelnitz, Serghei, and I joined the circle, we frequently visited their group, and gave them informal lectures upon all sorts of things. Our hopes, however, that 826 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST these young men would grow into ardent propagandists amidst less privileged classes of workers were not fully realized. In a free country they would have been the habitual speakers at public meetings ; but, like the privi- leged 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 thou- sands 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 artels, 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 artels, of stone-masons, carpenters, and the like. In some of these artels Sergh^i, Kelnitz, and two more of our friends were quite at home, and spent whole nights talking about socialism. Besides, we had in different parts of St. Peters- burg 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. ZEALOUS AGITATION 327 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 Eussia, 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 lodg- ing in a remote suburb, exchanged my fine clothes for a cotton shirt, peasant top-boots, and a sheepskin, and, jok- ing with peasants on the way, went to meet my worker friends in some slum. I told them what I had seen of the labor movement abroad. They listened eagerly ; they lost not a word of what was said ; and then came the question, “ What can we do in Eussia ? ” “ Agitate, organize,” was our reply ; “ there is no royal road ; ” and we read them a popular story of the French Eevolution, an adaptation of Erckmann-Chatrian’s admirable “ Histoire d’un Paysan.” Every one admired M. Chovel, who went as a propagan- dist through the villages, distributing prohibited books, and all 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 Eussia at liberty, is especially memorable to me. The previous evening I had 328 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST 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 thrill- ing speeches one note sounded : 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 intro- duced me : “ Borodin, a friend.” “ Tell us, Borodin,” he said, “ what you have seen abroad.” And I spoke of the labor movement in Western Europe, its struggles, its diffi- culties, 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 pro- paganda. 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 lis- tened 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 COURAGE OF THE WORKERS 829 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 Duking 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 some one, 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 Perdvskaya and three other friends, and all our relations with the workers in this suburb had to be suspended. We founded a new settle- ment, further away from the town, but it had soon to be abandoned. The police became very vigilant, and the ap- pearance of a student in the workmen’s quarters was no- ticed at once ; spies circulated among the workers, who were watched closely. Dmitri Kelnitz, Serghei, and my- self, in our sheepskins and with our peasant looks, passed, unnoticed, and continued to visit the haunted ground. But Dmitri and Serghei, 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 dur- ing a nocturnal raid at a friend’s lodgings, they would havo been arrested at once. There were periods when Dmitr had to hunt every day for a place where he could spend the night in relative safety. “ Can I spend 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 his neighborhood.” “ Then go to M. ; he is a great friend of mine and above VIGILANCE OF THE POLICE m suspicion. But it is far from here, and you must t„Ke a cab. Here is the money.” But on principle Dmitri 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 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. Tchaykdvsky was in the south, and we forced Dmftri and Serghei to leave St. Petersburg, — actually forced them, imperiously ordering them to leave. Only five or six of us remained to transact all tho 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 Nfzovkin, an ex-student, who unfortunately had their con- fidence, and, we were sure, would soon try to clear himself by telling all he knew about us. Besides Dmitri and Serghei he knew Serdukdff, 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 Borodin — were arrested. These two would surely set the police at once upon the track of Borodin, the man dressed as a peasant, who spoke at the weavers’ meetings. Within 832 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST a week’s time all the members of our circle, excepting Ser« dukoff and myself, were arrested. There was nothing left us hut to fly from St. Peters- burg : 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 ; and finally, our workers’ groups at St. Petersburg and our four different centres for propa- ganda amongst workers of the capital, — how could we abandon all these without having found men to maintain our relations and correspondence ? Serdukoff and I de- cided 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 ad- dresses 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 smug- glers, and on 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 workers who had not yet been arrested. The thing to be done in such a case was to disappear from one’s apartments, and to reappear somewhere else under an assumed name. Serdukoff 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 cir- cumstance prevented me. I had just finished my report IN A DILEMMA 333 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 hap- pened 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 would 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 a specula- tion of too far-reaching 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 Tambdv estate, which was situated in absolutely treeless prairies. I noticed in my street — the fashionable Morskaya — 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, gentle- men, that all we have hitherto said about the action of float- ing ice had no foundation whatever in actual exploration.” And I was proposed at that meeting to be nominated presi- dent of the physical geography section, while I was asking myself whether I should not spend that very night in thr prison of the Third Section. MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST 331 It would have been best not to return at all to my apart- ment, but I was broken down with fatigue, after the exertion 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 any one, packed all my things, and pre- pared 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 Nevsky Prospekt. There was no pursuit at first, and I thought myself safe ; but pre- sently 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 some one 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. Borodin, Prince Kropotkin, I arrest you ! ” He made a signal to the policemen, 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 police- men were already close by r , — 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. HOW I WAS ARRESTED 335 It was now evident that the police had hesitated for ten days to arrest me, because they were not sure that Borodin 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, Voinaralsky, and another from Dmitri addressed to our friend Polakoff. The former announced the estab- lishment 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 representativ ) of the judicial authorities, the procureur or public prose- cutor. This functionary plays the part of a straw mar, 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 any one 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 336 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST I. in the Secret Department, where the adversaries of the founder of the Russian military empire were subject 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 Rus- sian 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 cor- respond 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 im- prisoned as long as they pleased, and transported hundreds to Northeast 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. EXAMINATION BY THE PROCUREUB 337 It was four o’clock in the morning when my examination began. “ You are accused,” I was solemnly told, “ of hav- ing belonged to a secret society which has for its object the overthrow of the existing form of government, and of con- spiracy 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 Nikolai Tcliaykdvsky ? ” “ 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. Polakdff, whom you spoke about awhile ago ? ” “ The moment you ask me such a question, don’t hesi- tate : 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 an- swered ‘ 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 ques- tions 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 838 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST 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 newcomer, 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 Polakoff, to whom the letter of Dmitri was addressed. Polakdff was a young student, a very gifted zoologist and botanist, with whom I had made my Vitim expedition in Siberia. He was born of a poor Cossack family on the frontier of Mongolia, and, after having sur- mounted all sorts of difficulties, he had come to St. Peters- burg, entered the university, where he had won the reputa- tion 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 honor,” I said, “ that Polakdff has never taken part in any political affair. To-morrow he has to pass an examina- tion, and you will spoil forever the scientific career of a A LYING OFFICIAL 339 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 Bussian 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 Y. 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 pro- cureur said, “ was found at Mr. Polakoff s ; and now, prince, his fate is in your hands. If you tell me who V. E. is, Mr. Polakdff 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 ex- claimed 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 were written with 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 Polakoff.” He hesitated for some time, but then, regaining his auda- city, he said, “Polakoff has admitted that this letter of yours was written to him.” Now I knew he was lying. Polakoff would have admitted 840 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST everything concerning himself ; but he would have preferred to be marched to Siberia rather than to involve another per- son. 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 PolakofFs 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 state- ment did not come, and never came. Of course there was no such statement. I met Polakdff 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 he : he denied having any know- ledge of the letter or of the person the letters V. E. repre- sented. 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. I was not taken back to my cell, but half an hour later the procureur came in, accompanied by a gendarme officer. “ Our examination,” he announced to me, “ is now termi- nated ; you will be removed to another place.” Later on, each time I saw him I teased him with the question : “ And what about Polakdffs statement ? ” A four-wheeled cab stood at the gate. I was asked to enter it, and a stout gendarme officer, of Circassian 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 COMMITTED TO PRISON 341 frequented thoroughfares. “ Are we going to the Litdv- skiy 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 to- ward 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 on the way 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 gray 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 social- ists in Russia, and they are many, very many ; in two years you will not have done.” I did not then realize how pro- phetic my remark was. The carriage stopped at the door of the military comman- der of the fortress, and we entered his reception hall. Gen- eral Korsdkoff, a thin old man, came in, with a peevish expression on his face. The officer spoke to him in a sub- dued voice, and the old man answered, “ All right,” look- ing 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 role ; but he seemed to add, “ I am a soldier, and 842 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST 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 pas- sages 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 woolen 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 Kors&koff. 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 Tarakanova was kept in a cell which filled with water during an inundation, — the rats climbing upon her to save themselves from drown- ing; 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 Nevd 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 Bas- tille. Here were imprisoned the poets Ryl^eff and Shev- chenko, Dostoevsky, Bakiinin, Chernyshevsky, Pisareff, and so many others of our best contemporary writers. Here Karakdzoff was tortured and hanged. Here, somewhere in the Alexis ravelin, is still kept Nech&ieff, who was given up to Russia by Switzerland as a 344 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST common-law criminal, but is treated as a dangerous political prisoner, and will never again see the light. In the same ravelin are also two or three men whom, rumor says, Alex- ander II., because of what they knew, and others must not know, about some palace mystery, ordered imprisoned for /ife. One of them, adorned with a long gray 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 Bakunin, who, though he had been shut up in an Austrian fortress, after 1848, for two years, chained to the wall, and then handed over to Nicholas I., who kept him in the fortress for six years longer, yet came out, when the Iron Tsar’s death released him, fresher and fuller of vigor 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 band. 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 gray 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 southwestern corner of the fortress, in a bas- tion overlooking the Neva. 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 w r hich rises a little higher than the walls of the bastion, and is meant to contain MY PRISON CELL 345 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 sum- mer they were 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 yel- low 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 pas- sage 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 any sound from the Neva 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, softly at first, and louder and louder afterwards. “ Have I then to say farewell to love forever ? ” I caught myself singing from my favorite opera, Glinka’s “ Ruslan and Ludmila.” . . . “ Sir, do not sing, please,” a bass voice said through th« food-window in my door. “ I will sing.” 846 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST “ You must 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 com. mander of the fortress, and so on. “ But my throat will become blocked and my lungs be- come useless if I do not speak and cannot sing,” I tried to argue. “ Better try to sing in a lower tone, more or less to your- self,” 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, hut it wa9 of no avail. “ The main thing,” I said to myself, “ is to preserve my physical vigor. 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, practice gymnastics, and not let myself he broken down by my surroundings. Ten steps from one comer to the other is already something. If I repeat them one hun- dred 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 practice 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 SUFFERING FROM FORCED INACTIVITY 347 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 Eugene Sue’s “ Mysteres du Peuple.” I made up the plot, the descriptions, the dia- logues, and tried to commit the whole to memory from the beginning to the end. One can easily imagine how exhaust- ing 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 com- pany 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 Zurich 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 Swit- zerland, and decided to settle there. After he had lost his two children — one from cholera in a few hours, and the 348 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST other 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 repre- sentative body, like the National Assembly of Prance in 1789. As for the socialist agitation, he knew it only by means of public meetings and public speeches, — 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 Bollin. In Switzerland he settled at Zurich, and his sympathies went with the moderate wing of the International. Social- ist 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 counterpart to the famous “ Tableau de la Nature ” of the Encyclopae- dists. He soon became a close personal friend of the old refugee Colonel P. L. Lavrdff, with whom he had very much in common in his Kantian philosophical views. When he learned about my arrest, Alexander immedi- ately 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 imprison- ment. 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 PERMITTED TO RESUME WORK 349 feeling frankly in their presence. As for me, the sight of him at St. Petersburg filled me with the most dismal ap- prehensions. 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 permission to resume 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 appli- cation. The Academy of Sciences was interested in the matter ; and finally, two or three months after my im- prisonment, 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. B So I could work 1 I could hardly express now the immensity of relief ] 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 only prisoner to whom writing ma- terials 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 on 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 pre- pared 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, includ- ing the whole of the Swedish Geological Survey publica- tions, a nearly complete collection of reports of all arctic travels, and whole sets of the Quarterly Journal of the BEADING AND WRITING IN PRISON 351 London Geological Society. My book grew in the for- tress to the size of two large volumes. The first of them was printed by my brother and Polakoff (in the Geographi- cal Society’s Memoirs) ; while the second, not quite finished, remained in the hands of the Third Section when I ran away. The manuscript was found only in 1895, and given to the Russian Geographical Society, by whom it was for- warded 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 pris- oners 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 rela- tives I was enabled to read almost every work and collec- tion 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 mediaeval republic of Pskov, — the best, per- haps, in Europe for the history of that type of mediaeval 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 rela- tives 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. Ill 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 then, scattered among thirty-six casemates, — all my arrested comrades being kept in the Litdvskiy Zamok 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 fur- tive 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 liv- ing 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.” Only the pigeons were not afraid to hold intercourse with me. Every morning and afternoon they came to my window to receive their food through the grating. 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 for- tress cathedral. They rang a “ Lord save me ” (“ Gospodi pomflui ” ) every quarter of an hour, — one, two, three, four times. Then, each hour, the big bell struck slowly, MORNING WALKS IN THE PRISON YARD 353 with long intervals between successive strokes. A lugu* brious 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 mid- night, the canticle, moreover, was followed by the discord- ant 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 sleep- less 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 vege- tative 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 obscured the sky. During these walks I occasionally saw the daughter of the governor, a girl of eighteen or nineteen, 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 along, with her eyes cast down, as if she felt ashamed of being the daughter of a jailer. Her younger brother, on the con- trary, a cadet whom I also saw once or twice in the yard, always looked straight in my face with such a frank ex- S54 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST pression of sympathy that I was struck with 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. The casemates are so damp that in order to drive away moisture they must be overheated, and I felt almost suffocated ; but when at last I obtained my 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 Helene, 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 ARREST OF MY BROTHER 353 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 Polakoff. 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 he wrong with my brother. If it were only illness, Polakoff 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 hut Alexander’s arrest. For me, an unmarried man, im- prisonment was only personal inconvenience ; but he was married, he passionately loved his wife, and they now had a hoy, 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. Lavrbff. 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 then being made 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 356 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST 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 no- thing, — 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 under- stand what you are doing. But you, sir,” he continued, turning towards 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 im- prisoned 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 con- sumption. The doctors said he had only a few days more to live. Alexander, who had never asked any favor 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 foi one hour, upon his word of honor 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, Minusinsk. He would travel in a cart between two gendarmes, and his wife might follow later, but could not travel with him. VINDICTIVENESS OF THE THIRD SECTION 357 (t 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 Sec- tion, 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 Helene, acting on her own initiative, wrote a petition to the Tsar. Our cousin Dmitri, governor-general of Kharkoff, aide-de-camp of the Emperor, and a favorite 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 Romanoffs was a family trait strongly developed in Alexander II. He wrote upon the petition, “ Pust posidit ” (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 forever 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, traveling through the towns and villages, incited the masses to revolution, almost openly distributing pamphlets, songs, and procla- mations. 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 arrest nor eyes enough to trace the steps of every propagandist. Yet not less than fifteen hun- dred 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 mi ne, I distinctly heard the light steps of heeled boots, and a few minutes later I caught fragments of a conver- sation. A feminine voice spoke from the cell, and a deep bass voice — evidently that of the sentry — grunted some- thing in reply. Then I recognized the sound of the colonel’s spurs, his rapid steps, his swearing at the sentry, and the CONVERSING THROUGH PRISON WALLS 359 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 neighbor, 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 suc- cession of thirty-three knocks. Over and over again these knocks were repeated in the same succession, until the neighbor 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 Serdukdff, with whom I could soon talk about every- thing, especially when we used our cipher. But intercourse with men brought its sufferings as well as its joys. Under- neath me was lodged a peasant, whom Serdukoff 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 360 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST 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 neighbor 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 Serdukdff. When, after four years of im- prisonment, 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 IL, who was inspect- ing 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, Kropdtkin.” He knew me personally, and spoke in a familiar, good-natured tone, as to an old acquaintance. “ How is it possible, Kropdtkin, 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. u 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 AN UNEXPECTED VISIT 361 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 to add.” “ But understand, Kropdtkin, please,” he said then, in the most familiar tone, “ that I don’t speak to you as an examin- ing 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 pro- spect ? 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 talks 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.” 862 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST He asked me some other similar questions, and as h* spoke I distinctly saw what he was driving at. He was trying to obtain avowals, and my imagination vividly pic- tured 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 some- thing 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 ex- amining 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 find biographical dictionaries. V Two years had passed. Several of my comrades ha — 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. TURGUENEFF 409 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 concep- tions and the views which we Russians hold on the same subjects, — that there are 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 ad- vanced opinions. The subject of the play was this : A woman had separated from her husband. She had loved again, and now lived 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 time of the separation ; now they had grown, and throughout all these years they had supposed the man to be 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 and approaches her supposed father, and he is going to kiss her, when the boy, who has learned in some way the true state of affairs, rushes forward and shouts, ‘ Don’t dare ! : (N’osez pas !) “ This exclamation brought down the house. There was 410 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST 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 whipped for what he has said.’ ... It was of no use. I discussed for hours with them afterwards; none of them could under- stand me ! ” I was, of course, fully in accordance with Turgu4nefFs point of view. I remarked, however, that his acquaint- ances were chiefly amongst the middle classes. There, the difference between nation and nation is immense indeed. But my acquaintances were exclusively amongst the work- ers, and there is an immense resemblance between the workers, and especially amongst the peasants, of all nations. <- ■> In so saying, I was quite wrong, however. After I had had the opportunity of making a closer acquaintance with French workers, I often thought of the truth of Turgud- neff’s remark. There is a real chasm indeed between Russian conceptions of marriage relations and those which prevail in France, amongst the workers as well as in the middle classes ; and in many other things there is a similar difference between the Russian point of view and that of other nations. It was said somewhere, after TurgudnefFs death, that he had intended to write a novel upon this subject. If he had begun it, the above-mentioned scene must be in his manu- script. What a pity that he did not write it ! He, a thorough “ Occidental ” in his ways of thinking, could have said very deep things upon a subject which must have so profoundly affected him personally throughout his life. Of all novel-writers of our century, Turgueneflf has cer- tainly attained the greatest perfection as an artist, and his prose sounds to the Russian ear like music, — music as deep TURGUENEFF 411 as that of Beethoven. His principal novels — the series of “ Dmitri B,udin,” “A Nobleman’s Retreat,” “ On the Eve,” “ Fathers and Sons,” “ Smoke,” and “ Virgin Soil ” — re- present the leading “ history-making ” types of the edu- cated classes of Russia, which evolved in rapid succession after 1848 ; all sketched with a fullness 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 Bazaroff was by no means a true representation of his class ; many described him even as a caricature of nihilism. This misunderstanding deeply affected Turgue- neff, 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 Lavroff that I was an enthusiastic admirer of his writings ; and one day, as we were returning in a carriage from a visit to Antokolsky’s studio, he asked me what I thought of Bazaroff. I frankly replied, “ Bazaroff is an admirable painting of the nihilist, but one feels that jou did not love him as much as you did your other heroes.” “On the contrary, I loved him, intensely loved him,” Turgueneff replied, with an unexpected vigor. “ 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 Bazdroff’s death.” Turgueneff certainly loved the intellectual aspect of Ba- zdroff. He so identified himself with the nihilist philoso- phy of his hero that he even kept a diary in his name, appreciating the current events from BazarofPs point of view. But I think that he admired him more than he 412 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST 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 char- acters. “ Analys is first of all, and then egotism, and there, fore no faith, — a n egotist can not even believe in himself : ” so he characterized Hamlet. “ Therefore he is a skeptic, and never will achieve anything ; while Don Quixote, who fights against windmills, and takes a barber’s plate for the magic helmet of Mambrino (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 for- ward, keeping their eyes fixed upon a goal which is seen, perhaps, by no one but themselves. They search, they fall, but they rise again, and find it, — and by right, too. Yet, although Hamlet is a skeptic, and disbelieves in Good, he does not disbelieve in Evil. He hates it ; Evil and Deceit are his enemies ; and his skepticis m is not indifferentism, but on ly negation and d oubt, which finally consume his will.” These thoughts of Turgueneff 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 Bazaroff. He represented his superi- ority 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 Myshkin ? ” he once asked me, in 1878. At the trial of our circles Myshkin 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 TURGUENEFE 413 obviously meditating on this new type in the Russian move- ment, which did not exist in the phase that Turgudneff 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 that 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. Alex- ander III. had announced in a manifesto his intention ta remain the absolute ruler of Russia. vrr 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 coun- try, before the war broke out, a great deal of enthusiasm in favor of the Slavonians. Many believed, also, that a war of liberation in the Balkans would result in a move in the progressive direction in Russia itself. But the libera- tion of the Slavonian populations was only partly accom- plished. 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, w on at onc e the sym pathies of the great pub lic. They produced a very favorable 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 favor, even among the judges themselves. The court VERA ZASULICH 415 pronounced very heavy sentences upon a few, and relatively lenient ones upon the remainder, saying that the prelimi- nary 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 labor 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 Mezentsoff. At the same time, the chief of the St. Petersburg police, General Trepoff, noticing, during a visit to the house of detention, that one of the political prisoners, Bogoluboff, 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 in- dignation, 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 labor, but they were firmly de- cided not to tolerate corporal punishment. A young girl, Vdra Zasulich, who did not even personally know Bogolu- boff, took a revolver, went to the chief of police, and shot at him. Trdpoff 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. Trepoff had so many enemies at St. Petersburg that they managed to bring the affair before a common-law jury, and Ydra Zasulich declared in court that she had resorted to arms only when all means for bringing the affair to public know- ledge and obtaining some sort of redress had been ex* 416 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST hausted. Even the St. Petersburg correspondent of the London “ Times ” had been asked to mention the affair in his paper, but had not done so, perhaps thinking it improbable. Then, without telling any one her intentions, she went to shoot Trepoff. Now that the affair had become public, she was quite happy to know that he was hut 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 fired with enthusiasm, and writing powerful articles to glorify the girl. Even the serious “ Revue des Deux Mondes ” wrote, in its review of the year, that the two persons who had most impressed public opinion in Europe during 1878 were Prince Gortcha- kdff at the Berlin congress and Vera Zasulich. Their portraits were given side by side in several almanacs. Upon the workers in Europe the devotion of Vera Zasulich pro- duced a tremendous impression. A few months after that, without any plot having been formed, four attempts were made against crowned heads in close succession. The worker Hoedel and Dr. Nobiling shot at the German Emperor ; a few weeks later, a Spanish worker, Oliva Moncasi, 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 bot- tom some international conspiracy, and they jumped to the conclusion that the Jura Federation and the International Workingmen’s Association were responsible. PUBLICATION OF LE REYOLTE 417 More than twenty years have passed since then, and I may say most positively that there was absolutely no ground whatever for that supposition. However, (alljthe European governments fell upon Switzerland, reproaching her with harboring 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 connect- ing Brousse or the Jura Federation with the recent attacks, condemned Brousse to only a couple of months’ imprison- ment, 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 thus remained without an organ. Besides, the politicians of Switzerland, who looked with an unfavorable eye on the anarchist agitation in their coun- try, 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 Switzer- land. James Guillaume, who for eight years had main- tained against all obstacles the official organ of the federation, and made his living chiefly hy teaching, could obtain no employment, and was compelled to leave Switzerland and remove to France. Adhemar Schwitzguebel found no work in the watch trade, and, burdened as he was by a large family, had 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 the organ of the federation. I hesitated, of course, but there was nothing else to be done, and with two friends, Dumar- theray and Herzig, I started a new fortnightly paper at Geneva, in February, 1879, under the title of “ Le Kevolte.” I had to write most of it myself. "We had only twenty- three francs (about four dollars) to start the paper, but we all set to work to get subscriptions, and succeeded in issuing 418 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST our first number. It was moderate in tone, but revolution- ary in substance, and I did my best to write it in such a style that complex historical and economical questions should be comprehensible to every intelligent worker. Six hun- dred was the utmost limit which the edition of our previous papers had ever attained. We printed two thousand copies of “ Le Itdvolte,” and in a few days not one was left. The paper was a success, and still continues, at Paris, under the name of “ Temps Nouveaux.” Socialist papers have often a tendency to become mere annals of complaints about existing conditions. The op- pression of the laborers 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 employers is insisted upon : and this succession of hopeless efforts, related in the paper, exercises a most depressing influence upon the reader. To counter- balance that effect, the editor has to rely chiefly upon burn- ing words by means of which he tries to inspire his read- ers 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 symp- toms 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 uncon- scious support which advanced ideas find everywhere, when a revival of thought takes place in society. To make one feel 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 philo« THE DUTY OF A REVOLUTIONARY PAPER 419 sopliy has accomplished a certain change in human thought, and subsequently in institutions. But this is not history. The great est social philosophers have only caught the i ndi- catio ns of coming change s, have understood their inner relations, and, aided by induction and intuition, have fore- told what was to occur. It may also be easy to draw a plan of social organization, by starting from a few prin- ciples 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 endeav- ored to familiarize my 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 fetichism 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 ap- preciations of current events and men were so remarkable for their uncommon good sense that they were often pro- phetic. He was also one of the finest critics of the current socialist literature, and was never taken in by the mere dis- play of fine words or would-be science. Herzig was a young 420 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST 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 im- plicitly. If Herzig frowned, muttering, “Yes — well — it may go,” I knew that it would not do. And when Du- martherary, 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, inter- rupted his reading by exclaiming, “Non, 5a 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 is 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 also that we had hard times with it. No sooner had we issued four or 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 constitution 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 upon statistical reports and the like ; and our printer was plainly told that if he continued to print the paper he need not expect to have any more orders from the Geneva gov MEN OF GREATER VALUE THAN MONEY 421 eminent. 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 our paper, I received the same reply : “ We could not live without work from the government, and we should have none if we undertook to print * Le Revolted ” I returned to Geneva in very low spirits ; hut Dumarthe- ray 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 for it.” “ But we have no money, only a few huR dred francs,” I objected. “ Money, nonsense ! We shall have it ! Let us only order the type at once and immedi- ately issue our next number — and money will come ! ” Once more his judgment was quite right. When our next number came out from our own “Imprimerie Jurassienne,” and we had told our difficulties and printed a couple of small pamphlets besides, — all of us helping in the print- ing, — the money came in ; mostly in coppers and small silver coins, 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 is not so much a lack of money as of men who will march firmly and steadily to- wards 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 in almost 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 as Grave has done for the last sixteen years at Paris, the money comes in, and a yearly debit of about eight hundred pounds is made up, — mainly out of the pennies and small silver coins of the workers, — to cover the yearly expenditure for printing the paper and the pamphlets. For a paper, as for 422 MEMOIBS OF A REVOLUTIONIST 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 man from Little Russia, who undertook to put our paper in type for the very modest sum of sixty francs a month. If he could only have his modest 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 usual melodious voice, and with his customary smile. Unfortunately, he knew no French. I used to write my manuscript in the best of my handwriting, — often think- ing with regret of the time I had wasted in the classes of our good Ebert at school, — but John could read French only indifferently well, and instead of “ immediatement ” he would read “ immidiotermut ” or “ inmuidiatmunt,” and set up in type such wonderful words as these ; but as he “ kept the space,” and the length of the line did not have to be altered in making the corrections, there were only four or five letters to be corrected in such uncouth words as the above, and but one or two in each of the shorter ones ; thus we managed pretty well. We were on the best possible terms with him, and I soon learned a little type- setting under his direction. The composition was always finished in time to take the proofs to a Swiss comrade who was the responsible editor, and to whom we submitted them before going to press, and then one of us carted all the forms to a printing-office. Our “ Imprimerie Jurassienne” soon became widely known for its publications, especially for its pamphlets, which Dumartheray would never allow to be sold at more than one penny. Quite a new style had to be worked out for such pamphlets. I must say that I was often wicked enough to envy those writers who could use THE IMPRIMERIE JURASSIENNE 423 any number 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 brief.” When I had to con- dense the results of several months’ work — upon, let me say, the origins of law — into a penny pamphlet, I had to take the time to be brief. But we wrote for the workers, and twenty centimes for a pamphlet is often too much for the average worker. The result was that our penny and half-penny pamphlets sold by the scores of thousands, and were reproduced in many other countries in translations. My leaders of that period were published later on, while I was in prison, by Elisee Reclus, under the title of “The Words of a Rebel,” — Paroles d’un Revolte. France was always the chief object of our aims ; but “ Le Revolte ” was severely prohibited in France, and the smug- glers had so many good things to import into France from Switzerland that they did not care to meddle with our paper. 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 of our paper. All we could do, therefore, was to send it in sealed envelopes to about a hundred persons in France. We charged nothing for postage, counting upon voluntary contributions from 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 our paper by subscribing to a hundred copies and sending no voluntary contributions. For the first year we had to rely entirely upon ourselves ; but gradually Elisee Reclus took a greater interest in the work, and finally gave more life than ever to the paper after my arrest. 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 had 424 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST learned Kussian, but thought that, as I was well acquainted with Siberia, I might be helpful ; 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 Elisee Reclus lived at that time. We settled above Clarens, in a small cottage overlooking the blue waters of Lake Geneva, 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 and digging for itself a new hed, ran Tinder our windows, and on the slope of the hill opposite rose the old castle of Ch&telard, of which the owners, up to the revolution of the burla papei (the burners of the papers) in 1799, levied upon the neighboring peasants ser- vile taxes on the occasion of 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 lit- erary critic of my writings, I produced the best things that I wrote for “ Le Rdvolte,” among them the address “ To the Young,” which was spread in hundreds of thousands of cop- ies in all languages. In fact, I worked out here the foun- dation of nearly all that I wrote later on. Contact with educated men of similar ways of thinking is what we an- archist writers, scattered by proscription all over the world, miss, perhaps, more than anything else. At Clarens I had that contact with Elisee Reclus and Leframjais, in addition to permanent contact with the workers, which I continued to maintain ; and although I worked much for the Geogra- phy, I could produce even more than usual for the anar chist propaganda. vm In Eussia the struggle for freedom was taking on a more and more acute character. Several political trials had been brought before high courts, — the trial of “ the hun- dred and ninety-three,” of “ the fifty,” of “ the Dolgushin 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 pam- phlets, 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 does not occur in socialist agitations in every other country of the world. No traces of con- spiracy against the Tsar, or even of preparations for revo- lutionary action, were found ; in fact, there were none. The great majority of our youth were] at that time fioatilfl to such action. Nay, looking now over that movement of the years 1870-78, I can say in full confidence that most of them would have felt satisfied if they had been simply allowed to live by the side of the peasants and the workers, to teach them, to collaborate in any of the thousand capaci- ties — private or as a part of the local self-government — 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 Eussia, was too deeply rooted to be crushed down by mere brutality. Hard labor for six, ten, twelve years in the mines, with subsequent exile to Siberia for life, was a 426 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST common sentence. There were such cases as that of a girl who got nine years’ hard labor and life exile to Siberia, for giving one socialist pamphlet to a worker ; that was all her crime. Another girl of fourteen, Miss Gukdvskaya, was transported for life to a remote village of Siberia, for having tried, like Goethe’s Klarchen, to excite an indifferent crowd to deliver Kovalsky 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 Yenisei. Even those who were acquitted by the courts were banished by the gendarmes to little hamlets in Siberia and Northeast Russia, where they had to starve on the government’s monthly allowance, one dollar and fifty cents (three rubles). There are no industries in sucji hamlets, and the exiles were strictly prohibited from teaching. As if to exasperate the youth still more, their con- demned 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 Siberia. These prisons were awful indeed. In one of them — “a den of typhoid fever,” as a priest of that particular jail said in a sermon — the mortality reached twenty per cent, in twelve months. In the central prisons, in the hard-labor 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 suc- cession, and then lay motionless, their minds wandering, HORRORS OF RUSSIAN PRISONS 427 seemed not to appeal to the gendarmes. At Khdrkoff, the prostrated prisoners were tied up with ropes and fed by force, artificially. 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 hands, 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, Kovdlsky 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. Ko- vdlsky 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 — I say it deliberately — was the only charge against him. He was a boy, but he died like a man. Then the watchword of the revolutionists became “ self- defense : ” self-defense 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 accuse large numbers of persons ; self-defense against those who ill-treated prisoners ; 428 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST self-defense 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 Mezentsoff, who had induced the Tsar to double the sentences after the trial of the hundred and ninety-three, was killed in broad day- light at St. Petersburg ; a gendarme colonel, guilty of some- thing worse than that, had the same fate at Kieff ; and the governor-general of Kharkoff — my cousin, Dmitri Kropbt- kin — 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 favorable to the political prisoners ; but he was a weak man and a courtier, and he hesitated to inter- fere. 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 Kharkoff, and had treated the rioters very leniently. But this time he gave his approval to the jailers, and the young men of Kharkoff were so exasperated at the treatment of their friends that one of them shot him. However, the personal ity of the Emp eror 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 DESPOTISM OF ALEXANDER II 429 of those men with whom he had collaborated during the re- form 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 Libera- tor ” again, and once more the youth would have repeated Hdrzen’s words: “Thou hast conquered, Galilean.” But just as during the Polish insurrection the despot awoke in him, and, inspired by Katkdff, he resorted to hanging, so now again, following the advice of his evil genius, Katkoff, 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 Solovidff, 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 Solovidff 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 move- ment, 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 no- thing for him, but only for their lucrative positions. 430 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST He undoubtedly retained an attachment to the mother of his children, even though he was then with the Princess Yurievski-Dolgoniki, 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 L6ris Melikoff. And yet he entirely aban- doned the Empress Marie, who had stood faithfully by his side while he was the Liberator; he let her die in the palace in neglect. 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, having by her side but two ladies, deeply devoted to her, and receiv- ing every day but a short official visit from her husband, who stayed in another palace in the meantime. 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 dicta- torship, vesting unlimited powers in Ldris Melikoff. 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 Vdlga, and Germany threat- ened to mobilize her troops and put Russia under quaran- tine if the plague were not stopped. Now that Alexander II. saw that he could not have confidence in the vigilance of even the palace police, he gave dictatorial powers to Loris Melikoff, and as Melikoff had the reputation of being a Liberal, this new move was interpreted as indicating that the convocation of a National Assembly would soon follow. As, however, no new attempts upon his life were made iim mediately after that explosion, the Tsar regained confidence, and a few months later, before Melikoff had been allowed to do anything, he was dictator no longer, but simply min- ister of the interior. The sudden attacks of sadness ol which I have already spoken, during which Alexander H. PLAN FOR A DELIBERATIVE ASSEMBLY 431 reproached himself with the reactionary character that his reign had assumed, now took the shape of violent paroxysms of tears. He would sit weeping by the hour, bringing Meli- koff to despair. Then he would ask his minister, “When will your constitutional scheme be ready ? ” If, two days later, Mdlikoff said that it was now 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 rumors of a new plot reached him, he was ready to undertake something ; but when everything seemed to be quiet among the revolutionists, he turned his ear again to his reactionary advisers, and let things go. Every mo- ment Melikoff expected dismissal. In February, 1881, Melikoff 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 deliberative 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 Assemblee 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 final warning by Loris Melikoff, that he ordered it to be brought before the council on the following Thursday. This was on Sun- day, and he was asked by Melikoff not to go out to the parade that day, there being danger of an attempt on his life. Nevertheless, he went. He wanted to see the Grand Duchess Catherine (daughter of his aunt, Helene Pdvlovna, who had been one of the leaders of the emancipation 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 decide h convo- 432 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST quer une Assemble 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. Rysakdff, who flung the homb, 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 dig- nity required him to see the wounded Circassians, to con- dole 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 fete. He approached Rysakdff and asked him something ; and as he passed close by another young man, Grinevetsky, the latter threw a bomb between himself and Alexander II., so that both of them should be killed. They both lived but a few hours. There Alexander II. lay upon the snow, profusely bleed- ing, abandoned by every one of his followers ! All had disappeared. It was cadets, returning from the parade, who lifted the suffering Tsar from the snow and put him in a sledge, covering his shivering body with a cadet mantle and his bare head with a cadet cap. And it was one of the ter- rorists, Emelianoff, 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 II.’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 IT. and his gradual deterioration, who had caught a glimpse of ASSASSINATION OF ALEXANDER II 433 his complex personality, — that of a born autocrat, whose violence was but partially mitigated by education, of a man possessed of military gallantry, but devoid of the courage of the statesman, of a man of strong passions and weak will, — it seemed that the tragedy developed with the un- avoidable 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 build- ing, planned as a Vauban fortress, surrounded by moats and protected by watchtowers, 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 Anichkoff 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. Comical 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 labor lost. This league still exists in a more official shape, under the name of Okhrana (Protection), and from time to time frightens the present Tsar with all sorts of concocted “ dangers,” in order to maintain its existence. ANTI-REVOLUTIONIST ORGANIZATIONS 435 A still more secret organization, the Holy League, was formed at the same time, under the leadership of the brother of the Tsar, Vladimir, 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. Peters- burg. To pretend to direct conspiracies from Switzerland, while those who were at St. Petersburg acted under a per- manent menace of death, would have been sheer nonsense; and as Stepniak and I wrote several times, none of us would have accepted the doubtful 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. Skdbeleff, the hero of the Turkish war, was also asked to join this league, but he blankly refused. It appears from Ldris Melikoffs posthumous papers, part of which were published by a friend of his in London, that when Alexander III. came to the throne, and hesitated to con- voke the Assembly of Notables, Skdbeleff even made an offer to Ldris Melikoff and Count Igndtieff (“ the lying Pasha,” as the Constantinople diplomatists used to nick- name him), to arrest Alexander III., and compel him to sign a constitutional manifesto ; whereupon Ignatieff is said 486 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST 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 anything like a modest courage and some power of organized action, at that time, a National Assembly would have been convoked. Prom the same posthumous papers of L<5ris Melikoff it appears that Alexander III. was willing for a time to call one. He had made up his mind to do so, and had an- nounced 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 Katkoff party was busy in the opposite direction, — M. Andrieux advising him to crush the nihilists, and indicating how it ought to be done (his letter to this effect is in the pamphlet referred to), — that Alexander III. finally resolved to declare that he would continue to be absolute ruler of the empire. I was expelled from Switzerland by order of the federal council a few months after the death of Alexander II. I did not take umbrage at this. Assailed by the monarchi- cal 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 satisfac- tion 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 con- cocted in Switzerland,” and it was an acknowledgment of weakness, of which Italy and France took advantage at once. Two years later, when Jules Ferry proposed to Italy and Germany the partition of Switzerland, his argument EXPELLED FROM SWITZERLAND 437 must have been that the Swiss government itself had ad- mitted 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 Eussian affairs from our standpoint for the “ Newcastle Chronicle.” The English press, at that time, was an echo of the opinions of Madame NovikofF, — that is, of Katkoff and the Eussian 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 .ihe was staying, near the abode of Elisee Eeclus, 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 dis- covered 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 foreign- ers.” Thinking we were sure to overtake the lady at the rail- 438 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST way station, I wrote on one of the pamphlets the well-known verse relative to the rich in the kingdom of God, and s im ilarly 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 car. 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 suc- cession. 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. Peters- burg to Geneva to be the head centre of the conspiracy became known to me. So I simply communicated the fact and the names to the Geneva correspondent of the “Times,” asking him to publish them if anything should happen, and I put a note to that effect in “Le Revolte.” 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 hoard 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 PURSUED BY THE HOLY LEAGUE 439 husband with a lantern. “ Wait only a moment, Monsieur Kropotkin,” she would say ; “ my husband is going that way for purchases, and you know he always carries a lan- tern ! ” Or else she would send her brother to follow me at a distance, without my noticing it. A 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 in- tellectual life of London and of all England was quite different then from what it became a little later. Every one 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, the 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 for- gotten, 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 labors of the agricultural commission of 1871, the propaganda amongst the agricultural laborers, 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 labor leaders were not yet heard of; the Fabians did not exist; Morris had not declared himself a socialist ; and the trade unions, limited A YEAR OF REAL EXILE 441 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 social- ism, 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 re- formers, 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. Tchaykdvskv was then in Lon don, 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 prosecu- tions against John Most had attracted to the socialists, we went to the radical clubs, spea king about Russian aff airs, 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 gray-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 work- 442 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST ers, 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 what small means we had when we started “ Le Revolts,” and predicted a certain success if he would make the attempt. But so unpromising was its general outlook that even he thought the undertaking would be absolutely hopeless unless he had the means to defray all its expenses. Perhaps he was right ; but when, less than three years later, he started “ Justice,” f it found a hearty support among the workers, and early in 1886 there were three socialist papers, and the social demo- cratic federation was an influential body. In the summer of 1882 I spoke, in broken English, before the Durham miners at their annual gathering ; I deliv- ered 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 in London, and our efforts to awaken a social- ist movement in England seemed so hopeless, that in the autumn of 1882 we decided to remove again to Prance. We were sure that in France I should soon be arrested ; but we often said to each other, u Better a French prison than this grave.” Those who are prone to speak of the slowness of evolu- tion ought to study the development of socialism in Eng- land. 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 re- ports they wrote. A spy must report. If he should merely say that he has stood for a week in the street without no- ticing anything mysterious, he would soon he put on the half-pay list or dismissed. It was then the golden age of the Russian secret police. Ignatieff’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 Sudeikin, for instance, chief of one of the branches, — plotting with a certain Degaeff, who after all killed him, — denounced Igndtieff’s agents to the revolutionists at Geneva, and offered to the terrorists in Russia all facilities for killing the minister of the interior, Count Tolstdy, and the Grand Duke Vladimir ; 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 culminatedj 444 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST later on, in the kidnapping of the Prince of Battenherg from Bulgaria. The French police, also, were on the alert. The question, “ What is he doing at Thonon ? ” worried them. I con- tinued to edit “Le Re volte,” and wrote articles for the “En- cyclopaedia 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 my house a secret printing-press. So he came in my absence and asked the lady 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 sew on her 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 tombee de la nuit ?) And he wrote in his notebook, “ Never goes out except at dusk.” I could not well explain at that time this special atten- tion of the Russian spies ; but it must have had some connection with the following. When Ignatieff was nomi- nated 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 exten- sion of provincial self-government in Russia, but whose chief A COMPROMISE 445 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 Execu- tive Committee had been arrested in Russia, and a couple of them had taken refuge at Paris, Ignatieff 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 Chernyshevsky should be released from Siberia ; and that a commission should be nominated to review 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 favor of the peasants, which Alexander III. intended to make, were also men- tioned. The agreement was made at Paris, and was kept on both sides. The terrorists suspended hostilities. No- body was executed for complicity in the former conspiracies ; those who were arrested later on under this indictment were immured in the Russian Bastille at Schlusselburg, where nothing was heard of them for fifteen years, and where most of them still are. Chernyshevsky 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 told one day that a man who pretended to be a bona 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 446 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST reply. Probably the result was that while Ignatieff com. sidered the Tsar guaranteed from the attacks of the Execu. tive Committee, he was afraid that the anarchists might make some attempt, and wanted to have me out of the way. XII The anarchist movement had undergone 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 Work- ingmen’s Association “ collectivism ” was preached instead. It meant then the possession of the instruments of produc- tion in common, each separate group having to settle for itself whether the consumption of produce should be on individualistic or communistic lines. In reality, however, the French mind was hostile only to the monastic com- munism, to the phalanstere of the old schools. When the Jura Federation, at its congress of 1880, boldly declared itself anarchist-communist, — that is, in favor of free com- munism, — anarchism won wide sympathy in France. Our paper began to spread in that country, letters were ex- changed 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 con- siderable 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 paralyzed, and the misery among the weavers was so great that crowds of chil- dren 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 pop- ularity of General Boulanger, who had permitted this dis> 448 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST tribution 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 vexa- tions 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 on a more violent char- acter. 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 councilors and political lead- ers, as also against the press, which made light of a very acute crisis, while nothing was undertaken 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 con- spicuous in times of desolation and misery, as they imper- sonate for the worker the egotism and dissoluteness of the wealthier classes. A place particularly hated by the work- ers was the underground cafe at the Theatre Bellecour, which remained open all night, and where, in the small A PANIC AT LYONS 449 hours of the morning, one could see newspaper men and politicians feasting and drinking in company with gay wo- men. Not a meeting was held but some menacing allusion was made to that cafe, and one night a dynamite cartridge was exploded in it by an unknown hand. A worker who was occasionally there, a socialist, 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 j a dynamite cartridge was exploded at the doors of a recruit- ing 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 neighborhood to realize the extent to which the pop- ulation and the schools are still in the hands of the Catho- lic 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, repre- senting me as the leader of the agitation, who had come on purpose from England 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 con- signments 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 French 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. Not only was the house searched, but my wife, who was going to Geneva, was arrested at the station in Thonon, and 450 MEMOIBS OF A REVOLUTIONIST searched. But of course absolutely nothing was found to compromise me or any one else. Ten days passed, during which I was quite free to go away, if I wished to do so. I received several letters ad- vising 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 wrote that I must leave at once, because otherwise I should be the first victim of the 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. 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 it is terrible to see a young life extinguished in your presence after a brave struggle against death. Both my wife and I were broken down. Three or four hours later, as the dull winter morning was dawning, gendarmes came to my house to arrest me. Seeing in what a state my wife was, I asked permission to remain with her till the burial was over, pro- mising upon my word of honor to be at the prison door at a given hour ; but it was refused, and the same night I was taken to Lyons. Elisee Reclus, notified by telegraph, came at once, bestowing on my wife all the gentleness of his golden heart ; friends came from Geneva ; and although the funeral was absolutely civil, 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 used to come from the mountain villages to town to get the papers, and to see how my affair stood before the court. Another incident which profoundly touched me was tha ARRESTED BY THE FRENCH POLICE 451 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 con- siderable 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 had managed to see me freely, — not in the double-grated iron cage in which I was al- lowed interviews with my wife, — and he was as much affected by my refusal to accept the offer as I was by that touching token of friendship on the part of one whom, with his excellent wife, I had already learned to esteem so highly. The French government wanted to have one of those great trials which produce an impression upon the popula- tion, 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 be- fore a simple police court for having belonged to that asso- ciation. 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 every one knew that none of the Lyons work- ers bad 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 452 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST 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 meeting, preaching communism and anarchism, and carry- ing with them the audiences. Seeing that so far he had been fair in his testimony, I ventured to ask him a ques- tion: “ Did you ever hear 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 added, “ There ’s all your prosecution overthrown by your own witness ! ” Nevertheless, we were all condemned for having belonged to the International. Four of us got the maximum sen- tence, five years’ imprisonment and four hundred dollars’ fine ; the remainder got from four years to one year. In fact, they 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 clear this point, 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 accusation. Scores of searches had been made at the houses of French anarchists, but only two letters of mine had been found. The prosecu- A COMICAL INCIDENT 453 tion tried to make the best of them. One was written to a French worker when he was despondent. 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 mak- ing shoes in his own room. 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 to cover the expenses of his extremely modest living, and to send a few francs to his old mother in the country, he would spend long hours in writing letters in which he developed the theoretical prin- ciples of anarchism with admirable good sense and intel- ligence. He is now a writer well known in France and generally respected for the integrity of his character. Un- fortunately, at that time he would cover eight or twelve pages of note paper without 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 written thoughts subdivide into sentences, clauses, and phrases, each of which should end with its appropriate period, semicolon, or comma, and so on, — in short, gave him a little lesson in the elements of punctuation. I told him how much it would improve his writings if he adopted this simple plan. 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 par- ticular in it at first sight. He gives a lesson in grammar to a worker. . . , But ” — and here his voice vibrated with 454 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST accents of a deep emotion — “ it was not in order to help a poor worker in getting instruction which he, owing prob- ably to laziness, failed to get at school. It was not to help him to earn an honest living. No ! gentlemen, it was writ- ten in order to inspire him with hatred for our grand and beautiful institutions, in order only the better to infuse into him the venom of anarchism, in order to make of him only a more terrible enemy of society. Cursed be the day when Kropdtkin set his foot upon the soil of France ! ” We could not help laughing like boys all the time he was delivering that speech ; the judges stared at him as if to tell him that he was overdoing his role, but he seemed not to notice anything, and, carried by his eloquence, went on speaking with more and more theatrical gestures and intona- tions. He really did his best to obtain his reward from the Russian government. Very soon after the condemnation the presiding magis- trate 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 thus had its origin in the Lyons trial. This trial — 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 our doctrines for a fortnight — had a powerful influence in clearing away false ideas about anarchism in France, and surely contributed to some extent to the re- vival of socialism in other countries. As to the condemna- tion, 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 ” found fault with UNJUSTLY CONDEMNED 455 the verdict, ■which “ nothing in the proceedings before 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 voices, until we were released. XIII The trial was over, but I remained for another couple of months in 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 com- rades, I refused to take any part ia 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. During my sojourn at Lyons I began to realize the awfully demoralizing influence of the prisons upon the prisoners, which brought me later to condemn unconditionally the whole institution. The Lyons prison is a “ modern ” structure, built in the. shape of a star, on the cellular system. The spaces be- tween the rays of the star are occupied by small asphalt paved yards, and, weather permitting, the inmates are taken to these yards to work outdoors. The chief occupation is the beating out of silk cocoons to obtain floss silk. Flocks of children are also taken at certain hours to these yards. Thin, enervated, underfed, — the shadows of children, — I often watched them from my window. Anaemia was plainly written on all the little faces and manifest in their thin, shivering bodies ; and all day long — not only in the dormitories, but even in the yards, in the full light of the sun — they pursued their debilitating practices. What EVILS OF THE PRISON SYSTEM 457 will become of them after they have passed through that schooling and come out with their health ruined, their wills annihilated, their energy reduced ? Anaemia, with its dimin- ished energy, its 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 these children receive in their 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 criminals are bred in these nurseries, which the state supports and which society tolerates, simply because it does not want to hear its own diseases spoken of and dissected. “ Imprisoned in childhood, jail bird for life,” is what I heard afterwards from all those who were interested in criminal matters. And when I saw these chil- dren, and realized what they have to expect in the future, I could not but continually ask myself : “ Which of them is the worse criminal ? — this child or the judge who con- demns every year hundreds of children to this fate ? ” I gladly admit that the crime of the judge is unconscious. But are 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 from the very first weeks of my imprisonment, but which in some inconceivable way has escaped the attention of both the judges and the writers on criminal law ; namely, that imprisonment is in an immense number of cases a punish- ment which bears far more severely upon quite innocent people than upon the condemned prisoner himself. Nearly every one of my comrades, who represented a fair 458 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST average of the working population, had either wife and children to support, or a sister or old mother who depended for her living upon his earnings. Now being left without support, all of these women did their best to get work, and some of them got it ; but none of them succeeded in earn- ing regularly even as much as thirty cents (1 fr. 50 c.) a day. Nine francs (less than two dollars) and often only a dollar and a half a week to support themselves and their children, — these were their earnings. And that meant, of course, underfeeding, privations of all sorts, and deterioration of health, weakened intellect, impaired energy and will power. 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 hardship ; in most cases even worse than those to which the condemned man him- self is subjected. The fiction is that the law punishes the man by inflicting upon him a variety of degrading physical and mental hardships. But man is so made that whatever hardships may be imposed upon him, he gradually grows ac- customed to them. If 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 them. But during his imprisonment what becomes of his wife and children, or of the other innocent people who depended upon his 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 in- justice which is thu3 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 imprison- ment, 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. IN THE PRISON OF CLAIRVAUX 459 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 “ Encyclopaedia Britannica” and the “Nineteenth Century.” Now, the treatment we should have at Clairvaux was an open ques- tion. However, in France it is generally understood that, for political prisoners, the loss of liberty and the forced in- activity are in themselves so hard that there is no need to inflict additional hardships. Consequently, we were told that we should remain under the same regime that we had had at Lyons. We should have separate quarters, retain our own clothes, be free of compulsory work, and be al- lowed 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 favorable. We had been locked up and had been traveling all the day, from two or three o’clock in the morning, in those tiny cupboards into which the railway carriages used for the transportation of prisoners are usually divided. When we reached the central prison, we were 460 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST taken temporarily to the penal quarters, and were intro- duced into 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 a half-pint each of the very good vin du pays, which was sold at the prison canteen at the extremely modest price of twenty-four centimes (less than five cents) per quart. The governor and all 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, 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 had been in olden times the house of the superin- tendent of the abbey, and was now the hospital. Our windows looked down upon a little garden and off upon 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 was confined in one of the cells in the cellular house. We obtained thus three spacious rooms, and a smaller room was spared for Gautier and myself, so that we could pursue our literary work. We probably owed this last favor to the intervention of a considerable number of Eng- lish men of science, who, as soon as I was condemned, had signed a petition asking for my release. Many contributors to the “Encyclopaedia Britannica,” Herbert Spencer, and Swinburne were among the signers, while Victor Hugo had added to his signature a few warm words. Altogether, public opinion in France received our condemnation very unfavorably ; and when my wife had mentioned at Paris that I required books, the Academy of Sciences offered its library, and Ernest Renan, in a charming letter, put his private library at her service. WRITING AND TEACHING IN PRISON 461 We had a small garden, where we could play ninepins or jeu de boules, and soon we managed to cultivate a nar- row bed along the building’s wall, in which, on a surface of some eighty square yards, we grew almost incredible quan- tities of lettuce and radishes, as well as some flowers. I need not say that at once we 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 bookbinding, having learned how from one of those excellent Encyclopedic 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 Wfirtz’s laboratory and preparing to take an examination for the degree of Doctor of Science, abandoned everything, and came to the tiny 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 op- posite, 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 houses within the prison walls where a post of warders was kept, 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. 462 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST 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 correspond- ing institutions on the other side of the Channel. The medieeval revengeful system which still prevails in English prisons has been given up long since in France. The im- prisoned man is not compelled to sleep on planks, or to have a mattress on alternate days only ; the day he comes to prison he gets a decent bed, and retains it. He is not compelled, either, to 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, iron furniture, picture frames, looking-glasses, metric measures, velvet, linen, ladies’ stays, small things in mother of pearl, wooden shoes, and so on, being made by the nearly sixteen hundred men who are kept there. Moreover, if the punishment for insubordination is very cruel, there is, at least, none of the flogging which goes on still 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 penal institutions in Europe. And, with all that, the re- sults obtained at Clairvaux are as bad as in any of the prisons of the old type. “ The watchword nowadays is that con- victs 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.” Tlje pharmacy at Clairvaux was underneath the rooms SAD CONDITION OF AGED PRISONERS 463 which we occupied, and we occasionally had some contact with the prisoners who were employed in it. One of them was a gray-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 1 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 com- pany, excited talk about some capital fun, — some “ 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 had not yet returned 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. t( 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 endeavoring to be transferred to Clairvaux. The old men 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, al- ways in prison ; ” such is the saying derived from experi- ence And now, having reached or passed beyond the age 464 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST of sixty, they knew that they must end their lives in prison. To quicken their departure from life the prison administra- tion used to send them to the workshops where felt socks were made out of all sorts of woolen refuse. The dust in the workshop soon induced the consumption which finally released them. Then, four fellow prisoners would carry the old man to the common grave, the graveyard warder and his black dog being the only two beings to follow him ; and while the prison priest marched in front of the proces- sion, mechanically reciting his prayer and looking round at the chestnut or fir trees along the road, and the four comrades carrying the coffin were enjoying the momentary freedom from confinement, 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 aban- doned. 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, all news of any interest spreads immediately throughout the prison. No- thing can happen either among the prisoners themselves, or in the “ cour d’honneur,” where the lodgings of the adminis- tration are situated, or in the village of Clairvaux, or in the wide world of Paris politics, that is not communicated at once throughout all the dormitories, workshops, and cells. Frenchmen are too communicative to admit of their under- ground telegraph ever being stopped. We had no inter- course 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 scrim- COMMUNICATION AMONG PRISONERS 465 mage with So and So’s wife.” “James, in the cells, has been caught transmitting a note of friendship to John of the framers’ workshop.” “ That old beast So and So is no longer Minister of Justice ; the ministry was upset ; ” and so on ; and when the word goes that “ Jack has got two five-penny packets of tobacco in exchange for two flannel jackets,” it makes the tour of the prison very quickly. On one occasion a petty lawyer, detained in the prison, wished 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, — and quite a number of men took the liveliest interest in the transmission of that message, which had to pass through I don’t know how many hands before it reached me. When there was something that might specially interest us in a paper, this paper, in some un- accountable way, would reach us, wrapped about a little stone and thrown over the high wall. Confinement in a cell 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 I could hardly write, and when my wife, who was then at Paris, got my letter, she did not recognize my handwriting. 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 were choked with scraps of paper, bits of notes, pen- knives, and all sorts of small things which several genera- tions 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 others, and so went to a cell. To his great astonishment he found that he was not at all alone. The walls and the keyholes spoke. In a short time all the inmates of the cells knew who he was, and he had 466 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST 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 him- self had no idea of the aspects it assumes 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 Eng- land 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 preventive of anti- social deeds, are exactly the institutions for breeding them. Every one knows that absence of education, dislike of regu- lar work, physical incapability of sustained effort, misdi- rected love of adventure, gambling propensities, absence of energy, an untrained will, and carelessness about the hap- piness of others are the causes which bring this class of people 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 it exists. Incarceration in a prison of necessity entirely de- stroys the energy of a man and annihilates 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 room is there for exercising one’s nat- ural sympathies, everything being done to prevent free contact with all those, outside and inside, with whom the THE MORAL INFLUENCE OF PRISONS 467 prisoner may have feelings of sympathy. Physically and mentally he is rendered less and less capable of sustained effort, and if he has had already 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 was easily wearied by monotonous work which he could not do pro- perly, or had an antipathy to underpaid overwork, his dis- like 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 throws these 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 num- ber 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 educa- tion is most effective. In Siberia I had seen what sinks of filth and what hot- beds of physical and moral deterioration the dirty, over- crowded, “ unreformed ” Russian prisons were, and at the age of nineteen I imagined that if there were less over- crowding in the rooms and a certain classification of the prisoners, and if 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 prisons 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, who has spent some years in a prison, comes out of it more ready than ever to resume his former career ; he is 468 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST better prepared for it ; he has learned 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 sink deeper and deeper into the anti-social acts which first brought him before a law court. The offenses he will com- mit after his release will inevitably 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-labor colony. In the above-mentioned book I said 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 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 be- tween the hills, I certainly felt a strong desire to follow it and to breathe the air of the woods, or to be carried along with the stream of human life in 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 movement which spreads and strengthens the ideas that are dear to him. At Lyons, my comrades, my wife, and myself certainly THE CRIMINAL TYPE 469 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 Clemenceau. And at Clairvaux there was no need of such 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 away from Clairvaux the best recollection of its governor, and altogether, while I was there, I more than once thought that, after all, men are often better than the institutions they belong to. But, having no personal griefs, I can all the more freely and most unconditionally condemn the in- stitution itself as a survival from the dark past, wrong in its principles, and a source of immeasurable evils to society. One thing more I must mention, as it struck me perhaps even more forcibly than the demoralizing effects of prisons upon their inmates. What a nest of infection is every prison — and even every law court — for its neighborhood, for the people who live near it ! Lombroso has made much of the “ criminal type ” which he believes he has discovered amongst the inmates of the prisons. If he had made the same efforts to observe the people who hang about the law courts, — detectives, spies, petty solicitors, informers, people preying upon the simpletons, and the like, — he would probably have 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 as I saw around and within the Palais de Jus- tice at Lyons, — certainly not within the prison walls of Clairvaux. Dickens and Cruikshank have immortalized a 470 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST few of these types ; but they represent quite a world which revolves about the law courts and infuses its infection far and wide around them. And the same is true of each cen- tral prison, like Clairvaux. It is an atmosphere of petty thefts, petty swindlings, spying and corruption of all sorts, which spreads like a blot of oil round the prison. I saw all this ; and if before my condemnation I already knew that society is wrong in its present system of punish- ments, 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 willful ignorance of realities, it maintains at its own expense these universities of corruption, under the illusion that they are necessary as a bridle to the criminal instincts of man. XIV Eveky revolutionist meets a number of spies and “ agents provocateurs ” in his way, 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 only. 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 man to me ? What in the world can he have in common with us ? ” In most cases this simple question is sufficient to put one on his guard. When I first came to Geneva, the agent of the Russian government who had been commissioned to spy upon the refugees was well-known to all of us. He went under the title of Count ; 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 cafes, with- out 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, as Geneva began to fill up with refugees of the young generation ; and yet, in one way or another, they also became known to ua. 472 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST When a stranger appeared on our horizon, he was asked with the usual nihilist frankness about his past and his present prospects, and it soon appeared what sort of person he was. Frankness in mutual intercourse is alto gether the best way for bringing about proper relations be tween men. In this case it was invaluable. Numbers oi 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 refu- gees ; but in some way or other the spies never succeeded in crossing the threshold of familiarity. A spy might name 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 that sort 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 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 never had said a word to him, and consequently he especially sought 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 follow- ing 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 say- ing to him a single word. Besides, I worked at that time Bo hard that every minute of my time was taken up either AN AMUSING REPORT BY A SPY 473 with the Geography or “ Le Revolte,” 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 manipulating 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 inten- tion of visiting the country. In point of fact, however, the spies do not always make up reports out of whole cloth. They often tell things that are true, but all depends upon the way a story is told. We passed some most 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 traveling in 1881 from Paris to London. The spy, probably playing a double part, as is often done, had sold that report to Roche- fort, who published it in his paper. Everything that the spy had stated was correct, — but the way he had told it ! He wrote, for instance: “I took the next compartment to the one that Kropdtkin 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 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 disap- peared, and I looked for them in vain, on the platform and 474 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST elsewhere ; and when they reappeared, he was in disguise, and was followed by a Russian priest, who never left him after that until they arrived in London, where I lost sight of the priest.” All that was true again. My wife had a tooth slightly aching, and I asked the permission of the keeper of the restaurant to go to his private room, where my wife could ease her tooth. 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 ; I was “ in disguise.” As to the mysterious priest, he was also there. He was not a Russian, but that 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 woeful tone. “ Give the gentleman a glass of water,” I said to the waiter. Where- upon the priest, struck by my wonderful linguistic capacities, 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 of them. It ap- peared 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 news- papers in their hands. One was English, and the other — a handsome woman, who spoke good French — pretended to be English. After exchanging a few words, the latter asked me a brule pourjpoint : “ What do you think of Count Igndtiefif? ” and immediately after that : “Are you 60on going to kill the new Tsar ? ” I was clear as to het AN AMUSING REPORT BY A SPY 475 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 60 ,” 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 hav- ing 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 this : ladies don’t 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 every one 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 neighborhood ; so I ran up to Trafalgar Square, where I got one. I then drove after him, and he alighted at the above address.” Every fact of it is true again, — the address and every- thing ; but how mysterious it all reads. I had warned a Russian friend of my arrival, but there was a dense fog that morning, and he overslept. 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 only a tall man came out of the house, and returned one hour later with their baggage,” Even the remark about 476 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST 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 Elisee Reclus at Clarens, I used to go every fortnight to Geneva to see to the bringing out of “ Le Revolte.” One day when I reached our print- ing-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 Revolte,” in Russian. He offered for that purpose all the money that might be required. I went to meet him in a cafe, 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 cer- tain estates and manufactures, and he was extremely angry against the Russian government for their Russianizing schemes. On the whole he produced a somewhat indeter- minate impression, so that my friends insisted upon my accepting his offer; but I did not much like the man from first sight. From the cafd he took me to his rooms in a hotel, and there he began to show less reserve, and to appear more like himself and still more unpleasant. “ Don’t doubt my for- tune,” he said to me, “ I have also a capital invention. There ’s a lot of money in it. I shall patent it, and get a considerable sum of money for it, — all for the cause of the revolution in Russia.” And he showed me, to my astonish- ment, 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 manufacturer would have paid the patentee more than ten dollars. “ 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 SELF-BETRAYED SPIES 477 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 revolution- ary paper, and hold the flattering opinion about myself that you have expressed, you will have to deposit 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 let- ter was received from St. Petersburg warning us that we would receive the visit of a spy of the Third Section, Tohnlehm by name. The candlestick had thus rendered us a good service. Whether by candlesticks or something 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 a visit from two Russians. I knew one of them by name ; the other, a young man whom he recommended as his friend, was a stranger. The latter had volunteered to accompany his friend on a few days’ visit to London. As he was introduced by a friend, I had no suspicions what- ever about him ; but I was very busy that day and asked another friend, who lived near by, to find them a room and take them about to see London. My wife had not yet seen England, either, and she went with them. In the afternoon she returned, saying to me : “ Do you know, I dis- like that man very much. Beware of him.” “ But why ? What ’s the matter ? ” I asked. “ Nothing, absolutely no- thing, but he is surely not ‘ ours.’ By the way he treated the waiter in a cafd, and the way he handles money, I saw at once he is not ‘ ours,’ and if he is not, why should 478 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST he come to us ? ” She was so certain of the justice of her suspicions that while she performed her duties of hospital- ity, 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 they both gave were still less satisfactory. We were both on our guard. In short, they left London in a couple of days, and a fortnight later I got a letter from my Russian friend, full of excuses for having intro- duced 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 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 stay- ing with Elisee Reclus in the mountains, when we received a letter from a Frenchman, or rather a Belgian, who an- nounced 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 unfavorable impression, and Reclus had, moreover, some vague recollection of having heard the name of the writer in some unfavorable connec- tion. We decided to refuse collaboration, and I wrote to a Paris friend that we must first of all ascertain whence the money came with which the paper was going to be started. It might come from the Orleanists, — an old trick of the family, — and we must know its origin. My Paris A SPURIOUS ANARCHIST PAPER 479 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 offense, 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 anti- quated opinions, who yielded, however, to his fancy of hav- ing 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 neighbor. 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, assas- sination, dynamite bombs, — there was nothing but that in it. I met the man, the editor of the paper, when I went to the London congress, and the moment I saw his sullen face and heard a bit of his talk and caught a glimpse 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, all present kept aloof from him ; and when he insisted upon having the addresses of all anarchists throughout the world, the refusal was made in anything but a flattering manner. 480 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST To make a long story short, he was unmasked a couple of months later, and the paper was stopped forever on the very next day. Then, a couple of years after that, the prefect of police, Andrieux, published his Memoirs, and in this hook 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 other nations. I might write several chapters on this subject, but I will mention only one more story, of two adventurers at Clair- vaux. 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 elo- quence in their favor. “ Oh, I know the world,” she said, “ and I assure you, madame, that they are the most correct gentlemen. Nothing could be more comvieril-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 visiting card, which bore “ A Madame la Principesse Kropotkine. Quand h voir ? ” and needed no more commentaries about the comme-il-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 re- fused point blank to receive the writer and his interpreter. A FALSE BARON 481 Thereupon the baron wrote to my wife letter upon let- ter, which she returned without opening them. All the village soon became divided into two parties, — one siding with the baron and led by the landlady, 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 a glimpse of 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 contained a very interesting revelation. It proved to us that my 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 had gone to see Elisee Reclus in Switzerland, she wrote to me once that “ our boy ” was get- ting on very 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 Revolts,” which we often used to name in conversations “ our gamin,” — our naughty boy. But now that these gentlemen were inquir- ing 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 this. Nothing escapes the attention of village-folk in the coun- try, and the baron soon awakened suspicions. He wrote a new letter to my wife, even more wordy than the former 482 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST ones. Now he asked her pardon for having tried to intro- duce himself as an acquaintance. He owned that she did not know him ; but nevertheless he was a well-wisher. He had a most important communication to make to her. My life was in danger, and he wanted to warn her. The baron and his secretary took an outing in the fields to read this letter together and to consult about its tenor, — the forest-guard following them at a distance ; but they quar- reled about it, and the letter was torn to pieces and thrown on the ground. The forester waited till they were out of sight, gathered the pieces, connected them, and read the letter. In an hour’s time the village knew that the baron had never really been acquainted with my wife ; the ro- mance 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 behalf that a German spy had really been at Clairvaux shortly before. In time of war the vast buildings of the prison might serve as depots for provisions or barracks for the army, and the German gen- eral staff was surely interested to know the inner capacity of the prison buildings. Accordingly a jovial traveling photographer came to our village, made friends with every one by photographing all of them for nothing, and was ad- mitted to photograph not only the inside of the prison yards, but also the dormitories. Having done this, he trav- eled 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 that 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, EVIL OF THE GOVERNMENT SPY SYSTEM 483 the local paper stating that they were not German spies, hut “ 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 cafe, and there ventilated their griefs in German in a friendly con- versation over a bottle of wine. “ You were stupid, you were a coward,” the self-styled interpreter said to the self- styled 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 traveler who sat quietly in a corner of the room rushed at once to the brigadier to report the conver- sation which he had overheard. The brigadier made an official report immediately, and again 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.” After that the baron had more adventures, and the village did not resume its usual quietness till after the departure of the two strangers. I have here related only a very few of the spy stories that I might tell. But when one thinks of the thousands of villains going about the world in the pay of all govern- ments, — and very often well paid for their villainies, — of the traps they lay for all sorts of artless people, of the vast sums of money thrown away in the maintenance of that army, which is recruited in the lowest strata of society and from the population of the prisons, 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. 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 com- pelled, during her imprisonment, to have better food than her fellow prisoners, because she always gave them 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 pro- cession 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 Grevy. Then the outcry in 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 inter- pellation in the Chamber, said that “ diplomatic difficulties , stood in the way of Kropotkin’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. In the middle of J anuary, 1886, both Louise Michel and Pouget, as well as the four of us who were still at Clain vaux, were set free. ELIE AND ELISEE RECLUS 485 My release meant also the release of my wife from her voluntary imprisonment in the little village at the prison gates, which began to tell upon her health, and we went to Paris to stay there for a few weeks with our friend, Elie Eeclus, — a writer of great power in anthropology, who is often mistaken outside France for his younger brother, the geographer, Elis4e. A close friendship has united the two brothers from early youth. When the time came for them to enter a university, they went together from a small country place in the valley of the Gironde to Strasburg, making the journey on foot, — accompanied, like true wander- ing students, by their dog ; and when they stayed at some village, it was the dog which got the bowl of soup, while the two brothers’ supper very often consisted only of bread with a few apples. From Strasburg the younger brother went to Berlin, whither he was attracted by the lectures of the great Eitter. Later on, in the forties, they were both at Paris. Elie Eeclus 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’etat, they both had to leave France, and emigrated to England. When the amnesty was voted, and they re- turned to Paris, Elie edited there a Fourierist cooperative paper, which circulated widely among the workers. It is not generally known, but may be interesting to note, that Napoleon III., who played the part of a Caesar, — interested, as behooves a Caesar, 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 Working- men’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 Caesar ; and he ordered its prosecution when the Internationalists refused point blank to do any thing of the sort. 486 MEMOIES OF A REVOLUTIONIST When the Commune was proclaimed, both brothers heart* ily joined it, and Elie accepted the post of keeper of the National Library and the Louvre Museum under Yaillant. It was, to a great extent, to his foresight and to his hard work that we owe the preservation of the invaluable trea- sures of human knowledge and art accumulated in these two institutions, during the bombardment of Paris by the armies of Thiers and the subsequent conflagration. A pas- sionate lover of Greek art, and profoundly acquainted with it, he had had all the most precious statues and vases of the Louvre packed and placed in the vaults, while the great- est precautions were taken to store in a safe place the most precious books of the National Library, and to protect the building from the conflagration which raged round it. His wife, a courageous woman, a 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 a system of feeding the people, who had been reduced to sheer destitution during the second siege. In the last few weeks of its existence the Commune finally realized that a supply of food for the people, who were deprived of the means of earning it for themselves, ought to have been the Commune’s first care, and volunteers organized the relief. It was by mere accident that Elie Eeclus, 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, a very few chapters of it, published in book form under the titles of “Primitive Folk ” and “ The Australians,” as well as from the history of the origin of religions, which forms the substance of his lectures at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes, at Brussels, — a LOUISE MICHEL 487 foundation of his brother. In the whole range of ethnologi- cal 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 history of re- ligions (part of which was published in the review “ Societe Nouvelle,” and which is now being continued in its succes- sor, “ Humanite Nouvelle ”), it is, I venture to say, the best work on the subject that has yet appeared ; 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 sim- ple nature of the primitive man which Elie Eeclus pos- sesses to a rare perfection, and to which he has added an extremely wide knowledge of a rather neglected branch of folk-psychology, — the evolution and transformation of be- liefs. It is needless to speak of Elie Eeclus’ 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, which is his and no one else’s. With his modesty, his calm manner, and his deep philo- sophical 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 workingmen or were made up of middle-class people. Her already great popu- larity became still greater, and spread even amongst the university students, who might hate advanced ideas, but worshiped in her the ideal woman. While I was at Paris a riot, caused by some one speaking disrespectfully of Louise 488 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST Michel in the presence of students, took place in a caf4„ The young men took up her defense and made a great uproar, smashing all the tables and glasses in the cafe. I also lectured once, on anarchism, before an audience of sev- eral thousand people, and left Paris immediately after that lecture, before the government could obey the injunctions of the reactionary and 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, Stepniak and Tchaykdvsky. 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 the cottage, a good part of which I made myself with the aid of Tchaykovsky, — he had been 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 I went with much enthusiasm into gardening, the admirable results of which I had before realized after having made acquaintance with the writings of Toubeau, and some Paris market-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 con- valescence was more completely restorative than a stay at the very best sanatorium would have been. Near the end of the summer a heavy blow fell upon me. I learned that my brother Alexander was no longer living. During the years that I had been abroad before my im- prisonment 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 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 EXILE OF MY BROTHER ALEXANDER 489 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 other of my relatives. After the Tsar had written on the petition of our sister Helene, “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 which he had already been kept there. Then a new committee was nominated under Ldris MelikofF, 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 further east. When I was imprisoned at Clairvaux he wrote to me, and we exchanged a few letters. He wrote that though 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 even under this double super- vision. He spoke of his family life, of his three children, whom he described interestingly, and of his work. He earnestly advised me to keep a watchful eye upon the de- velopment of science in Italy, where excellent and original researches are conducted, but remain unknown in the scien- tific world until they have been exploited in Germany ; and he gave me his opinions about the probable progress of po- litical life in Russia. He did not believe in the possibility with us, in a near future, of constitutional rule on the pat- tern of the West European parliaments ; but he looked for- ward — and found it quite sufficient for the moment — to the convocation of a sort of deliberative National Assembly (Zemskiy Sobor or Mats Generaux ). It would not make 490 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST laws, but would only work out the schemes of laws, ta which the imperial power and the Council of State would give definitive form and final sanction. Above all he wrote to me about his scientific work. He had always had a decided leaning towards astronomy, and when we were at St. Petersburg he had published in Russian 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 algebra- ists, — who are apt to lose sight of the realities of the phy- sical world and see nothing but their own formulae. Our St. Petersburg astronomers spoke to me with great appreciation of that work of my brother’s. Row, he undertook to study the structure of the universe ; to analyze the data and the hypotheses about the worlds of suns, star-clusters, and nebulae in the infinite space, and to work out the problems of their grouping, their life, and the laws of their evolu- tion and decay. The Pulkova astronomer, Gylden, spoke highly of this new work of Alexander’s, and introduced him by correspondence to Mr. Holden in the United States, from whom, while at Washington lately, I had the pleasure of hearing an appreciative estimate of the value of these 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 MY BROTHER’S SCIENTIFIC WORK 491 which had been made up to the date of his exile. Some capital work had been done since. He knew it, hut how could he get access to the necessary books, so long as he re- mained in Siberia ? The approach of the time of his libera- tion 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. “A despair like Faust’s takes hold of me at times,” he wrote to me. When the time of his liberation was at hand, he sent his wife and children to Russia, taking advantage of one of the last steamers before the close of navigation, and, on a gloomy night, this despair put an end to his life. A dark cloud hung upon our cottage for many months, — until a flash of light pierced it, when, the next spring, a tiny being, a girl who bears my brother’s name, came into the world, and with her helpless cry set new strings vi- brating in my heart. 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, in the wind and the rain, between two newspapers ; and one day in February a crowd, after hav- ing 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 labor move- ment 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 suf- ficient to show, at least, good intentions. As to the SOCIALISM IN ENGLAND 493 sentences which were passed upon the prosecuted leaders, they were limited to two or three months’ imprisonment. The amount of interest in socialism and all sorts of schemes of reform and reconstruction of society was very great among all classes of people. Beginning with the au- tumn and throughout all the winter I was asked to lecture all over the country, partly on prisons but mainly on anar- chist socialism, and I visited in this way nearly every large town of England and Scotland. As a rule I accepted the first invitation I received for entertainment on the night of the lecture, and consequently it happened that I stayed one night in a rich man’s mansion, and the next in the narrow quarters of a working family. Every night I saw consid- erable numbers of people of all classes; and whether it was in the worker’s small parlor, or in the reception-room of the wealthy, the most animated discussions went on about socialism and anarchism till a late hour, — with hope in the workman’s house, with apprehension in the mansion, but everywhere with the same earnestness. In the mansion the main questions asked were, “ 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 our conversations I seldom heard the justice of the socialist contention simply denied, or de- scribed as sheer nonsense. But I found 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 mean- time, of still more in the future. “ We are a left-centre country ; we live by compromise,” I was once told by an 494 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST aged 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 from those which I was asked on the Continent. General prin- ciples, of which the partial applications will be determined by the principles themselves, deeply interest the Latin work- ers. If this or that municipal council votes funds in sup- port of a strike, or provides for 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.” That is all that is said, and no praise is given to such minor concessions by the present individual- ist 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 could be the moral restraint if society parted with its present repressive agencies ; whether an elected democratic govern- ment 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 grow- ing in importance, that the chief weight was laid. But on the other hand the impossibility of state administration of in- dustries seemed to have been settled long before in the work- ers’ minds, while what chiefly interested most of them was matters of constructive realization, as well as how to attain the conditions which would make such a realization possible. “ Well, Kropotkin, suppose that to-morrow we were to take THE MIDDLE CLASSES IN ENGLAND 495 possession of the docks of our town. What’s your idea about how to manage them ? ” would be asked, for instance, as soon as we had sat down in a workingman’s parlor. Or, “ We don’t like the idea of state management of rail- ways, and the present management by private companies is organized robbery. But suppose the workers own all the railways. How could the working of them be organized ? ” The lack of general ideas was thus supplemented by a de- sire 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 s upport in differen t wa ys, — some of them frankly joining it, while others helped it from the outside. In France and in Switzerland the two parties — the workers and the middle classes — stood arrayed against each other, sharply separated from each other. 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 considerable number of people went in all sorts of capacities to live near 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 496 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST social revolution had already commenced. As always hap- pens, however, with such enthusiasts, when they saw that in England, as everywhere, there was a long, tedious, pre- paratory uphill work to he done, very many of them re- tired from active work, 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 I started, in addition to the three so - ; cialist papers already in existence, an anarchist-communist monthly, “ Freedom,” which continues to live up to the present hour. At the same time I resumed my work on anarchism where I had had to interrupt it at the time of my arrest. The critical part of it was published by Elisee Reclus, during my Clairvaux imprisonment, under the title, “Paroles d’un Revolte.” Now I began to work out the constructive part of an anarchist-communist society, — so far as it could be forecast, — in a series of articles published at Paris in “ La Revolte.” “ Our boy,” prosecuted for anti-militarist propaganda, had been 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 Conquete du Pain.” These researches caused me to study more thoroughly certain points in the economic life of the civilized nations of to-day. Most socialists had hitherto said that in our pre- sent civilized societies we actually produce much more than is necessary for guaranteeing full well-being to all ; that it was only the distribution which was defective ; and, if a social revolution took place, all that was required would be for every one to return to his factory or workshop, — so- ciety taking possession for itself of the “ surplus value,” or benefits, which now went to the capitalist. I thought, on the contrary, that under the present conditions of private ownership production itself had taken a wrong turn, and was entirely inadequate even as regards the very necessaries 498 MEMOIRS OF A. REVOLUTIONIST of life. None of these necessaries are produced in greater quantities than would be required to secure well-being for all ; and the over-production, so often spoken of, means no- thing 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 mi ght he im mensely increased, so as to secure a reign of plenty for all. This brought me to consider the possibilities of modern agricul- ture, as well as those of an education which would give to every one 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 “ strug- gle for existence,” had been developed by his followers gen- erally, 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. Even during my stay at Clairvaux I saw the necessity of completely revising the formula itself and its applications to human affairs. The attempts which had been made by a few socialists in this direction did not satisfy me, hut I found in a lecture by a Russian zoologist, Professor 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 Syevertsoff, the zoologist of whom I have spoken in an earlier chapter, added one or MUTUAL AID A LAW OF NATURE 499 two more) — contained for me the key of the whole pro- blem. 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 understand- ing the struggle for life, among animals as well as among men, the materials for which I had been accumulating for two years. I spoke of it to my friends. However, I found that the interpretation 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 rooted 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 sup- porter was the regretted H. W. Bates, whom Darwin, in his “ Autobiography,” described as one of the most intelligent men he ever met. He was secretary of the Geographical Society, and I knew him ; so I spoke to him of my inten- tion. 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 of commendation which you may publish.” I could not have had better encouragement, and I began the work, which was published in the “ Nineteenth Century ” under the titles of “ Mutual Aid among Animals,” “ Among Savages,” “ Among Barbarians,” “ In the Mediaeval City,” and “ Amongst 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 500 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST to complete it, and in the meantime Bates passed from 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 mediaeval free cities, led me to another important research : the part played in history by the state during its latest manifestation in Europe, in the last three centuries. And on the other hand, the study of the mutual support institutions at different stages of civilization led me to examine the evolutionist bases of the senses of justice and morality in man. Within the last ten years the growth of socialism in Eng- land has taken on 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 re- present socialism in Parliament jump to the conclusion that there is now hardly any socialist work going on in Eng- land. But the depth and the penetration of the socialist ideas can nowhere be judged by the numbers of votes given in favor of those who bring more or less socialism into their electoral programmes. Especially is this the case in Eng- land. The fact is, that of the three systems of socialism which were formulated by Fourier, Saint-Simon, and Rob- ert Owen, it is the last-named which prevails in England and Scotland. Consequently it is not so much by the number of meetings or of 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 THE WIDE SPREAD OF SOCIALIST IDEAS 501 socialist views have penetrated is immense in comparison with what it was in 1886 ; and I do not hesitate to say that it is simply colossal in comparison with what it was in the years 1876-82. And I may also add that the perse- vering endeavors of the small anarchist groups have contrib- uted, 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 agree- ment, as against those of state supremacy, centralization, and discipline, which were dominant twenty years ago. All Europe is now going through a very had phase of the development of the military spirit. This was an un- avoidable consequence of the victory obtained by the Ger- man military empire, with its universal military service system, over France in 1871, and it was already then fore- seen, and foretold by many, in an especially impressive form by Bakunin. But the counter-current already begins to make itself felt in modern life. Communist ideas, divested of their monastic form, have penetrated in Europe and America to an immense extent during the twenty-seven years in which I have taken an ac- tive 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 among the most thoughtful of the leaders, and com- pare them with those which have been arrived at to-day by a vast number of workers, I must say that they seem to me to belong to two entirely different worlds. There is no period in history — with the exception, perhaps, of the period of the insurrections in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, which led to the birth of the me- diaeval Communes — during which a similarly deep change has taken place in the current conceptions of society. And 502 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST now, in my fifty-seventh year, I am even more deeply con- vinced than I was twenty-five years ago that a chance com- bination of accidental circumstances may bring about in Europe a revolution as wide-spread as that of 1848, and far more important ; not in the sense of mere fighting be- tween different parties, but in the sense of a profound and rapid social reconstruction ; and I am convinced that what- ever character such a movement may take in different coun- tries, there will be displayed everywhere a far deeper com- prehension of the required changes than has ever been displayed within the last six centuries ; while the resistance which the movement will meet in the privileged classes will hardly have the character of obtuse obstinacy which made the revolutions of times past so violent. To obtain this great result is well worth the efforts which eo many thousands of men and women of all nations and all classes have made within the last thirty years. INDEX INDEX Adlebbekg, Count, 149. Agents, government. See Spies. Agriculture, in Finland and other parts of Russia, 237-239. Aigle, Switzerland, 437, 438. Aigiifi, Manchuria, 206. Aksdkoff, Ivdn, 131, 174. Albarracin, a member of the Jura Federation, 396, 396. Alexander II., at the funeral of the Dowager-Empress, 111, 120 ; at- tends the manoeuvres of the mili- tary schools, 121-123; takes the first steps towards the abolition of serfdom, 129, 130 ; hesitates to proclaim freedom, 130-132 ; issues manifesto of emancipation, 132- 134 ; meets with popular approval, 134, 135 ; his court life, 141-144 ; his relations with a certain prin- cess, 144, 145 ; closely watched by the police, 145, 146 ; his moods, 146 ; an incident at a parade of the garrison, 146, 147 ; his char- acter, 148-151 ; his policy becom- ing reactionary, 148-151 ; 152 ; surrenders to the reactionaries, 163, 164 ; his address to the newly promoted officers, 165, 166 ; his talk with Kropdtkin before the latter’s departure for Siberia, 166, 167 ; his betrayal of the reform movement, 183 ; retains Dmitri Mildtin as minister of war, 242 ; a tool of Shuvdloff and Trdpoff, 242, 243 ; as a bear hunt- er, 243, 244 ; his courage, coward- ice, brutality, and cruelty, 244 ; official corruption under, 245, 246 ; restriction of education under, 247, 248 ; shot at by Kara- kdzoff, 253, 254 ; 260, 261, 310 ; protected by the very men whom he afterwards exiled, 315, 316 ; 344, 349 : refuses to liberate Alex- ander Kropdtkin, 357 ; 376, 377 ; increases the sentences of social- ists, 415 ; adopts severe measures against the revolutionary move- ment, 427-429 ; his relations with Dmitri Kropdtkin, 428 ; his cour- age and cowardice again, 429 ; his relations with Princess Yu- rievski-Dolgonlki and the Em- press, 430 ; alarmed by an attempt to blow up the Winter Palace he creates a sort of dictatorship, which he soon abolishes, 430; wavers between constitutionalism and absolutism, 431 ; decides to convoke a deliberative assembly, 431 ; his assassination, 431, 432 ; the tragedy of his life, 432, 433. Alexander III., a true descendant of Paul I., 152, 153; his lack of education, 152, 153 ; his haughti- ness and impetuosity, 153; 246, 413 ; fears assassination on his accession, 434 ; organizations for the protection of, 434, 435 ; at first willing to convoke a National Assembly, he finally resolves to remain absolute ruler, 436 ; an arrangement to protect him until after his coronation, 445, 446 ; objects to Kropotkin’s re- lease from Clairvaux, 484. Amdr, the river, 184-186 ; barge navigation on, 186-189, 191-193; scenery on, 189 ; a post boat jour- ney on, 189, 190 ; floods and high seas in the rainy season, 190, 191 ; a typhoon on, 191 ; a perilous journey on, 192, 193 ; a steamer on, 193, 194 ; 206, 208. Amdr region, the, annexation to Russia, 184 ; settlement of, 184- 186. See Manchuria, Siberia, Transbaikalia. Anarchism, the first spark of, 282 ; the aim of the Jura Federation, 287; gaining headway in Western Europe, 378 ; its presence saves Europe from a period of reaction, 387-390 ; the red flag, 397, 398 ; the ideal society under, 398, 399 ; a long struggle necessary to bring about the change, 399, 400 ; asscr 506 INDEX ciated but entirely free effort necessary, 400-402 ; a part of a philosophy to be treated by the same methods as the natural sciences, 403 ; in France (1881- 82), 447 ; manifestations during the panic at Lyons, 448, 449 ; trial of Lyons anarchists, 451, 452, 454, 455 ; an animated movement in Paris in 1886, 487, 488 ; results of anarchist work in England, 501. See Circle of Tchaykdvsky, Com- munism, Jura Federation, Nihil- ism, Revolution, Revolutionary movements in Russia, Socialism, “To the people.” Andrei, the Kropdtkin cook, 42. Andrfei, the Kropdtkin tailor, 21, 29, 53, 54, 56. Andrieux, M., sometime prefect of Paris police, 436, 444 ; his spuri- ous anarchist paper, 478-480. AnichkofF Palace, the, 434. Annenkoff, General, chief of police, 159, 160. Aprdxin Dvor, the, 157. Argiiil, the river, 194, 199, 208. Armfeld, Nathalie, 266. Avant-Garde , suppression of the, 417. Baikdl, Lake, 218-220. Bakiinin, Mikhael, 169, 287 ; his in- fluence in the anarchistic move- ment, 288, 289 ; his imprison- ment, 343, 344 ; 386 ; excluded from the International Working- men’s Association, 387 ; his death, 387 ; 390, 402, 501. Barbot-de-Mamy, 333. Barge navigation on the Amdr and its tributaries, 186-189, 191-193. Bastian, Adolph, 217. Bates, Henry Walter, 499. Bavdri, 135. Becker, Herr, librarian of the im- perial library of Russia, 84-86, 113. Belgium, the International Work- ingmen’s Association in, 274, 281, 287. Bern, the red flag at, 397. Bernard, anarchist, 454. Blagovdschensk, Siberia, 190, 191, 206. Blanqui, 406, 460. Bogohiboff, 415. Bosio, Angiolina, 119. Boulanger, General, 447. Boy of the Commune, heroism of a, 285. Brousse, Paul, 393 ; his aiTest and imprisonment, 417 ; his paper the Avant-Garde suppressed, 417 ; expelled from Switzerland, 417. Biirman, Madame, 6, 7, 12, 15. Buxhovden, Captain, 201. Cafiero, personality of, 394 ; 473. Catherine, Grand Duchess, cousin of Alexander II., 431. Celfnski, a Polish insurgent, 222. Censorship of the press in Russia, 66, 67. Chatelard, the castle of, 424. Cherkdssky, Prince, 177, 179. Chernydeff, Colonel, 209. Chernyshdvsky, 131 ; his arrest and imprisonment, 196, 197 ; 242, 249 ; his novel What is to be Done ? 301 ; transferred from Siberia to Astra- khan, where he dies, 445. Chinese functionary, an old, 203, 205, 206. Chinese in Manchuria, the, 211. Chitd, Transbaikdlia, 170 ; munici- pal self-government in, 171 ; how it got its watchtower, 182, 183 ; 186, 201, 215, 218, 219. Circle of Tehaykdvsky, the, organ- ization of, 304 ; originally formed for purposes of self-improvement, 304 ; growth of, 305 ; engages in the spread of books among stu- dents, 305 ; becomes a centre of socialist propaganda and estab- lishes relations with the working- people, 305-308 ; membership of, 306 ; 310 ; its inner harmony, 317 ; its place of meeting, 317 ; its female members, 317-319 ; its meetings, 325 ; arrest of most of its members, 330-332 ; methods used for continuing its work, 332. See Nih ilism , Socialism, “ To the people.” Clairvaux, the prison of, its history, 458 ; the author’s confinement in, 459-470 ; internal economy of, 459-461 ; its surroundings, 461, 462 ; has the aspect of a manufac- turing town, 462 ; one of the best penal institutions in Europe, 462 ; aged prisoners in, 463, 464 ; com- munication among the prisoners, 464-466 ; administration of. 469. Clare ns, (Switzerland, the author INDEX 507 settles at, 424; a spy at, 472, 473. Collectivism, 447. Communal effort, necessity of, 215- 217. Commune, the Paris, refugees of, 25:3-285 ; 392, 393 ; an outbreak ■with insufficiently determined ideals, 291, 400, 401 ; Lefran§ais’s hook on, 393 ; the treasures of the National Library and the Louvre during, 486 ; relief of the poor during, 486. Communism, attitude of the French mind towards, 447 ; spread of the idea in Europe and America, 501. See Anarchism, Socialism. Compositor, a Russian, 422. Conquete du Pain, La, 497. Constantine, Grand Duke, 129, 148, 149, 151, 152, 163 ; insinuation of KatkOff against, 254. Constitutionalism in Russia, 313, 314 ; Alexander II. and, 431 ; Alexander III. and, 436 ; 489. See Liberal movement in Russia, the. Corps of pages, the, Kropdtkin enters, 70j 71 ; its organization, 71, 72 ; its inner life changed after the death of Nicholas I., 73; the master and the pupils, 73-82 ; de- velopment of the new spirit, 82 ; education in, 83-93, 113-118 ; the new master, 108 ; assists in the funeral ceremonies of the Dowa- ger-Empress, 109-111 ; a frolic, 111, 112 ; military manoeuvres of, 121-123 ; field work of, 123-125 ; duties of pages, 140-144 ; final promotion of members as officers, 154-156, 165, 166 ; in the great fire of 1862, 157-161. Corruption in the official life of St. Petersburg, 245, 246. Cossacks, Transbaikdlian, their or- ganization and settlement in the Amiir region, 185, 186 ; their in- quisitiveness, 200-202 ; on the Usurf, 213. Cossacks, Usurf, 213. Costa, 406 ; arrest and imprison- ment of, 407. Court life, 141-144. Courts of law, nests of moral in- fection, 469. Cowen, Joseph, 437. Cracow, Poland, 293-295. Crimean war, the, 63-65. Darwin, Charles, his Origin of Species, 97, 98, 115 ; his formula, the “struggle for existence,” 498, 499. Deldeluze, 284. Discipline, of no value in real life, 216, 217. Dolgoniki. See Yurievski-Dolgo- ruki, Princess. Dolgdsliin circle, the, 425. Don Quixote, Turgdeneff on, 412. Dowager-Empress, widow of Nicho- las I., funeral of, 109-112. Dukhobdrtsy, the semi-commu- nistic organization of the, 216, 313. Dumartheray, associated with Kro- pdtkin and Herzig in starting Le Revolts, 417 ; personality of, 419 ; his work on the paper, 420 ; suggests the purchase of a print- ing-plant for Le Rivolte, 421 ; puts all his energy into the paper, 421, 422. Easter in Russia, 33-35. Ebert, writing-teacher at the school of pages, 89, 90. Economy and extravagance in Rus- sian life, 31-33. Education in Russia, revival of in- terest in, 83 ; influences of the priesthood on, 247 ; its restric- tion in the seventies, 247, 248 ; movement for the higher educa- tion of women, 258-263. See “ To the people.” Elssler, Fanny, 20. Emelidnoff , runs to the help of the wounded Tsar, 432. Empress. See Dowager-Empress and Marie Alexdndrovna. Encyclopcedia Britannica, Kropdt- kin contributes to, 444, 459. Engels, 281, 386. England, socialism in, 274, 440-442, 492-497, 500, 501 ;“ a left-centre country,” 493. Equerries’ Quarter, Old. See Old Equerries’ Quarter. Erekmann-Chatrian’s Histoire d'un Paysan, 327. Executive Committee, the, declares war against absolutism, 429; makes a daring attempt to blow up the Winter Palace, 430; a new plot of, 431 ; enters into an agreement with Igndtieff, 445, 446. 508 INDEX Extravagance and economy in Rus- sian life, 31-33. Fair, a Russian country, 102-104. Fddchenko, zoologist, 230. Fddchenko, Olga, 230. Ferrd, a Blanquist, 396. Fields , Factories, and Workshops, 498. Filka, bandy-legged, 57. Finland, Kropotkin’s exploration of the glacial deposits in, 234, 235 ; condition of the peasants in, 237 238 Fire of 1862 in St. Petersburg, the great, 157-164. Flaubert, Gustave, 409, 410. Fleury, General, 243. Fortress of St. Peter and St. Paul, the, the author’s confinement in, 341-363 ; its terrible history, 343, 344 ; the author’s cell in, 344, 345 ; routine of life in, 352, 353. Fourierism, 405. France, proposed restoration of the Bourbon monarchy prevented by the socialists, 387, 388 ; sup- pression of revolutionary papers and of the “Marseillaise,” 389; rapid quiet development of ideas in, 406 ; circulation of Le Rtvolti in, 423, 447 ; development of the anarchist movement in, 447 ; ef- fect of the Lyons trial on the anarchist movement in, 454 ; pris- ons in, 456-470 ; her alliance with Russia, 484 ; attitude of the mid- dle classes towards socialism, 495. Franz Josef Land, 233. Freedom, an anarchist-communist monthly, 497. Frol, the Kropdtkin major-domo, 10, 11, 15, 39, 40, 50, 99, 100. Functionary, an old Chinese, 203, 205, 206. Gagdrin, Prince, 24. Gagdrin, Princess, 9. Gamaldya, Mademoiselle, 111. Ganz, drawing-teacher at the school of pages, 90-93. Gatchina, the palace at, 434. Gautier, Emile, 449, 454, 460. Geneva, a centre of the international socialist movement, 276 ; Kropdt- kin in, 276-280 ; work of the In- ternational Workingmen’s As- sociation in, 276-280. Geographers, some Russian, 228- 231. Geographical Society. See Russian Geographical Society. George, Henry, his Progress and Poverty, 440. Germany, the face of the country contrasted with Russia, 268 ; so- cialism in, 274 ; beginnings of the Social Democracy in, 385 ; hostil- ity to the revolutionary spirit in, 389. Ghent, international socialist con- gress at, 404, 405. Ghirfn, Manchuria, 208, 210. Girardot, Colonel, his personality, 73-75 ; his system of discipline in the school of pages, 75-79 ; his dislike of Kropdtkin, 79, 80 ; loss of influence, 81, 82 ; dis- missal, 82. Glacial period, the, 239, 333 ; the author’s book on, 349-351, 365. Gdgol, 67. Gonehardff, liis Precipice, 300. Gosse, L. L., 159. Grand dukes, private life of the, 144, 145, 246. Grigdrieff, Peter, 139. Grinevetsky, kills Alexander H. and himself, 432. Gruber, Dr., 259. Guesde, Jules, 406. Guillaume, James, beginning of the author’s friendship with, 282, 283 ; 288, 382 ; excluded from the International Workingmen’s As- sociation, 387 ; his personality, 391 ; 396, 405 ; compelled to leave Switzerland and return to France, 417. Gukdvskaya, Miss, 426. Hamlet, Turgudneff on, 412. Harrow, England, 488. Hdldne Pdvlovna, Grand Duchess, 129, 151, 431. Helmersen, General, 234. Hdrzen, Alexander, his review The Polar Star, 127, 131 ; 129 ; his article Thou hast conquered, Galilean, 130 ; his Bell, 131, 408 ; 135, 151. Herzig, starts Le Rtvolti withKro- pdtkin and Dumartheray, 417 ; his personality, 419, 420 ; 421. Hoedel, his attempt upon the Ger- man Emperor’s life, 416. Holy League, the, 435, 438. INDEX 509 Hospital, the military, 365-367. Hugo, Victor, 460. Huxley, Thomas Henry, 498, 499. > Hyndman, Henry Mayers, 441 ; his England for All , 442 ; starts his socialist paper Justice , 442 ; 492. Hyndman, Mrs. Henry Mayers, 441. Igndtieff, Count Nikoldi Pdvlovich, 146, 197 ; said to have frustrated a scheme to compel Alexander III. to sign a constitutional mani- festo, 435 ; appointed prime minister, 436 ; 443 ; sends agents into Switzerland to sow dissension among refugees, 444, 445 ; makes a compromise with the Executive Committee, 445, 446. Imprimerie Jurassienne, 421, 422. In Russian and French Prisons, 466. Ingodd, the river, 208. Inn, a “ white,” 106, 107. Innocentus, bishop of the Amiir, 1 . 86 . International Workingmen’s As- sociation, the, origin of, 269-271 ; importance of the congresses of, 272, 273 ; its work in various countries, 273, 274 ; Kropdtkin joins, 274, 275 ; enthusiasm in Geneva for, 276-278 ; elevating influence of, 277 ; political wire- pulling by leaders of, 279, 280; essentially a workingmen’s move- ment, 281 ; development of an in- ternal governing body followed by the opposition of the Jura Federation, 281, 282 ; its origi- nal aim, 384 ; divides into two factions, 385, 386 ; its method of solving the problems of socio- logy by appealing to the work- ers themselves, 402, 403 ; 404 ; wrongly accused of conspiracy against the lives of European sovereigns, 416, 417 ; collectivism preached in, 447 ; the French law against ex-members of, 451, 452. See Jura Federation. Irkritsk, Siberia, 169, 194, 198, 212, 217 ; winter amusements at, 220, 221 ; 222, 223 ; some society girls of, 29!). Ishdtin, 253. Italy, work of the International Workingmen’s Association in, 273 ; effect of the presence of socialists upon the actions of the monarchy, 388 ; scientific re* searches in, 489. Ivdnoff, soldier servant of the author, 133. Ivdnoff, Vasily, 104, 136. Jallot, a Blanquist, 396. Jews, smuggling, 293-295. Joukdvsky, Nicholas, 280; person- ality of, 395. Jura Federation, the, a rebel against the authority of the general council of the Interna- tional Workingmen’s Associa- tion, 281, 282 ; personnel and or- ganization of, 282-287 ; the author joins, 383 ; excluded from the In- ternational, 387 ; the centre of anarchistic work in Europe, 390 ; members of, 391-395 ; work of, 396-403 ; its main activity the working out of the practical and theoretic aspects of anarchism, 398 ; takes a large part in the elaboration of the anarchist ideal, 403 ; wrongly accused of conspiracy against the lives of European sovereigns, 416, 417 ; its organ, the Avant-Garde, sup- pressed, 417 ; boldly declares it- self anarchist-communist, 447. See International Workingmen’s As- sociation. Jura Mountains, the, Kropotkin visits, 281 ; socialism in, 282, 286, 287. Kard, Transbaikdlia, 194. Kara Sea, the, 231, 232. Karakdzoff, 252-256, 301. Karandind, Elisabeth, her mar- riage to the author’s father, 14, 15. See Kropdtkin, Princess. Katkdff, 162 ; the leader of the serfdom party, 180 ; accuses radicals and liberals of complicity with Karakdzoff, 254 ; 260, 309, 429. Kavdlin, 151. Kelnitz, Dmitri, his personality and student life, 303, 304 ; invites the author to join the circle of Tchaykdvsky, 304 ; 309, 325, 326; evading the police, 330, 331, 335 ; goes to the Balkan peninsula t* join the insurgents, 383. Keltie, J. Scott, 381, 382. Kennan, George, 181, 182. Kessler, Professor, 498. 510 INDEX Khamdr-dabdn, 219. Khdnshina (Chinese brandy), 190. Khdrkoff, the prison of, 427, 428. Khingdn, the Great, 199, 203, 204, 206. Kirin. See Ghirin. Klasdvsky, Professor, 84, 86-88, 156. Knowles, James, 499. Kohandvsky, Madame ( “ V. Kres- tdvskiy ” ), 251. Komfloff, the sisters, 318, 320. Korsdkoff, governor - general of East Siberia, 169, 208. Korsdkoff, General, of the fortress of St. Peter and St. Paul, 341, 342. Kovalevsky, Sophie (Sdnya), 260. Kovdlsky, 426, 427. Kravchinsky, Serghdi (Stepnidk), conversation with the author and George Kennan, 182 ; 267 ; his Career of o Nihilist. 278 ; a gen- eral favorite in the circle of Tchaykdvsky, 319 ; his reckless- ness about his own safety, 319, 320 ; beginning of an intimate acquaintance with the author, 320 ; his personality, 320, 321 ; a story of his work among the peasants, 321 ; his cryptographic correspondence with the author, 321, 322 ; his work among the peasants in disguise, 322 ; his escape from arrest, 323 ; a leader of the agitation in Moscow, 323 ; as a pamphleteer, 324 ; 325 ; elud- ing arrest, 330 ; forced to leave St. Petersburg, 331 ; goes to the Balkan peninsula to aid the in- surrection against Turkey, 383 ; 435 ; in London, 488. Krestdvskiy, V., 251. Kropdtkin, Madame, the author’s wife, in poor health, 424 ; a severe literary critic of her hus- band’s writings, 424 ; 437, 438, 440, 442, 449-451, 460 ; leaves her studies and settles at Clairvaux near the prison, 461 ; her inter- views with her husband in prison, 461 ; 465 ; detects a Russian spy in London, 477, 478 ; her experi- ence with two spies at Clairvaux, 480-482 ; 485. 488. Kropdtkin, Princess (Ekaterina Sulima), the author’s mother, her death, 6, 7 ; her marriage, 11 ; her personality, 12 ; 60, 01. Kropdtkin, Princess (Elisabeth Karandind), the author’s step- mother, 26, 41, 42, 45, 50, 51, 56, 58, 59, 64, 264, 265. Kropdtkin, Alexander (Sdsha), the author’s brother, 6, 7, 15, 17, 21, 23, 24j enters a corps of cadets by the Tsar’s orders, 26, 27, 48 ; 45 ; development of his intellect at school, 48 ; 61 ; early literary attempts, 68 ; 69 ; 85 ; correspond- ence with his brother, 94-97 ; a reader and writer of poetry, 95 ; his ideas about reading, 95, 96 ; his ideas on religion and philo- sophy, 96-98 ; clandestine meet- ings with his brother, 99-101 ; 102, 155, 195 ; becomes an officer of the Irkdtsk Cossacks, 198 ; with his brother at Irkdtsk, 217 ; re- turns to St. Petersburg with his brother, 223 ; enters the military academy for jurisprudence, 224 ; in the literary circles of St. Petersburg, 249, 250 ; his last visit to his father, 264, 265 ; visits his brother in prison, 347-349 ; his veracity and frankness, 347 ; removes to Switzerland, 347 ; his attitude towards socialism, 348 ; his scientific work, 348 ; returns to St. Petersburg to help his brother, 348 ; obtains permission for his brother to finish his book on the glacial period in the fortress, 349 ; another interview with his brother, 354, 355 ; his arrest and exile, 355-357 ; his term of exile, 445, 489 ; corre- spondence with his brother, 488- 490 ; his astronomical work, 490 ; hampered in his scientific work by the conditions of his exile, 490, 491 ; despair and death, 491. Kropdtkin, Prince Alexei Petrd- vich, the author’s father, 7 ; his character and military career, 9-11 ; his first marriage, 11 ; mar- ries Elisabeth Karandind two years after the death of the author’s mother, 14 ; 26, 27 ; his wealth in serfs, 28 ; his private band. 29, 30 ; his pleasure in exercising patronage and in enter- taining, 30 ; his gambling. 31 ; his economies and extravagances, 31 ; 36, 39—42, 45, 4S ; his treat- ment of his serfs, 50, 51, 53, 54, 57- 62 ; secures his promotion as gen- INDEX 511 eral through his ex-serf, 59 ; 99, 156 ; his last illness, 264, 265 ; his funeral, 265. Kropotkin, Dmitri Nikolaevich, the author’s cousin, aide-de-camp of the Emperor, 131, 165 ; gov- ernor-general of Khdrkoff, 357 ; shot by a revolutionist, 428 ; his attitude towards political offend- ers, 428. Kropdtkin, Hdlkne, the author’s sister, 7, 17, 18, 30, 31, 56, 63, 65, 68, 97, 354, 355, 357 ; secures adequate medical attendance for her brother in prison, 364 ; ar- rested and imprisoned for a fort- night, 376 : 489. Kropdtkin, Nicholas, the author’s brother, 7, 26, 48 ; goes to the Crimean war, 63. Kropdtkin, Pauline, the author’s half-sister, 45, 49, 264, 265. Kropdtkin, Peter, birth, 5 ; at his mother’s death-bed, 6, 7 ; ances- try and parentage, 8-13 ; his father’s second marriage, 14, 15 ; his lessons at home, 16-18 ; child- ish amusements, 18-22 ; early visits to the theatre, 20-22 ; at- tends a fancy dress ball in honor of the Tsar, 25 ; is inscribed as a candidate for the corps of pages, 25, 26 ; home life in Mos- cow, 28-31, 36-39 ; life at Nikdl- skoye, 39-46 ; awakening of a love of nature, 44 ; becomes in- terested in the French Revolution and renounces his title, 47 ; has a German tutor, 48 ; goes to school for a time, 48 ; under his Russian tutor, 48, 49 ; growing love of nature, 49 ; early development of literary tastes, 49 ; intellectual development at fourteen, 66-68 ; early ventures in authorship and journalism, 68-70 ; enters the corps of pages at St. Petersburg, 70, 71 ; life at the school of pages, 72-93, 108-125 ; studies German literature, 85, 86 ; correspondence with his brother Alexander, 94- 97 ; his reading while at the school of pages, 95-98 ; church- going and religion, 96, 97 ; his first start as an investigator of the life of the people, 102-107 ; at the funeral of the Dowager- Empress, 109-111 • studies his- tory, 113, 114 ; studies the natural sciences and other branches, 114- 118; interest in machinery, 119; fondness for music and the opera, 119, 120 ; learns surveying, 123- 125 ; first acquaintance with re- volutionary literature, 126, 127 ; becomes a constitutionalist, 127, 128 ; appointed sergeant of the corps of pages and page de chambre to the Emperor, 140 ; life at court, 141-149 ; choosing a regi- ment, 154-156 ; assists in fighting the great fire in St. Petersburg, 157-161 ; becomes an officer of the mounted Cossacks of the Amiir, 162, 166, 167 ; conversation with the Emperor, 166, 167 ; ben- efit derived from residence in Siberia, 168 ; arrives at Irkiitsk and becomes aide-de-camp to General Kiikel, the governor of Transbaikalia, 169 ; goes to Chitd. and assists the governor in pro- moting the reform of the exile system and instituting municipal self-government, 170-173 ; his plans of reform buried under the wave of reaction, 181 ; his travels in government service on the Amtir and its tributaries, 184, 187-194 ; journey as courier from Irkiitsk to St. Petersburg, 194- 196 ; interviews with officials, 196, 197 ; a winter journey to Irkiitsk, 198 ; appointed attache to the Governor-General of East Siberia for Cossack affairs, 198 ; an exploration in Manchuria, 199-207 ; an exploring journey up the Sungari, 208-212 ; investi- gates the economical conditions of the Usuri Cossacks, 213 ; ex- lorations in and about Trans- aikdlia, 214, 215 ; lessons taught him by his life in Siberia, 215- 217 ; prepared to become an anar- chist, 217 ; life with his brother Alexander in Irkiitsk, 217 ; leaves the military service after the in- surrection of Polish exiles and returns to St. Petersburg, 223 ; enters the university, 224 ; dis- covers the principles of the dis- S osition of the mountains of lorthern Asia, 224-227 ; secre- tary to the section of physical geography of the Russian Geo- graphical Society, 228 ; plans an arctic expedition, which is vetoed 512 INDEX by the government, 232 -234 ; Bent by the Geographical Society to Finland and Sweden for the urpose of exploring the glacial eposits, 234, 235 ; anxious to write an exhaustive physical geography of Russia, 235 ; de- clines the position of secretary to the Geographical Society, 235, 236 ; his interest in the life of the peasants awakened in Finland, 237-241 ; returns to St. Peters- burg, 242 ; his last visit to his father. 264, 265 ; attends his fathers funeral, 265 ; his first visit to Western Eur op e, 268 ; joins the International Working- men’s Association at Zurich, 274 ; visits Geneva, 276 ; decides to devote his life to the cause of revolution, 278 ; visits Neu- chatel and the Jura Mountains and observes the work of the Jura Federation, 281-287 ; be- comes an anarchist, 287 ; returns to St. Petersburg, 292-295 ; smug- gling prohibited books and papers into Russia, 293-295 ; at the university again, 303 ; joins the circle of Tchaykdvsky, 304-306 ; offers to lay aside personal feel- ings and work for constitution- alism, 313, 314 ; his proposal not accepted by the circle, 314 ; his work in the circle, 317, 324 ; acquaintance and correspond- ence with StepniAk, 320-322 ; talks to the workers in disguise, 326 - 329 ; takes the name of Borodin, 328 ; eluding arrest, 331-333 ; reads to the Geographi- cal Society his report on the glacial formations of Finland and Russia, 333 ; his arrest, 334, 335 ; his examination by the public prosecutor, 335, 337-340 ; im- f risoned in the fortress of St. 'eter and St. Paul, 340-342 ; his cell, 344, 345 ; exercising body and mind in prison, 345-347; obtains permission to finish his hook on the glacial period, 349 ; at work on his book, 350, 351 ; his reading in prison, 351 ; routine of prison life, 352-354 ; his last interview with his brother, 354, 355 ; conversation between the cells, 359, 360 ; receives a visit from the Grand Duke Nicholas, 360-362 ; his health gives way, 363 ; removed with other prison- ers to the house of detention, 363 ; grows worse, 364 ; trans- ferred to the military hospital, 365 ; his health improves, 365, 368 ; plans escape, 366-371 ; es- capes, 371-374 ; eluding recap- ture, 375, 376 ; succeeds in reach- ing England, 376-378; lands under the name of Levashbff and goes to Edinburgh, 378 ; decides to remain in Western Europe working in the cause of anar- chism, 378, 379 ; writes for Nature and The Times, 380, 381 ; removes to London in search of more regular work, 381 ; asked to re- view his own books, 381, 382 ; goes to Switzerland, 382, 383 ; joins the Jura Federation and settles in La Chaux-de-Fonds, 383 ; work for the cause of anar- chism, 396-405 ; forced to return to England, 405 ; goes to Paris and starts socialist! groups there, 406 ; escapes arrest as an Inter- nationalist, 407 ; acquaintance with Turgu4neff, 408—413 ; starts Le Revolts as an organ of the Jura Federation, 417, 418; his work on the paper, 418—424 ; re- moves from Geneva to Clarens, Switzerland, and assists Elis4e Reclus with his geography in ad- dition to his anarchist labors, 423, 424 ; his life in danger from Russian agents on account of his supposed connection with con- spiracies against the Tsar, 435, 438 ; expelled from Switzerland, 436, 437 ; previous stay in Eng- land writing articles on Russian affairs for the Newcastle Chron- icle, 437 ; settles in Thonon, France, 438 ; removes to London, 440 ; socialist work in England, 441, 442 ; goes back to Thonon, 443 ; under the constant surveil- lance of spies, 443-446 ; accused by newspapers of being the leader of the agitation at Lyons, 449 ; the police seek to entrap him, 449, 450 ; arrested and taken to Lyons, 450 ; his trial and sentence to’ five years’ imprisonment, 451- 455 ; confinement in the Lvons prison, 456-459 ; transferred to the central prison of Clairvaux, INDEX 513 458, 459; confinement at Clair- vaux, 460-470 ; petition for his release and offer of the use of books, 460 ; his release, 484 ; lectures on anarchism in Paris, 488 ; goes to London and settles at Harrow, 488 ; loses his brother Alexander, 488-491 ; birth of a daughter, 491 ; lectures in Eng- land and Scotland on prisons and anarchist socialism, 493 ; starts Freedom , an anarchist-communist monthly, 497 ; anarchist writ- ings, 497 ; his researches in pro- duction and distribution result in a series of articles, 497, 498 ; makes researches and publishes articles on mutual aid as a law of nature, 498, 499; further re- searches, 500. Kropdtkin, Petr Nikoldevich, the author’s cousin, 178. Kropdtkin family, origin of the, 8. Xrugldff, Gherdsim Ivdnovieh, 58, 59. Kdkel , General, Kropdtkin be- comes his aide - de - camp, 169 ; romotes various reforms in iberia, 170-173 ; his recall, 180, 181, 196. Kupreydnoff, 319. La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland, 383, 396. Lavrdff, Colonel P. L., 348, 355 ; his newspaper Forward , 381, 382 ; 408, 411. Lefrangais, a refugee of the Com- mune, 392, 393, 424. Ldna, the river, 215, 218. Letter in court, a, 452-454. Levashdff, name used by the author to conceal his identity, 378, 404, 405, 407. _ Liberal movement in Russia, the, in 185T-61, 128-130 ; reaction, 130-132; the emancipation mani- festo issued, 133, 134 ; serious reaction produced by the great fire of 1862 in St. Petersburg, 162-166 ; great reforms on foot in Siberia, 169-173 ; attitude of Russian people in Polish revo- lution, 174, 175 ; the Polish in- surrection, the definitive close of the reform period in Russia, 180 ; the wave of reaction reaches Siberia, 180, 181 ; betrayal of the reform movement by Alexander 11., 183; liberal ideas in bad repute in offioial circles in the seventies, 242, 249-251 ; Kara- kdzoff’s attempt upon the Tsar’s life and its effect upon the liberal movement, 252-254 ; posi- tion of the Russian youth in the struggle for more political free- dom, 256, 257 ; an opportunity lost at the accession of Alexander 111., 436. See Constitutionalism in Russia, Nihilism, Revolution- ary movements in Russia. Literature, the teaching of, 88. Locarno, Switzerland, 288. London, socialism in, 440 - 442, 492, 495. Lunatic in prison, a, 360. Lyons, an industrial crisis at, 447- 449 ; the author taken to, 450 ; the trial of the author and the Lyons anarchists at, 451-454 ; the author’s imprisonment at, 456- 458, 468, 469. Machinery, 119. Mdikoff, the poet, 242. Makdr, servant in the Kropdtkin family, 29, 50, 61. Makldy. See Mikldkho-Makldy. Malatesta, his life and personality, 394 ; 479. Malon, a refugee of the Commune, 283-285. Mdloyarosldvetz, the battlefield of, 42, 43. Manchuria, geographical explora- tions in, 199-212 ; the authorities suspicious of Russia, 210 ; the Chinese in, 210, 211. See Am dr region, the. Map, a Tungus, 214, 215. Marie Alexdndrovna, Empress, 25, 84, 142 ; her character and in- fluence, 161; 178; becomes _ a devotee and falls under the in- fluence of a priest, 247 ; aban- doned by her husband and left to die in neglect, 430 : 431. Martin, a fellow-prisoner of the author’s, 456, 465. Marx, Karl, 281, 386. Mdslia, maid of the author’s mother, 60, 61. Matvdi, a servant in the Kropdtkin family, 15. Mdlikoff, Ldris, given dictatorial c- powers by Alexander II., 430 ; as minister of the interior he 514 INDEX urges liberal policies upon the Tsar. 430, 431 ; warns the Tsar of plots against his life, 431 ; some revelations of his post- humous papers, 435, 436 ; 489. Merghdn, Manchuria, 206. Mdzentsoff, General, chief of the Third Section, 415 j killed by revolutionists, 428. Michel, Louise, her orime, im- prisonment, and release, 484 ; arouses the enthusiasm of her audiences, 487, 488. Mikhael, Grand Duke, brother to Alexander II., 149; assists Kro- pdtkin to his appointment in Siberia, 161, 162. Mikhael, Grand Duke, brother to Nicholas I., 10 ; teases the young Kropdtkin, 25 ; his military dis- cipline, 55. Mikhdiloff, the poet, 172, 249. Mikhdiloff, Adndn, 256. Mikldkho-Makldy, Nikoldi Niko- Idevich, 228, 229. Military service in Russia, 54-56. Military spirit, under Nicholas I., 9, 10 ; in all Europe at the present day, 501. Mildtin, Dmitri, 197, 242. Mildtin, Nicholas, 132, 151 ; his mission to free the serfs in Po- land, 177-179; 180; treated as a suspect, 242. Mlrslti, Prince, 33, 126. Mfrski, Princess, 126. Moncasi, Oliva, 416. Monceau-les-Mines, France, 448. Moscow, description of, 1-5 ; nobil- ity of, 2, 3 ; celebration of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the accession of Nicholas I. at, 23-26 ; in the seventies, 264-267. Mountains of Northern Asia, gen- eral trend of the, 224-227. Muravidff, Mikhael, sent to Lithu- ania during the Polish revolu- tion, 178 ; his oruelty to the Poles, 179 ; suspected of using torture, 254, 256 ; a terror to the radicals, 256. Muravidff, Count Nicholas N., his character and opinions, 169 ; in- tervenes to save Kdkel from imprisonment, 181 ; his annexa- tion and settlement of the Amdr region, 184-186 ; marries colonists by wholesale, 185, 186 ; treated as a suspect, 242. Mutual aid a law of nature, 498. 499. # Mishkin, nihilist, 412. Napoleon I., 42, 43. Napoleon ill., 163, 175 ; plays the part of a Caesar towards the work- ing classes, 485. Nature , the journal, Kropdtkin’s contributions to, 380. Nazlmoff, General, 129. Nazimoffj Madame, 23, 24, 26. Nechdieff, revolutionist, 304, 305, 343. Neuchatel, Kropdtkin visits, 281 ; socialists at, 282-285. Newcastle Chronicle, the, Kropdt- kin writes for, 437, 444. Nicholas I., celebration of the twenty-fifth anniversary of his accession, 23 - 26 ; notices the young Kropdtkin, 25 ; appoints Kropdtkin to the corps of pages, 25, 26 ; forces the sons of the nobility to adopt the military career, 26, 27 ; 55 ; death of, 64, 65 ; press censorship under, 66, 67 ; organizes the Third Section, 336. Nicholas, Grand Duke, brother of Alexander II., interviews the author in prison, 360-362. Nihilism, a revolt against domestic despotism, 296; not to be con- fused with terrorism, 297 ; sin- cerity the distinctive feature of, 297-301 ; enthusiasm for, 301, 302 ; not a revolutionary move- ment, 302 ; 401. See Circle of Tchaykdvsky, Socialism, “ To the people.” Nikoldevsk, Siberia, 208. Nikoldi Alexdndrovich, heir ap- parent to the Russian throne, 84, 151 , 152. Nikdlskoye, serfs bring provisions from, 36-39 ; the annual moving to, 39-44 ; description of, 44 ; life at, 45, 46 ; 99 ; the annual fair at, 102-104 ; after the emancipation of the serfs, 136, 238. Nineteenth Century, Kropdtkin writes for, 459, 498, 499. Nlzovkin, arrest of, 331. Nobiling, Dr., 416. Nonconformists, Russian, 45, 46 Ndnni, the river, 209. Nordensjkold, Baron Nils Adolf Erik, 234. Ndvaya Zemlyd, 231, 233, 234. Novikdff, Madame, 437. Ob, the river, 195. Ob<5, an, 203. Okhrdna, 434. Old Equerries’ Quarter (Stdraya KonjTishennaya), description of, 2-5 ; 35 ; its changed condition in the seventies, 264-267. Olga, Madame, 276. Oldkma, the river, 214. On<5n, the river, 208. Ootin, Nicholas, 276, 279, 280. Opera, the Italian, 119, 120, 252. Opera, the Russian, 252. Orography of Asia, 381. Ouroiisovo, one of the Kropdtkin estates, 8, 9. Owenism, 405. Pages, corps of. See Corps of pages. Pages de chambre, 75-77, 140-144. See Corps of pages. Paris, revival of socialist move- ment after the rigid suppression of the Commune, 406 ; an anar- chist movement develops in, 447 ; an animated socialist and anar- chist movement in 1886 at, 487, 488. Paroles d’un Pfvoltf 423, 497. Passanante, makes an attempt upon the life of the King of Italy, 416. Passport, an imposing, 205, 206. Pauline (Pdlya), one of the Kro- pdtkin maidservants, 56, 57. Pdvloff, N. M., 69. Peasants, Finnish, agricultural con- dition of, 237, 238. Peasants, Russian, 46 ; their good sense and intelligence, 105 ; their independent spirit, 105, 106 ; “ Crown peasants,” 107 ; their condition after emancipation, 136-139 ; agricultural conditions of, 238, 239. See Serfs, “ To the people.” Pedashdnko, Colonel, 170, 194. People, the, their willingness and ability to learn, 240. See “To the people.” Perdvskaya, Sophie, 304 ; person- ality of, 317-319 ; her arrest, 330. Peterhof, Russia, 121. Petermann, geographer, 227. INDEX 515 Pindy, a refugee of the Commune, 283, 284, 393, 396. Pfsareff, imprisonment of, 249. Polakdff, naturalist, 215 ; a letter addressed to him occasions his arrest, 335, 338-340 ; meets the author in Geneva in 1878, 340; 351, 355. Poland, beginnings of the revolu- tion of 1863 in, 162-164 ; outbreak of the revolution, 174-176 ; mis- take of the revolutionists in not freeing the serfs, 176-179; dis- astrous failure of the insurrec- tion, 179, 180 ; smuggling on the frontier of, 293-295. Polish exiles, insurrection of the, 218-222. Political economy, interest of Rus- sian people in, 98. Polozhdnie (the emancipation law), 135, 136. See Serfs. P<51ya. See Pauline. Potdpoff, General, his cruelty and corruption, 244, 245. Pouget, anarchist, 484. Poulain, M., engaged as tutor in the Kropdtkin family, 15 ; his meth- ods, 16-18 ; 20, 43 ; at Nikdl- skoye, 45, 46 ; his opinions of revolutions, 47 ; dismissed, 48. Praskdvia, servant in the Kropdt- kin family, 100. Priest, a Greek, 474. Priesthood, the Russian, its atti- tude towards the schools, 247. Prisons, in Russia in 1862 and 1886, 181 ; the fortress of St. Peter and St. Paul, 343-345, 352, 353; a show prison, 363, 364 ; horrors of Russian, 426, 427, 467 ; their de- moralizing influence upon the prisoners, 456, 457, 466-468 ; the Lyons prison, 456-458, 468, 469 ; imprisonment apunishment which often bears more severely upon the prisoner’s family than upon himself, 457, 458; the central prison of Clairvaux, 458-470 ; French prisons more humane than English, 462 ; convicts not re- formed in, 462, 463, 466-468; the rule of absolute silence in French prisons, 464 ; universities of crime, 468 ; nests of moral infection, 469, 470; the present system unjust and foolish, 470. PrjevjUsky, as an explorer and hunter, 230, 231; 380. 516 INDEX Pumpelly, Raphael, 217. Pungahdrju, 234. Pushkin, Alexander, his Evgheniy Onyeghin , 67. Reclns, Elie, 485-487. Reclus, Elisde, personality of, 392 ; 400 ; publishes KropOtkin’s edi- torials under the title of Paroles d'un Revolte , 423, 497; his work on Le Revolte, 423 ; invites Kro- pdtkin to aid him on his Geogra- phy, 423 ; 424, 450, 478 ; his friend- ship with his brother Elie, 485; his early life, 485 ; joins the Com- mune, 486. Reform in Russia. See Liberal movement in Russia. Renan, Ernest, 460. Repninsky, General, 46. Revolte, La, 497. Rtvolti, Le, the starting of, 417, 418; its aim, 418, 419; editing and proof-reading of, 420 ; diffi- culty in securing a printer, 420, 421 ; starts its own printing-office, 421, 422 ; its circulation in France, 423, 447 ; 438, 444, 476 ; its nick- name deceives the Russian em- bassy, 481 ; prosecuted for anti- militarist propaganda and com- pelled to change its name, 497. Revolution, the coming social, 502. See Anarchism, Communism, Revolutionary movements in Russia, Socialism. Revolutionary movements in Rus- sia, in 1857-61, 126, 127, 129, 135, 136, 150; in 1862, 162-164 ; the unsuccessful organization formed by Nech&ieff, 304, 305 ; work of the circle of Tchaykdvsky, 305 ; “ the mad summer ” of 1875, 358 ; an armed struggle takes the place of the socialistic pro- paganda, 378, 325-432; work of the “Executive Committee,” 429-431, 435 ; a compromise be- tween Igndtieff and the Execu- tive Committee, 445. See Anar- chism, Circle of Tehaykdvsky, Communism, Liberal movement in Russia, Nihilism, Socialism. Riuke, a member of the Jura Fed- eration, 395, 404. Rogaehdff, a revolutionist, 322. Russia, its external appearance and climate contrasted with Western Europe, 268. Russian Geographical Society, the, some of the members of, 228-230 ; awakes to an interest in arctic exploration, 231, 232 ; appoints a committee to prepare a plan for an expedition, 232 ; the commit- tee’s report, 232, 233 ; its plans for an expedition under KropOt- kin’s leadership vetoed by the government, 233, 234 ; sends Kro- pdtkin to Finland and Sweden to explore the glacial deposits, 234 ; Kropdtkin offered the position of secretary, which he declines, 235, 236 ; Kropdtkin reads his report on his Finland expedition before, 333. Russo-Turkish war, the, 414. Ryazan, a Kropdtkin estate, 48. RysokOff, his part in the assassina- tion of Alexander II., 432. St. Imier, Switzerland, 396 ; the red flag at, 397, 398. St. Peter and St. Paul fortress of. See Fortress of St. Peter and St. Paul. St. Petersburg, the great fire of 1862, 157-164 ; its official life in the seventies, 242-248 ; its intel- lectual life in the seventies, 249, 250 ; deteriorating effects of the reaction from liberalism, 250, 252. Saint-Simonism, 405. Sansaux, Madame, 438, 439, 443, 444 Sardtoff, Russia, 164. Sisha the Doctor, 57, 58. Savdlieff, AntOn, 138, 139. Sayins, the, 214. Scldusselburg, Russia, 445. Schmidt, Frederick, 234, 333. School. See Corps of pages. Schwitzgudbel, Adhdmar, Kropot- kin's first meeting with, 286 ; hi3 personality, 391 ; 396 ; compelled to retire from the anarchist move- ment, 417. Science, pleasures of discovery in, 226, 227, 239. Sciences, natural, the teaching of, 88, 89. Sebastopol, 63-65. Semydnova, the actress, 9. Serdukdff, forms a socialist circle among the engineers, 325 ; in dan- ger of arrest, 331, 332 ; his con- finement, release, and suicide, 359, 360. INDEX 517 Serfdom, evils of, 49-62 ; question of abolition agitated, 128-132 ; abolition decreed, 132-136. Serfs, wealth measured in, 28 ; harsh treatment of, 49-51, 56, 62 ; married at the owners’ will, 52, 53, 57 ; military service of, 54-56 ; education of, 57-59 ; suppression of revolts among, 60 ; the dream of freedom, 60, 61 ; insurrections of, 129 ; emancipation discussed and accomplished, 129-136 ; con- ditions of emancipation, 135-137, 176 ; in Poland during the revo- lution of 1863, 176-179. See Ser- vants. Sergh4i. See Kravchfnsky, Servants, in the Kropdtkin house, 19, 20, 28-30, 49-51, 53-61, 100, 101 ; varied duties of Russian, 28, 29 ; after emancipation, 137. See Serfs. Seven Mortal Sins, the, 189. Shflka, the river, barge navigation on, 186-189 ; scenery on, 189 ; 194, ' 208. Shiibin, the procureur, 364. Shuviloff, Count, 140 ; his influ- ence over the Tsar, 242-244 ; ap- pointed ambassador to England, .244 ; 254. Siberia, general description of, 168, 169 ; the reform movement in, 169-173 ; reaction in, 180-183 ; autumn traveling in, 195 ; winter traveling in, 198 ; the administra- tion of, 213, 214 ; explorations in, 214, 215. See Amur region, Transbaikalia. Sldoroff, a Siberian merchant and gold miner, 231. Skbbeleff, Gen. Mikhael, 435. Smirndff, Nikoldi Pdvlovich, Rus- sian tutor in the Kropdtkin fam- ily, 15, 18, 20, 47-49 ; fosters Kro- potkin’s literary tastes, 66-69. Smuggling, on the Polish frontier, 293-295. Social Democracy, the, origin of, 385 ; its hostility towards the revolutionary spirit, 389 ; its at- tempt to control the entire labor movement, 404, 405. Socialism, in 1840-48, 270 ; total de- struction of the movement, 270 ; revival of, 271 ; work of the In- ternational Workingmen’s Asso- ciation, 271-274, 276-280; litera- ture of, 275, 324, 418; sacrifices of the workers for, 277, 278 ; help from educated men needed for, 278 ; necessity of revolutions in the cause of, 289-291 ; impor- tance of definite ideals in revo- lutions, 291, 292 ; the circle of Tchaykdvsky promotes, 305-308 ; a mass movement in the direction of, 308 ; persecutions by the Rus- sian police, 309, 310 ; the Tsar’s life protected hy the socialists, 315, 316 ; Stepniak’s propaganda of, 321-323 ; propaganda by per- sonal contact, 323, 324 ; propa- ganda by pamphlets, 324 ; work among the engineers, 325, 326; propaganda among the city work- ers, 326-329 ; numerous arrests among the propagandists, 330- 332; “the mad summer,” 358; gives place to a revolutionary movement in Russia, 378, 379 ; socialist papers in the later seven- ties, 389, 390 ; trial and sentence of 193 Russian socialists, 414, 415 ; men a greater desideratum than money in the cause of, 421 ; in England, 440-442 ; an animated movement in Paris in 1886, 487 ; the movement in England in full swing, 492-496, 500, 501 ; the true measure of the depth and pene- tration of socialist ideas, 500. See Anarchism, Circle of Tchaykdv- sky, Communism, International Workingmen’s Association, Ni- hilism, Revolution, Revolution- ary movements in Russia, “To the people.” Sokoloff, socialist, 395. Solovi6ff, his attempt on the Tsar’s life, 429. Spain, work of the International Workingmen’s Association in, 273, 274 ; the menace of the socialists averts a clerical re- action in, 388. Spencer, Herbert, 460, 487. Spichiger, personality of, 392 ; 396 ; forced to leave Switzerland, 417. Spies, Kropdtkin’s lodgings be- sieged by Russian, 443, 444, 449 ; their character easily detected, 471, 472 ; the Russian agent at Geneva, 471 ; a spy at Clarens, 472, 473 ; amusing report of a Frenrh spy, 473-475 ; a female spy, 474, 475 ; a spy betrayed by a candlestick, 476, 477 ; almost 518 INDEX always betray themselves, 477 ; a Russian spy in London betrayed by his conversation, 477, 478 ; a spurious anarchist paper and its editor, 478-480 ; two Russian spies at Clairvaux, 480-483 ; a German spy visits Clairvaux, 482 ; evils of the spy system, 483. Stdraya Konyusliennaya. See Old Equerries’ Quarter. Stdsova, Miss, 263. Stepnidk. See Kravchinsky, Ser- ghdi. Strikes, famine, 426, 427. Struggle for existence, the, 498, 499. Suddikin, Colonel, 443. Sukhdnin, Captain, 84. Sulfina, Ekaterina. See Kropot- kin, Princess. Sulima, Gen. Nikoldi Semydnovich, 11 , 22 . Sunday-schools in Russia, 150, 165. Sungari, the river, 190 ; exploration of, 208-212 ; SuvOroff, Prince, governor-general of St. Petersburg, 160, 161. Sweden, Kropotkin’s visit to, 234. Swinburne, Algernon Charles, 460. Switzerland, its action in expelling revolutionary refugees, 436, 437 ; attitude of the middle classes to- wards socialism, 495. SydvertsofE, zoologist, his reluc- tance to put his observations and studies into writing, 228 ; 498. Szaramdwicz, leader of the insur- rection of Polish exiles, 222. Tambdv, a Kropdtkin estate, 138, 312, 313, 333. Tanitino, Russia. 43. Tchaykdvsky, Nikoldi, 182, 266; friendship of the author with, 304 ; twice arrested as a suspect, 310; 331, 337; in London, 441, 488. Tchaykdvsky, the circle of. See Circle of Tchaykdvsky, the. Terrorism. See Executive Com- mittee, Nihilism, Revolutionary movements in Russia. Third Section, the, history of, 335, 336 ; its cruelty in the case of Alexander Kropdtkin, 355-357. Thonon, France, 438, 440, 449. 450. Tikhon, a servant in the Kropdtkin household, 19, 29. Times, The, Kropdtkin writes for, 3S0, 450. Timofdeff, General, 14. “ To the people,” the watchword and the movement, 301, 302, 307, 308, 318, 321-329 ; “the mad sum- mer,” 358. See Circle of Tchay- kdvsky, Nihilism, Socialism. To the Young, Kropdtkin’s address, 424. Tolstdy, Leo, his War and Peace, 216 ; 298. Tom, the river, 195. Torture in Russian prisons, 254-256. Tracts, the author receives and re- turns, 437, 438. Transbaikdlia, reform in, 170-173; end of the reform era in, 180-183 ; seeks trade with the middle Amiir, 199, 200; discovery of a passage to the gold mines of the Yakdtsk province, 214, 215. Transbaikdlian Cossacks. See Cos- Trdpoff, General, chief of the St. Petersburg police, 145, 146 ; one of the real rulers of Russia, 242, 243 ; the exposure of his official corruption 245 ; 254 ; strikes the prisoner Bogoliiboff and orders him flogged, 415 ; is shot and wounded by Vdra Zasiilich, 415. Trial, the Lyons, 451-455. Turgudneff, his Mumu, 57 ; 67, 131 ; his Smoke, 251 ; his Fathers and Sons, 296, 411 ; his portrayal of the nihilist Bazdroff, 300, 301, 411, 412 ; his literary service, 408 ; his personality, 408, 409 ; on the difference between Russian con- ceptions on certain subjects and those of other peoples, 409, 410 ; his novels, 410, 411 ; attitude of the nihilists towards, 411 , on his character Bazdroff, 411 ; his Virgin Soil, 411, 413; meditates asking Alexander III. to give Russia a constitution, 413. Turkestan, 228, 230. Turkey, the war between Russia and, 414. Ulidna, Russian nurse of the Kro- pdtkin children, 6, 7, 12, 15, 17, 18, 20-22, 49-51. Universities, disorders in the Rus- sian, 150. Usdltzeff, Th., astronomer, 209, 212 . Usurf, the river, 184, 186, 190, 208. Usuri Cossacks. See Cossacks. INDEX 519 Varlin, 283.284. Verviers, Belgium, 287, Vitim, the river, 214. Vladimir, Grand Duke, 435. Voinardlsky, revolutionist, 323, 335. Werner, a member of the Jura Federation, 395, 404. White Sea, the, 231. Watchmakers of the Jura Moun- tains, the, 286, 287. Wielepdlsky, Marquis, 163. Wilhelm I. of Germany, 436. Winkler, Colonel, 83. Women, Russian, the higher edu- cation of, 258-263 ; members of the circle of Tchaykdvsky, 317- 319 ; work of rich girls among the poor, 324. Vakiitsk, the province of, 214, 216. Yurievski-Dolgordki, Princess, re- lations of Alexander II. with, 430. Zasdlich, V6ra, 245; shoots and wounds General Trdpoff in the cause of Russian freedom, 415 ; is tried and acquitted, 416 ; effect of her act, 416. Zemstvos, the provincial councils, institution of, 180 ; hampered by the central government, 310-312. Zhdduoff, Senator, 164. Zheltdkhin, General, director of the corps of pages, 73, 108, 112. Zurich, girl students at, 260, 261, 269; full of Russian students, 269 ; Kropotkin visits, 274. ■■ • • i ;i