Produced by Fritz Ohrenschall, Sania Ali Mirza, Martin
Pettit and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
http://www.pgdp.net
LIVES OF GREAT ALTRURIANS
COMRADE KROPOTKIN
BY
VICTOR ROBINSON
"_To liberate one's country!" she said. "It is terrible even to utter
those words, they are so grand._" TURGENEV: "On the Eve."
PRICE, ONE DOLLAR
THE ALTRURIANS
12 MOUNT MORRIS PARK WEST
NEW YORK CITY
1908
This book is not copyrighted--
How could it be?
[Illustration: PETER ALEXEIVITCH KROPOTKIN
Born in the Old Esquerries' Quarter of Moscow in 1842]
CONTENTS
DEDICATION
FOREWORD
PAGE
UNDER NICHOLAS I. 7
SCENES FROM SERFDOM 15
EXPLORATIONS 23
THE NIHILISTS 29
THE TERRORISTS 36
SOPHIA PEROVSKAYA 43
THE FORTRESS OF PETER AND PAUL 54
BROTHERS 62
THE OPEN GATE 71
FROM THE PRINTING PRESS 82
IN LATER LIFE 106
THE HISTORIAN OF THE REVOLUTION 120
ILLUSTRATIONS
FACING
PETER KROPOTKIN Frontispiece PAGE
THE SCAFFOLD'S BRIDE 32
NICHOLAS CHAYKOVSKY 44
SOPHIA PEROVSKAYA 52
BEFORE THE SEARCH 66
THE COSSACKS 112
_TO GEORGE KENNAN_
_I dedicate this work. I need not say why. He will know--
Everyone will know. With tears, during the night,
I have read your book, thou earnest truth-seeker.
O compassionate traveler, what a man you must have been!
For the weary Siberian exiles called you
'Dear George Ivanovich!' With a heart
Full of thankfulness for the work you have done,
I lay my bitter and bloody pages at your feet._
VICTOR ROBINSON
FOREWORD
Bernard Shaw calls us a nation of villagers. To a large extent this
appellation holds good. We are so self-sufficient unto ourselves that
the most important events in the world leave us cold if they take place
outside of the realm of the star-spangled banner.
A wonderful and terrible thing is happening in the largest empire on
earth; a downtrodden people is engaged in a death-grapple with its
merciless rulers; and never were masters so inhuman, and never were
people so heroic. In comparison with this titanic struggle the French
Revolution itself sinks into insignificance. But what do we know about
it? And what do we care? Russia is far away.... Once in a while the
report of a particularly atrocious massacre, or a particularly cruel
torture inflicted upon a young girl revolutionist will shock our
sensibilities, will cause a pang in our hearts, will perhaps make our
hair stand on end,--but in a day or two we forget all about it. We are
so busy!
No wonder that this battle-drama appeals with special force, and exerts
a special charm on the young of all lands,--the young who worship
Freedom, and whose breasts beat warmly for Ideals. No wonder therefore
that it appeals to Victor Robinson.
This essay was written at the age of twenty, and the youth of the author
will serve as an apology, if apology be needed, for the sharpness of
some of the expressions found in these pages. But is excuse really
necessary? I hardly think so. No language can be too strong when
condemning the Russian Bureaucracy, no judgment can be too severe when
pronounced on czardom and its cruel minions. In fact the English
language sometimes seems inadequate....
A remarkable commentary on the conditions in Russia is the fact that he
who studies them carefully and thoroly, be he the gentlest and sweetest
youth who would not harm a fly or tread on a worm, becomes saturated
with the conviction that in Russia, the rebel's bomb and pistol and
dagger are not only legitimate and necessary, but even noble weapons of
defense and offense.
I refrain from any remarks as to the intrinsic value of this book, as it
is perhaps not quite proper for a father to criticize, favorably or
otherwise, the literary productions of his son. One comment however I
would like to make: For one who is utterly unfamiliar with the Russian
language, and who has worked alone and unaided, (in the leisure moments
left over by strenuous college studies), the author has accomplished a
rather noteworthy feat. He has succeeded in imbuing the book with such
an atmosphere, in presenting such vivid and faithful glimpses of Russian
life and literature, and exhibiting such wide and varied knowledge of
the subject, that even a Russian writer would not be ashamed to have his
name appear on the title-page of this volume.
Love understandeth all things.
DR. WILLIAM J. ROBINSON.
New York City, November 11, 1908.
UNDER NICHOLAS I.
I understand that doom awaits him who first rises against the
oppressors of the people. When has Liberty been redeemed without
victims? Fate has already condemned me. I shall perish for my
native land. I feel it, I know it, and gladly bless my
destiny.--_Ryleev._
A fabled king of Thrace fed his horses on human flesh, but a real czar
of Russia washed his streets with blood. On his accession to the red
throne, the Iron Despot immediately expelled progress from his empire by
butchering the Decembrists--those pioneers of freedom who fought for a
constitution and the abolition of serfdom. Exiles began to tramp the
lonely Siberian highway, and from the time of that Nicholas I. to this
Nicholas II.--a period of 75 years--over a million political prisoners
have taken the 'long journey.'
The mighty country was turned into a military camp. The term of service
was twenty-five years. The life was so hard that when a man was
recruited, his relatives followed him as if to his grave. His mother ran
after him, and sometimes fell dead on the spot. The emperor spent his
time reviewing troops and altering uniforms.[1] If an officer appeared
in the streets with the hooks of his uncomfortable collar unfastened, he
was liable to be degraded to the rank of a common soldier and deported
to some distant province. If a soldier complained of his diet, or was
guilty of the slightest infraction of the most insignificant rule, he
was condemned to run the gauntlet. He was stripped naked, his hands were
tied behind him, and he was brought between two long rows of pawing
privates and eager 'non-coms,' equipped and armed with sticks, whips and
gun-stocks. Behind the soldiers stood officers commanding, "Harder!
Harder!" Thru these lines the victim was compelled to run--because in
yesterday's paltry parade conducted by a petty sergeant, he scratched
his itching neck. At first it was his shoulders which they struck, but
before he had gone very far he had no longer a back, but only a bleeding
mass of quivering flesh thru which parts of the bones protruded. A
doctor was always present to see that the culprit did not die before
receiving his full punishment. That is, if he were booked for 500 blows
and was on the point of succumbing after receiving 300, it was the
physician's duty to send him to a hospital to regain sufficient strength
to allow the additional 200 to be administered. However, in spite of the
medicus, the mangled men often perished before their time, and then
there was nothing to do but beat the corpse.[2]
During this reign originated the widespread system of stealing Jewish
children from their homes, separating them from their families, severing
them from their faith, and bringing them up to serve in the army. These
were the Cantonists.[3] Thus it came about that when a mother of Israel
gave birth to a boy, she did not rejoice as for one born and living, but
lamented as for one dead and departed. (Sometimes Jewish mothers saved
their children from the army by cutting off their fingers, or taking out
one of their eyes).
Liberty was so shackeled she did not even dare weep aloud.[4] Since that
unlucky day when Ryleev, Pestel, Bestuzhev, Kakovsky and
Muraviov-Apostol dangled from a tall straight post and a strong
crossbar, no revolutionist arose to oppose tyranny. During all the many
years of the reign of Nicholas-with-the-Stick, no ray of light
brightened a darkened nation, no torch glimmered in the bloody gloom.
Hope was dead. Freedom was buried. Literature was in exile. Knowledge
lay in a closed coffin. But censorship was alive, and autocracy had more
eyes than Argus.
An anonymous pamphlet, toward the end of his reign, cried out that the
czar had rolled a great stone before the door of the sepulchure of
Truth, that he had placed a strong guard round her tomb, and in the
exultation of his heart had exclaimed, "For thee, no resurrection!"
So thoroly was liberalism crushed, so completely was absolutism supreme,
that 'Nikolaus Palkin' walked the streets of bleeding Russia unattended
and unafraid.
Alas, when a nation has only knees to bend, but no hands to strike!
After his shadow had obscured the sun for a quarter of a century, a
brilliant festival was given in his honor at Moscow--called the Holy
City because it contains a Miracle Monastery for glorifying God and a
Kremlin Fortress for crucifying Man. It was a fancy-dress ball, and a
thousand gorgeous uniforms were there, from the leather coat of the
Tungus to the embroidered flummery of the chamberlain. In this affair
the children of the nobility played an important part. They were
lavishly attired, and each carried an ensign representing the arms of
the provinces of the Russian empire. At a given signal the little
emblem-bearers began to march, and on reaching the purple platform upon
which the royal family sat, all standards were lowered. The inflexible
autocrat viewed the scene with satisfaction--all the provinces bowed
before him. When the children retired to the rear of the immense hall,
someone pulled the smallest of the boys from the ranks and placed him on
the imperial elevation. The lad was arrayed as a Persian prince, and
wore a jewel-covered belt and a high bonnet. Nicholas I. looked at his
chubby face all surrounded with pretty curls and taking him to the
czarevna Marie Alexandrovna, said in his military voice, "This is the
sort of boy you must bring me." The woman was gravid at the time, and
the soldier-like joke made her blush.
"Will you have some sweets?" asked the emperor.
"I want some of those tiny biscuits which were served at tea," eagerly
responded the child. A waiter was called and he emptied a full tray into
the tall bonnet.
"I will take them home to Sasha," said the curly little cherub.
Mikhael--the czar's brother--now paid attention to the little visitor.
"When you are a good boy," he said, "they treat you so," and he passed
his rough hand downwards over the rotund features of the diminutive
would-be Persian; "but when you are naughty, they treat you so," and he
rubbed the child's nose upward.
The poor innocent did his best to restrain himself, but unhappily the
gushing tears could not be repressed. The ladies at once took his part,
and Marie Alexandrovna set him by her side on a velvet chair with a
gilded back--William Morris being then unknown. Soon the big eyes began
to close, and drowsily putting his beautiful head in the lap of the
future empress, the boy fell soundly asleep.
And the frolic went on. Under the glittering chandeliers the dancers
glided. Over the waxen floors the merry feet waltzed. Wine disappeared
by barrels, and revelry ran riot. Swords, spurs, buckles, medals,
diamonds--how they all sparkled! The smooth-cheeked courtiers and the
slick-tongued cavaliers gaily jested, and the silk-swathed ladies
flirted their proverbial fans and smiled flatteringly at their wit, but
not the wisest of them knew that someday this babe would awake and make
his name terrible to the ears of tyrants!
FOOTNOTES:
[1] See "Russia," by Alfred Rambaud.
[2] Among those who witnessed this spectacle was Germain de Lagny, who
describes it in his book, "The Knout and the Russians" ... "After
fourteen hundred strokes, his face which had long before begun to turn
blue, assumed suddenly a greenish hue; his eyes became haggard and
almost started out of their sockets, from which large blood-colored
tears trickeled down and stained his cheeks. He was gasping and
gradually sinking. The officer who accompanied me ordered the ranks to
open, and I approached the body. The skin was literally ploughed up, and
had, so to say, disappeared. The flesh was hacked to pieces and almost
reduced to a state of jelly; long stripes hung down the prisoner's sides
like so many thongs, while other pieces remained fastened and glued to
the sticks of the executioners. The muscles, too, were torn to shreds.
No mortal tongue can ever convey a just idea of the sight.... It was
seven months before he was cured and his health re-established; and, at
the expiration of this period, he was solemnly taken back to the place
of execution, and forced once more to run the gauntlet, in order to
receive his full amount of six thousand strokes. He died at the
commencement of this second punishment.... After all, Russia is only an
immense barrack, in which every one is in a state of arrest." Yet the
author of these words was a worshipper of Nicholas!
[3] They were called Cantonists because they were kept and trained in
military settlements or cantons under Arakcheev. It is a most remarkable
fact--considering the circumstance that they were taken away in early
childhood--that several Cantonists who were able to live thru the
horrors of the service, returned to their homes as orthodox and as
fanatically devoted to their religion as if they had spent the preceding
twenty-five years not in the military barracks of the gentiles, but in
cheder and shool reciting the Torah.
[4] He slaughtered Poland like a hound tears a hare. "But below all (in
the Museum of the Kremlin), far beneath the feet of the Emperor, in dust
and ignominy and on the floor, is flung the very Constitution of
Poland--parchment for parchment, ink for ink, good promise for good
promise--which Alexander I. gave with so many smiles, and which Nicholas
I. took away with so much bloodshed."--Andrew D. White, "The Development
and Overthrow of Serfdom in Russia," Atlantic Monthly November 1862.
This sentence which I have quoted is correct, but the reader who is
unfamiliar with Russian history had better avoid the article, as the
last paragraph alone contains as many lies as there are kalachi in
Moscow.
SCENES FROM SERFDOM
To be sold, three coachmen, well-trained and handsome; and two
girls, the one eighteen and the other fifteen years of age, both of
them good-looking and well acquainted with various kinds of
handiwork. In the same house there are for sale two hairdressers;
the one twenty-one years of age can read, write, play on a musical
instrument, and act as huntsman; the other can dress ladies' and
gentlemen's hair. In the same house are sold pianos and organs.
Advertisement in the _Moscow Gazette_, 1801.
Peter Kropotkin's father was a general and a prince. His family
originated with a grandson of Rostislav Mstislavich the Bold. His
ancestors had been Grand Princes of Smolensk. He was a descendant of the
house of Rurik, and judged from the standpoint of heredity, had more
right to the throne than the Romanoffs. Incidentally he was like most
military men--barbarous, pitiless, merciless. He owned twelve hundred
male serfs. We do not know how many maids. Neither do we know how many
were scarred by the knout, how many were flogged till the breath of life
left them, nor how many hanged themselves under his window.
If this brave warrior--who received the cross of Saint Anne for
gallantry, because his servant Froll rushed into the flames to save a
child--became imbued with the notion that there was not sufficient hay
in the barn, he would call one of his serfs, strike him in the face, and
accuse him of overfeeding the horses. In order to prove he was right he
would make another calculation, and come to the conclusion there was too
much hay. So he would bang his slave again for not giving the equidae
enuf. Suddenly he would sit down and write a note: Take So and So to the
police station, and let 100 lashes with the birch rod be administered to
him.
On such occasions Peter would run out--his rosy cheeks wet with
weeping--catch the unhappy soul in a dark passage, and try to kiss his
hand. The serf would tear it away, and say bitterly, "Let me alone; you
too, when you grow up, will you not be just the same?"
"No, no, never!" cried the child, while the hot tears choked him and
made him cough for breath.
The females of all animals, having dislikes and preferences, exercise
the right of selection; rejecting one and receiving another; sending
away a male who is repulsive to them, and accepting a wooer they find
attractive.[5]
Such absurd liberty was never allowed the serfs. They married when,
where and whom the master wished. The Kropotkins owned a woman named
Polya--intelligent and artistic--an exceptional serf. Her body was
bound; her hands were doomed to labor; her talents brought benefits not
to herself; her skill was at the service of others; her industry
profited her owners; she was a chattel, chained and confined--but her
heart could not be controlled. She deeply loved a neighboring servant,
and was with child from him. The lover, forgetting the Russian proverb,
"One cannot break a stone wall with his forehead," implored permission
to marry her.... The Kropotkins owned also a dwarf called 'bandy-legged
Filka.' Because of a terrible kick which he received in his boyhood, he
ceased to grow. His legs were crooked, his feet were turned inward, his
nose was broken, his jaw was deformed. It was the General's will that
the refined Polya should wed this unsightly imp. She was forced to
obey. The 'happy couple' were sent to the estate of Ryazan.[6]
During the sixth year of the reign of Alexander II., a servant dashed
wildly into Peter Kropotkin's room. It was early in the morning, and
Kropotkin was still in bed. But the servant brandished the tea tray and
babbled excitedly, "Prince, freedom! The manifesto is posted on the
Gostinoi Dvor." In a moment Kropotkin was dressed and began to run out.
Just then a friend came running in. "Kropotkin, freedom!" he shouted,
"Here is the manifesto!"
Kropotkin read it. His eyes beamed. He stamped his feet. O happy day! No
more slavery--serfdom was abolished--the muzhiks were free. Not the dark
ghosts of reaction, but the luminous sons of light had triumphed. Not
Shuvaloff, Muravioff, and Trepoff, but Herzen, Turgenev and
Chernishevsky.[7]
That afternoon Kropotkin attended the last performance of the Italian
Opera. Baveri, the conductor of the band, raised his baton; the
musicians began to play, but human voices drowned the notes, for the
people were shouting for their czar--Redeemer!--Deliverer! Then Baveri
stopped, but the hurrahs did not. Again Baveri waved his stick wildly in
the air, the fiddlers grasped tightly their bows, the drummers beat with
all their strength, the players inflated their lungs and blew the brazen
instruments with might and main, but from that powerful band not a bar
of music could be heard, for the people were shouting for their
czar--Immanuel!--Illustrious! Strangers met in the streets, embraced,
kissed each other thrice on the cheek, and shouted for their
czar--Father!--Messiah! In front of the royal palace, peasants and
professors mingled, and shouted for their czar--Emancipator!--Liberator!
When he really appeared, crowds eager and immense, ran after the
carriage and shouted for their czar--Tsar Osvoboditel!
As a dream disappears at dawn, so died this enthusiasm. The brief moment
of promise was followed by an eternal hour of despair; the short day was
succeeded by the endless night. Hell may not be Hell, but a Romanoff is
a Romanoff. Only one year later, the despot in Alexander awoke--mature
and monstrous. If the dead could touch the living, Nicholas would have
hugged his son. The steps of the scaffold became slippery with the blood
of the best. The rope of the hangman was jerked day and night, and the
key of the jailer creaked in a thousand locks. Reaction had won, and
liberalism lay covered with a crimson shroud.
The Valuev volcano vomited its smothering lava as far as Siberia, and
General Kukel who with Kropotkin's help was preparing a long list of
necessary reforms, was dismissed from his post because another place had
been found for him--in prison.
On the other hand there was a district chief who robbed the peasants and
whipped their wives, and whose brutality and dishonesty were so
unanswerably exposed by the energetic Kropotkin that this officer was
also transfered--to a higher position in Kamchatka where he found more
roubles for his purse and more women for his knout.
When Kropotkin returned to St. Petersburg on an official commission, a
high functionary said to him, "Do you know that Chernishevsky has been
arrested? He is now in the fortress."
"Chernishevsky? What has he done?"
"Nothing in particular, nothing! But _mon cher_, you know--state
considerations!... Such a clever man, awfully clever! And such an
influence he has upon the youth. You understand that a government cannot
tolerate that: that's impossible! intolerable _mon cher, dans un Etat
bien ordonne_!"[8]
For these mad acts of a drunken despotism, there was neither shadow of
excuse nor shade of reason, except that a Romanoff was hungry and
thirsty for victims, satisfying the blood-craving spirit that cried
within him, demanding that the brightest youths and the noblest girls be
changed to lifeless corpses.
Is it any wonder that men who on the great day of emancipation quoted
with tears in their eyes the beautiful article by Herzen,[9] "Thou hast
conquered, Galilean," now recited these other words by the same exile:
"Alexander Nikolaevich, why did you not die on that day? Your name would
have been transmitted in history as that of a hero."
FOOTNOTES:
[5] See Darwin's "Descent of Man."
[6] Yet Kropotkin was not among the cruelest proprietors. To read what
occurred on the estate of General Arakcheev is enuf to drive the
stoutest mind insane. In the "Russki Archiv" is an account of a woman
who by the most horrible tortures killed hundreds of her serfs, chiefly
of the female sex, several of them young girls of eleven and twelve.
Another woman murdered a serf boy by pricking him with a pen-knife,
because he had neglected to take proper care of a rabbit. See Sir D. M.
Wallace's "Russia." Also the "Memoirs of a Sportsman" and "Mumu" by
Turgenev.
[7] Leonora B. Lang, who translated Rambaud's "Histoire de la Russie"
from French to English, says there are about thirteen ways of spelling
Patzinak. Ditto for Chernishevsky. The form which I have chosen is
perhaps as proper as any, and simpler than most. An English reader is
not supposed to be able to pronounce Tschernyschewskiy.
[8] See P. Kropotkin's "Memoirs of a Revolutionist."
[9] For an account of Herzen's influence, see the "Russian Revolutionary
Movement," by Konni Zilliacus. This excellent volume which all should
read is of especial interest to Finns.
EXPLORATIONS
And at the same time falls upon his ear the plaintive song of the
Russian peasant; all wailing and lamentation, in which so many ages
of suffering seem concentrated. His squalid misery, his whole life
stands forth full of sorrow and outrage. Look at him; exhausted by
hunger, broken down by toil, the eternal slave of the privileged
classes, working without pause, without hope of redemption. For the
government purposely keeps him ignorant, and every one robs him,
every one tramples on him, and no one stretches out a hand to
assist him. No one? Not so. The young man knows now "what to do."
He will stretch forth his hand. He will tell the peasant how to
free himself and how to become happy. His heart throbs for this
poor sufferer who can only weep. The flush of enthusiasm mounts to
his brow, and with burning glances he takes in his heart a solemn
oath to concentrate all his life, all his strength, all his
thoughts, to the liberation of this population which drains its
life blood in order that he, the favored son of privilege, may live
at his ease, study, and instruct himself. He will take off the fine
clothes that burn into his very flesh; he will put on the rough
coat and the wooden shoes of the peasant, and abandoning the
splendid paternal palace which oppresses him like the reproach of a
crime, he will go forth "among the people" in some remote district,
and there, the slender and delicate descendant of a noble race, he
will do the hard work of the peasant, enduring every privation in
order to carry to him the words of redemption, the Gospel of our
age,--Socialism. What matters to him if the cut-throats of the
Government lay hands upon him? What to him are exile, Siberia,
death? Full of his sublime idea, clear, splendid, vivifying as the
mid-day sun, he defies suffering, and would meet death with a
glance of enthusiasm and a smile of happiness.--STEPNIAK:
_Underground Russia_.
Peter Kropotkin came into life sailing on its topmost wave. The fat of
the land, and its milk and honey were his. Personally, nothing was
denied him. All the gifts had been lavished upon him. Position was his,
health he had in abundance, he was as handsome as the characters in
Tolstoy's _War and Peace_, and his talents were many and varied. To use
the Russian vernacular, he was born in his shirt.
But not praise from princes or bows from beauties could induce him to
fritter away his splendid energies in senseless dinky-dinks at Moscow or
foppish balls at Petersburg. He wished to exercise head, hand and heart,
for he agreed with John Ruskin that whatever else you are, you must not
be useless and you must not be cruel--two adjectives which best portray
the average official.
As has already been said, while still a youth Kropotkin went to Siberia
to aid Kukel improve the prisons, the exile system, etc. But when the
Herzen-reading Kukel was recalled, and it was no longer permitted to
mention the word "reform," Kropotkin became an explorer.
Being clever, he soon made several important discoveries--the
border-ridge of the Khingan, the tertiary volcanoes of the Uyun
Kholdonsti, a direct route to the Amur.
Also it is interesting to remember that he was among the first Europeans
who entered Manchuria,[10] and he went at the risk of being put in a
cage and conveyed across the Gobi on a camel's back. It was impossible
to go as an officer, so Kropotkin disguised himself as a trader, put on
a long blue cotton dress, and acted like a Muscovite merchant--sitting
on the edge of the chair, pouring his tea in the saucer, blowing on it
with puffed-out cheeks and staring eyes, and nibbling tiny particles
from his lump of sugar.
One night as he wandered thru a Chinese town, the inhabitants by signs
asked him why such a young man wore a beard. Answering by the same
means, Kropotkin told them that if he had nothing else to eat he could
eat the beard. This caused the Celestials to roar with laughter, and
they petted him tenderly, showed him their houses, and offered him more
pipes than Skitaletz's Gavril Petrovitch could have smoked.
In 1866, Kropotkin found what previous explorers had vainly sought--a
communication between the gold mines of Yakutsk and Transbaikalia.
Then came what he considers his chief contribution to science: the
important discovery that the maps of Northern Asia were incorrect,
because the main lines of structure run neither north and south, nor
east and west, but from the southwest to the northeast.[11]
Later Kropotkin was to lead an expedition to the Arctic seas, but as the
government was spending enormous sums in erecting scaffolds, it could
not spare a poltinik for explorations in unknown regions. However the
Geographical Society sent him to Finland to study the glacial deposits.
Here he made valuable researches relative to the glaciation of the
country. He conceived the idea of writing a monumental physical
geography of Northern Europe. His chief ambition was to become the
Secretary of the Society, for then he would be in a condition to
considerably advance the cause of science.
But because he now had more leisure than formerly, he began seriously to
think of another subject--The People. When he crossed a plain which had
no interest for a geologist, he thought of their sufferings. When he
walked from one gravel pit to another, he mused on their downtrodden
hopes. Sometimes the hammer would pause in mid-air before it struck the
chisel, because the naturalist was dreaming of these plundered beings.
After collecting an immense amount of evidence, he anticipated what keen
joy he would have in analysing and arranging it for publication; but
then another feeling would assert itself--what right had he to this
happiness when all around him were men and women and children
struggling and slaving for a bit of mouldy bread? Yes, yes, Kropotkin
was thinking about the hungry people.
It was in the autumn of 1871, as he looked over the hillocks of Finland,
and saw with his scientific eye the ice accumulating in the archipelagos
at the dawn of mankind, that he received this telegram from the
Geographical Society: "The council begs you to accept the position of
secretary to the society."
At last Kropotkin was in a position to realise his old dream, but he
pondered much before answering, for he now dreamed a new dream--how to
lighten the burdens of the overworked people.
A voice in the wind said, "To work for Science is great."
Then another voice spoke saying, "To toil for Humanity is greater."
So Kropotkin wired, "Most cordial thanks, but cannot accept." The chisel
of the geologist slipped from his fingers, and from that day on Peter
Kropotkin carried in his upraised hand a burning torch for the weary
people.
FOOTNOTES:
[10] By P. Kropotkin: "A Journey from the Trans-Baikal to the Amur by
Way of Manchuria," in the "Russian Messenger," June 1865.
[11] Not even Kropotkin's enemies have denied his scientific ability.
Zenker, in his unfair and unsympathetic book on "Anarchism" says, "The
dreaded Anarchist Kropotkin is and always has been active as a writer of
geographical and geological works, and enjoys a considerable reputation
in these sciences, apart from his activity as a Socialist teacher and
agitator." The conservative Hon. Andrew D. White in his "Autobiography"
calls him "one of the most gifted scientific thinkers of our time." The
unbelievably cruel Pobedonostzeff--who would gladly have used the
thumb-screws on him--refers to him as "a learned geographer and
sociologist."
THE NIHILISTS
"He is a nihilist."
"What!" cried his father. As to Paul Petrovitch, he raised his
knife, on the end of which was a small bit of butter, and remained
motionless.
"He is a nihilist," repeated Arcadi.
"A nihilist," said Nicholas Petrovitch. "This word must come from
the Latin _Nihil_, nothing, as far as I can judge; and consequently
it signifies a man who ... who recognizes nothing?"
"Or rather who respects nothing," said Paul Petrovitch; and he
began again to butter his bread.
"A man who looks at everything from a critical point of view," said
Arcadi.
"Does that not come to the same thing?" asked his uncle.
"No, not at all; a nihilist is a man who bows before no authority,
who accepts no principle without examination, no matter what credit
the principle has."--TURGENEV: _Fathers and Sons_.
It was a cheerless Saint Petersburg to which Kropotkin returned--a city
in the grip of the powers of darkness. The officials despoiled the
muzhiks of their last copecks, and if the poor peasants sought redress
in institutions ironically known as "courts of justice,"[12] they were
either imprisoned for life or murdered outright--at the order of the
very men who were fleshed with pillage.
The best writers had escaped abroad, or languished in faraway Siberia,
or had departed upon a still longer journey.
Where was Lavrov? Who heard of Mikhailov? What fortress held Pisarev?
Why sat no ardent youths at Chernishevsky's feet?
The reformers who had worked for the abolition of serfdom were still. An
uncanny fear possessed them. They trembled at the thought of Trepoff.
They shuddered at the sight of Shuvaloff. They wished nothing but
obscurity; they prayed only for oblivion to cover them. They denied with
pale faces that they had ever held advanced opinions. They were a
pitiful lot, but it is hard to blame them. Like a blood-crazed beast
Alexander roamed his empire, slaughtering human beings with a ferocity
that would have made a pack of wolves protest. In the dead of the night
they were shot--and sometimes at dawn. No reasons were assigned, no
questions answered. Russia prostrated herself at the feet of
power--poisoned with the fangs of force. Little wonder the old
generation was frightened.
The lime had grown in their bones, and to have these bones crushed by
Katkoff in the casemates of the Fortress of Peter and Paul was not
pleasant. The fathers withdrew from the society of their sons. Even the
older brothers held aloof. At every step the young people heard,
"Prudence, young man." Never before was youth so deserted, and never
before was youth so splendid, so supreme, so sublime. Was it for them to
follow the craven footsteps of a cowardly generation? Let the
overcrowded prisons answer! Let the youngster-jammed dungeons reply!
From the army came the young officer and cast aside his uniform. From
the palace stepped forth the young prince and threw off his costly
mantle. From the general's family hastened the young heiress and put
away her silken dresses.
It is not for a halting tongue to celebrate this youthful band of
pioneers. It is not for a faltering pen to chant praises to those whose
glory is unrivalled. History has not seen their equals. They deserve the
worship of a better world than this. We who have no faith in God or
reverence for Government, may well bow our heads at the recollection of
men who left comfortable firesides to expose themselves to maddening
tortures. We may well fall right down on our knees at the thought of
women who bade farewell to wealthy parents to bare their breasts to the
sabre of the gendarme and the embrace of the cossack.
Authorities they rejected. The chains of custom they rent asunder. Even
the axiomatic they re-examined. With the luke-warm, half-hearted
agnosticism of Huxley, they were dissatisfied. Out-and-out apostles of
Atheism were they, and one of the first books they printed was Ludwig
Buchner's. The theory of transformism they eagerly accepted, and more
than any English evolutionist they would gladly have died to prove
Darwin right and Cuvier wrong.[13]
Only one mistake they made--they spat upon Art. They found no joy in
beauty. An arched rainbow, a Grecian urn, a vine-covered cottage, were
nothing to them. They scorned the laurels of the golden-haired Apollo.
They claimed a shoemaker was superior to Raphael because he makes useful
things while the other does not.
[Illustration: THE SCAFFOLD'S BRIDE
It is for such girls that the czar buys rope.]
Their sacred watchword was: To The People. This great movement--which
Turgenev[14] named Nihilism--spread rapidly. Many schools were
established and enormous numbers of peasants flocked to them. The old
sat on the benches with their grandchildren and did their best to learn.
Teachers and the taught were enthused with the great idea. Leaders and
the led were comrades. The youths did not spend a couple of hours with
the peasants and then run off to indulge in an abnormal orgy prepared by
a pathic Grand Duke. Altho several were heirs to fortunes, they refused
to accept any money from their parents. They lived exactly like the
peasants, several in a room, ate black bread and dressed in boots and
sheepskin. Many of the girls formerly owned a trunkful of jewels and a
houseful of servants, but now they dispensed with chignon and crinoline.
They cropped their hair close and put on blue spectacles so they might
not be fair in the eyes of men. They wanted no love affairs. They wanted
to educate the ignorant. Children of the rich, offsprings of
aristocrats, scions of nobility, brought up in luxury, encouraged in
idleness, unused to manual work, unaccustomed to physical labor, they
now toiled fifteen hours a day in the factories. To look peasant-like,
the prettiest maidens rubbed their cheeks with grease and steeped their
hands in brine. All the woes of the commoners they accepted for
themselves. Were there ever before such luminous sons, such divine
daughters? Ask history for a parallel, and Clio's scroll is blank!
Let this statement stand--indeed not even the twisted intellect of the
perverted W. T. Stead[15] could demolish it--had the autocracy
permitted these young teachers to continue their educative work among
the peasants, Russia to-day would not be a nation of illiterate muzhiks,
and millions who are now hopelessly blind would have eyes that see.
FOOTNOTES:
[12] "This court is worse than a house of ill-fame; there they sell only
bodies, but here you prostitute honor and justice and law."--IPPOLIT
MISHKIN.
[13] If the reader has not read Stepniak's "Underground Russia" he
should do so without delay.
[14] See his "Fathers and Sons," but avoid the abominable translation by
Eugene Schuyler. To the eternal honor of the nihilists it must be said
that they instantly and emphatically repudiated the hero of this novel,
the brutal Bazarov. I myself have no hesitancy in saying that I prefer
even the perfumed dandy Paul Petrovitch, to this harsh, coarse,
repulsive, insulting individual who treats his loving parents like dogs,
and who refers to a beautiful woman by exclaiming, "What a magnificent
body! How fine it would look on a dissecting table!" Here is one of the
curiosities of literature: a great artist conceives a great admiration
for a great type, and yet he produces--a caricature! But Kropotkin seems
to have a somewhat higher opinion of Bazarov, for in a letter which I
received from him, he says, "Those Nihilists who understood Bazarov as
Pisarev did, were right. Those who reproached Turgenev for Bazarov's
scorn to work for mankind were right again. Turgenev has not succeeded
in representing the man of action whom he admired well enough to excite
the uninitiated admiration of the reader." For a correct representation
of a nihilist in a novel--which the nihilists themselves heartily
accepted--see the character of Rakmetov in Chernishevsky's wonderful
"What is to be done?" Among those who enthusiastically praised this work
was Sophia Perovskaya.
[15] The English eulogist of Russian officialism, the hypocrite who is
intimate with Nicholas II., the scoundrel who praises Trepoff, and yet
speaks of uplifting humanity!! He has written a lying book, "The Truth
About Russia."
THE TERRORISTS
In July 1906, I was in Bialystok. A pogrom had just been started. I
saw women who were repeatedly raped before the eyes of their
husbands and their fathers. I saw a child, four years old,
deliberately shot in the arm by a soldier. I saw a girl of twelve
shot in the stomach. I saw a hospital that was purposely fired upon
by soldiers merely to create a panic among the patients. The local
schoolmaster was killed by three gendarmes driving nails into his
skull. The whole reason for the massacre was to terrify the
population into submitting meekly to various governmental
impositions. The massacre is a recognized weapon of the Russian
Government, often used to shape political ends. By what standards
of the eternal verities is it wrong to combat this kind of
slaughter by removing the official or officials responsible? To
assassinate an Alikhanov, a Pavlov, a Min, a Dubossov, a Sergius, a
Plehve, is, to my mind, precisely like killing a rattlesnake that
has crawled into a nursery, or stamping out a pest, or blowing up a
building to stop the further spread of the flames.
KELLOGG DURLAND: _The Necessity for Terrorism in Russia_.
It is not often remembered--tho it should be--that at this time these
Nihilists were not politicals, and did not fight czarism. Their object
was to teach the alphabet, not to overthrow the dynasty. It was only
when the government condemned to a slow death in Siberia every one who
printed a leaflet, or distributed a pamphlet, or attended a meeting, or
listened to a speaker, or joined a co-operative association, or started
an experimental farm, or went to a technical school, or taught a
peasant--that they commenced to oppose the Romanoff regime. It was only
when the ultimatum, "No schools allowed!"[16] was for several years
rammed down their throats at the point of the bayonet that the Nihilists
became Terrorists. It was only when the prisons overflowed with their
young warm blood that Sophia Perovskaya waved her handkerchief.
The shaft of truth is naked, and so armored with bias is the mind of
man, that the missle cannot pierce the mail. In spite of the
unanswerable array of historical data, many will still exclaim, "We do
not believe in using force in Russia. We believe in education."
O huge Sviatogor, giant-hero of the primitive Russians, endow us with
your mighty nerves, lest we burst!
There was a girl--Miss Gukovskaya. A young girl--fourteen years old.[17]
She addressed a crowd--about Kovalsky. She was transported to a remote
part of Siberia for life. The child could not endure the wilderness and
drowned herself in the Yenisei.
There was another girl who gave a single pamphlet to a worker. Her
punishment was nine years of hard labor and then life-long exile among
Siberian snows.
A young man was found reading a book not admired by the censor. He was
put in prison and kept there until he committed suicide.
When the gay and gentle Starinyevitch was a student, a manifesto was
found in his possession. Unwilling to incriminate another, he refused to
say from whom he received it. For this omission he spent twenty years
in filthy prisons.
While searching the room of Rosovsky who was not yet twenty, the police
discovered a proclamation of the Executive Committee.
"Who gave it to you?"
"That I cannot say. I am not a spy."
He was sentenced to death and died on the scaffold.[18]
Kropotkin mentions another youth of nineteen who posted a circular in a
railway station. He was caught and killed--hanged I think. "He was a
boy," says Kropotkin, "He was a boy but he died like a man."
Ask a Revolutionist if he knows Sophia Bardina and his glowing eyes will
answer yes. Because she read a couple of articles in public, she was
condemned to several years' penal servitude, which by special favor of
the czar was commuted to life-long exile.
Leo Deutsch in his mild and modest _Sixteen Tears in Siberia_, tells of
a few girls of Romny who hit upon the plan of loaning one another books
and making notes on them. Soon a few young men joined, and thus was
formed a small reading society, such as might help to pass away the long
winter evenings in the dull provincial town. For this--and for
absolutely nothing but this--"the conspirators of Romny" were deported
across the Urals.
Only a couple of years ago, several schoolteachers met at Tiflis to
discuss the best method of improving their educational curricula. A
commander entered and cried, "Disperse!" Turning to his cossacks he
said, "These women are yours"--and all were raped with impunity.
As long as the Romanoffs rule Russia, only idiots opaque and impervious
to reason, can speak of education without action.
If education were permitted, revolutionary violence would not be,
because terrorism is the last straw to which the drowning nation
clutches. They cling to this because under existing circumstances
nothing else is possible, nothing, nothing, nothing.
Russia has produced no greater Terrorist than Gregory Gershuni, and when
this glorious Jew stood before his "judges" he told them: "History will
forgive you everything; the centuries of oppression, the millions you
have starved to death, the other millions you have sent to be butchered
on the battlefield; everything but this--that you have driven us who
mean well with our fatherland to seek recourse in murder."[19]
Men cannot meet for purposes of discussion, because if they do, they
will be beaten and bayoneted. Children cannot, for they will be hacked
to pieces. Women cannot, for their bodies will be utilized to warm the
beds of cossacks.
Such liberticide must be answered by tyrannicide! And the hand that
holds a dagger, red with the blood of a despot, is the noblest hand of
all!
FOOTNOTES:
[16] This fact is so notorious that even an obscurantist like W. R.
Morfill must admit it. See the passage in his mediocre book, "Russia."
But illiberal as this work is, it at least is not outrageous. What
however are we to do with Augustus Hare ("Studies in Russia") who writes
that exile to Siberia is pleasant; with Rev. Henry Landsell ("Through
Siberia") who informs us that punishment with the knout was not painful;
with Miss Annette Meakin ("A Ribbon of Iron") who describes the cruel
Gribsky as a kindly man; with John A. Logan ("Joyful Russia") who is
religiously convinced that the czar is an angel; with Francis H. Skrine
("Expansion of Russia") who approves the worst crimes of the house of
Romanoff. Of course lackeys are always plentiful, but how sad that
Russian Despotism should have Anglo-American defenders.
[17] Russian heroines begin early. The renowned Vera Zasulitch was just
sweet sixteen when she startled the world by shooting and wounding the
murderous General Trepoff.
[18] See "Russia Under the Czars," by Stepniak.