revolutionary nurse, Anna Korba, was on trial, 1882, she said, "If the
party of the Will of the People adopts the policy of terror, it is not
because it prefers terrorism, but because terrorism is the only possible
method of attaining the objects set before it by the historical
conditions of Russian life. These are sad and fateful words, and they
bear a prophecy of terrible calamity. Gentlemen--Senators, you are well
acquainted with the fundamental laws of the Russian Empire. You are
aware that no one has a right to advocate any change in the existing
imperial form of Government, or even to think of such a thing. Merely to
present to the Crown a collective petition is forbidden--and yet the
country is growing and developing, the conditions of social life are
becoming day by day more and more complicated, and the moment approaches
when the Russian people will burst thru the barriers from which there is
no exit." Here she was interrupted by the presiding judge, but
continued, "The historical task set before the party of the Will of the
People is to widen these barriers and to obtain for Russia independence
and freedom. The means for the attainment of these objects depend
directly upon the Government. We do not adher obstinately to terrorism.
The hand that is raised to strike will instantly fall if the Government
will change the political conditions of life. Our party has patriotic
self-control enuf not to take revenge for its bleeding wounds; but,
unless it prove false to the Russian people, it cannot lay down its arms
until it has conquered for that people freedom and well-being." One of
the last things that Stepniak tells us in "King Stork and King Log" is:
"Terrorism is the worst of all methods of revolutionary warfare, and
there is only one thing that is worse still--slavish submissiveness, and
the absence of any protest."----An unusually good editorial, "The
Meaning of Terrorism," appeared recently in the New York Evening Post,
in which it was correctly said, "In exchange for freedom of
self-expression, the Revolutionists stand ready instantly to abandon
terror, and they point for proof of their sincerity to the cessation of
warfare during the period when the Duma was being elected and sat, to
their readiness even now to suspend hostilities for the coming
elections; small reason tho they have for confidence in the future plans
of the government."----The Boston Herald (March 16, 1905), in a column
editorial called "How Assassins Are Made," says, "The dark cloud of
Russian oppression is riven only by thunderbolts. There is no wind of
free speech to drive it away."----The editor of Altruria (November 1907)
in answering a gentleman who objected to terrorism in Russia, writes,
"When he says 'there are other ways,' he is mistaken. That's all. That
is just the trouble. In Russia there are no other ways; not at present.
There was hope of peaceful reformation; the Government destroyed that
hope. The bomb and the bullet, therefore remain the only weapon."
SOPHIA PEROVSKAYA
All the condemned died like heroes. Kibalkitch and Geliabov
appeared very calm and resigned. Timothy Mikhailov pale but firm;
Rysakov calm and under control, but his face was as white as a
sheet. Sophia Perovskaya's courage struck us all with astonishment.
Not a sign of fear of death in her lovely countenance. Her cheeks
wore the fresh roses of youth and health, and a heroine's soul
gleamed from her gentle, but firm and serious face.
--From the reactionary _Kolnische Zeitung_.
Russia has long been famous for its circles, which far surpass in
interest and excellence, those of any other country. According to the
calculation of the police, each member contributes to the society either
a pint or a quart of blood, but this computation is too conservative.
Those who join Russian Circles do not measure the amount, but are ready
to give unto the last drop. At these meetings, chairmen and ceremony are
unknown. Those present sit on chairs, lean against the window-sill, or
squat on a broken sofa. They sing melancholy songs, smoke cigarettes and
overwork the samovar. They dress carelessly in loose blouses of colored
calico. Their hair is disheveled, their faces are flushed, their eyes
are blazing. All argue at once, and in order to make themselves heard,
interrupt each other, shout animatedly, bang the table, and rattle the
spoon in the glass. The noise is deafening, but from the din of the
debate fly forth sparks which may eventually inflame even this outraged
empire of officials and icons.
In 1872, Kropotkin joined the most important of these groups--the Circle
of Chaykovsky. Kropotkin was now a thoro-going revolutionist, and it is
foolish to ask as Grand Duke Nicholas did, "When did you begin to
entertain such ideas?"
In a country like Russia, where the present government incites the
troops to massacre the people, hoping in this way to prolong its
existence;[20] where the wardens do a thriving business by turning over
the female prisoners to the soldiers at so much a piece; where the
Dnieper-Demons beat women to the ground and ride their horses over their
bosoms; where they toss children in the air and catch them on their
bayonets;[21] where they hack babes in twain and hurl the bleeding
pieces at their agonized mothers; where they hammer spikes thru the
heads of old men;[22] where youths are exiled for life for reading a
forbidden author; where vulgar officers command refined women to become
their mistresses[23] or pay the penalty of having their families shipped
to that side of the tear-drenched monument which says, "Asia;" where
officials who plan pogroms are promoted, and those who protest are
imprisoned[24] where tortures like pricking out the eyes[25] and
striking the stomach are perpetrated; where virgin and matron are used
to glut the lust of the cossack;[26] where such crimes are openly
committed from dawn to dusk and thru the darkness of the black night,
that at mere thought of them the suffering brain reels, and the
horrified senses faint--in a land like this could a Peter Kropotkin
remain Chamberlain to the Czarina?
[Illustration: NICHOLAS CHAYKOVSKY
"The Father of the Russian Revolution."]
Such rare-souled characters formed this Circle, that Kropotkin spent
here the two happiest years of his life. To pass whole days with
Nicholas Chaykovsky, to speak with the Kornilov sisters, to work with
the young Kuprianov, to grasp the honest hand of Stepniak, to enter the
room at night in top-boots after lecturing to peasants, and see sweet
Sophia Perovskaya say severely, "How dare you bring so much mud in this
house!"--what life could be intenser?
The Circle of Chaykovsky held its meetings in a little dwelling in the
suburbs of Saint Petersburg. There was nothing about it to excite
suspicion. The neighbors often saw the mistress attending to her
business. They knew her to be an artisan's wife, an ordinary
workingwoman. She wore a cotton dress and men's shoes, her head was
covered with a fancy kerchief, and she trudged slowly along, carrying on
her shoulders full pails of water from the Neva River.
But they did not know that she belonged to the highest aristocracy; that
one of her ancestors was the morganatic husband of Empress Elizabeth,
daughter of Peter the Great; that her grandfather was Minister of Public
Instruction; that her uncle was a renowned conqueror in Asia Minor; that
her father was Governor General of St. Petersburg; that she herself had
shone in the most fashionable drawing rooms of the capital, and that her
name was Sophia Perovskaya,--a name which thrills the soul of every
rebel to its center.
Physically she was like a novelist's heroine. She had golden hair and
her eyes were blue. A lissom figure, a musical voice, a charming
laugh.[27] Pure with a maiden's modesty, chaste with a virginal shyness.
So graceful and girlish that she never looked more than eighteen--even
when she was twenty-six. Of such a sympathetic nature that when she
became a nurse, sufferers whose nerves quivered in distress, claimed
their agony abated as soon as she entered. Her mother she loved to
adoration, and often at the risk of her life, she left her hiding-place
to give Varvara Sergyevna the joy of folding her hunted child in her
aching arms. Her father had human form, but was in reality a fiend, yet
rejoice that he lived, for from his ultra-reactionary loins was born the
white queen of the red revolution.
From her sixteenth year, Sonya was ready to die for the Cause--with a
smile on her beautiful lips and a wave of her graceful hand, with the
crimson banner above her head, and upon her bosom a red carnation. I
speak figuratively. She would not have worn these things. She was
altogether too simple.
Hers was a life full of pain, and in 1881 came the supreme sorrow. Her
heart twitched with the torture, for Andrew Geliabov, the man she loved
so fondly, was in the casemate of the fortress, and all knew, and Sonya
knew too, that soon around his beloved neck would be a bluish streak.
Yet her brilliant intellect was not dimmed or darkened. That will of
iron and those nerves of steel, neither broke nor faltered. It was then
that she arranged every detail for the assassination of Alexander II.
She may have wept in private, but to her comrades she said with dry
eyes, "When I give the signal, throw the bomb."
The appointed day came. In a metal-clad carriage, the czar drove to the
parade. Behind him in a sledge rode Colonel Dvorjitsky. Burning eyes
looked at a girl. A handkerchief fluttered in the air--Sonya's signal!
Rysakov threw his bomb. The Emperor alighted--unhurt. Then Grinevetsky
too, flung a blessed ball of Kibalkitch's make, and within a few hours
the old despot and the young martyr passed out of the world.
Sophia Perovskaya inspired the greatest stanzas of the Poet of the
Sierras, for usually the verse of the slangy Joaquin Miller is mediocre.
But how grand are these!:
"A storm burst forth! From out the storm
The clean, red lightning leapt,
And lo, a prostrate royal form ...
And Alexander slept!
Down thru the snow, all smoking, warm
Like any blood, his crept.
Yea, one lay dead, for millions dead!
One red spot in the snow
For one long damning line of red,
Where exiles endless go--
The babe at breast, the mother's head
Bowed down and dying so.
And did a woman do this deed?
Then build her scaffold high,
That all may on her forehead read
The martyr's right to die!
Ring Cossack round on royal steed!
Now lift her to the sky!
But see! From out the black hood shines
A light few look upon!
Lorn exiles, see, from dark, deep mines,
A star at burst of dawn!...
A thud! A creak of hangman's lines!--
A frail shape jerked and drawn!..."
Before stepping upon the scaffold, Sophia Perovskaya wrote a note. (I
know it has often been printed, but how can I help publishing it again?)
Think you she laments that one so gifted should perish so young? Read:
"Mother, mother! Beloved, beloved one! If you only knew how cruelly I
suffer at the thought of the sorrow and torture I have caused you,
dearest--! I beg and beseech you not to rack your tender heart for my
sake. Spare yourself, and think of all those who are round you at home,
and who love you no less than I do--and need you constantly; and who,
more than I, are entitled to your love and affection. Spare yourself
too, for the sake of me, who would be so happy if only the agonizing
thought of the sorrow I have caused you did not torture me so
unspeakably. Sorrow not over my fate which I created for myself, as you
know, at the strict behest of my conscience. You know that I could not
have acted differently, that I was obliged to do what my heart ordered,
that I had to go and leave you, beloved mother, when my country called
me. Do not think that the death that inevitably awaits me has any terror
for my soul. That which has happened is only, you know, what I have been
expecting every day, every hour, during all those years, and what sooner
or later, must overtake me and my friends. Soon, in the course of a few
days, I must die for the cause, for the idea, for which I devoted my
life and all the powers of my soul and body. How happy I should be then,
dearest, beloved! Once more I beseech you not to mourn for me. You are
well aware how ineffably I love you, I have always, always, loved you.
By this love I conjure you to forgive your Sonya! Again and again I kiss
your beloved hands, and on my knees, thank you for all you have given me
during every moment of my life. On my knees I beseech you to bear to all
the dear ones at home my last loving greetings! To-morrow I shall stand
once more in the presence of my judges; probably for the last time. But
my clothes are so shabby, and I wanted to tidy myself up a bit. Buy and
send me, dearest mama, a little white collar and a pair of simple loose
sleeves with links. Perhaps it will be vouchsafed us once again to
meet. Till then, farewell! Do not forget my last fervent prayer, my
last thought: forgive me and do not bewail me."
[Illustration: SOPHIA PEROVSKAYA
She was hanged in her twenties, but her name is as immortal as the
eternal sun.]
Yes, this is her letter. "Buy and send me, dearest mama, a little white
collar and a pair of simple loose sleeves with links."
A woman still--but glorified, radiant, resplendent--a woman all
inspired, upraised, exalted, uplifted, aureoled.
FOOTNOTES:
[20] See the book on massacres by the ex-bureaucrat Prince Urusoff, in
which the high official shows that the government itself is the chief
pogrom-preparer. Translated by Herman Rosenthal.
[21] See "Within the Pale," by Michael Davitt. Also Bialik's "'Al
Shechitah," either in the Jewish Quarterly Review or The Maccabean,
January 1907. Translation by Helena Frank.
[22] See the "Report of the Duma Commission on the Pogrom at Bialystok,"
published in the London Jewish Chronicle, July 1906. Reprinted in its
entirety in the American Jewish Year Book, 1906-1907. At Kishineff, the
wife of Fanorissi Siss had nails driven thru her eyes. See also Book II
of "Gillette's Social Redemption," and Kropotkin's letter in the London
Times, July 25, 1908.
[23] See "Russia from Within," by Alexander Ular. This truthful volume
contains many horrible revelations concerning the fearfully cruel and
corrupt Grand Dukes.
[24] For a well-edited "Table of Pogroms" see American Jewish Year Book,
1906-1907. Out of hundreds of examples, here is one: On the last day of
October 1905, a frightful carnage overtook the Jews in Odessa. Their
financial loss amounted to at least one million rubles, and six thousand
of them were killed and injured. The Self-Defense was well organized,
but when they fought too valiantly, the police surrounded them and shot
them down. The janitors were ordered to point out Jewish flats to the
mob. An imperial Ukase was published, thanking the troops for their
excellent work. Nineteen officers who tried to prevent the wholesale
butchery were transfered to obscure posts, while Neidhardt who was
Prefect of Police at this time was promoted to the position of Governor
of Nishni-Novgorod. I purposely quote very modern instances, so English
readers will see that the crimes of the Romanoffs are not things of the
past.
[25] See "The Revolution in the Baltic Provinces." The author's name is
withheld for obvious reasons, but the terrible little book is edited by
J. Ramsay MacDonald, a well-known member of Parliament. The reader of
nervous temperament will not find the chapter on the "Torture Chambers
of Riga," at all enjoyable.
[26] For numerous instances see the "Red Reign," by Kellogg Durland.
From every standpoint this is one of the most admirable works that has
appeared on Russia.
[27] "She had the ready laugh of a girl, and laughed with so much
heartiness, and so unaffectedly, that she really seemed a young lass of
sixteen.... At dinner time, when all met, there was chatting and joking
as tho nothing was at stake, and it was then that Sophia Perovskaya--at
the very moment when she had in her pocket a loaded revolver intended to
blow up everything and everybody into the air--most frequently delighted
the company with her silver laugh."--STEPNIAK.
THE FORTRESS OF PETER AND PAUL
A strange feeling came over me when I saw that I was being conveyed
to this prison, used by the Government of the Czars for political
offenders only; a place never spoken of in Russia without a
shudder.--LEO DEUTSCH: _Sixteen Years in Siberia_.
The Circle of Chaykovsky exerted an immense influence all over the
empire, forming branches in every province, and producing the greatest
of the Russian Revolutionists. Yet the particular group to which
Kropotkin belonged was daily decreasing, on account of the imprisonment
of its members.
In January 1874, the police became so vigilant that the remaining
comrades thought it wise for Stepniak to leave St. Petersburg. But this
noble and lovable giant, whose simplicity earned him the epithet of
"Baby," refused to obey. He protested warmly, and remained at his risky
post until the Nihilists actually forced him to depart to a safer city.
It was also time for Kropotkin--who had become famous by his speeches to
the 'prostoi narod'--to conceal himself, but in his case a strange
circumstance prevented. He had just completed his essay on the glacial
formations, and it was necessary to read it at a meeting of the
Geographical Society. When he finished, an animated discussion began,
but laurels were on Kropotkin's head; it was admitted that all old
theories concerning the diluvial period in Russia were erroneous. This
paper produced such an excellent impression that it was proposed to
nominate the author president of the Physical Geography section. So
Kropotkin sat among the fine gentlemen, and shook hands with the
dignified professors, and smilingly thanked the learned savants for the
honors they conferred upon him, but inwardly he asked himself if he
would not spend that very night in the prison of the Third Section.
His guess was not a bad one. He was soon arrested. After certain tedious
formalities, he was put in a cab. A colossal Circassian sat at his side.
The genial Kropotkin spoke to him, but the mass of meat only snored.
Many of Kropotkin's comrades were already entombed in Litovsky prison,
but his question if he too were going there was unanswered. Then the cab
crossed Palace Bridge, and it was no longer necessary to interrogate the
guardian. Peter Kropotkin knew he was bound for that silent coffin of
stone which darkly rises like a Hell-on-Earth--the Fortress of Saint
Peter and Saint Paul.
He leaned over and looked at the flowing Neva, knowing he would not soon
see the graceful river again. Over the gulf of Finland, clouds were
hanging, but the prisoner searched for patches of blue sky. The sun was
going down, wearily perhaps, but proudly, for as it slowly sank below
the horizon it left behind it gossamer colors of sapphire and scarlet,
with glint and glow of gold. (And the officer snored.)
The carriage turned to the left and entered a dark passage. Kropotkin
was now within the gate of the Cemetery for the Living, the mouldy,
murderous Tomb of Torture. Thru his mind flashed all the horrors of this
famous prison whose dreaded name is uttered only in a voice hushed and
awed.[28] Within these walls the Decembrists became martyrs. Here
Nechaev--in the gloomy Alexis ravelin[29]--was kept a prisoner for life.
Here Perovskaya had been confined. Here was incarcerated the
poet-prince Odoevsky, about whose early death the banished Lermontov
wrote so tender an elegy.
The carriage stopped before another gate which was opened by soldiers.
Here Catherine II.[30] buried alive all who opposed her abominations.
Here the terrible Minich tortured his enemies until they expired from
the agony. Here Princess Tarakanova was locked in a cell which filled
with water, causing the rats to climb upon her body to save themselves
from drowning. Here in the awful loneliness of the silent dungeons, an
army of unfortunates had gone insane.
The carriage rested again and Kropotkin was taken to a third iron gate
which opened into a dark room where he could vaguely see several
soldiers in soft felt boots gliding noiselessly about as if they were
phantoms from another world. He recalled that here was caged much of the
winged glory of Russian Literature--Ryleev, the poet of freedom whose
forbidden ballads Kropotkin's mother copied in her note-books;
Griboyedov who wrote one immortal masterpiece[31] and then put pen no
more to paper because the censor mutilated his work beyond recognition;
Shevchenko who dipped his quill in a soul of tears and wrote
heart-breaking poetry about his fellow-serfs; Dostoyevsky, the sensitive
novelist who described so well the injured and insulted; Pisarev, a
truly marvellous critic whose voice was a trumpet-call arousing the
youth to a higher life; Chernishevsky, the profoundest thinker of his
time, as great a genius as the race of man has produced.[32] These--and
how many more!--had spent weary years in the fortress where he was now
walking.
He remembered that in one of these cells the dauntless Karakozov was
frightfully maltreated by being deprived of sleep. The gendarmes, who
were changed every two hours, were ordered to keep him awake. Karakozov
was inventive, and as he sat on his small stool he would cross his legs,
and swing one of them to make his tormentors believe he was up;
meanwhile he would steal a nap, continuing to swing his leg. When the
gendarmes--depraved, imbruted blood-spillers--discovered the deception,
they shook him every few moments whether he swung his limb or not. It is
also quite certain that all his joints were crushed, for when he was
taken out from the fortress to be hanged, he looked like a lump of
rubber or heap of jelly. His head, arms, legs, trunk, were altogether
loose as if they contained no bones or only broken ones. It was terrible
to see the strenuous efforts he made to ascend the scaffold.
Kropotkin was taken to another black hall where armed sentries were
moving. He thought of the mighty Bakunin, who was kept in an Austrian
prison chained to the wall for two years, and then spent six more in
this Fortress of Peter and Paul, and yet came out as fresh and pink as a
boy.
He was put into a cell--a casemate originally intended for a cannon. A
heavy oak door was shut behind him, a huge key turned in the lock, and
the prince who had slept in the lap of an empress, who had been petted
by Nicholas I., and who as sergeant of the corps of pages became the
closest personal attendant of Alexander II., was left alone in a
darksome reduit.
The prisoner examined his cell. High up in the granite wall a hole was
cut. Kropotkin dragged his stool there, looked out and listened.
Emptiness--no sound. He tapped the walls--no response. He struck the
floor with his foot--no reply. He spoke to the sentry--no answer. The
coldness, the dampness, the darkness were bad enuf, but this utter
silence, this intense stillness, this grave-like deadness were
maddening.
No human being addressed him; no living thing held intercourse with
him--except the pigeons which came morning and afternoon to his window
to receive food thru the grating. Only the bells of the fortress
cathedral were heard. Every quarter of an hour they chimed to the glory
of Jesus, and every midnight they pealed forth, "God save the Czar."
Then all was mute ... and nothing more....
Not only did no one speak to him, he was not even permitted to speak to
himself. When the killing silence first began to oppress him, he hummed
a tune. Then the spirit of song took hold of him, and he raised his
voice. He sang from his favorite opera, Glinka's _Ruslan and
Ludmila_--"Have I then to say farewell to love forever?"
"Sir," said a bass voice thru the food-window, "do not sing!"
A few days later, Peter Kropotkin could not sing.
FOOTNOTES:
[28] See the "Memoirs of a Revolutionist."
[29] See the "Russian Bastille" by Simon O. Pollock in the International
Socialist Review, March 1907.
[30] If anyone cares to know to what sexual depravities royal ladies can
descend, let him read what Dr. W. W. Sanger says about Empress Elizabeth
and the two Catherines in his valuable "History of Prostitution." The
number of lovers they caressed was surpassed only by the number of
thinkers they tortured. The first-named had a reputation for humaneness.
Does this mean that during her reign no one was exiled? No, it means
that during her reign only 80,000 of her subjects were knouted and
deported to Siberia.
[31] Prophetically named "The Misfortune of Having Brains." (Gore ot
Uma).
[32] For a brief but sympathetic sketch of Chernishevsky by one who knew
him personally, see the "Russian Revolt" by Edmund Noble. It contains
this sentence: "Such was the cost of trying to be a Cobden or a Bright
in Russia!"
BROTHERS
The worst is, that the gendarmes cannot live without political
plots; if they have none to deal with in reality, they must invent
some; otherwise they run the risk of seeing their budget diminished
for the next year. This is the reason why alarming reports as to
future political attempts circulate as a rule a few weeks and even
months before the renewal of the special budget serving to pay this
sort of people.--MAXIM KOVALEVSKY: _Russian Political
Institutions_.
So time crept on with crippled feet, halting and limping on its broken
crutches, held back by heavy ball and clanking chain. Thru the five feet
of granite the sun could not penetrate, but grief came in thru the
mortar. No oxygen passed the Judas, but with noisy wings sorrow flew in
the embrasure. The oaken doors held freedom out, but sadness passed the
bars of iron.
A great blow came to Kropotkin. He heard news which sickened him. Life
lost its meaning. His stool remained unused in the corner.[33] All the
day long, and during the endless hours of night, he wandered up and
down his cell like a dazed animal. Friendly faces could not see him, but
distress was his warder, and despair became his familiar visitor. He had
learnt of the arrest of his brother Alexander[34]--the Sasha for whom he
had saved the tiny tea-cakes.
The history of Peter Kropotkin can never be written and the name of
Alexander left out. Tho only a year older, Sasha was in advance of him
intellectually. This alone shows what a remarkable child he was, for
Peter also was precocious: at twelve he dropped his title of prince,
signing himself merely P. Kropotkin; at fourteen he wrote articles in
favor of a constitution; and while still at school, he became the author
of a text-book on physics which was printed for the use of his
class-mates.
But more than anyone else, it was Sasha who opened unknown vistas to
him, who stimulated his mind, who guided his studies, and directed his
reading.
"What happiness," wrote Kropotkin many years later, "it was for me to
have such a brother! To him I owe the best part of my development."
However, we soon forget Sasha's abilities--great as they were--in the
contemplation of his white soul, of his spotless character, of his open
heart, of his affectionate and exceptional personality.