I was born in 1844. I passed my childhood and youth in the province of
Tchernigoff, and all my life I remained grateful to my parents for the
good and wise training and schooling which they gave me. They pitied
the serfs and never oppressed them. Nevertheless there was a sharp
difference between our life, the life of landlords, and that of the
peasants in their cabins, such a shocking difference that my childish
soul suffered greatly from the contradiction between the reality and
the teaching of Christ. My mother would often read to us the New
Testament and biographies of the great apostles of truth and love for
humanity.
All my life I thought so much and ceaselessly about the needs of the
people, the suffering of the people, that all my sorrows and joys are
bound up with the people. And I always made it my duty to serve the
people and do all that is necessary to open the people's eyes to its
own life and wants.
My own life was entirely composed of love and devotion to my country
and people and of a passionate desire to serve them with all the powers
in my possession up to the very hour of my death.
I am asked: "How did I arrive at the firm resolution to live only for
the people?" I think that this resolution was always present in me,
from my youngest years, from the very beginning of my conscious life.
When I turn back in my mind to review my past life, I see myself,
first of all, a little five-year-old lassie, who suffered at heart for
somebody: for the coachman, or the chambermaid, or the day laborer, or
the oppressed peasants (at that time serfdom still existed in Russia).
The impressions of the people's suffering sank so deeply into my
childish soul that they never deserted me afterward in all my life.
I was seventeen when, in 1861, the peasants were freed of the violence
of the landlords, but were so badly supplied with land that the
laboring masses were again forced to go into slavery to the wealthy.
The agitations among the peasants provoked terrible executions.
Their torture was taking place before my very eyes, strengthening my
aspiration to serve the people with all my might, so as to lighten
their bitter lot.
No revolutionary circles and organizations were known to exist at
that time in the provinces, but there soon came the activity of the
Zemstvos, and I applied to it all my efforts. Ten years I labored
in the peasant school and the village, organizing credit-savings
banks, mutual aid, co-operative shops and campaigns on the eve of the
elections of judges and rural boards. My work was progressing, the
confidence of the peasants in me was helping it along, but against me
and my assistants the nobility arose, reporting us to the ministers,
and the labor of many years was swept away as if with a broom.
The schools and banks were closed, all the honest people of our
county and the whole province of Tchernigoff were placed under police
surveillance, many were exiled to the northern provinces and me they
began to persecute.